IT for the Non-IT Executive
This program is ideal for business unit leaders (e.g., CEO’s, CFOs, COOs, CMO’s, business unit executives, and board members). It provides executives with the core competencies they need to succeed as IT becomes the business itself, not just a support function.
It is built to:
- Strengthen the harmony between business and IT organizations, so IT moves beyond being a cost center and becomes a genuine driver of innovation and growth
- Prepare candidates for a world where stakeholders expect far more from technology, driven by the consumerization of technical capability
- Put candidates in the seat of an organizational leader (strategic, tactical, and operational) working directly with IT and business stakeholders, vendors, and customers to deliver real, demonstrable value
- Be a co-branded executive program for non-IT leadership cohorts
While course descriptions are similar to GIIM's CIO Certification program, this program is designed for business leaders without a technical background. It builds the competencies needed to partner effectively with IT and lead in a digital business environment. Participants will learn to:
- Understand how IT resources are organized, governed, and sourced, and how to strengthen business-IT alignment
- Recognize the strategic role of information technology in the enterprise and how to align IT strategy and business goals
- Evaluate emerging technologies (e.g., Agentic AI, cybersecurity, digital twins, quantum computing) and their business implications
- Apply leadership approaches tailored to Business-IT contexts, including managing global and virtual teams
- Confidently collaborate with IT organizations as strategic partners rather than a cost center
The descriptions of the 4 required courses are:
(All courses are available face-to-face & online, blended/hybrid )
1. Managing IT Resources
Digital transformation only works when IT investments are managed well, and when IT and business leaders are pulling in the same direction. This course covers the organizational structures, governance, and processes that turn IT spend into enterprise value, and prepares you to run the day-to-day tactical and operational side of IT as it becomes inseparable from the business itself.
Course covers: IT-business alignment, IT governance at every level, sourcing and outsourcing trends (e.g., Multi-Cloud Governance), demonstrating IT’s value, the evolving CIO role, and managing emerging technology and change (e.g., Cyber Resilience).
2. Strategic Issues in IT
This course is about the CIO and non-IT executive team working together as strategists, building and executing a technology strategy that creates real competitive advantage, and making sure that IT strategy and business strategy are never running on separate tracks.
Course covers: strategy formulation frameworks, short-term vs. long-term strategic tradeoffs, evaluating strategic alternatives, how Agentic AI changes competitive strategy (autonomous decision-making, agent-driven business models), and the CIO’s role as a genuine member of the executive team.
3. Managing Emerging Information Technologies
Technological disruption is now constant. This course gives you the frameworks to identify, evaluate, and act on emerging technology before your competitors do — from AI at scale to quantum computing.
Candidates will learn to: build a business case for new technology, judge organizational readiness, evaluate costs and risks with modern frameworks, and design governance that lets your organization adopt fast without losing control.
Course Covers: AI and automation (e.g.,autonomous agents, multi-agent orchestration, agent governance), Multi-Cloud Governance (e.g, cross-provider cost/risk management, data residency, and vendor lock-in mitigation), data and analytics, cybersecurity (e.g., Zero Trust Architecture and Cyber Resilience frameworks), spatial computing and digital twins, blockchain, quantum computing, and innovation governance.
4. IT Leadership
Leadership is what makes everything else in this program work. This course is built specifically around Business-IT leadership — not generic leadership theory — and centers on three things the most effective leaders consistently get right:
- Recognizing how Business-IT leadership differs from leadership in general (e.g., Zero Trust rollouts, agentic-AI-driven workforce change)
- Reading the situation and adapting your style to it
- Applying the right leadership approach to the situation in front of you
Candidates will leave with a concrete, personal approach to leading in a global, multicultural, often virtual business-IT environment.
Individual customized course for senior executives
As organizations accelerate the digital transformation of their industry, they are focusing their investments on leveraging information technology (especially AI) to improve customer/client products/services while lowering overall costs. In today’s highly regulated, increasingly resource-constrained, and cost-focused environment, it is essential to understand how to effectively and efficiently manage an organization’s information technology (IT) resources. There are numerous strategic, tactical, and operational choices to be made about managing an organization’s IT resources, and it is essential to ensure that IT and non-IT executives across the organization work in harmony.
Experience has made it clear that organizations need well-conceived organizational structures, skills, processes, and decision rights to ensure that IT investments are appropriately leveraged across the organization, especially when considering the impact of emerging information technologies across every industry.
This course prepares executives by providing a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental decisions related to the management of IT resources for competitive advantage. The course will also provide an overview of current and future information technologies and their potential impact on customers/clients, organizations, and associated stakeholders.
Digital management topics include:
- Deriving IT-business strategies
- Considerations for types of organizational structure, sourcing governance (i.e., decision-making and decision rights), roles/responsibilities, and processes
- Leverage emerging digital technologies
- The business value of IT
- The definition, concepts, and contexts of leveraging IT for competitive advantage
- Enhancing business-IT alignment
