Dirk Wood

9 December 2020

[Infographic] Six Ways for CIOs to Prepare Their Organizations for 2021

[Infographic] Six Ways for CIOs to Prepare Their Organizations for 2021

In our webinar Looking to 2021: How CIOs Are Preparing for the New Normal, CIOs Alex Kalinovsky of Home Credit and Finance Bank and Paul Farnsworth of DHI Group gave their thoughts on the ‘new normal’.

Here are the six key takeaways!

1. Communicate, communicate, communicate!

It’s critical to be more intentional about ad hoc communication and actively arrange informal discussions!

“ I put a little bit more structure into my week around just making sure that I’m calling them up and saying, hi and seeing what’s on their minds to make sure that we feel like we’re synchronized a little bit more.”

Paul Farnsworth, CIO, DHI Group

2. Survival is about more than (just!) technology

The pandemic has challenged what people prioritize in a crisis. Disaster recovery no longer provides enough security. Keeping the technology going is now a necessary–but by itself, insufficient–ingredient of survival.

“Try to get everyone to build proper business continuity plans that include technology that doesn’t rely on disaster recovery. These two things are completely different. I think infrastructure for technology is a lot less fragile than it used to be, it’s now about keeping the business running and not the technology.”

Paul Farnsworth

3. Focus on what you can control: staying adaptable

Flexibility between teams and leadership in technology organizations will be a key factor to success in 2021. Everything is constantly changing and we need to continue to be able to adapt with what is coming tomorrow.

“In terms of CI/CD and various engineering transformation things we’ve launched before, it became even more critical to continue them. In terms of efficiency, we haven’t lost any, we’re as efficient as we’ve worked before.”

Alex Kalinovsky, CIO, Home Credit and Finance Bank

4. Don’t expect things to return to ‘normal’

Companies are questioning whether they will ever go back to ways of working similar to that of 7-8 months ago.

“ I don’t think it’s ever going to go back to the way it was before. I think that remote work is with us to stay. Whether it’s going to be to the extent it is now where we’re almost 100% remote is unclear. I think whatever happens, it’s going to be a hybrid mode.”

Alex Kalinovsky

5. How you bring on new people matters more than ever

Businesses have been rethinking their recruitment strategy with social distancing, and the way they train and onboard employees in order to remove barriers of physical location.

“I’ve got to assess whether my HR partners are actually equipped to deal with suddenly hiring people remotely or whether there’s culture change needed across the organization. You then need an onboarding strategy for individuals, which means much more thought and care about who you’re meeting, how do you schedule it, and how are they getting access to tools.”

Paul Farnsworth

6. Focus strategic investments on your customer

During the pandemic, we’ve discovered several investments critical for a business to make in order to establish themselves for success in the new normal. These investments include digitization, information security, and your engineering culture.

“What is important for us as a business requires focus in culture, changing how you manage your budgets and how you make your strategic decisions. Make sure it invests in the right things that help you achieve those goals. Beyond that think of the customer.”

Alex Kalinovsky

This webinar is a part of our wider Cloudfest series covering the biggest trends in DevOps, data and cloud computing. You can watch all of these back here!