Featuring:
Matt Guarini, VP, Senior Research Director
Show Notes:
The tech economy is picking up, with 6% growth in spending for the last six to eight months. The reason? Companies are shifting back to long-term strategic planning and spending on tech to help meet increasing demand. How will those trends impact your tech organization in 2022? Listen in as VP and Senior Research Director Matt Guarini reviews Forrester’s 2022 predictions for technology leadership and innovation.
The episode starts off on a very pressing issue: the tech talent panic. Guarini dissects what’s behind the hiring challenges in the tech market. “When you’re not one of the companies that attracts talent, you’ll be drawing on whatever you can get, and that will change how CIOs and CTOs run their businesses,” he says. For starters, tech leaders will need to think more about employee experience (EX) to reduce attrition and attract talent. They’ll also have to use technology platforms and low-code solutions to automate some tasks and engage more closely with partners. “It’s not outsourcing today; it’s co-innovation,” says Guarini.
Guarini says we’ll see a wider shift from digital to human-centered innovation in the technology economy as digital sameness continues to hold back many industries. To combat this trend, he says, technology executives need to focus more on customer experience (CX) and EX. That means better understanding how their company makes money and what customers and employees want so they can partner with marketing and other business orgs to deliver it.
Later in the episode, Guarini discusses a prediction that says technical debt will worsen in 2022 because the technology that firms invested in during the pandemic was mostly a short-term fix to an immediate challenge or crises, not a long-term strategic decision. Now it’s time to step back and decide what will stay as part of your tech stack and what might go away when you go back to your long-term focus.
Did the pandemic change the perception of tech leaders? Certainly, accelerating transformation plans raised the perception of tech execs and their ability to solve business problems. They have finally become true solution providers, and businesses need to change how they goal technology executives, focusing more on compensation.
Be sure to listen to the end of the episode to hear Guarini describe the one prediction that didn’t make the list this year — but could have. And you’ll hear his thoughts on what a New Year’s resolution should be for the technology executive.
