11 :: 3 Non-Obvious Strategies for CINOs in 2024

New year, new format. One of many, actually, but you’ll get to see it over the next issues. After 2 weeks off, just like the 12 raisins for the 12 wishes at midnight, I’m kicking off 2024 sharing 3 (unexpected) strategies I’d further explore if I was a CINO this year. 1 for each of the 3 areas this newsletter covers: Innovation, Growth, and Leadership.

1. Innovation: Partnering with Cloud Services ☁️

It is difficult to match the innovation potential that cloud providers bring to the market. And I’m not only referring to their own internal mechanisms nor the disruptiveness, scalability, or cost-efficiency of their technology. That is obviously important, but more and more democratized. The quite unexplored engine hidden in cloud services is the powerful ecosystem they create and the financial incentive they have to help others innovate. These companies are closely interconnected to the most relevant innovation stakeholders - academia, startups, large corporations, public sector - and have the means to interconnect them to each other as well. Most of them even have specific programs to identify and establish these connections. If you are still not leveraging your cloud provider to innovate, reach out to your point of contact there and ask how they can support you.

2. Growth: Fostering Metaskills 💭

Metaskills are overarching cognitive abilities that enable the development of others (acquiring new or improving existing ones). They are basically the foundation for developing, cultivating, and executing any skills, and transcend specific tasks or domains - like how to approach problem-solving, addressing challenges, or interacting with others, for example. Knowing how to program in Python is a skill. Knowing how to learn any programming language is a metaskill. And even though 80% of CEOs believe that their biggest challenge is acquiring new employee skills, plus the skills required to succeed in a constantly changing world are constantly changing as well, it looks like learning to learn is still underrated. Yet, it is a minimal requirement for continuous innovation. If you are still unsure of how to develop yourself or others this year, find the best metaskills for you and focus on those.

3. Leadership: Identifying a Next-Gen Board 📶

Is the wordplay with Boards of the future and Boards with future generations too obvious? Next-Gen can be literal or metaphorical, and here it goes both ways. No organization will ever succeed (at innovation or at all) without senior executives in their leadership. Fact. However, no organization will succeed without a new generation of consumers, employers and leaders represented at their decision-making level either, because 1. Gen Z has a unique set of characteristics that are difficult to understand for other generations and 2. innovation is hidden in the diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and ideas. As Directors, Non-Executive Members, or Advisors, in Executive Committees, Shadow Boards, or Advisory Councils, leaders need to look beyond years of experience when identifying their top leadership, if they want to be future-proof. If your organization does not have one of these yet, consider creating it yourself.

Ps. If you have any other non-obvious strategies that could be added to the list let me know and let’s discuss them.

See you next Tuesday! 👋