Chief Transformation Officer
The Chief Transformation Officer (CTO) is an organizational position that is gaining recognition within many organizations. The CTO is a relatively new type of leadership role that will be explored in this paper.
In your paper:
Define the role and function of the Chief Transformation Officer.
Explain how a CTO can help an organization with change initiatives.
Explain what some of the disadvantages or limitations of the CTO position are.
Describe how an organization’s utilization of a CTO is different than the ‘Changing from the Middle’ approach (mentioned in Chapter 12 of the course textbook).
Your paper should be three to four pages in length (excluding the title and reference pages). Your paper must be formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Writing Center, and it must include in-text citations and references for at least two scholarly sources from the University of Arizona Global Campus Library, in addition to the course text.
Carefully review the Grading Rubric (Links to an external site.) for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.
Sample Answer
Define the Role and Function of the Chief Transformation Officer
The role of the chief transformation officer in an organization is to help large and mature organizations with complex structures and hierarchies to make necessary changes. The CTO helps large organizations to implement important changes effectively and therefore ensure the survival of such organizations (Regan, 2021). The CTO is meant to have a large picture of an organization and consider infrastructure data and people in a cross-functional way to bring about seamless transformation in an organization. The CTO oversees the transformation of all business processes of an organization and anticipates the obstacles and changes that will occur along the way. The CTO position is therefore dedicated to transformation, with the chief transformation officer being involved in driving the momentum of change and holding all the people accountable in an organization to such changes. The CTO is able to prioritize and focus on changes without worrying about responsibilities and distractions in an organization (Firk et al., 2021).
Explain how a CTO can help an Organization with Change Initiatives
In an organization, the CTO has different roles that can help with change initiatives which include being a consumer advocate, corporate architect, storyteller, collaborator, bookkeeper, innovator, and role model. One of the main roles of a CTO is being a consumer advocate. Every organization or business has a consumer end-user or client which they serve through their business. Before an organization or any form of transformational change, it is important to understand the impact of changes in the consumer (Gorter et al., 2021). The CTO spearheads the efforts of understanding the impact of certain transformational changes in an organization or a consumer. The CTO also helps organizations to understand what customers expect and what they are willing to pay for during a transformational change. Another significant role of a CTO is being a corporate architect. CTOs have to understand the needs and desires of clients of consumers in an organization. They will then move into understanding the processes that are involved in an organization, including the important players in organizational processes and how they relate with one another (Kessel & Graf-Vlachy, 2021). This issue is therefore involved in mapping the corporate hierarchy and the connections of different departments in an organization. By mapping the corporate architecture of an organization, the CTO is, therefore, able to effectively understand how a given change in a particular department affects another department or another team. By having a clear understanding of how different departments and teams contribute to the whole organization, a CTO will therefore be able to determine the adequate pathway to promoting transformation in an organization (Kessel & Graf-Vlachy, 2021).
The CTO also needs to play an important role as the storyteller to bring about transformation in an organization. Naturally, it is not easy to introduce changes in an organization which makes it important for a CTO to be able to come up with a compelling narrative and reasons why an organization needs to adopt certain changes. A CTO needs to craft a story that has a beginning, middle, and end to inspire various organizational members into action. A CTO is also required to articulate specific goals of various transformation projects in an organization and how certain changes will help an organization to maintain a competitive edge (Gorter et al., 2021).
Being a collaborator is also an important role of a CTO after coming up with an adequate narrative to convince or organizational members to follow certain changes in an organization, the CTO needs to bring or organizational members together and create a collaborative environment to enact different changes. The CTO needs to understand the expectation of internal stakeholders in an organization relating to certain changes and facilitate relationships and build rapport between various departments in an organization. A collaborative relationship will therefore make it easier for easy execution of transformational changes in an organization (Gorter et al., 2021).
The CTO is also the central bookkeeper in an organization during changes. As a bookkeeper, the city or therefore needs to effectively assess the resources and capability of an organization to adopt certain changes. By appraising the resources and capabilities of an organization to facilitate transformational changes, the CTO can therefore be able to look for the right resources such as funding and human resources to facilitate transformational change in an organization. On the other hand, the CTO plays the role of an innovator in an organization. The CTO is able to anticipate changes before they happen in a given industry and ensure that its organization is prepared to deal with such modifications (Kessel & Graf-Vlachy, 2021). Finally, the CTO is a role model during the change processes in an organization. The CTO is the primary motivator of changes in an organization and plays essential roles such as maintaining a positive attitude supporting resilience in the face of challenges, and accepting feedback from subordinates during transformational changes in an organization (Kessel & Graf-Vlachy, 2021).
Disadvantages or Limitations of the CTO Position
The main limitations of the CTO position include poor governance and a negative environment. In some organizations, the CTO can therefore be treated as a member of the corporate staff and even be assigned to a program management office. When the CTO is treated as a member of corporate staff, it becomes difficult for them to spearhead changes and to include the executive management of such organizations in such changes (Gorter et al., 2021). In an organization that treats the CTO as a member of the corporate staff, the CEO and the board of such an organization may therefore significantly undermine the efforts of the CTO to influence changes. In an organization, the city or must therefore be able to direct senior leaders, including CEO, to attend meetings and enact the necessary changes in an organization (Regan, 2021).v
