There was an interesting article in an issue of CIO Insight that talked about the changing role of CIOs. The basic point of the story was that since today's CIOs are spending so much time (and $$$) on keeping their firms systems up and running, that they are losing their position at the strategy table. The thinking is that if a CIO doesn't have the time to spend on thinking about where the company needs to go and how it's going to get there, then he/she doesn't need to take up space at the table where the firm's long term direction is being decided.
The article went on to point out that CIOs are being relegated to reporting to the CFO. This basically reinforces the view of the IT department as simply being a cost center. Of course there is a plus side to having a good CIO/CFO relationship; however, I think that losing access to the CEO has got to be a bad thing for both the CIO and his IT team.
With the arrival of grid (aka "utility" computing), it sure looks like the CIO who is only in charge of managing existing equipment and systems will soon be no longer needed. That also means that the DBAs and other support personnel may also be at risk. Talk about change happening!
So what's a CIO (and for that matter an IT department) to do? Clearly what a CIO used to do and may be doing today is not going to cut it going forward. So what is a CIO to do? Well, most CIOs already split their time between operations and strategy. The problem is that too many of them spend their time on the operations issues because that is what they know best -- it's where they come from. Additionally, just like every IT worker out there, CIO fear having their technical skills grow dull. Where CIOs need to be spending their time is on learning where the business is going and then making sure that the IT systems are going to be there to support the firm.
We get back to that issue of alignment, but its even more than that. CIOs need to create a way for the operations side of their job to run on autopilot -- no problems, but also not requiring any time. Sounds easy, but it never is.
4 comments:
To me, this falls back to two fundamental requirements when filling the CIO role.
1) Delegate properly. If the CIO is unable to get away from the operational role then they are pigeon holing themselves into a less strategic role.
2) Hire well. Delegation is all about hiring well, if you can't find good people to pass the operational jobs too, you are always going to just be a 'do-er' with limited value to the executive team.
I think that you hit the nail on the head. I read Jack Welch's bio a few years back he said something that really stuck with me. He stated "All I could do as a CEO was two things: hire/fire people, and set budgets. Everything else was in the hands of others."
Delegation is soooo hard to do in a technical field because you start to see your skills grow old and out of date. Soft skills like being a good manager are just as important, but we seem to value them less because they don't seem to be as "real" to us!
Sounds like it is actually time to talk about CIO recruitment. Perhaps the criteria for CIO now are not just "is really good at tech stuff"? Perhaps we need to take people with solid line business experience & educate them in tech stuff and make them CIO?
Kate has a good point and in fact, I've been seeing a lot more of that. It was not that long ago that the quality of a CIO was judged by his/her technical prowess -- where had they started, what development projects did they know, and which vendor's product line did they understand inside & out.
Lately I've been seeing more of the business unit heads being promoted to be CIO at several firms. What's interesting for me is that they all seem to be doing fairly well. You can imagine their complete terror at finding themselves thrown into our technical pond. I've seen them revert back to the business skills that made them successful in their previous business unit job.
I view this as another clear example of writing on the wall: IT's got to learn to align with the business world. We've been hoping that they would come over to our side, but I don't think that that is going to happen. Oh yeah, and they've got the money...!
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