We continue to address foundational ways to increase leadershipcapacity by focusing on mission, ethics and values and innovation.Combined with effective strategic communication, leaders canestablish trust, engagement, accountability and collaboration withemployees and build strong relationships with customers andmembers.

IBM's March 2013 white paper from the IBM Institute for BusinessValue, titled, “Connecting More – Intersecting Insights from theIBM CEO, CMO and CIO Studies” is based on 6,600 face-to-faceinterviews with global C-suite executives. It provides deepinsights into the challenges of aligning senior executives aroundthese key issues.

For the organization as a whole, CEOs identified the topattributes to engage employees as ethics and values; acollaborative environment; purpose and mission; and the ability toinnovate. Importantly, CEOs communicated that the leadership skillsmost needed in employees today and in the future werecollaboration, communication, creativity and flexibility.

Most CEOs interviewed by IBM listed technology and people astheir two top strategic priorities. IBM found that technologyleaders and organizations that focus on employees and emphasizeopenness tend to outperform their industry peers in both revenuegrowth and profitability.

Furthermore, CEOs believe that technological factors and peopleskills are among the most important external forces that willimpact their organizations over the coming years. They know thatthey must employ and develop good people with the right skills inorder to leverage ever-developing and improving technology.

Technology includes understanding social networks, mobile dataand digital media, utilizing the cloud and effectively employingthe related data explosion. Emphasizing openness includes breakingdown silos and empowering employees to collaborate, innovate, becreative and engage in a two-way conversation with thecustomer.

As organizations become more open, CEOs recognize the criticalneed for organizational values and a clear sense of purpose toguide decisions and actions. Mission and values statements are notjust words on a page. They need to be understood and embraced byeveryone in the organization and should be employed for strategicdecision-making. They are important in creating, building andsustaining your organization's culture.

The chief marketing officer (CMO) is becoming much more involvedwith defining and managing both internal culture and brandreputation as well communicating it externally. Most CMOs, however,recognize that substantial work is required to have employeesembrace and live the corporate culture.

Chief information officers (CIOs) can help manage openness andsharing of information by working with CMOs to enhance and improvethe total customer or member experience by drawing on Big Data'spower.

“Knowing your customer or member” is expanding well beyond thetraditional market segment statistics and statistical inferencesthat CMOs traditionally have used. Transaction records plus volumesof other available information, which has been more of the CIO'sdomain, can substantively augment the traditional information forthe CMO now as well.

An overwhelming majority of CMOs interviewed expect thatcustomer analytics, social media and mobile apps will beincreasingly employed. Questions arise, however, on how managing ina social environment and incorporating social feedback in ameaningful way can best drive revenue growth. This is a challengeand an opportunity for both CMOs and CIOs to creativelycollaborate.

IBM found that outperforming organizations surpass their peersin capabilities to access and draw insights from data, translateinsights and apply to business strategy and effectively engageemployees and customers.

Most of the CEOs surveyed saw that increasing innovation wascritical for their organization and they believed that externalpartnering is increasingly more important. Outperformingorganizations are investing significantly more in partneringrelationships. CIOs are familiar with partnering to accesstechnologies. Often the rapidly changing ideas and processes thatorganizations require are best obtained externally.

Rapid and continuous change will remain and openness increasesinformation access and collaboration. IBM found that CMOs and CIOsfelt that new skill mixes including effectively employing socialmedia and Big Data are needed to address these challenges. Theyforesee a dramatic increase in external partnering and investing ina portfolio of relationships to achieve long-term businessobjectives.

CEO, CMO and CIO C-suite alignment is a shared obligation. CEOscan demonstrate and enable organizational openness by establishing,recognizing and rewarding collaboration across the enterprise. CMOscan jump-start efforts related to new technologies, including howdata should infuse the organizational decision-making and beemployed by partners. CIOs can introduce technological tools andopportunities for more creative collaboration especially throughpartnering.

As IBM states: “the chief data officer is in everyone's jobdescription.”

Stuart R. Levine is chairman/CEO of Stuart Levine &Associates
Contact: (516) 465-0800 or stuartlevine.com