CIO’s are great because they’re technical, organized, and good with people. That combination is rare. Most people in IT have one or two of those. CIO’s have all three, which is exactly why they can actually move a business forward.

There greatest asset is the ability to cast a vision and unify a team on a single clear command intent. This is where CEO’s are out of order and floundering right now.

To start, your team cannot operate from competing definitions. Even worse, competing intent.

I've watched it happen and been victim to it - we all sometimes move too fast. The developer is in Claude writing code. HR is pasting performance reviews into ChatGPT. Finance figured out Copilot can summarize contracts. Nobody's doing anything wrong, but nobody's talking to you either.

That's the problem. Independent ideas on how to implement a new technology because leadership simply regarded it as a tech tool and didn’t start with the leadership philosophy.

We've been here before though. Remember BYOD, work from home, and security awareness training? Every one of those policies changed how IT is purchased and deployed. Every one of them started the same way, employees moving faster than leadership. By the time most leaders caught up, personal devices were already in the boardroom, connected to Exchange, handling sensitive data. The cleanup was pretty expensive and the disruption hurt morale.

AI is moving faster than all of them combined.

A real AI policy isn't a tool list. It starts with a shared definition of intent. What we're trying to accomplish. What data never leaves our walls. What responsible use actually looks like on the floor. How our business benefits and succeeds by using it.

When your team has that clarity, the confusion stops. Shadow IT slows. Your risk surface gets smaller.

The leaders who are ahead of this right now didn't get there by locking everything down. They showed up with a clear direction, and that direction was enough to begin establishing policies for real people and real workflows.

Your team doesn't need another policy handed down from legal. They need YOU to walk in and define the intent. Give them the filter. Let them run.

If you don't fill that vacuum, someone else will. Usually it looks like 40-something AI subscriptions on the corporate card and a bunch of rework.

Define the direction and allow your team to build on one of the greatest business tools of all-time.

Until next week,

—Jared

Text Me: 314.806.3912

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