cio_it38d ago
Like most IT executives, Kevin Rooney knows exactly how IT initiatives can tick all the boxes and still fall short of business outcome goals.Early in his career, Rooney delivered a technology project on time, on budget, and on spec — and still saw it fail. The electronic signature system his team implemented at an insurance company worked perfectly. Adoption didn’t. The initiative was supposed to reduce underwriting cancellations, but without users embracing the tool, the business needle didn’t move.“Because we had defined success in terms of reducing cancellations, we revisited the user experience, changed the approach, and ultimately met our financial goals,” says Rooney, now CIO at West Monroe. “Without that outcome focus, we would have assumed the project was a success and moved on.”Rooney’s experience captures a fundamental shift in what’s expected of CIOs today. Delivering technology isn’t enough. Boards and business leaders want results — revenue, measurable efficiency, competitive advantage — and they’re increasingly impatient with IT organizations that can’t connect their work to those outcomes. In fact, CIOs who relentlessly pursue financial outcomes from technology initiatives are 25% more likely to excel, yet only a third do so consistently, according to Gartner.Sure, “outcomes” has become an overused buzzword, alongside “business value” and “digital transformation.” But fatigue with the language doesn’t diminish the urgency.What’s emerging among CIOs who’ve made this shift is a more disciplined approach some are calling “outcome orchestration” — aligning strategy, funding, delivery, and adoption into one system that converts business intent into measurable results. It requires different metrics, different governance, different relationships with the business — and a different mindset about what IT success looks like.What outcome orchestration actually meansIn a recent CIO article, Dalibor Siroky, general manager of Plutora at Planview, defined outcome orchestration as “the disciplined conversion of strategy into shipped value across people, data, platforms, and AI.” But for CIOs living this shift, the concept goes deeper.“It’s the ability to align technology, data, AI, and people around business value,” says Bret Greenstein, chief AI officer at West Monroe. “Rather than focusing on tools or platforms, the CIO focuses on enabling outcomes — making technology accessible, secure, and useful so it directly improves how the organization performs.”Historically, IT was structured around functions — applications, infrastructure, security. Success was measured by whether projects came in on time, on budget, and on spec. “You could hit all three and still fail to move the business forward,” says Rooney. The value, Greenstein adds, “has moved up the technology stack. Now it’s about data, analytics, and AI. CIOs have to move with that value shift, or they become disconnected from what the business cares about.”Marianne Johnson, EVP and chief product officer at Cox Automotive, frames it even more starkly. “Anything outside of those outcomes is activity, not value added,” she says. For Johnson, outcome orchestration starts with four core elements: clarity on what outcomes actually matter; empowered ownership, where one leader is accountable for each outcome; integrated execution across people, platforms, data, and AI; and rapid feedback loops to adjust quickly based on what’s working.Ghada Ijam, CIO of the Federal Reserve System, puts it simply: “Whatever we do in IT has to connect to business outcome.” With the acceleration of cloud, machine learning, and agentic AI, “obsessing about outcomes becomes more important,” she says. “Otherwise, you end up investing a lot without producing value — creating complexity, tech debt, and sprawl.”What outcome-orchestrating CIOs do differentlyThe shift from traditional IT leadership to outcome orchestration isn’t purely philosophical. It shows up in concrete changes in the way CIOs run their organizations.Start with metrics. “In the past, we’d report on sprint velocity or system availability,” says Neal Sample, chief digital and technology officer at Best Buy, who previously held IT leadership roles at Walgreens Boots Alliance, Express Scripts, and American Express. “Those things matter to IT. But when you’re talking to the rest of the business — or the board — you need to change the language.”Instead of a rundown of 10 releases last year, talk about 15 points of customer friction IT is addressing. Rather than uptime, get into revenue impact. “It’s not that software doesn’t matter,” Sample says. “But software is a vehicle to get somewhere.”Sample advocates for shared KPIs between IT and the business. “Say to the business, ‘Here are your goals — let’s make them our goals, too,’” he advises. IT might have an availability metric like three nines. The business might care about new customer