The rise of the chief transformation officer

“The people, process, and technology moniker gets brushed over, but as transformation officer, you have to have competency in all three with enough depth to extract value out of the role,” Wiedenbeck says.

CIOs’ organic role in transformation

Some CIOs with robust transformation agendas have little interest in crossing over to a formal CTO role. Take Katrina Agusti, who as CIO at Carhartt has played an active part in leading transformation initiatives, including a rethinking of the go-to-market calendar, expansion of the distribution network, developing end-to-end customer journeys, and the shift towards more sustainable products and packaging. When the executive tasked with setting up a transformation office left the company several months back, Carhartt’s top executives reached out to Agusti to see whether she would stand up the office and have oversight of the efforts until they brought in a replacement.

Agusti believes she was sought out for the transformation role because of her long tenure at the company (20 years) and her past achievements advancing business strategy and working with cross-functional teams on change management. As an IT chief, Agusti says she also shares a lot of the same competencies and characteristics as transformation leaders, including the ability to understand business direction, evaluate tradeoffs, assess organizational readiness, and broker difficult discussions between different functions.

“We in IT have led so many projects without the name of transformation, we’ve built the trust and credibility to take this on,” she says.

Even so, Agusti says she has no interest in serving as CTO long term, and doing both roles, in her view, does a disservice to the transformation office.

“This can’t be a side gig — it has to be a focus and I can’t do that consistently on my own due to other priorities,” she adds.

SAIC

While there’s certainly overlap between the functions, most CIOs see their responsibilities and career tracks as complementary to the CTO charter as opposed to direct conflict. For example, while the CTO focuses on organizational, market, and change management challenges, the CIO’s charter most often zeros in on the digital piece — a delineation that typically rules out any significant turf wars.

“I see the roles complementing each other if it’s set up correctly,” says Nathan Rogers, senior vice president and CIO infrastructure enablement at SAIC, a technology integrator. “Whether reporting to the same person or at the same level, if they’re strategically aligned, it’s a powerful combination.”

Sri Adusumilli, CIO at Truckpro, is accountable for all the digital aspects of transformation happening at the independent distributor of heavy-duty aftermarket truck parts and accessories, working in concert with the vice president of corporate initiatives who oversees the work from an organizational structure and cultural standpoint. Truckpro hasn’t appointed a formal CTO, and Adusumilli says he sees the role as more transient as there are limited large-scale transformation efforts a company will undergo in its lifetime.

“The CTO is a time-bound role,” he claims. “You don’t change your culture or your operating model every few years.”

Truckpro

Regardless of whether he or any other IT leader aspires to hold the CTO title ultimately is irrelevant, Adusumilli contends, because CIOs are already doing the heavy lifting of orchestrating transformation.

“CIOs are already transformational executives if they’re doing their jobs,” he says. “I’m not looking to become a transformation officer because I believe I already am.”