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ZDNET Highlights
- Aspiring IT professionals are ready to break the glass ceiling.
- Just because you’re a manager doesn’t mean you should leave IT behind.
- As your career develops, keep a keen eye on technological developments.
Your career is going well. You’ve delivered projects, received recognition, and been promoted to a mid-level management position. However, now it feels like you have reached a glass ceiling.
Although you would love to take on a senior role and even become CIO, you haven’t found opportunities to expand your reach in your current business or in the market.
Also: 5 Ways to Escape Middle Management and Speed Up Your Journey to the Top
What’s worse, some experts believe that the increased use of AI will make it even more difficult to move into senior roles. so what happens now?
ZDNET spoke to five business leaders who outlined five ways aspiring IT professionals can ensure they have what it takes to lead in the AI-enabled business of the future.
1. Stay close to technology
Orla Daly, CIO of technology expert Skillsoft, advised future leaders to stay abreast of developments in the IT sector.
Daly told ZDNET that in the not too distant past many CIOs abandoned bits and bytes in favor of boardroom battles. Today, successful digital leaders focus together on technology and business.
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“In the past, as you progressed in your career in IT, you became less involved in the technology and your role became more about leadership and management,” he said. “And while those leadership and management pieces will remain hyper-relevant and important, you will also need to stay closer to the technology, perhaps more than ever.”
Daly said one factor behind this change in emphasis is the critical role that digital and data, particularly AI, play in all modern businesses.
Successful IT leaders are expected to be expert resources for leading technology development. In fact, Daly said the CIO of the future will demonstrate how AI can take over some executive roles and responsibilities.
“Now, with AI, you have tools that enable you to get things done more easily,” he said. “I can go in and create my own agent to perform certain tasks, even though my IT engineering days are far behind me.”
2. Connect with digital
Fausto Fleites, vice president of data intelligence at horticulturist ScottsMiracle-Gro, said career-minded IT professionals should recognize the game-changing potential of AI: “If they don’t understand it, I don’t think they’re going to succeed.”
Fleites told ZDNET that, even though he’s a VP now, he’s still extremely technologically aware.
“I understand the limits of what technology can and can’t do,” he said. “I would say that professionals who don’t have my background in technology need to start understanding the power and limitations of AI.”
While promotion can sometimes mean IT professionals are isolated from day-to-day technology challenges, Fleites takes a hands-on approach to digital and data, even designing his firm’s machine-learning models.
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He advised other IT professionals to develop knowledge of the inner workings of emerging technologies.
“For example, your understanding of AI right now should be based on the capabilities of AI agents, in terms of asking key questions like, ‘How can I deploy that in a business?’” he said. “The answer to those questions is how the roles of CIOs and other digital leaders should evolve. They should consider how they will run the company using AI. So, a big focus of these leaders should be, ‘How do we use AI to reimagine our processes?'”
3. Develop a can-do attitude
David Walmsley, chief digital and technology officer at jewelery specialist Pandora, said rising IT stars take on responsibilities and opportunities.
The disconnected technology organization of old, which relied on outsourcing arrangements for project delivery, has been replaced by a department that works closely with the business to achieve its objectives.
“The days of technology leaders leaning back and saying, ‘Well, now which of our external providers do I blame?’ They’re long gone,” he said. “Everyone can see that technology is a strategic lever to grow the business and help it succeed in its mission.”
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Walmsley told ZDNET that digitization is at the heart of business strategy and that ambitious digital leaders have a can-do attitude.
He said, “You have to have the right mindset. Pick a cliché, fail fast or whatever you like, but success is about doing the work; get on with it.”
“And there are judgment calls within that approach. I’d rather people get the job done, and they’d rather do two things and break the third thing than do nothing.”
4. Learn to adapt
ed Fido, CEO and co-founder of the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS), a new university in London, said digital tools will always evolve faster than professionals.
The critical skill for the next generation of leaders lies not in chasing every new platform or coding language, but in developing the human capabilities that allow you to adapt.
“Those abilities include curiosity, critical thinking, collaboration and an understanding of human behavior,” he said.
“At LIS, we place particular emphasis on interdisciplinary learning because technology never exists in isolation; it is always entangled with psychology, economics, ethics, and culture.”
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Fido told ZDNET that a professional who understands how systems interact, including why people adopt certain innovations, why organizations resist change, and how incentives shape behavior, will always be in demand.
“For example, an AI system is not just about algorithms: it raises legal, social and environmental questions,” he said. “Future-proofing your career means learning to ask the right questions across those dimensions and building flexibility into your thinking. The professionals who will succeed will not be those who memorize today’s tools, but those who can understand the complexity of tomorrow.”
5. Build a network
Ankur Anand, Group CIO of global technology and talent solutions provider Nash Squared, is another business leader who said successful emerging leaders must adopt a mindset of continuous learning.
He said, “Be curious – explore and learn about new technologies and techniques, especially AI. Look for opportunities to use AI and experiment with it.”
Anand told ZDNET that professionals should avoid being afraid of change and regularly audit their capabilities, considering their current skills and the skills they will need.
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“Don’t just think about hard skills and certifications, although these are important. Think about soft skills, as these are becoming even more important as specialization and silos break down,” he said. “Critical thinking, emotional intelligence, communication, creativity, stakeholder management – these are all important qualities.”
Anand encouraged the next generation of leaders to adopt a modular mindset and develop skills that can be applied across domains such as software engineering and project management.
Then, with all this knowledge, make contacts that will help you climb the career ladder.
“Stay connected to what’s going on in the market and build your network,” he said. “The more current you stay and the more you keep your contacts fresh, the more likely you are to continue to have opportunities to advance your career.”
