Nabeel Nawaz is a dynamic leader with over 25 years of experience driving innovation and transformation across industries and geographies. Based in London, he has thrived in diverse roles from technical pre-sales at Cisco to VP IT at Abraaj and Director of Business Information at K-Electric, and as Founder & CEO of his own tech startup. An INSEAD MBA graduate, Nabeel now serves as IBM’s Global CIO M&A Leader, overseeing IT integration for strategic acquisitions. A passionate mentor and agile coach, he’s known for his servant leadership and commitment to empowering senior leaders to reach their full potential, globally recognized. Recently, in an exclusive interview with CIO Magazine, Nabeel shared insights on the role of CIO evolving in the next 5-10 years, personal hobbies and interests, future plans, words of wisdom, and much more. The following excerpts are taken from the interview. Hi Nabeel. How did you first become interested in technology and what propelled you into it? I think my interest in technology happened in a few waves. The first wave was related to the advent of ubiquitous internet. The applications that started being built on top of that were fascinating, and I remember this gave rise to the Internet of Things, where everything was internet enabled and could feed back data irrespective of where the device was. The second was the personal device transformation that happened through the mobile phone wherein certain reports cited that we look at our mobile screens about 55 times a day!! Finally in the most recent wave, generative AI, and its potential impact on any job or work an individual, or company does, has got me hooked. What do you love the most about your current role? The challenge and impact of the work we do. In my current role, I am globally responsible for post-acquisition integration of any company that IBM acquires, from an IT perspective. No day is the same, and we have to solve complex problems that present themselves across people, process, technology, and data. However I know the faster my team is able to integrate these companies, the sooner IBM can achieve its medium to long term growth goals and gain competitive advantage in the market. That’s exciting! How do you see the role of the CIO evolving in the next 5-10 years, and what skills or competencies will be most important for CIOs to develop? CIOs have always been known for their business acumen and technical knowledge. The success of a CIO is measured on a few key areas, ensuring value from technology investments, protecting the company and shareholder value from security, data privacy, and other risks, and building high performance teams, and coaching for success, amongst other things. However as the massive improvement in efficiency of LLMs takes the world by storm, I think the CIO needs to drive the evaluation, and use of Gen AI technology, to drive efficiency, productivity, and speed, in their own organisation, but also the organisation at large. Here once again, how to extract value from Gen AI technology becomes front and centre. What role do you think technology plays in enabling effective leadership and coaching, and how do you leverage technology in your own work? I feel leadership and coaching is technology agnostic, irrespective of where you are, you will not get far as a CIO if you are not able to lead and coach well. I use strategic technology platforms to help enable the business processes of the newly acquired company, this could be Salesforce, SAP, Adobe, and Sirion. Is there a particular person you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Yes, I had two mentors when I was much younger, they both were exceptionally successful as senior corporate executives, and entrepreneurs. They both were able to tell me hard truths that changed my perspective about myself, truths that my friends or family couldn’t tell me. This set me up on the course to progression, from a place I could never have imagined. What role do you think self-awareness and emotional intelligence play in effective leadership, and how can leaders develop these skills? These are two of the most important skills that I have developed and have helped me get where I have got to in my career. I believe these skills can be coached, leaders should seek out coaches who can help to develop such skills. Leaders must first assess their EQ, and acknowledge the gap. Only once they realise themselves that there is a need, would they be motivated to develop these skills. There is a lot of material one can read, tests one can take to assess EQ, and also coaches and mentors that can help guide on this path. What are some of your passions outside of work? What do you like to do in your time off? I am super interested in Generative AI and read a lot around the subject. I play with the technology and experiment where I can. Aside from that, these days I have Padel Tennis fever, and end up playing at least twice a week! Which technology are you investing in now to prepare for the future? Hybrid cloud and Artificial Intelligence is the way to go! What is your biggest goal? Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now? My biggest goal is to leave a legacy in respect of how many people’s lives I impacted positively so that they were able to achieve their untapped potential. In 5 years, I see myself as an executive responsible for a major transformation that helps IBM become the nimble, productive, machine it seeks to be. What advice would you give to aspiring leaders who are looking to build their skills and expertise? I always advocate that aspiring leaders should gain three E’s: Education, Experience, and Exposure. Education should be relatively straightforward, this is formal education through degree programs or structured courses. Experience is working in a particular job for a company, in a particular role. Finally exposure is when you get assigned to a “stretch project” which gives you critical access to new contacts, executives, skills, and opportunities. Also don’t stagnate, look for opportunities to rotate your role as this brings significant exposure.