The Renaissance of the CTO in the AI Era

It starts like this: the Board asks, “How do you plan to deploy AI?” 

Of course, you’ve all been talking about it. The CEO turns and defers to the CTO. The CTO has been bringing up AI for several months at the team meetings only to be met with skeptical glances. “We’re working on our AI strategy,” says the CTO, “we’ll brief you next quarter.” 

On Monday, at the next executive team meeting, the main topic is AI and the question “What’s our plan?” hangs thick in the air. The CTO asks the rest of the table, “How much have each of you played with AI?” Someone will inevitably answer that they’ve used Google’s Gemini but what they mean is Gemini’s AI summary shows up when they search something on Google. Someone else will say that they spent fifteen minutes playing with ChatGPT but “couldn’t really find a use for it.” The CMO will note that some of the enterprise systems the company uses have rolled out AI features and that the marketing team has started to slowly use them. The CEO turns to the CTO and asks, “Why don’t we have an AI strategy yet?” The CTO thinks it is rather evident why there isn’t an AI strategy yet.

Under pressure, the CTO makes several strategic recommendations. Several AI enterprise solutions are approved but staff training and education get earmarked for next year. The implementation begins. Tickets quickly pile up. Staff are confused. The CEO has briefed the Board that the company is going through the growing pains but is well on its way to leveraging AI well. A couple of weeks in the issue is clear: the new AI enterprise solutions are not designed to integrate with your existing legacy systems. 

Year after year current and past CTOs have raised the issue of outdated systems and underfunding in areas like cybersecurity. Some of your database management practices and systems date back to the eighties with band aid solutions patched on over the decades. Your existing CRM system has rolled out its own AI features and is not compatible with the AI enterprise solutions the organization has chosen. Your software engineers are upset because they raised all of these issues beforehand and no one listened. Now they’re being asked to patch problems that turn the company’s tech stack into an indomitable Frankenstein. The feedback from the rest of the executive team is some version of, “I can’t get it to work- I don’t know what our money went to.”

No one is happy and the AI rollout leaves a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth. No one is more dissatisfied with the rollout and integration foibles than the CTO. Understandably so, CTOs faced an uphill battle before Boards started asking about AI. Prior to the recent AI boom, many CTOs were begging for robust enough budget lines to update systems/improve systems/train staff. Now, almost overnight, the CTO position is being pushed into center stage and is experiencing a renaissance that is just beginning. 

The challenges for CTOs will not diminish, but the opportunities will increase. The newfound limelight will come with more robust budget lines CTOs. That will certainly be a welcome change. The strategic spotlight on CTOs will also require CTOs themselves to play a more prominent and visible leadership role within the organization. Being a knowledgeable technical expert with some people skills will no longer be good enough. To be an effective CTO will require more proactivity in staying current and helping to educate the rest of the executive peers on the skills required to keep up with the changes. It will require the CTO to partner with the CHRO to develop an upskilling strategy for staff. It will require the CEO to view and leverage the CTO the way they often deploy their COO, as an essential co-leader. It will require the COO to make room for the CTO and share the CEO. And, ultimately, CTOs will have to get comfortable on center stage. CTOs, your time is now.