CIO are hired to work on strategic capabilities, but in reality most CIOs spend most of the time on operational issues. How do you balance between Strategy and Operational issues?

The CIO role can vary greatly from one company to the next and is also heavily influenced by that individual's mindset. From a company standpoint, the industry, company size, operational maturity, CIO reporting structure, and product/service offerings all play a key role in the type of leadership required. The CIO of a product company will likely spend a lot of time supporting development, increasing developer productivity, and reducing time to market. If the CIO reports to the CFO, a key part of their role may be to reduce OpEx or build a business case for any new initiative to prove its ROI. A CIO with a growth mindset and the ability to pivot with changing times will ask questions like "how can one spend more time being strategic and drive more innovation?" In short, not all companies want or need strategic CIOs. Those CIOs that want to focus on being more strategic need to run their technology organizations like a business. Some of the things you should consider: - Attract and develop top talent to offload operations activities. - Force leaders to come to the table with solutions, not problems. - Invest in automation and moving to proactive Vs. reactive IT management to make more time available for strategy. - Commit to spending 1 day per month with your leaders offsite to laser focus on strategy, roadmap development or updates. Offsite means OOO with no distractions. - Do not allow interruptions (email, chat, hallway discussions) to rule your day. Instead, check these on a schedule.- Block 2-3 hour chunks of time in your calendar each week where no meetings can occur

I agree with @Michael Wahl that each organization has a different expectation and demands of a CIO. My philosophy is to take a page from Maslow's hierarchy of needs. First, take care of the needs (networking, service desk, collaboration tools, etc) and do them really well and make it cost effective. The savings derived from those services can be easily applied towards innovation. This can help change the narrative with the rest of the executive team and lead the innovation charter. I define innovation in a few categories:1. Incremental innovation: empower employees to innovate within the current paradigm2. Major innovation: Big game changing scope3. Experimental innovation: Value prop not clear but do it to learn and understand Major innovation should have a direct correlation with eventual business value (outcomes driven) to muster support in the organization. This will drive alignment around major investments. Experimental innovation should be bite-sized and smaller investments. Once the value is clear, that can turn into a major investment.Leading with strategy requires thought leadership, selling and taking some calculated risks. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet.

I have an operations team I trust completely... I delegate as much as I can to them.

I think each organization is a little different when they hire a CIO, but for each to be successful they must be fully aligned on the business strategic plan. There will be an element of utility/keeping the lights on, the CIO should oversea, but that day to day maintenance operations should be handled by a good IT manager and DevOPS team. The CIO is charged with leading the digital transformation for an organization. In addition to evaluating new technology, looking at the current business systems/processes to determine where competitive improvements could be made. CIOs are shifting from being functional to being more transformational and strategic. It is an ongoing struggle, but the CIO must find a good balance with the business between achieving operational excellence and innovation.

YOU have to be the one who forces the change. Many times I find that IT is the "utility" of the organization. YOU need to get the CEO on board as to why it's not. You need an advocate (CEO) and will need to win them over. Have your plan ready, show the value and sell it! No one will do this for you, so it's your choice. Do you want to be a CIO or an Operations Leader.