There is obviously something very attractive about having a job at C-level, but that does sometimes seem to lead to the notion that there should be more of them, even though most of the core responsibilities are already fully covered. There is an answer to that problem, of course, and that is increasing the level of granularity needed within the areas of responsibility.
We have seen this happen before. When I were a lad, a Vice President was the equivalent to the person responsible for a major slice of a company’s business - VP Sales, for example. But then the IT industry got underway and the sobriquet became devalued. Many years ago now, when speaking at a conference, one of the other speakers was introduced as VP of something totally unmemorable, so later I asked what he actually did. It transpired he was Vice President of giving presentations at conferences, and just used the VP tag for maximum plausibility.
The same now seems to be happening with C-level job titles, which makes me wonder where it might lead - Chief Janatorial Requisites Officer before the decade is out? OK, that one is silly, but Chief Code Optimization Officer is not beyond the bounds of reason. We have already seen Chief Digital Officer, Chief Data Officer and Chief Knowledge Officer come and, if not go exactly, fade off in popularity.
Those three are of particular interest, not least because they seek to sub-divide areas that really should be components of the Chief Information Officer’s balliwick. While I am happy to acknowledge that the CIO’s job now includes mastery of a far, far wider range of functions, skills and technologies than in the days of batch-processed accounts applications, that does also include using a far wider set of values for the word `mastery’ than the ability to handle every aspect of every job single handed. Delegation, with a deep understanding of the issues of each area, as well as the capabilities required of the person selected to handle their relationship to each of the others is now the watchword.
Do you need a CKO?
One of those titles – Chief Knowledge Officer – has once again surfaced and is being touted round as the next big thing. The notion comes from major international consultancy, EY Global Consulting. The firm’s lead on global AI strategy, Beatriz Sanz Sáiz, believes that, within two years, every business will have a Chief Knowledge Officer charged with implementing generative AI both effectively and at scale.
EY Global considers this thinking to be important enough to warrant a press announcement, and there are certainly some important arguments to be had about the subject. I had hoped to get some answers to questions about her thinking, but it transpires that, by the time of writing, she is currently too busy to engage with the media, even by email exchange. That leaves several questions hanging, looking for answers: I have my own views but answers from the CIO community would be enlightening and educational to receive at a time when gen AI is creating a heady mixture of excitement, fear, expectation, confusion and doubt as to what might be possible, what innovations might spring from it and what catastrophes might result.
The announcement postulated a position with regard to the future of AI and its relationship with business users, namely that "to implement generative AI effectively and at scale, there is an urgent need to implement strategies to effectively capture and leverage data to enhance decision making and reasoning".
That, of course, makes fairly obvious sense. AI is solely dependent upon the data it has available to work with, so ensuring a continuous supply of sufficient current, accurate, reliable, legal and validated data is an essential pre-requisite. Key to managing this, in Sanz Sáiz’s view, is the creation and filling of a new role within business that can provide the skillsets and capabilities required to generate the value potential of gen AI to businesses. That automatically raises associated issues such as staff re-skilling, data capture, and what data is worth capturing. It is her belief that, within two years nearly every business will have appointed a Chief Knowledge Officer to handle these important roles.
An obvious question here concerns identifying what is the difference between this new role and the Chief Knowledge Officers that quite a few business appointed some 20 or so years ago, when being a knowledge worker was all the rage? It was a title that really didn’t take off at the time and I can see no reason why it should become flavor of the month this time round. Identifying and providing both the skillsets and the right individuals in the company can be achieved just as well by the CIO and HR team working well together. If anything, a Chief Education Officer would be a more relevant role because in this new territory of AI, everyone will be a poorly skilled frontiers person for a good while yet.
Referring back to that mention of CIO delegation, it seems more likely that getting domain specialists and team leaders within a business up to speed on AI tech and modelling practices might be a better bet. Each of them should understand what is the important data in their domain and why it is important to the business. They and should then be trained in the skills of data preparation and availability. After all, they will also play a role in the post-gen AI operation of interpreting what the answers really mean and how they get implemented. An implanted Chief Information Officer is likely to just get in the way and could become a political hindrance.
The E&Y announcement also indicates her feeling that in order to meet the need to implement gen AI effectively and at scale, there is an urgent need for new strategies in order to implement effective processes and tools to capture and leverage data. Sadly it does not go so far as to indicate what strategies or tools she might have had in mind but then again, as EY Global is one of the big international consultancies that could be seen as giving away the golden eggs for nothing.
Sanz Sáiz does, however, see the new role of Chief Knowledge Officer as being critical to creating, delivering and managing such new strategies. This does of course require there to be enough of such people to go round the user community at a very early stage in the development of gen AI. They will also need a wide personal skill and knowledge base if they are to match the huge range of applications that users will require. creating a few chatbots in ChatGPT does not make a Chief Knowledge Officer.
Again, this points to a broad spread of gen AI education at a departmental level across all potential users, where those that understand what needs to be achieved in `company X’ – often vastly different from what is required in `company Y’ – learn how to apply gen AI in a meaningful way.
It also means CIOs, already the prime target for every vendor sales rep, will be the prime target for all those vendors now starting to deliver new tools and services that can help companies develop and implement the new gen AI applications and services that are at yet barely imagined. Such trained staff will be crucial to the evaluation of what is good and what is frighteningly bad – and better, I would suggest, than a single C-level individual implant with their own inevitable biases and favourites.
It would be far too cynical of me to suggest that any of those biases and favourites might include working with any consultancy operation, and indeed there will be many situations where such input will prove crucial to many businesses. But I would suggest that any successful CIO is already going to be well-equipped for identifying and scoping the problems gen AI is likely to present over the next few years. They should also be well-skilled in picking the people who might benefit most from on-going education and able form the core of a company’s long-term gen AI Exploitation Team.
