The responsibility of the chief information officer has traditionally been to oversee the internal technology needs of the company. In the age of AI, CIOs are being called to become chief orchestration officers as well – overseeing projects across business lines to find value from AI deployments.
“The CIO role has evolved significantly over the last decade and a half,” said Asana CIO Saket Srivastava in an interview with The AI Innovator. Today, “we are brought into the conversation much earlier because we can connect the dots and enable company-level strategy and business strategy through technology.”
The shift is transforming the CIO from a back-office technology executive into something closer to an enterprise orchestration leader — an executive responsible not only for infrastructure and software, but also for redesigning workflows that increasingly span humans, AI agents, data systems and business operations.
Leading orchestration well is crucial given that only 5% of companies are deriving measurable value from their AI investments despite widespread adoption of AI tools, according to a 2025 BCG survey. The problem, executives increasingly believe, is not access to AI technology. It is orchestration.
Many companies layered AI copilots onto fragmented workflows without redesigning how work actually moves across the enterprise. The result is scattered experimentation, duplicated tools and isolated productivity gains that fail to materially improve revenue, margins or operational throughput.
Today’s CIO still oversees infrastructure, security and compliance. But the mandate increasingly extends into revenue growth, operational efficiency and organizational redesign.
Changing role of the CIO
For decades, CIOs were primarily associated with maintaining infrastructure, managing networks and ensuring systems uptime internally.
“If you look back maybe 15 or 20 years, the CIO was thought of as an infrastructure leader, someone who had a heavy operational burden, making sure that the lights were kept on,” Srivastava said. “The CIO did not necessarily have a seat at the table where business decisions were being made.”
The role began changing during the rise of SaaS platforms, when enterprises suddenly faced an explosion of cloud applications and disconnected data systems. “CEOs and other executives needed a leader who could make sense out of all of this and start thinking not just about tooling, but about how to think about data and insights for the company.”
Then the pandemic elevated the role again. “As companies were going remote, the CIOs were then being looked at as the ones driving productivity, efficiency and business continuity,” he said.
“We have a seat at the table. We have a voice at the table. We’re not in the seventh or the 10th conversation on our company strategy.“
Now AI is forcing another reinvention. “CIOs are again in the spotlight,” Srivastava said. “CEOs are again looking for someone to champion and drive the AI transformation at companies.”
Compared to other technology shifts, however, AI is touching nearly every business function unusually quickly and simultaneously: Engineers are using AI to generate code. Sales teams are using AI to prepare customer outreach. Customer service centers are deploying AI agents to resolve tickets. Finance teams are using AI for reconciliation and analysis. Legal departments are experimenting with AI for contract review. HR organizations are applying AI to recruiting and internal operations.
That breadth is pulling CIOs far deeper into business operations than before.
“A lot of CIOs that you will find now are people who, yes, lead technology organizations, but also have a strong inclination and understanding of the business,” he said. “We have a seat at the table. We have a voice at the table. We’re not in the seventh or the 10th conversation on our company strategy.”
Creating an enterprise AI unit
That means the CIO role is beginning to converge with operational leadership itself. Rather than simply supporting the business, CIOs are increasingly being asked to redesign how businesses function.
“How do we deliver on the business outcomes? How do we deliver on the business strategy, which would mean that if your go-to-market team is trying to sell more, how can technology help?” Srivastava asked. “If finance is trying to close their books earlier, or have more accurate financials, how can technology aid in that? If marketing is doing the customer acquisition and awareness campaigns, how can technology help?”
To support the expanding responsibilities of his office, Srivastava reorganized portions of Asana’s technology organization around a more product-oriented structure designed to operate as business partners rather than internal service providers.
He created a dedicated enterprise AI unit led by a head of enterprise AI responsible for identifying cross-functional AI opportunities. “The ones that make sense we go build or buy and we deliver on those,” he said.
Asana also created an internal AI council with representatives from different departments. “What we’ve asked is that the representative from each of these departments has a direct line into the functional leadership so that the functional leader – be they the CFO, CHRO, CPO or CTO – will have an understanding of what’s being driven through this AI council,” he said.
Council members are expected to encourage AI adoption within the company and identify opportunities to explore.
Lastly, Srivastava convenes executive leadership team-level meetings periodically to discuss their AI transformation and “what’s working, what’s not working and what needs to shift.”
AI ‘teammates‘
At Asana, the company has deployed what it calls “AI teammates,” agent-like digital co-workers embedded into operational workflows. The systems can intake requests, gather missing information, prioritize work and resolve certain tasks autonomously before escalating issues to human employees.
The company measures AI effectiveness across departments. Engineers are evaluated on AI-assisted coding output. Sales teams track whether AI improves meeting generation and outreach response rates. Support organizations measure ticket deflection and customer satisfaction outcomes.
That emphasis on measurement is becoming increasingly important as executive patience around AI spending begins to narrow.
“There’s going to be extreme pressure from the board, from the CEO, from the rest of the executive staff, to move forward with AI because there’s a lot of interest,” Srivastava said. “But it’s also your job to educate them on what is real, what is noise.”
The challenge is compounded by the speed of AI innovation and the flood of vendors entering the market. “There’s just so much noise in the ecosystem,” Srivastava said.
That puts CIOs in the position of both AI evangelist and organizational filter — responsible for accelerating adoption while also determining which technologies are substantive and which are hype.
Security and governance concerns add another layer of complexity. Srivastava said legal, governance and risk management teams must be involved early in enterprise AI initiatives because AI systems are deeply dependent on access to corporate data. “There is no AI without data governance, data security, privacy,” he said.
But after the guardrails are in, it’s time to go for it.
“Identify high ROI opportunities and go strong at them. Go hard at them. Get those wins. Nothing speaks like a win or a success,” Srivastava said. “Make sure that when you land, you’re communicating and celebrating it so that you’re inspiring the rest of your workforce as well.”
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