How do you move from being that traditional CIO that's 100% cost centered to a transformational CIO that's driving business results?

What I have observed is that CIO and teams often get buried in day to day operations of Technology and Apps. This often does not give them enough bandwidth to reach out and work with business and operations stakeholders. Also, sometimes these issues also takes away focus on customer experience. To improve this, it may be prudent to have your teams sit with the business and operations and understand how they use IT apps on day to day basis and document their pain points. Trust me, it will be an eye opener. That should provide enough view of changes that could be done in Business, and how IT can help.

It's easy. Just leave your desk. Go talk to people. Go talk to other VPs and all the other departments and see what they're working on and then see where you can help them. See where you can collaborate on projects.

I've learned from my fellow CIO friends. They've shared their thoughts on how to do it. The most important thing is to understand what each department is doing. Especially in my current situation where the pace of change is so rapid.