How senior business leaders’ collaboration on tech can become a digital advantage

Technology evolves constantly; yet, for decades, the operating framework for IT remained largely unchanged: identify the problem, engineer a solution and execute. This was the domain of the chief information officer (CIO) and IT teams, often siloed from other functions.

Those days are over.

When we meet with clients today, it’s not just CIOs and IT leaders at the table. It’s chief marketing officers (CMOs), chief financial officers (CFOs) and chief human resource officers (CHROs) – executives from every corner of the enterprise.

IT has become a team sport. And in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), the tech agenda is no longer just about infrastructure; it’s about driving business outcomes.

Gartner data backs this up: 80% of non-CIO executives say they feel responsible for leading digital transformation. But here’s the catch: the same Gartner report notes that only one in five of these senior business leaders “lead digital initiatives in ways that have a high likelihood of hitting value targets.”

As a CMO, I know this statistic needs to change and that it can. To marketing organizations, such as the one I lead, change isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. It’s the world we live in.

We are experts in the art of the possible. We’re the voice of the client. When seismic tech shifts occur, we’re the first group to be disrupted, making marketing the perfect partner for IT. And it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.

Even as IT shows us what’s possible with AI, we use our storytelling skills to share the company’s AI transformation both internally, with other senior leaders and externally.

With tech decisions tied more closely to business outcomes – or even driving those outcomes – new empathy and cooperation are required. On one hand, C-suite leaders may have the functional or business lens to deliver those outcomes but not the technological know-how. For their part, CIOs and IT teams have the tech savvy but perhaps not a clear picture of the business or function.

But not every IT decision warrants collaboration. Here we’ll discuss the importance of knowing when to collaborate, who should collaborate and how to collaborate.

First, organizations must set clear parameters for when to expand the decision-making team. Not every tech initiative requires broad input – the CIO and IT team can often handle routine IT investments such as infrastructure upgrades or workflow improvements.

But digital transformation is a different story. These initiatives are innovation-driven, cross-functional and high-impact. Collaboration becomes essential when making decisions:

Signals a major strategic shift for the entire company.Involves entering or exiting a market.Introduces new technologies with unknown risks (data privacy, security, regulatory implications etc.).

In these cases, executive leadership and teamwork across departments are critical to ensure decisions are informed, agile and outcome-focused. This is true whether a business is implementing a customer data platform to personalize marketing, launching a new digital service line or integrating AI agents across sales, service and fulfilment.

These are fluid, often unpredictable changes that demand that business or functional know-how mesh with the tech needed for transformation. This is truer than ever as the adoption of AI hurtles forward.

Functional leaders know they need to be part of the tech decision-making process to ensure their needs are met – but groups limited in size (five to seven members are optimal) are most likely to succeed. A defined team, with all members having clear roles, gives business and technology people a voice without losing sight of the vision.

Tech discussions tend to drag on. They are often big-budget decisions that leaders understandably want to be certain about. However, precision needs to be balanced with speed, particularly in technology. And tech itself can expedite this process.

For example, generative AI (GenAI) can conduct deep research and competitive analysis to bring team members up to speed, while chat-based tools can answer technical questions so that groups can make the most of their discussion time.

Team members providing input to the primary group need to be brief, clear and fact-based – not just because time is a precious commodity but because clarity and brevity are likely to work in their favour. Coming to the table with an informed, justifiable position helps ensure the speaker’s needs are reflected in the final decision.

Collaborative discussions around tech projects will succeed when team members do the following:

Senior leaders don’t need to be technical experts to participate in technology decisions but they do need to ask the right questions to guide the team toward value. Here are several questions I recommend business executives ask during IT evaluations to ensure they are helping the organization move in the right direction.

To turn shared responsibility into collective success, C-suite leaders must move beyond simply having a seat at the tech table. They need to take steps to become active participants in tech conversations – informed contributors within the decision-making process.

At the same time, IT leaders must take clear steps to determine when to collaborate, whom to involve and how to work effectively. Co-owning the tech agenda in this way will turn business-IT collaboration into a digital advantage.