Looking to lead technology teams in 2025? Follow this CDO's advice

Successful leadership in the year ahead will likely require embracing artificial intelligence (AI) and related solutions. At the same time, those aspiring to lead technology innovation also need to promote greater human intuition and creativity. That balance means walking a delicate line between automation and human creativity, said a chief digital officer and former chief information officer.

With AI now readily available online and embedded within vendor solutions, there’s a temptation to automate as much work as possible as some experts suggest it’s cheaper and often more reliable than humans. 

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I spoke to Carrie Rasmussen, executive vice president and chief digital officer at Dayforce at the company’s recent customer conference, and she said modern IT leaders must keep human and machine intelligence at an equal level, balancing the strengths of each.

Creativity that spurs critical thinking and innovation is becoming the most valuable skill for technology and business professionals. However, not enough of these human-centred skills are being taught in schools. With the rise of AI, there is a growing risk of losing the skills required to advance and protect businesses.

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“The developer role is going to be very different in the future,” she said. Managing new technologies needs discipline. “We need to make sure we’re cleaning up or taking down old environments. It’s going to be really interesting because AI learning models are very expensive. You need to think about how you embark on some of those generative models.”  

The biggest risk, however, is that emerging technology leads to an erosion of understanding the logic and reasoning behind the solutions and processes adopted. “We may lose sight of coding skills if we start putting it all in generative AI,” Rasmussen said. 

“We need to keep learning techniques to keep bad actors from coming in. But if we never taught coding again, and you just used an AI tool, are we separating ourselves from some of our thinking? If bots are doing everything for me, am I really a creative, innovative thinker anymore? Because I’m not thinking about how it was built.”

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Rasmussen said “soft skills are important” for promoting greater critical thinking. For instance, one of the greatest challenges for an IT leader is finding the return on investment for emerging technology. AI is getting very expensive very fast, and IT leaders and professionals need to be mindful of keeping things from going out of control. 

Rasmussen recommended being open to the possibilities of emerging technologies, such as generative AI. But there’s another element that needs to be closely watched and managed as well — data. 

“Make sure you have that foundation of data — governed data,” she said. “How are you governing AI that’s coming in. It’s coming in the software you’re buying as well. Every day there’s something new. Get ahead of the governance part, be open to it, and make sure your house is in order.”

She said new technology initiatives need to be highly focused. “Be purposeful — no peanut butter spreading,” Rasmussen said. 

“Be piloting where you’re seeing the value. We see the value in code development with GitHub. We see the value in generative search. We see the value in language translation. You’re going to see some things around being able to create training material rapidly. Stay where you can make that difference.”

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Rasmussen said one area of great promise is AI agents — eventually: “I don’t think we’re ready to let things go. I think the word ‘copilot’ is a strong term because you still need a human.” 

The right approach to agentic AI is incremental. “I don’t think we’re ready to just let them go, and say ‘Distribute emails to my customers,'” she said.

Rasmussen said the orchestration of AI agents is essential. “We still need a human,” she said. “Because models drift, or there’s a bias built in. Those are things that we have to think about. There will be checks, but we’re not quite there. You have to be open to the vision of where we can go. You can see it. Things are coming together.”