Are CIOs doomed to forever be second-class citizens among top executives?
We don’t think so, but they’ve got a lot of work to do to avoid that fate.
Chief information officers are more important than ever to the success of their companies, given the crucial role information technology has come to play in every aspect of business. But in most companies, the CIO still isn’t viewed as a peer by other senior executives, who tend to see CIOs as specialists lacking the full set of broad management skills. Very few CIOs have become CEOs, especially outside the high-tech industry.
What’s holding CIOs back? The problem is that, for the most part, their fellow executives’ perceptions are correct. Based on our research, it’s clear that most CIOs don’t have the broad business understanding, strategic vision and interpersonal skills that it takes to run a company or at least play a bigger role in running one.
The good news: These are skills that can be learned, in the classroom and at work.
Questions to Ask Yourself
- Does your CIO understand the company’s business strategy and take the lead in determining how technology can help your business achieve its goals?
- Is your CIO able to think like a senior executive and see the big picture, without getting lost in the details of a problem?
- Is your CIO an effective communicator, possessing strong questioning, presentation and influence skills?
- Is your CIO out in front of every major emerging technology, educating senior executives on what each technology does and what it means for the company?
- Is your CIO skilled at building strong relationships with colleagues at work?
If you answered no to any of these questions, your CIO hasn’t fully developed the broad business understanding, strategic vision and interpersonal skills that it takes to run a company or at least play a bigger role in running one. To acquire or polish those skills, the CIO needs to take part whenever possible in company and other executive-development programs and take the initiative to learn about every aspect of the company’s business by talking to managers from other departments.
Over the past 11 years, we have had the opportunity to make an extensive assessment of the senior administrative capabilities of more than 600 professionals, including some 30 CIOs, who have attended a development program we run for IT executives. Based on our observations, here’s a
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Fascinating, but allow me to expand:
All of these weaknesses are actually requirements for the job. In the context of their environment, they’re perfectly appropriate.
Leadership: As it’s commonly understood, leadership is marked by aggressiveness and confidence. “Fake it till you make it” is a short-hand way to look at this. CIO’s lead technical people, who are generally high-IQ, hard-fact-preference individuals with little tolerance for any kind of faking, for any reason. Thus, a cautious approach to leading actually gains respect with them. Unfortunately, the wider business audience has a different world view.
Strategic thinking: This is simply a by-product of the highly reactive nature of all IT work. Since everyone is our customer, and our customers rarely give us notice of future needs, we often must react quickly with little input, or else play mind-reader. Strategic thinking is a rare skill that requires constant development. It often gets lost in the daily emergencies.
Synthesis skills: Like strategic skills, synthesis skills tend to become atrophied in the constant barrage of needs and wants. There’s a “rush” to determine problems because there is so rarely time to properly analyze.
Communication skills: As mentioned, “closing” is a weakness amongst CIOs. Again, this is a matter of environment. All technical people are proud of their hard-won skills, and expect respect. Closing often comes across as inappropriate pushing to change an opinion. Respectful and fact-based collaborative decision making is much more effective with them. There’s little need to “close” an idea with a geek; the facts are generally enough.
Influence skills: See Communication, above. Also, influencing others sometimes smells like dishonesty, even when it isn’t. Like engineers and “hard” scientists, dishonesty is discomfiting to hard fact loving IT people.
Relationship skills: Again, this is related to the nature of the people CIOs lead. IT people almost never hold grudges for missed phone calls, if a logical reason is given. Even gregarious types in our business will take someone’s (especially a fellow techie’s) word when a reason is given.
Most of the success traits you list for CEOs are detractors for CIOs. For instance, a CIO that attempts to influence techs via personality only would soon find himself/herself without the personal loyalty of the employees.
I in no way disagree that the skills you speak of are needed for a CIO that wishes to be CEO. I merely state that it would take an unusual leader to maintain the ability to switch modes.
Thanks for your hard work and research.
Great article! Very thoughtful and well-balanced with constructive advice. Another way to get synthesis, influence and relationship help is to partner with a communication expert. Many of us, because of our experience, strengths and placement in our organizations, have a holistic perspective. Plus, we tend to work horizontally across the organization rather than vertically, which gives us a much broader perspective. This vertical orientation is very helpful in serving external and internal customers especially in a flat world.
I enjoy working with CIOs and others in IT because of their deep knowledge. Reading your article was good validation for why I’m often called in to synethesize stacks of data and develop a short, compelling story that includes a call to action.
Interesting, but reminds me of the line, “I’m drowning here, and you’re describing the water!”
Isn’t it time to look at the issue of leadership through a different lens?
Dr. Elliott Jaques, a noted psychoanalyst, social scientist and management consultant, discovered the necessary and sufficient psychological conditions for creating systems of accountable, authoritative, managerial leadership. He observed that the way to achieve effective leadership is to establish a sound organization and sound working practices. This approach is about getting the organizational basics right as opposed to trying to change the personalities of individuals to fit the dysfunctional organization. In his 50+ years of research he found no evidence for personality traits specific to managerial leadership other than the requirement to value a two-way relationship with subordinates.
Jaques observed, “So called people or leadership skills are nothing more than the ability needed by leaders to manipulate subordinates into doing what they want them to do in the absence of clear accountabilities, authorities, and managerial leadership practices.”
“Once you’ve assimilated Jaques, you can’t take too many other management theories seriously. You can’t take a class on leadership styles with a straight face, and you can only talk about Myers-Briggs as a kind of parlour game.” – Professor Jerry Harvey, George Washington University (organizational change expert)
Michelle Malay Carter sums this up well with her mantra, “I’m ok. You’re ok. Let’s fix the system.” http://www.missionmindedmanagement.com/about.
Too often though the approach taken is, “I’m ok. The system’s ok. Let’s fix you.”