I just read another CIO top-10 priorities list. As is often the case, it struck me as being right on the money.

So long, that is, as the money it’s right on is in Martian dollars.

No, I’m not going to give you the link. Today’s offender isn’t a standout. Do some Googling to find your own missing-the-point list.

I say this because right now, as of this writing, CIOs have three and only three priorities (updated from The CIO’s missing priority | CIO ):

(1) Preventing ransomware attacks; (2) figuring out how to lead and manage IT’s workforce given today’s staffing challenges; and (3) helping the business executive leadership team focus on how IT can and should be used to create competitive advantage, or, failing that, to mitigate competitive disadvantage … without increasing the risk of a ransomware attack.

We’ve already covered ransomware attack prevention to the extent my sources and I are able – see “Ransomware: Don’t just accept the risk” (KJR,10/18/2021).

Helping your execs stay focused on competitive advantage? You’ll find ideas for that here: “The CIO’s missing priority” (CIO.com, 4/7/2022) and I don’t have much to add on that subject either at the moment.

That leaves staffing. This used to be about finding, recruiting, hiring, and promoting the best talent you could find. It’s no longer that straightforward. The logic dictating how CIOs need to plan has become more convoluted as well. IT hiring managers have these ingredients to deal with (at least):

Employer/employee relationship: Do you want employees to feel like they’re part of something, or will a transactional perspective, where each employee’s role is to move work from their inbox to their outbox, suffice?

Inter-employee relationships: While this decision might seem to be joined at the hip to how you define the employer/employee relationship, it isn’t: Even if you decide the employer/employee relationship will be transactional, that doesn’t mean employees will interact with each other solely on a transactional basis.

In fact, employees might find it impossible to limit their relationships to a transactional perspective. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to manage the organization you’re responsible for by parsing responsibilities to such an atomic level that employee can work independently. Like it or not, situations will arise in which employees will find themselves relying on each other to get their work done.

Siting: Remote vs Onsite vs Hybrid workforce: Back in the good old days of COVID-driven improvisation on this subject, the workforce siting decision was independent of the employer/employee and employee/employee relationship models.

To the extent their responsibilities allowed it, employees worked remotely. But as COVID declined and the situation evolved, the siting decision became a consequence: The desired relationship models became the driving logic underpinning the siting model. According to this view, if the goal is non-transactional relationships, you need an on-site workforce, or at least a hybrid one.

Power sharing: Employers are accustomed to having more power over employees than employees have had over them – even more so for job-seekers. That imbalance has, over the past few years, eroded. Management (that is, you) is no longer in a position to decide what is optimal for the business and inform employees of how it’s going to work.

You’re going to have to negotiate your staffing preferences with employees who’s view of “optimal” is predicated on their very different perspectives.

All of which leaves you with the current, messy situation, where employees mostly want to work remotely because it’s more convenient, while employers mostly want employees on site at least part of the time so as to encourage the formation and maintenance of trust-based relationships, both between employees and their managers and employees with each other.

What’s making your situation even trickier is that it isn’t even clear who you’re supposed to negotiate with. You certainly can’t negotiate siting and relationship models with employees one at a time. But in the absence of unions, no defined entity has the authority to speak for all employees.

Which leaves it up to you to help employees choose credible representatives to figure it out with you.

Bob’s last word: Because employees will have to depend on each other no matter how everything else comes out, everyone will have to figure out how to use collaboration tools to maximum advantage no matter how siting and the employer/employee relationship comes out.

Making that real has been an IT priority for the past several years already. In this respect, count on the future being just like the recent past only more so.

Bob’s sales pitch: Aw, c’mon. You know what I do for a living and what I can do for you.

Now on CIO.com: “Bad metrics are worse than no metrics.” It’s about being smart without embracing SMART.