“The job description hasn’t changed much, but the questions coming from boards and investors have,’ says Daniel J. Jacobs, Founder of Starkhorn, a premier IT leadership and digital transformation consultancy. For much of the last decade, the CIO role was defined around stewardship: keeping the lights on, ensuring technology did not disrupt the business. Inside acquisition-led, private equity-backed organisations, that definition no longer holds. What boards now demand is judgment about growth, integration, and competitive advantage, often under compressed timelines and scrutiny that leaves little room for error.
When Technology Moved Upstream
M&A was the first area where this became visible. Technology was no longer a post-deal risk check. It was being pulled upstream to shape the deal thesis itself, recast as a driver of deal value rather than a line item to remediate. Rather than being asked how quickly systems could be integrated or how expensive remediation might be, the questions focused on what new capabilities could be unlocked through data, platforms, and scale. “It stopped being about whether the technology would break the deal,” he says. “It became about whether the technology could change the trajectory of the business.” This reframing is consequential. With technology now positioned as an enabler of market advantage, the CIO role has become inherently strategic, requiring fluency in business models, operating leverage, and the realities of execution across complex, multi-site estates.
From Expertise to Judgment
This evolution is about a deeper shift away from technical expertise as the primary source of authority. Traditional CIO credibility was built on knowing how systems work and how risks can be mitigated. That knowledge remains necessary, but it is no longer sufficient. “The uncomfortable truth is that expertise can become a place to hide,” he says. “When you are the expert, you are protected from having to take positions on things that cannot be proven in advance.”
The modern CIO is asked to operate in ambiguity. Decisions about integration sequencing, cyber investment, or platform standardization rarely come with complete data. They require judgment calls that blend technical understanding with commercial context and organizational reality. Unlike technical decisions, these calls cannot be validated beforehand. Their quality is only revealed over time, often after capital has been committed and expectations set.
Holding Tension Instead of Resolving It
The CIO role is defined by persistent trade-offs: speed against risk, consistency against flexibility, central direction against local autonomy. In acquisition-led businesses, these tensions sharpen with every deal. “Earlier in my career, I thought my job was to find the right answer and defend it,” he says. “Now I think the job is to make the trade-offs explicit so the organization knows what it is choosing.” Technology strategy rarely offers clean answers. Moving faster introduces risk. Locking down cyber posture can slow integration. Investing in shared platforms can frustrate operators in the short term. The value is not in resolving these tensions but in surfacing them so decisions are made consciously.
Releasing an Old Identity
The traditional CIO identity offered comfort in mastery and predictability. The newer version requires letting go of being the definitive expert in the room and accepting visibility in decisions that extend well beyond technology. “There is a kind of grief in leaving behind a role you understood,” Jacobs says. “Competence in the old game doesn’t guarantee competence in the new one.” Yet this discomfort is also what makes the role more consequential. When technology leadership is embedded in growth, integration, and exit readiness, it becomes inseparable from enterprise value creation. Technology is part of the story investors and buyers scrutinize from the start.
The New CIO
For early stage companies scaling through acquisition, the implications are significant. Technology missteps can stall integrations, erode synergies, and introduce risk at precisely the wrong moment. Conversely, disciplined IT leadership can accelerate onboarding, strengthen cyber confidence, and turn complexity into operational leverage. What Jacobs describes is not a promotion of the CIO role, but a redefinition. The function has moved closer to the core of how value is built and protected and that proximity brings influence. It also brings accountability that cannot be deferred to technical explanations.
The old playbook offered predictability. The new one offers proximity to where value is created and destroyed. That is a harder place to operate, but it is where the CIO role now lives. The leaders who thrive will not be the ones with the most answers, but the ones most willing to act clearly when certainty is not available.
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