By Alexis Wierenga | 3-minute read | November 09, 2023
Executive Insights from Day 4 of Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo Barcelona
C-suite dynamics can make or break an enterprise. The executive team’s ability to collaborate when needed while allowing individual leaders to play to their strengths is essential. In this session, Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst Tina Nunno revealed the results of a new survey of direct reports of the CEO from over 140 enterprises globally to illustrate what informs high-performing businesses.
Ask these questions to evaluate how functional your executive leadership team (ELT) is:
Can you say the difficult things? Strong ELTs index highly on trust, allowing employees to feel comfortable offering dissenting views or asking for help.
Does the ELT make decisions well? Functional ELTs use data to make decisions about disruptions, while dysfunctional ELTs defer to the CEO or lack a consistent, strategic approach.
Does the CEO lead effectively? Good CEOs are engaged and present, communicate clearly, and not only empower but also reward their workforces.
Is everyone on the ELT delivering results? For low-performing ELTs, accountability is inconsistent at every level.
“Invest in a good CEO relationship, but do not over-index on it.”
Tina Nunno, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner
Autonomous business is the next distinct macro wave of digital-enabled business change. Helen Poitevin, Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst, explored how to upskill business leaders and enable organizations' core competencies with the help of AI.
“Only one in two employees is confident in their manager’s ability to lead their teams to be successful in the next two years.”
Helen Poitevin, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner
AI support can benefit these areas of the enterprise:
Individual professionals & leaders: Improve performance, skills and development by decreasing time to competency.
Management decision making: Gain a leadership edge with cognitive offloading and better, faster decisions.
Enterprise productivity: Address the complexity of workflows by detecting and removing friction before it crops up.
Generative AI technologies can generate new, derived versions of content, strategies, designs and methods by learning from large repositories of original source content. In this session, Gabriele Rigon, Gartner Sr Principal Analyst, discussed the current state of generative AI, key use cases for enterprises, and what to expect next.
“78% of IT executives believe that generative AI’s benefits outweigh its risks.”
Gabriele Rigon, Sr Principal Analyst at Gartner
Consider these four use case areas for implementing generative AI in your enterprise:
Natural Language Processing (NLP): Foundation models can generate original and coherent text in highly contextualized ways, such as creating product descriptions and generating conversational responses.
Computer vision: Fine-tuned diffusion models can create images from text. This can be extremely useful for synthetic data generation when real data is scarce or unavailable.
Software engineering: Foundation models may be fine-tuned to augment developers by translating natural language to code.
Using the results of the 2023 Gartner Enterprise Culture Change Survey, Daniel Sánchez Reina, Gartner VP Analyst, identified which allies are most effective for organizations seeking to become digital top performers and outlined the fast-track actions to achieve these ambitions.
“93% of CEOs want to make changes to their enterprise culture.”
Daniel Sánchez Reina, VP Analyst at Gartner
To become a digital top performer:
Judiciously choose your allies for enterprise culture change. Identify a CxO with influence and a digital mindset to drive transformation.
Apply the principles of democratization of digital delivery. Pick pain points in two categories of business outcomes where digital can be an enabler. Determine the business capabilities needed to overcome these challenges.
Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, The World’s Most Important Gathering of CIOs and IT Executives™, brings together thousands of executives every year to address the strategic needs of enterprise CIOs and their leadership teams.
Learn more about Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo and what's in store for 2024.
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Tina Nunno is a Distinguished VP and Gartner Fellow in Gartner's Executive Leadership Research Group based in Stamford, Connecticut. Ms. Nunno is a recognized thought leader. She has published extensively on working with the board of directors, and executive leadership dynamics. Ms. Nunno is a sought-after keynote speaker and interviewer. She is regularly featured in the opening keynote at Gartner Global Symposia and Summits, as well as industry events around the world. She has interviewed industry luminaries such as Bob Iger, CEO of Disney Corporation, Peyton Manning, Super Bowl winning quarterback, and Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey.Ms. Nunno is NACD board certified, and enjoys coaching senior executives on personal branding and achieving their career goals such as joining boards of directors. She is the Analyst Sponsor of the Gartner Women's CIO Community, and enthusiastically supports a wide range of diversity and inclusion iitiatives.Organizational politics is a subject that Ms. Nunno has been passionate about researching, to help executives deal with their most high risk conflict situations. Her range of work analyzes the dynamics of dealing with political land mines such as investment prioritization, saying "no" assertively, dealing with urgency, and moving from defensive to offensive positioning.Her popular book, "The Wolf in CIOs Clothing" deals with the "dark side" of organizational politics, which she describes as when stress or conflict takes over either individual interactions, or enterprise cultures that then need to be brought back to the "light side".Prior to joining Gartner in 1997, Ms. Nunno worked for the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. As part of her work for the Congressional Research Service, she led interparliamentary technical assistance programs. She also conducted research on a variety of issues related to international affairs, national defense, and United Nations-related issues.
Helen Poitevin is a Distinguished VP Analyst with a focus on HCM technologies and advising clients on their HCM technology strategies. In HCM, areas of particular focus include talent analytics, voice of the employee analytics, workforce planning and AI in HCM. Ms. Poitevin also conducts research regarding the future of work with a focus on the impact of technology on how people will work, the gig economy, talent marketplaces and ecosystems and future talent practices.
Gabriele Rigon is currently Sr Principal Analyst in the Enterprise Operations team in Gartner. He covers AI topics and he is specialized in Natural Language Technologies, in particular Conversational AI, speech and translation technologies, as well as Responsible AI and how that relates to NLTs. He is also contributing to research in the areas of Generative AI and Sustainable AI.
Daniel Sanchez-Reina is a VP Analyst in CIO Leadership, Culture and People. Mr. Sanchez-Reina covers the complex challenges of Culture Change in organizations, High-Performing Teams, Leadership, CIO influence and CIO Role Evolution. He provides research on a worldwide basis, advising clients on their specific needs to achieve sustainable growth.