acquisition. Share both. “When everyone’s on the same scoreboard,” Sample says, “you get alignment and speed.”Funding models change, too. Traditional IT budgets fund teams to deliver features. When the business pivots, that becomes a change request — creating friction even when it’s not an adversarial situation. “Instead, fund a value stream,” Sample says. “Then, whatever the business needs, you absorb the change and work toward shared goals. It doesn’t matter what’s on the bill because you’re all working toward the same outcome.”It’s a fundamental reframing of IT’s role. “Stop talking about shared services,” says Ijam of the Federal Reserve. “Talk about being a co-owner of value realization.” That means evolving from service provider to strategic partner — not waiting for requirements but actively shaping how technology creates business results.Ijam calls this “shifting left” — getting involved earlier in the lifecycle. “Have the conversation at ideation level rather than after someone’s already developed a business case,” she says. “Co-create the idea and the use case, then agree on specific outcomes. You have a better chance of achieving them — and if the idea doesn’t materialize, you find out fast.”At Cox Automotive, Johnson stresses accountability. “Assign empowered leaders who own each outcome end-to-end,” she says. “These leaders need to spend time on the front lines understanding how technology is actually being used and what’s blocking value realization.” The CIO’s job becomes less about managing projects and more about removing obstacles for those owners.West Monroe’s Rooney emphasizes defining leading indicators early. “Be explicit about what must be true for a project to succeed before business outcomes appear,” he says. “Without naming those indicators and measuring progress early, organizations waste time and money.” It’s how his team caught the adoption problem on the electronic signature project before declaring victory and moving on.Reimagining business and board interactionsOutcome orchestration changes more than internal processes — it reshapes how the CIO and the IT team engages with the rest of the enterprise.“In the old model, IT had a vendor-like relationship with the business, even when it was in-house,” says Best Buy’s Sample. “The business asked for a feature; if it didn’t work for the customer, that was a business failure, not an IT failure.” Outcome orchestration flips that. IT shares accountability for results. “It usually works best when a CIO is a peer to the COO or CFO,” Sample says. “Not a vendor beholden.”Operating at that level requires CIOs to invest time understanding the business, not just its technology needs. When Ijam joined the Federal Reserve, she asked to shadow business leaders. “Can I join you for a day in the life? Can I sit down with your people to understand how they do their jobs?” she recalls asking. They thought, “She cares enough to spend time with us.” “It built trust,” recalls Ijam, “and it helped me understand what’s first, what’s second, what’s third when priorities shift.”That trust compounds over time. “Delivering is important — not two- or three-year programs, but planning in increments, showing outcomes you’re committing to,” Ijam says. “Small increments and progress. You earn a seat at the table.”When outcome orchestration is working, the boardroom conversation changes. “CIOs are presenting business results enabled by technology — not just technology updates — and discussing where to invest next for maximum impact,” says Cox Automotive’s Johnson. “The CFO begins to see technology as an investment that generates returns, not just a cost to be managed.”The relationship with business units evolves, too. “Business leaders start bringing opportunities to IT early because they trust you can deliver value, not just technical solutions,” Johnson says. “The conversation shifts from ‘Can you build this?’ to ‘How do we solve this business challenge together?’”West Monroe’s Greenstein has seen the same pattern. “IT becomes a trusted partner in growth and transformation rather than a support function,” he says. “Business leaders begin pulling IT into strategic conversations earlier. That changes how the CIO is perceived across the organization.”Dan Roberts, host of the Tech Whisperers podcast, who was inducted into the CIO Hall of Fame in 2025, puts it this way: “The CIO is no longer simply the owner of execution, but the enterprise leader who helps shape decisions across people, data, platforms, funding, and risk.”When outcome orchestration clicksWhen outcome orchestration takes hold, the impact shows up across multiple dimensions — not just in business metrics, but in how IT is perceived and how its people experience their work.