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As business and technology leaders well know, leading through change can be hard. People don’t like change, so that’s a tough starting point for anyone. But change can be good, and as leaders, we need to be able to effectively communicate to our team members and members of the SLT and the board how the change we’re talking about is going to not only benefit the organization but the people who are involved. After all, people won’t buy into change unless they see a benefit for themselves.

Let’s start out with the definition of change: Change means `to make different in some particular way; to make radically different (or to alter). or to give a different position, course or direction to.’

Change is happening faster and faster and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for each of us to keep pace. For sure, the future of technology is uncertain. By the time I begin to learn what a new technology is all about, my company will require knowledge that I don’t have, and I might be sunk.

As The Doors’ Jim Morrison once sang, “The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.” OK, perhaps that’s a bit darker than I wanted to go. But hopefully you get my point.

My definition of change is the following: It’s the act of taking something that felt comfortable and making it uncomfortable.

The nail here is technology change. Technology is constantly evolving, and this change is driving new waves of productivity, new business opportunities and fresh ways of doing business. But don’t think that technology will be the biggest change that we see, there will be others. Layer on top of that the rapidly changing cybersecurity, vulnerability and risk landscape and we as CIOs have our hands full.

Customers certainly want change, so long as it’s change for the better. They want to receive the same types of intuitive experiences they’ve come to anticipate from companies such as Amazon – whether they’re buying goods and services from your company or a small boutique in Wisconsin. To that end, customers expect the companies they do business with to know who they are, what they’ve purchased, and what their buying behaviors are. In short, customers want companies to know them – to a degree.

This underscores the criticality of real-time data – to better understand and respond to changing customer behaviors and preferences, shifts in market conditions, etc.

Translating Change to Your IT Organization

These lofty customer expectations also apply to your IT organization. Your internal customers – whether those are employees, contactors, third-party consultants, etc. – also expect to receive easy, natural experiences just as they do with the retailers they purchase from as consumers. Call it The Amazon Effect. Or apply Airbnb, CVS Health or another customer-focused brand here. These are examples of brands that are good at anticipating their customers’ needs.

Meanwhile, employees need the ability to access information from anywhere – whether it’s a salesperson who needs to access a prospect’s account before an important meeting or a customer service rep who needs deeper insights into a customer’s purchasing behavior while providing them with support.

Of course, as a CIO or business technology leader, it’s tough to make this pivot and to fully utilize customer sentiment and other data at a time when budgets are being squeezed further and further. But sometimes, all it takes is a spark and the right timing for new business models to click. Consider this: it took the airline industry 68 years to reach 50 million users and 62 years for automobiles to be adopted by the same number of consumers. Thanks to social media and word-of-mouth marketing, it took just 6 months for Instagram to reach 50 million users and just 19 days for Pokémon Go to achieve that level of adoption.

Consider companies that failed to change. The poster child for this is Blockbuster. The video retailer grew from a single location in Dallas to 9,000 stores nationwide. But mistakes such as declining to acquire Netflix when it was just a start-up and its failure to adapt its business model to streaming services ultimately led the company to go bankrupt and close nearly all of its stores.

There are countless examples of other companies that have withered on the vine. Ninety percent of Fortune 500 companies have vanished, been acquired or gone out of business since 1955. Adapt or perish is the new mantra in business.

Tackling Change

The biggest impediment to change in an organization is culture. This includes the willingness of people to be open to change along with opportunities that change can bring. People are often reluctant to change – they get comfortable with the status quo; they get used to a certain way of doing things and that approach often works for them.

The companies that are succeeding are those that accurately predict their customers’ wants and needs. Apple’s Steve Jobs is famous for anticipating demand for the iPhone – even before customers knew that they wanted one.

Winning companies also don’t sit on their laurels – they’re always open to change. Fast-movers practice what’s called `creative destruction’ to relentlessly innovate and envision new ways to conduct business.

Leaders need to change their way of thinking – assume that everything will change at any time. The technological cycle today is measured in days, not years.

To enable the business to pivot quickly, the IT organization can’t simply be aligned with the business. IT must be integrated and embedded within the business.

CEOs expect CIOs and business tech leaders to drive cultural change. This is your time to shine. Indeed, there’s nothing more critical to your success right now.

Survive – or Else

With all of this change being thrown at us, CIOs and their companies are truly in a ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ mindset – or should be. We not only have to adapt to the changing environment, but we also need to equip our teams with the right skills and knowledge to succeed. As the company’s business technology leaders, we also need to strike a balance between providing remote and in-person operations at the right price points.

We and our teams also need to be wherever the customer is and to be able to better support their channel and information preferences seamlessly.

None of this is easy, but it’s the new directive for CIOs. We must adapt to the changes that are all around us – or else.

Stuart Kippelman is former Chief Information & Digital Officer, Cybersecurity Leader at Parsons Corporation. He’s also a mentor and a lecturer at Columbia University, an independent consultant and advisory board member.