By Alexis Wierenga | 4-minute read | October 19, 2023
Executive Insights from Day 4 of the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo
The widespread adoption of ChatGPT woke us up to the urgent need to tackle AI risks and security head-on. AI attacks lead to organizational harm and losses, such as theft of intellectual property or compromise of sensitive data. Avivah Litan, Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst, presented a framework, inclusive of new processes and tools, for managing AI trust, risk and security.
Use Gartner’s MOST framework to manage AI trust, risk and security:
Model Operations to support model reliability, predictability and accuracy
Security to prevent hackers and malicious insiders from manipulating AI input, applications and outcomes
"Most will tell you that the benefits of GenAI outweigh the risks, and I'm sure they do. But all you need is one bad incident to change that equation."
Avivah Litan, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner
In this session, Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst Rita Sallam showed CIOs and other technology leaders the six high-impact habits of top data, analytics and AI leaders, and how to develop these practices for themselves and their organizations.
"High-business-impact leaders don’t create a data or analytics strategy — they create a business strategy that is enabled by data, analytics and AI. It is core the organization’s success and the value delivered is very clear.”
Rita Sallam, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner
These are the six high-impact habits of successful data, analytics and artificial intelligence (DAAI) leaders:
Build a value-centric, DAAI-native business strategy.
Prioritize talent, skills and change management core competencies.
Drive innovation by leveraging emerging trends and fast teams with audacious goals.
Build data, analytics and AI products — not projects.
Create a scalable data, analytics, and AI foundation and ecosystem.
Objectives and key results (OKRs) serve as a bridge between business units and IT, different IT groups, and strategy and execution. Christie Struckman, Gartner VP Analyst, demonstrated how IT leaders can use OKR goals to keep everyone focused and the OKR process to keep everyone aligned.
"There is a balance between giving clear direction and giving too much direction. Leading companies use capabilities like OKRs to find that balance.”
Christie Struckman, VP Analyst at Gartner
Use these best practices to successfully leverage OKRs:
Set three objectives and three key results per objective each quarter.
Review these OKRs weekly or monthly.
In 2022, 75% of all CIOs, CFOs and business unit executives told Gartner they were not effective managers of enterprise-wide tech spend. Jim McGittigan, Gartner VP Analyst, explored the need to better understand the difference between IT and technology spend, and use both to measure, manage and optimize value delivered from all technology investments.
"Shedding a light on the full portfolio of spend can help teams prepare future investments appropriately. For this to happen, the enterprisewide technology financial plan needs to be forward-looking beyond the annual budget cycle, preferably with a time horizon of two years or more.”
Jim McGittigan, VP Analyst at Gartner
To effectively track enterprise technology spend:
Identify benefits: Use above- and below-the-line business-outcome-driven metrics (BODMs) to identify benefits of tech spend and monetize where possible.
Update governance: Move from traditional technology governance to co-created digital business governance that is integrated throughout the customer journey.
Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, The World’s Most Important Gathering of CIOs and IT Executives™, brings together thousands of executives every year to address the strategic needs of enterprise CIOs and their leadership teams.
Learn more about the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo event and what's in store for 2024.
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Avivah Litan is a Distinguished VP Analyst in Gartner Research. Ms. Litan is currently a member of the ITL AI team that covers AI and Blockchain. She is the lead Gartner analyst who started and continues coverage of AI Trust Risk and Security, which has been in strong demand since the launch of ChatGPT. Ms.Litan also helps cover the use of AI including Generative AI in Cybersecurity. She specializes in all aspects of Blockchain innovation, ranging from public to private chains, use cases, security and emerging technologies. Ms. Litan has a strong background in many aspects of cybersecurity and fraud, including the integration of AI with these domains. This background is useful in her current coverage of securing and protecting AI models, applications and data as well as blockchain applications. Her background also supports her research into integrating advanced technologies such as blockchain, IoT and AI to solve specific use cases, such as detecting fake content or goods. Before joining Gartner, Ms. Litan worked as a Director of Financial Systems at the World Bank. She also worked as a journalist and columnist for the Washington Times. She earned her Masters of Science at M.I.T. and graduated a general manager's course at Harvard Business School.
Rita Sallam is a Distinguished VP analyst and Gartner Fellow in the Data and Analytics team. Mrs. Sallam's focus includes tracking market trends, vendor assessment and selection, and identifying best practices for realizing business value from data, analytics and AI investments. Of particular interest is how leaders can leverage disruptions in AI to create sustainable competitive advantage. She is also focused on building frameworks for selecting and valuing data and analytics portfolios including AI investments, including Generative AI.
Christie Struckman is a Vice President in Gartner's CIO research team. She helps CIOs and other C-level executives with aligning the organizational building blocks needed to succeed in the digital-era. Topics include: culture and organizational change; leadership development, leadership transitions and development; management practices; diversity, equity and inclusion; and conflict management practices. She is currently working on supporting clients developing themselves as executive leaders, re-imagining the role of managers in the future of work, and thriving as the role of the CIO continues to evolve.
Jim McGittigan is a Research Vice President within the Gartner CIO Research group, where he focuses on delivering value to Gartner clients through his insight and experience in IT financial management. This includes cost transparency, budgeting, chargeback, service pricing, cost optimization, benchmarking, project financial management, business value and product funding.
