Those looking to advance their careers in the IT field will want to pay close attention to the future of IT leadership. From challenges they face to expected responsibilities, explore the future of IT leadership.
IT Leadership Must Deal with Home Network Security
With so many people working from home, one of the biggest challenges IT leaders must deal with is home network security. Leadership has to find a balance between keeping the company and its data secure and not making employees feel like the company doesn’t trust them. Hybrid environments and work-from-home situations have many inherent cybersecurity risks. The risks include ransomware and security vulnerabilities.
Leaders Must Embrace Agility
The pandemic has shown how important it is for IT leaders to be incredibly agile and ensure that their infrastructure is as well. Companies that quickly adapted a work-from-home policy fared better, at least initially than those that were slow to adjust. This came down to the ability of the IT department to adapt to changes. As the pandemic continues, IT leadership has to continue this agility, as it is impossible to predict what the future of work holds.
You Need to Upskill Employees in a Changing World
Not all the challenges facing IT leadership are due to the pandemic. The challenge of upskilling employees in a cost-effective yet effective way has been consistent for several years. IT managers don’t want to have to replace current employees with new talent with new skills, as that is pricey. Instead, they must find ways to help their current team gain new skills. This saves the company money and boosts employee satisfaction and retention.
Some of the skills IT leaders need to look into helping their team gain include:
- Cloud migration
- Cloud processes
- Cloud computing
- Artificial intelligence
- Data science
- Data visualization
- Data engineering
- Machine learning
- Network and information security
IT Leadership Gets to Take Advantage of Improved Technology
While those in IT leadership face challenges, they also benefit from the various technological advantages of the last years and decades. A few decades ago, workers had to share computer terminals due to high costs and physically distribute encryption keys. Now, technology allows people to work from home and have higher processing power. The advances in technology also mean that there is typically a backup solution. For example, if email fails, chat will likely work.
Or consider some of the processes that IT leaders can take on. For example, making the help desk a priority is a good option. That is because the help desk is the common metric used to judge the relationship between the IT department and the rest of the business. As such, CIOs should ensure it runs smoothly and resolve any roadblocks, such as IT not being able to explain to coworkers why a system is down. Or another process would be to focus on support for applications.
How IT Leaders Should Plan for the Future
To create a plan for the future, IT leadership must assess the organization as a whole. They need to examine the problems as well as the opportunities that it is facing. Leaders must have the skills to evaluate and prioritize changes. They need to know what technological changes can wait and which ones should start immediately. This planning must also involve IT leadership working with other leaders in the organization. It ensures that the tech plans account for overall goals.
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