Tech leadership: Questions to answer in 2025
Crystal-ball gazing is a fraught practice, but looking ahead is the cornerstone of any thoughtful strategy. Tech officers navigating 2025 need to focus on macro trends that have been in play for years, such as the pace of technological change and demographic shifts, and on the specific changes we can expect in the coming year, such as new administrations and regulatory changes.
These developments will push the evolution of technology generally and IT specifically in two particular ways. One is what we’ve been calling the “new dawn” of the tech officer—the transformation of the role and responsibilities of multifaceted technology leaders, so that they become business builders, protectors, orchestrators, and operators. The other is the drive to link technology investment more closely to the creation of business value, requiring tech officers to go deep into how technology is evolving and what the implications are for their company.
As tech officers look to fulfill these expectations in 2025, they will need to navigate some likely developments. Those could include, for example, increased M&A activity fueled by growing markets, renewed investments in technologies leading to a tightening of the talent market (especially with baby boomers retiring and taking their knowledge of systems with them), breakthroughs in the use of gen AI agents to take on increasingly complex tasks, profitability pressures, and resilience and cyber issues driven by complex technology environments on the one hand and more sophisticated attacks on the other.
In light of these possible developments, tech officers should be ready to answer some critical questions in 2025. Some of them are perennial, but they have new urgency. Others are more specific to potential developments in 2025.
- What are the three to five tech initiatives that are crucial for your company to execute its strategy—and is your team aligned around them?
- What is your approach to applying tech to fundamentally change the cost structure of both the business and the tech function?
- How do you make resiliency a real muscle so you can commit to—and deliver against—expectations of zero downtime, including business processes and vendor support?
- Do you have a vision for what a gen AI agent–first organization looks like, and how are you getting ready to harness it rather than be taken over by it?
- Is your tech estate really ready to deliver the high ambitions of AI, including data, modern tech platforms, operating model, and talent?
- Which mergers, acquisitions, or IPOs could have the biggest impact on your organization, and how have you prepared the technology team to benefit from them?
- What steps have you taken to protect the business from top geopolitical risks?
- What initiatives will you put in place to understand how emerging tech, such as quantum technologies, can generate value for the business?