What's the future of IT leadership?
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Sales, ensuring that technology is being used to deliver strategic business outcomes.
IT should be leading the way, but never be seen. My opinion is it is their job to make everyone else's job easier. My career path has taken me in a different direction than others who will post and expound on hybrid workers and remote workers being the future. I am on the other side of the fence from the standpoint I have spent my entire career (and plan to retire from) the manufacturing side of things where working remote isn't a real possibility and my "customers" are in front of machinery doing their jobs. I can't wrap my mind around the concept of a remote manufacturing job, but most definitely can look at things from the perspective of how can I make those people whom my staff serve lives as easy as it can possibly be while they are at our facilities. Its a totally different perspective than some have, but it is what I have built my life and career around and try to live by that example every day that I show up to work.
More leaders will come from non-technical backgrounds. The worshiping of technology and the belief that its impact will be so monumental will fade as the focus on practical applications today will start to win out. Leaders who excel will be focusing their time and energy on more obtainable goals that drive revenue. The future of technology leadership is much more about real leadership, not so much about the technology. As AI starts to do much of the coding the focus will shift more to orchestration and optimization especially during the recession. You can see this trend already across a number of industries.
Hard to predict... but if you think about it, IT is one of the only part of the organisation that knows processes AND technolgy, end to end. For example, IT can connect sales with finance, supply with retail, HR with Digital... So, I guess the future of the IT leadership is on helping the organisation bridging more and more internally and seeing the "big picture", i.e. how clients/consumers are consumer the organisation's product and services.
The number of areas that IT leadership is becoming responsible for is growing. It is at a point that the leader can no longer be the expert in all things they lead. You now need a Cybersecurity expert, a networking expert, a phone system expert, a security camera expert, an accounts expert, a device procurement/deployment expert and more that I have missed. Decades ago, one person could conceivably handle things with a small staff. That is clearly no longer the case. The IT leader must possess staff and project management skills at a higher level than in the past.