The CIOs InformationWeek profiled this yr shared a standard actuality: Main IT means main change — typically large change. Throughout industries, CIOs described a job that extends past instruments and methods, calling for enterprise judgment, change administration and the flexibility to construct belief — all amid a yr of head-spinning AI developments and geopolitical uncertainty.
“There are at all times pressures across the anticipated enterprise worth you need to obtain within the enterprise relative to all of the expertise developments,” Shelia Anderson, government vice chairman and chief data and digital officer at Unum Group. “How do you leverage these new and rising applied sciences to drive worth by innovation?”
Simply as putting had been the paths that introduced these leaders to their roles. Whereas some rose by the IT ranks, others arrived from outdoors conventional profession tracks, with backgrounds in product growth, operations, engineering and stock management administration.
No matter the place their careers started, these CIOs shared a transparent view of what efficient IT management requires as we speak: clear targets tied to enterprise worth, shut cross-team collaboration, and sensible guardrails for deploying rising applied sciences resembling agentic AI.
Two profiles on this assortment highlight IT leaders outdoors the CIO function — a chief working officer and chief safety officer — who echoed related themes. Like their CIO friends, they emphasised the necessity for management that spans expertise and the enterprise.
“I like expertise, however I additionally love technique. I like enterprise,” stated Nate Baxter, president and COO at ScottsMiracle-Gro. “Coming with that technical background, I may take complicated issues and distill them into helpful factors … and get a company to rally round and ship outcomes on.”
As CIOs plan forward for 2026, there’s worth in analyzing how friends have addressed challenges starting from AI deployments and upskilling staff to securing enterprise knowledge and ROI.
