IT now has a seat at the strategy table. “Increasingly, CIOs are becoming less service-oriented and more product-oriented.” explains Saket Srivastava, CIO at Asana. “Now, it’s more about being a business leader than a technology leader.”

In partnership with The Work Innovation Lab, a think tank by Asana, and Sierra Ventures, we’ve spent the last several months studying this evolution of the IT leader’s role. We surveyed over 500 IT professionals and asked leaders from Slack, Okta, Asana, Google, CDW, and Kleiner Perkins to weigh in on the current and future state of their field.

Get a sneak peek at what we learned below. Click here to get access to the full report.

How Top IT Leaders Are Rethinking Efficiency

Faced with cost-cutting, security threats, and AI tech that seems to evolve daily, it’s easy to get caught up in the “more is better” approach to new tech. The research found that while technology leaders obviously care about efficiency and performance, their focus is on efficient business growth—not growth at any cost. This means being more selective with what gets added to their tech stack, embracing experimentation, and tapping into the employees who work for them. 

Here’s what IT leaders are prioritizing in this new climate where they are both strategists and deal-makers:

• Collaborate more with sales teams: 32% of IT executives are being asked to advise on their company’s go-to-market strategy more often than last year
• Invest in the digital employee experience: IT professionals at companies that successfully hit or exceeded their IT-related objectives were more likely to say that improving the digital employee experience was important to them—92% found it important on some level
• Embrace cross-functional collabs: About 25% of all collaboration by IT teams is with operations teams, with ops being their biggest collaborator 

And much more! Check out the rest of the insights.