I’m taking the gloves off. I’m raising my voice in victory.

The 2018 State of the CIO Survey is out as reported by CIO.com.

• 71% of IT and LOB (Lines of Business) collaborate more frequently.
• 88% understand the CIO role to be more digital and innovation focused, with top priority focus being strategic, transformational and then functional.
• 88% are involved in transformation efforts, including business alignment, IT and business partnership and change leadership.
• 49% of LOB now consider IT a strategic adviser.
• CEO’s are now looking for the CIO to upgrade IT and data security to avoid cyber-attacks, to reach specific revenue growth goals and to lead digital business initiatives.
• IT and LOB are giving top priority to increase operational efficiency, improve customer experience and increase cyber-security precautions.

I have been fighting for this. Let the keywords and buzzwords stand out: Collaboration. Digital Transformation. Adviser. Partnership.

Yes!

This is what I do: I contend for you so that you work boldly, rest easily and maximize every opportunity. And the opportunity to maximize: To raise your position as a CIO to the presence and power you need.

Your effectiveness and success is exactly what the CEO and C-Suites have been wanting but not knowing how to craft. You have long sounded the message that your IT team is more than specialists in their own tucked away area, and your team has desired to be more than functionaries without connection to the larger enterprise. Certainly, you have long argued, you are not the team that is a blockade to progress.

It doesn’t matter that what is called upon from you may be outside the training you received. You have what it takes, and the leadership adjustments, collaborative skills and persuasion management are priorities you can learn from peers and in the midst of work within the C-Suite.

Momentum. That is what we have been building to, and now it has taken hold. You are not alone. Success stories, case studies and learned peers now abound. The need has come to you. The very nature of business now is nothing you had to craft. Its evolution has remade itself to the very core of who you are and what you bring.

You have what it takes, and the leadership adjustments, collaborative skills and persuasion management are priorities you can learn from peers and in the midst of work within the C-Suite.

The time between shifts are short, but you now possess the agility to ride the waves that come your way. For this, your C-Suite peers are grateful: The technology, language and processes the marketplace demands are too great for your peers to respond to without your leadership. You never cared about position really: You have had to prioritize your presence and power. This is no longer your fight. Never before have you experienced the invitation for influence that is now yours. The support will grow, and the survey numbers will become even more favorable. The future has revealed herself, and you sit at her right hand.

So pause for a moment, just to breathe in the air of having arrived. Now, let’s get to work. We are needed, and we can’t rest content. Our growth edge is even more keen.

As we close this year and look to the next, I am available to you. I trust my words help here and in my newsletter. For those of you I can serve in my Mastermind group, or those who choose to become a client, we have ahead the best year yet, and it is my privilege to ride the waves with you.

I am available to you because I have contended for you. The fight is worth everything I give to it. Congratulations my friends.