“The moment is escaping us in a very big way,” says Geoff Nielson, senior vice president at Info-Tech Research Group.
Boards are demanding measurable AI results. CEOs want visible transformation. CIOs are caught in between, trying to keep projects on track while proving their impact.
Nielson, who is set to speak at the upcoming CIO Association of Canada Peer Forum conference, has spent more than 16 years advising CIOs and has seen repeated calls for technology leaders to step into more strategic roles.
Over that time, he says, expectations for IT have steadily grown. AI has simply accelerated it.
What concerns Nielson is that CIOs are being asked to lead AI transformation while questions about IT’s credibility still linger inside many organizations.
Trust is still the currency
Nielson says his research consistently points to two factors that correlate strongly with CIO success.
“Are you able to build strong relationships with the business, and are you actually able to deliver on the priorities they ask you to?” he says.
He describes a persistent gap between the share of CIOs seen as transformational and the level of transformation that organizations say they want.
To move up what he calls the value ladder, from keeping the computers running to delivering strategic impact, CIOs must first run core IT services well. Then they need to show how technology initiatives connect directly to business outcomes.
That groundwork is what allows CIOs to expand their influence beyond day-to-day operations.
“One of the themes I’m seeing is CEOs and executive leaders who are trying to run AI without IT or around IT,” says Nielson. “I don’t personally believe that that’s to anybody’s benefit.”
He says similar behaviour is showing up at the individual level, with employees experimenting with generative AI outside formal company oversight.
The business wants speed. The CIO is accountable for security, data protection, and risk.
Nielson says that conversation has to happen openly at the executive table, with clear agreement on how much risk the organization is willing to take and who is responsible for it.
Start with listening
When asked where CIOs should begin, Nielson points to listening.
He has spent years encouraging technology leaders to ask the business directly how IT is performing in a structured way that can be repeated and measured. Surveys, he says, create a clearer picture of whether stakeholders feel supported, whether systems are delivering value, and where friction exists.
Tracking that feedback over time gives CIOs something concrete to work from. It allows them to see patterns and respond with evidence rather than instinct.
Nielson also says CIOs should pay close attention to the metrics the business cares about. Operational measures such as uptime and ticket resolution still matter inside IT but not at the executive table.
He believes technology leaders gain influence when they connect their reporting to business outcomes such as revenue and market position, showing how their work affects revenue, growth, or customer outcomes.
The underused potential of analytics
When I asked him what CIOs should actually be paying attention to, Nielson went straight to analytics.
The tools to forecast demand, fine-tune supply chains, and understand customer behaviour have been available for years, he said. Many companies still are not using them well.
The limiting factor is often the state of their data. Legacy systems, uneven governance, and inconsistent data practices shape how much value organizations can extract.
It’s a similar message to what Snowflake chief data and analytics officer Anahita Tafvizi told Digital Journal in a recent interview about AI adoption inside many enterprises.
“If you don’t have [data] documented to train a human, then how do you train an AI agent?” she told Digital Journal.
Much of the value companies expect from AI depends on data they already have but have not organized or documented.
Smaller teams, sharper impact
Inside technology organizations, Nielson sees structural shifts underway, but he pushes back on the idea that AI will make software developers obsolete.
“I think that’s total nonsense,” he says. “Everything I’ve learned from my experience with enterprise tech and with IT is that the demand for IT so far outpaces the supply.”
In his view, recent layoffs reflect overhiring when tech companies had access to low-interest capital in 2022 and 2023, rather than automation suddenly eliminating the need for those roles. He describes it as an economic adjustment disguised as a technological adjustment.
He also questions the idea that vibe coding, a term for using generative AI tools to generate software from prompts, will replace engineers.
“It’s not replacing coding. It’s just not,” he says.
At the same time, he believes AI is changing how much a strong technical team can accomplish.
Smaller teams, he says, are delivering more when experienced leaders pair AI with architectural discipline.
A defining leadership moment
“I can’t understate the importance of this moment in terms of the impact that we can have,” says Nielson.
At the upcoming CIOCAN Peer Forum, CIOs from across Canada will gather as executives demand proof that AI is delivering real business value.
In his advisory work, Nielson sees how quickly curiosity becomes expectation. Boards want progress. CEOs want visible movement. Technology leaders are being asked to move faster while still protecting the organization.
He has been talking about trust between IT and the business for more than a decade. AI has made that conversation more urgent.
The leaders who can show they deliver, who understand the business, and who have their data in order are the ones most likely to shape what happens next.
Final shots
- Credibility determines influence. CIOs who consistently deliver and stay aligned with business priorities are better positioned to guide AI adoption.
- Executive expectations around AI are rising quickly. Boards and CEOs want to move past pilots to measurable progress.
- Structured feedback from business stakeholders gives technology leaders clearer direction and stronger footing at the executive table.
- Many organizations still have untapped value in advanced analytics and in the data they already collect.
- AI is set to change the structure of IT teams, but it won’t replace them.
Digital Journal is the national media partner for the CIO Association of Canada.
