You cannot evaluate unless you educate.

Decisions are never meant to be made in a void, and information alone isn’t education. Wisdom is the pool in which information and context swim together. When it comes to IT, board of directors need to be educated in IT fields and ramifications.

Very few board members have technology experience. Less than 10% have technology subcommittees from which to draw.

We have talked about digital transformation for years; now we have rushed into the emergency room. Ignorance at the Board level of IT insight has opened the door for reactionary decisions.

What is a Board of Directors to do?

There are four questions boards need to ask now, and three acts they must build into their environment.

The Four Questions

1. What is in place that is right and that we can maximize?
2. CIO’s and CEO’s have been ahead of the curve. The value of the IT strategies may not have been given proper perspective, but the work has been happening. Now is the time to put past work into context, and to inform as to what future strategies will be able to accomplish.
3. What is wrong with our IT function and focus that needs to be corrected?
4. Now is the time for brutal assessments in areas such as security, business processes, IT alignment, human resources, remote implications, allotments, and technology innovations. This is the window the CIO has been waiting for, and the readiness to understand has never been stronger.
5. What is missing from our IT strategy and must be added?
6. This is a different question than what is in need of correction. It is a lens on the overlooked and discounted; it is an indictment on legacy and procrastination; it is that which gives charge to high leverage implementation.
7. What is confusing and needs clarification?
8. Good board members have already done research, and they have run into conflicting information. Different leaders within the companies have different opinions on need or preferences on solutions. This is the time for Board members to bring information and context together, and the CIO is the chief architect of the process.

The answers to these questions lead a board to ACT now in three areas:

1. Analysis
2. Boards must make decisions on financial investments and allocations based on the data and findings of technology. It is only through analysis, coupled with information and context, that provides boards with insight for business opportunity decisions.
3. Clarity
4. Cyber security and risk, regulatory issues and industry disruptions are a sea of waves that refuse to be corralled. Information changes; solutions are constantly evolving; the unexpected is more frequent.
5. These are contextual issues that serve as parameters for sound decisions. Unless a board is being continually informed, they will lose the value and the urgency of major technology decisions that need to be made to serve strategy.
6. Transformation
7. Information and context provide boards with transformation initiatives regarding growth and innovation. Understanding the future role of technology, conviction strengthens around  the whole enterprise of customer experience. Seeing a whole picture, they are also able to make informed decisions when tasked regarding essential talent and acquisition.

The obvious answers are for boards to appoint technology experts to open positions, to bring the CIO to the table, and, at minimum, to engage a technology subcommittee.

The group I’m in, CIO Mastermind, is a referral pool for qualified CIO’s able to sit in a board position. CIO Mastermind also trains boards on their role in digital transformation and technology strategy, and their ability to master information and context for better decision making.

CIO Mastermind provides assessment, coaching, training and support so that boards can have clarity and confidence in their technology strategies and the personnel who drive it. Boards are led through a three step integration of information, context, and pathways.

We have never been in better days for the CIO to be at the table, and for the CEO to shed the burden of trying to represent the critical dynamics of technology that must influence board decisions.