The tension between business and IT is one of the most persistent challenges in enterprise organizations. And few people understand both sides like Rozita Sehat, former CIO at Dustin and business development leader at Telia. In this episode of Data Driven Voices, host Emma Storbacka talks with Rozita Sehat about why this tension exists, what’s changing in the CIO role, and how AI is forcing organizations to completely rethink what leadership means in the digital age.
In this blog, we summarize some of the key takeaways from the episode.
Why business and IT speak different languages
Rozita has seen this tension from both sides. As CIO at Dustin, she managed infrastructure and risk. As a business leader at Telia, she felt the frustration of IT being slow. Both perspectives are real.
The core problem?
“Business usually think, why is IT so slow? And on the other hand, IT sitting on the other side of the table thinking, why does prioritization change every other week? So we speak different languages.”
Business faces market pressures and KPI targets. IT manages technical debt and system stability. They answer different questions. Until both understand the other’s constraints, alignment remains impossible.
For a CIO, bridging this gap means understanding business deeply. This is why Rozita moved from pure IT roles into business development—to combine both perspectives into one leadership view.
Who owns data? The CIO must force the answer
One of Rozita’s clearest insights: business must own data, not IT. Most organizations have not made this choice explicit. Data ends up in the middle with no clear owner.
“The ownership of understanding your processes and your data. It’s on the business side.”
Salespeople own sales processes. Supply chain teams own supply chain data. Finance owns financial data. IT cannot be responsible for expertise it does not have.
But here is what the CIO must do: ask hard questions and refuse to move forward without answers. Is your data good enough? Are processes followed throughout the organization? If we change this system, what breaks? If business cannot answer these questions, transformation stalls.
This is uncomfortable. But it is the CIO’s job.
Structure before speed
The biggest mistake Rozita sees: organizations trying to move fast before building structure.
“You need to have the ground in place. You don’t see much when you set the ground. But when you have a place, then things happen.”
Foundation work is not impressive. It shows no output. But without it, everything breaks. Use case by use case. Tied to business plans. This connects IT work directly to business value and prevents the “fix all data first” paralysis.
The data question CIOs get wrong
Every CIO hears the same thing: “Our data is bad. We need to fix our data first before we can do anything.” It becomes a universal blocker. But Rozita challenges this belief. Data problems are use-case specific. A CIO should not try to fix all data. Instead: what data do you need for this specific decision?
“You need to think about what kind of data I need. Look at what you need to take a certain decision and then look at that data. If you do it that way, you usually can find the relevant data.”
This reframes the CIO’s role. Not “fix everything.” But “understand what business needs and make sure that data is trustworthy.”
The CIO role is merging with business leadership
Here is where Rozita’s insight becomes radical. The traditional CIO role, managing infrastructure, is disappearing.
She shares an example: a bank in Sweden where the CEO asked the CIO to take on HR responsibilities. Why? Because AI agents are becoming part of the workforce. Managing a hybrid human-AI workforce requires thinking about capability, deployment, training, and organizational design.
“Many of those roles will be merged, not at least because of the development we see in the AI area.”
For future CIOs, technical skills matter less than business acumen and organizational leadership. Technology is the operating system. Business runs on top of it.
Leading without certainty
The hardest challenge for CIOs will not be technical. It will be leading through uncertainty.
Rozita sees this as parallel to the industrial revolution. That transformed physical labor. AI transforms knowledge work. The leadership capability that matters is comfort with uncertainty.
“One of the components of leadership that will be important going forward will be to lead in uncertainties more than a specific technical background or specialisation in certain technologies.”
For a CIO, this means making informed bets without perfect information and building teams that can adapt quickly.
Build cognitively diverse teams
A CIO cannot do this alone. Transformation demands teams with radically different thinking styles.
“Diversity is much broader than what we usually talk about. Look at the kind of business that you have and think about what do I need in a certain area and not go for what you are usually comfortable with.”
Most CIOs build teams of people who think like them. It feels efficient. But it is a vulnerability. The best teams combine opposites: strategic thinkers with execution operators, risk takers with careful planners.
Use AI as a thinking partner
When Emma asks Rozita for AI hacks, Rozita shares something most people have not considered: using AI to become smarter at thinking, not just faster at getting answers.
She built an AI partner in Claude. Not to get answers, but to analyze her thinking approach. She asks questions and gives her own answers. The AI analyzes her approach and asks different questions that help her think differently.
This is the opposite of using AI as a shortcut. For a CIO managing transformation, deeper thinking leads to better decisions.
Key takeaways for CIOs
- Business owns data: Your role is ensuring they take responsibility and answer hard questions.
- Structure enables speed: Push for foundation work before speed, even when it feels slow.
- The CIO role is becoming a business leadership role: Technology skills matter less than understanding operations and change.
- Lead through uncertainty: Comfort making informed bets without perfect information is critical.
- Build cognitively diverse teams: Surround yourself with people who think differently.
- Use AI for deeper thinking: Meta-cognition and reflection matter more than quick answers.
For CIOs navigating this transition, the path forward requires merging technical understanding with business acumen and organizational leadership.
Inspiration for marketing, sales, and data professionals
Data Driven Voices is a podcast where Avaus together with industry experts, thought leaders, and partners discuss how to harness data, technology, and strategy to drive meaningful change and business results in primarily marketing and sales. The podcast shares actionable insights, success stories, and thought-provoking challenges to help professionals with new perspectives.