UK & Ireland CIO Community
Executive Summit

Exclusive to Governing Body members and select guests, this dinner is a can’t-miss opportunity to connect with your peers prior to tomorrow’s Executive Summit. 

Prior to the dinner, attendees will take part in a one hour interactive workshop, facilitated by Georgina Pawley, CEO & Founder, Life Body Health. Georgina will take you through a business impact assessment designed to help align leaders and organisations in a way that drives productivity and business results. This will be followed  by an evening of good food, wine, and lively networking.

The Game Changing CIO – How to Lead with Impact

As CIOs face ever-expanding responsibilities in their roles, they must remain effective in dealing with uncertainty and change. How can CIOs ensure they are leading and communicating with impact to drive forward successful digital business initiatives and position themselves as true business partners? Join Georgina Pawley, CEO & Founder, Life Body Health, as she takes you through an innovative measurement framework to better understand how your personal leadership qualities and team energies, can have the biggest impact within your organisation. Specifically, this session will drive insights into:

• Understanding individual leadership tendencies and how they can be leveraged to maximise impact within the organisation
• How CIOs can drive better collaboration and communication across their teams and the wider organisation
• Dominant UK CIO leadership proclivities and how these align to the technology agenda

While excited about the potential of generative AI to revolutionise their businesses, CIOs are approaching this transformative technology with a mix of curiosity and caution as they navigate the peak of inflated expectations Join John, for a practical exploration of where we are with generative AI today.

Specifically, this Keynote will cover:

• Why diversity and business knowledge are critical for CIOs in harnessing Generative AI's potential
• Establishing transparent communication strategies to internal and external stakeholder groups
• Overcoming biases, addressing ingrained beliefs and identifying opportunities to enhance efficiencies

Enterprise-wide transformations can be highly complex and often come with huge challenges. For Tesco Mobile, the prospect of a widescale transformation programme provided the opportunity to innovate customer facing technology and overhaul legacy IT systems. This came alongside a move to a business-wide agile way of working. With major updates needed around technology, culture and processes, the scope of the transformation was wide. Join Sally Marriott, CTO, Tesco Mobile as she shares the journey of how Tesco Mobile navigated this unique transformation, ensuring the company delivered successful outcomes both internally, and externally to customers. Sally will then be joined by Nicky Green, Global I.T Director at LAVAZZA Professional Europe for a fireside chat. 

Specifically, Sally will share:

• The technology journey of delivering successful transformation in a complex operating environment
• How Tesco Mobile was able to meet its objectives, despite challenges, and enable a change in ways of working, culture and mindset
• The learnings and recommendations for CIOs looking to deliver significant technology and agile transformations with minimal disruption

While the vast majority of infrastructure has been upgraded and modernised to support the shift to the cloud, enterprise IT teams are still missing an equally seamless access method to deliver cloud-native apps and data to their end users. While traditional browsers have become the de-facto access point for the majority of business critical applications, they lack the deep visibility and hyper-granular policy controls enterprises need. This results in IT leaders surrounding their browsers with layers of tech to meet those needs.

Join this breakout session to discover:

• Why traditional cloud security methods undermine your modernisation efforts and end-user experience
• Embracing technological momentum to adapt to a "more-with-less" IT landscape
• How enterprise CIOs are using this solution to bolster cloud security

CIOs are operating in a rapidly evolving digital landscape, and IT departments often find themselves overloaded and in survival mode, with pressure on budgets, struggling to keep up with the demands of businesses. Meanwhile, business users with minimal technical know-how face challenges in effectively communicating their ideas and requirements to IT teams, caught up in the hypes of Generative AI and emerging technologies. How can CIOs ensure they set their organisations up for success in complex environments?

Join this session to discuss:

• Improving operational efficiency, partnering with the business, and driving innovation by eliminating the barriers that legacy systems present
• Keeping control of the narrative around emerging technologies, like AI, to better manage expectations of technology
• Leveraging AI and innovative solutions to optimise the overall modernisation process

The ransomware threat is a top-of-mind issue for so many CIOs; however, few feel totally prepared for an attack. Readiness Is essential to ransomware mitigation, yet significant gaps exist for most. Join this boardroom to discuss with you peers:

• The proactive and reactive measures CIOs should put in place to defend against threats and secure backups
• Mitigation best practices across readiness, prevention, response and recovery
• Identify the priorities associated with mitigation in the next 12 – 18 months

The career path to becoming a CIO has evolved as the role has become increasingly critical to business success. Beyond technology skills, you need to have the ability to influence stakeholders, be a capable communicator, be savvy at negotiating and possess the business and financial acumen to partner effectively with the business. With all this in mind, what are the most practical steps you can be taking now to ensure you’re ready for when the time comes. Join Pooja Bagga, CIO at the Guardian (and a ‘Next Generation Programme’ Alumni) as she shares:

• Her journey to becoming a CIO, and the critical capabilities picked up along the way
• The key skills needed to lead large scale, multi-year transformation programmes
• Fostering partnerships and networks to set you up for success

Gartner expects that by 2027, 25% of CIO’s compensation will be linked to their sustainable technology impact. But focusing only on the sustainability of internal IT operations (“sustainable IT”) is too narrow a way to think about sustainable technology. As sustainable technology has the potential to facilitate new business models and tech-enabled products, how can CIOs make the right decisions when defining IT strategies with sustainability in mind and create an effective sustainable technology portfolio?

Join this session to discuss:

• Understanding the business priority around sustainability, and what CIOs can actually control
• Define your role in driving sustainability across the organisation
• Evolving your teams mindset to drive momentum around sustainable initiatives

Gartner research shows a near split of CIOs opting to build an application in-house versus buying or partnering with a third-party. Regardless of the choice, IT executives must deliver programs that are relevant and both cost and time effective to manage.

In this boardroom, you will discuss:

• Aligning application strategy to business objectives
• Best uses of application development
• Adaptability of applications and threat readiness

Communication is a critical leadership competency, particularly in distributed work environments. Progressive CIOs use stories to deliver complex technical ideas through simple, persuasive narratives. What are the steps CIOs should take to become good storytellers? How can you convey your message and digital story in a way that resonates and focusses on the outcomes that stakeholders care about? Join this boardroom to discuss:

• Building narratives that focus on unique challenges, plausible tension and desirable resolutions
• Engaging stakeholders by focussing on the outcomes they care most about
• Enable distributed employees to become storytellers who amplify leadership messages

As digital transformation, innovation and technology advance at a staggering pace, organisations need to rapidly adapt and ‘look beyond’ the horizon to remain relevant, competitive and proactive. With the need to transform technologies, culture and organisational structures in a sustainable way, how should CIOs evolve their strategies, competencies and technology roadmaps to ensure they are well placed to deal with the changing obligations and opportunities. Join Kate Platonova, SVP & CIO for Downstream & Renewables at Shell as she shares her thoughts on:

• Looking at longer term planning for emerging technologies, like AI, to remain relevant
• Preparing for what the IT leadership role will entail in the coming years, including driving sustainable business
• Ways to elevate the CIO role for influence across the C-suite and beyond