CIOs, who do you rely on most for driving change management?

In my experience, effective change management doesn’t sit with a single role, it’s more of an ecosystem. But if I had to pick who I rely on most, it comes down to two anchors:

Functional Leaders / Business Owners – Change only sticks if the business owns it, not IT. I rely heavily on my peers in advancement, finance, or operations to champion the “why” of the change, shape communications, and model adoption.

HR / Learning and Development – They bring the structure, tools, and sometimes the objectivity to drive change at the people/process level (communications planning, training, adoption metrics). In a university foundation setting, this has been crucial for aligning diverse stakeholders.

Within IT, the PMO often plays a coordinating role, keeping the effort on track, surfacing resistance early, and tying change management into the delivery plan.

That is one loaded question. In reality, a breadth of people. Immediately, I would say I rely on my direct reports when pushing change into the IT Organisation, as in this change, I am sponsoring and leading the change. This takes a considered approach, inclusive of clear active communications, several frameworks for communicating change (e.g. Create and Communicate Direction, ADKAR, etc) and a lot of coaching and support.

When leading externally to the IT group, rely upon Peer executives to assist in driving the organisation change/response to any change let from the IT Organisation.

Finally, in the case of projects/products, having an executive sponsor with active delegates to work with the IT teams is key. Methods to the external stakeholders rely on a principal-based approach, the first of which is Transparency, which again is achieved through active communications/presentations through to showcases and playbacks. reporting success continuously.

PPM, PMO or the CxO that's in charge of portfolio / project management. Change leadership, for instance, is another matter and more complex than change management.