“You end up with faster time to value,” says Best Buy’s Sample. “You get higher ROI because you’re consistently reevaluating at the speed of business, not waiting for an annual plan. You’re always working on the most important things.”Sample saw this play out at Express Scripts, where a team managing internal productivity tools had proposed cutting email storage in half to save money. From an IT cost perspective, it made sense. “I put this leader in with our HR partners, who owned employee experience,” he recalls. “They said, ‘We want to go the other way: Let’s invest more so people don’t land in email jail.’ Instead of measuring on cost, we measured on employee productivity. Overnight, it turned a bug into a feature.” The shift to shared outcomes transformed a cost-cutting exercise into an investment in how people work.At Cox Automotive, Johnson has seen the cultural shift inside IT. “Teams are energized and retention improves as technologists see the direct business impact of their work,” she says. People aren’t just shipping code — they’re moving the business forward, and they know it.The credibility gains extend to the C-suite. “When outcome orchestration is working, the CIO becomes a true business partner with a seat at the strategy table — demonstrating how technology is a competitive differentiator, not just a support function,” Johnson says.West Monroe’s Rooney puts it simply: “IT stops being known for ‘keeping the lights on’ and starts being known for moving the business forward. Leaders gain visibility because they’ve driven measurable improvements.”Greenstein, also of West Monroe, adds a note of realism. “Engagement increases among people who embrace this model,” he says. “But some may opt out during the transition.” The shift demands new skills and a different relationship to accountability — not everyone will want to make that leap. “We have to help people adapt,” says Greenstein.That’s because outcome orchestration isn’t ultimately about frameworks or funding models — it’s about culture. “CIOs who excel in this role deliberately shape how their teams think, decide, and act,” says Roberts. “They move their organizations from completing tasks to owning results, from waiting for direction to exercising judgment, and from technical execution to business accountability.”And the stakes are rising. “The urgency around outcome orchestration is being exposed in real-time by AI,” Roberts adds. “Most organizations aren’t failing because they lack ideas or pilots — they’re stuck because AI initiatives were launched as experiments, not as business commitments.”The CIOs who are scaling AI successfully, he says, share one trait: “They start with outcomes, not algorithms.”Becoming an outcome orchestratorFor CIOs looking to make the shift, advice from those who’ve done it is consistent: Start small, be honest, stay human. Some specific actions include:Start with quick wins. “Don’t wait for perfection,” says Cox Automotive’s Johnson. “Outcome orchestration is a muscle you build through practice. Start with one or two critical outcomes where you can demonstrate impact quickly. Success builds credibility, which creates permission to tackle bigger challenges.”Build trust through execution. “Deliver in small increments. Show progress toward outcomes you’ve committed to,” says Federal Reserve’s Ijam. “Certain crises happen, and you can leverage those into opportunity. That’s how you earn your seat at the table.”Be transparent about what’s not working. “The biggest risk is persisting with approaches that aren’t delivering results because you’re too invested to change course,” Johnson says. “Create a culture where surfacing problems early is rewarded, not punished.”Learn what matters to the business. Ijam recommends spending time in the front office to understand what matters. “Be curious enough to ask, ‘What makes the business tick? What matters today that didn’t matter yesterday?’” she says. “That perspective, if done right, is something only the CIO can bring because we see across the whole enterprise.”Balance outcomes with humanity. Roberts cautions that a relentless focus on results can backfire if it ignores the human element. “The CIOs who are scaling transformation lead with HEART: humility, empathy, adaptability, resiliency, and transparency,” he says. “But [that] doesn’t mean avoiding hard conversations.” These leaders still set clear expectations, hold people accountable, and make tough calls when outcomes matter. “Lean too hard into outcomes and you lose your people. Lean too hard into HEART and you lose your job,” says Roberts. “The best CIOs know how to do both.”The stakes are clear. “CIOs who embrace this shift will become central to enterprise strategy,” says West Monroe’s Greenstein. “Those who don’t risk being displaced.”Johnson puts it even more bluntly: “This shift is permanent. The expectation that CIOs deliver business outcomes is now standard. Organizations that master outcome orchestration will be leading the future state of their industries, not reacting to change after it’s already happened.”
