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The CIO role increasingly combines technology leadership with enterprise strategy, business fluency, delivery, and change management. A 2025 CIO.com feature identifies seven standout capabilities through interviews with industry leaders; it is a useful framework, not a universal ranking of what every employer wants. Current surveys reinforce the direction: technology leaders are being asked to connect technology investments—including AI—to business outcomes.
What the evidence says about the modern CIO role
Technology leadership is increasingly tied to business performance, but the evidence comes from distinct surveys with different respondents and scopes—not one universal measure of CIO demand. McKinsey’s 2026 Global Tech Agenda reports results from a 2025 survey of 632 C-level executives and IT professionals across 69 countries and 24 industries. Nearly two-thirds of respondents at top-performing companies said their technology leaders were very involved in crafting enterprise strategy, compared with 52% at other organizations. McKinsey defined top performers as companies reporting average revenue and EBIT growth of at least 10% over three years; 114 respondents met that definition. Read McKinsey’s 2026 Global Tech Agenda.
Other surveys point to the breadth of the role. Foundry’s 2025 State of the CIO survey included 906 IT leaders and 250 line-of-business professionals. Among its respondents, 38% named monetizing company data as a top business imperative, 35% cited improving customer experience, and 32% cited developing new digital revenue streams. Seventy-six percent said balancing business innovation with operational excellence remained an ongoing challenge. See Foundry’s State of the CIO survey.
AI is adding to the leadership remit rather than replacing the need for business judgment. Salesforce’s 2025 survey of 200 CIOs in 24 countries, conducted with NewtonX, found that 94% said scaling AI was forcing them to expand their skill sets. In Deloitte’s 2025 survey of 622 US-based senior technology leaders, fielded March 7–April 1, 2025, 69% said generative AI was their organization’s most urgently needed skill, while 50% said co-creating technology strategy was essential to thriving as a technology leader over the next 18 months. These are separate survey findings, not directly comparable benchmarks. Salesforce’s CIO survey and Deloitte’s 2025 Tech Exec Survey provide their respective methodologies and results.
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The seven capabilities below come from CIO.com’s September 29, 2025 feature, which drew on interviews with industry leaders. They are best read as complementary capabilities rather than a ranked checklist: strategy and business fluency help identify what matters; delivery and outcome ownership turn priorities into results; communication, resilience, and change leadership help the organization move with the work. Read the CIO.com feature.
1. Visionary leadership that produces innovation
A CIO needs to spot where technology can improve the organization—not simply introduce technology for its own sake. That means inviting ideas from teams beyond IT, then linking experimentation to a practical outcome. In the healthcare examples discussed in the CIO.com feature, those outcomes include better patient care, fewer delays, and using data to support prevention. A vision becomes credible when people can see how it changes a service, decision, or operating process.
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2. Business insight comparable to a COO’s
Understanding operations, sales, customers, and the value chain helps a CIO choose technology that fits how the business actually works. It also makes it easier to spot where a process is failing before proposing a technical fix. Commvault CIO Ha Hoang describes the role as connecting technology investments to measurable business outcomes and understanding the whole business, not just IT. That breadth matters when the same initiative touches customers, employees, operations, and systems.
3. Strategic thinking and transformative instincts
Strategic thinking means anticipating needs, listening across the organization, and aligning technology initiatives with long-term business goals. It is not only about predicting what comes next; it is about making choices that preserve options while preparing the company to adapt. BairesDev CTO Justice Erolin said a technology leader’s ability to “see around corners,” align initiatives to business goals, and think long-term is essential. CIO.com’s interviews place this capability alongside the practical work of guiding transformation.
4. Internal fortitude
Technology programs can encounter operational complexity, financial pressure, failures, and delays. Internal fortitude is the ability to stay steady, take responsibility, and learn without treating a setback as the end of the effort. The CIO.com feature recommends seeking candid mentors, setting clear principles and guardrails, owning outcomes, and using adversity to improve future decisions. Resilience is not a substitute for accountability: it helps a leader face problems directly and keep teams focused on what can be changed.
5. Business acumen comparable to a CFO’s
A CIO should be able to explain technical choices in terms of investment, risk, return, revenue, and efficiency. That includes distinguishing necessary resilience or compliance spending from discretionary projects, and weighing expected value against cost and uncertainty. Financial fluency does not mean reducing every decision to short-term savings; it means making trade-offs legible to executives who must allocate limited resources across the enterprise.
6. Outcome orchestration
Outcome orchestration is the discipline of turning strategy into delivered and adopted value across people, data, platforms, and AI. It requires more than launching a project: leaders need clear measures, accountable owners, appropriate funding and governance, and a regular way to remove impediments. Plutora at Planview general manager Dalibor Siroky recommends: “Define a few measurable outcomes and make one leader accountable for each.” A small set of owned outcomes gives teams a clearer basis for prioritization than a long inventory of technology activity.
7. Solid communication
Communication is the bridge between technical possibility and organizational action. A CIO must explain complex ideas in accessible language, clarify the business value of technologies such as AI, address concerns about disruption, and build consensus among teams with different priorities. Object Edge CEO Rohit Garewal emphasizes explaining complex technical concepts so the rest of the organization can understand them and defining the business value of disruptive technologies. Salesforce’s 2025 CIO survey found that 61% of respondents had personally improved leadership skills, 57% storytelling or narrative-building skills, and 55% change-management and communication skills.
How CIOs can develop the capabilities
Skill-building is most useful when tied to work the CIO already owns. The following approaches translate the framework into practical development priorities without assuming every company or sector needs the same emphasis.
- Build business fluency: Spend time with leaders in finance, sales, operations, and customer-facing teams. Map how value is created, where work slows down, and which outcomes matter to each group.
- Practice financial translation: For major initiatives, explain the expected business result, cost, risk, assumptions, and trade-offs in language a finance or operating leader can assess.
- Make strategy actionable: Turn broad priorities into a small number of measurable outcomes, assign accountable owners, and review progress and blockers on a regular cadence.
- Strengthen change leadership: Include affected teams early, communicate what will change and why, and make adoption part of the delivery plan rather than an afterthought.
- Invest in communication and narrative: Practice concise explanations that connect a technology choice to a customer, employee, or financial outcome. Salesforce’s survey suggests CIOs themselves are investing in leadership, storytelling, and change-management skills.
- Protect judgment and resilience: Use trusted mentors to pressure-test decisions, establish clear principles for risk and governance, and conduct candid reviews after setbacks.
What to take from the seven-skill framework
The evidence supports a broad view of CIO leadership: business and technology fluency need to work together, and strategy must be translated into outcomes people adopt. But neither CIO.com’s interview-based framework nor the surveys establish a single ranked list that applies across industries, company sizes, and countries. For an aspiring or current CIO, the practical test is whether these capabilities help the organization make better choices, deliver useful change, and understand the value and risks of its technology decisions.
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