There is a distinct mental shift that happens right before the summer break. We wrap up our final meetings, set our out-of-office replies, and promise ourselves we will travel light, both physically and mentally. We look forward to slowing down, disconnecting, and finally clearing the headspace that gets so easily crowded during the year. But if you are anything like me, as you close your laptop, you can still feel the residual energy and momentum of your work tagging along in your luggage.

Even though I am not a CIO myself, my days at CIONET are spent listening to your realities. In our roundtables, events, and workshops, you share beautiful, inspiring stories about AI integration, modern architectures, and agile transformation. You pitch these grand narratives, get the budgets, and act as the architects of tomorrow.

But looking at it from my vantage point? Most organisations are also acting as corporate archaeologists, presiding over layers of digital ruins. For every shiny new platform you deploy, how many dead processes do your teams actually bury? The truth is, companies rarely kill anything. Instead, they leave fossils, ghost processes, obsolete reporting lines, and ancient approval gates that exist purely because something went wrong once years ago. Organisations buy cutting-edge technology, but allow their cultures to run on rules disguised as governance. True transformation isn't just defined by what you build; it is defined by what you have the courage to destroy.

Admitting this is one thing; fixing it is another. I know from our discussions that hunting ghosts inside a corporation is incredibly lonely, thankless work. The moment you try to delete an old workflow or axe a redundant report, three different departments panic. Busywork is comfortable; it feels safe. Stripping it away requires immense courage, and doing so in isolation is exhausting. But if you want your teams to build new, impactful habits, the kind that actually stick, you have to stop suffocating them with the past. New habits need oxygen. They need the space currently occupied by the ghosts of old routines.

This is precisely why we gather, and it is the exact spirit we are bringing to this year’s CIONET Summerfest at the Castle of Kapellen on August 27th.

Our theme is "From Story to Habit," but before we talk about building the new, let’s use the CIONET community as a safe place to dismantle the old. Let’s skip the usual polite corporate talk this summer. Instead, let’s bring these ghosts into the light. Together, we can name the friction, share the burden of fixing it, and help each other transition from the exhaustion of busywork to the clarity of true impact work.

Use these upcoming, quieter summer weeks to look at your organisation with fresh eyes. Identify just one ghost process you want to remove before September.

Enjoy the well-deserved break, travel light, and we look forward to welcoming you all, except the ghosts, at our Summerfest!