Nowadays, CEOs are looking for different character traits than in previous years when they employ a CIO. Chief among them is broad business experience rather than a deep but perhaps blinkered focus on technology. Foreign experience has also become a highly attractive trait, again broadening the outlook that CIOs are expected to bring to the business.
Although IT skills are still a given, they're certainly no longer enough and seem to be diminishing in importance.
Research firm Gartner maintains anyone aspiring to be the CIO of a leading global company can no longer rely on their IT experience alone. They need the experience that comes from working in other departments, as well as other countries and cultures.
CIOs don't need to be engineers or computer science majors, although they do need a solid track record in IT functions. What CEOs are looking for most of all are well-rounded people who understand business needs from having lived them, not having studied them, says Gartner's research vice president Chris Howard.
Priority shift
Much of the information about what CEOs will demand when they hire their next CIO came from a survey Gartner conducted among recruitment companies that focus on IT placements. One trend is that the demand for candidates with ERP experience is going down, but the requirement for international experience is definitely going up.
"A background in computer science or engineering is not essential; they're looking for a balance of technical experience and business experience," says Howard. "Technology experience is taken as a standard, but business experience is a plus."
The word most often used by headhunters to describe the ideal CIO is a flair for 'leadership', rather than management, Gartner found. Companies want CIOs who have managed both IT and something other than IT, and they want people who have lived and worked outside their native countries to break the limits of single-country experience.
That eliminates more than 90 percent of the world's 12 million or so current IT practitioners - and provides a clear guideline for those with CIO ambitions.
"If you have a career goal of becoming the CIO of a Global 2000 company, you need to be asking yourself two questions right now," says Gartner vice president Ken McGee. "First, when do I leave IT to get experience in other business functions? And second, when do I leave my home country to gain a global view?"
This shift in priorities reflects the fact that "the number-one challenge for the next few years is not technology, but culture," McGee says. "CIOs need to be able to manage cultural differences between staff across national boundaries, between different business functions and between customers, the business and suppliers around the world."
Digital evangelist
The triumph of broader business experience over geeky IT skills is partly due to the rapid speed at which new technologies can arise, mature and shift the way a business operates. That means the CIO is no longer expected or able to provide all those services in-house. So their role is increasingly becoming a managerial task of handling various suppliers, and not just the big name IT suppliers of today.
"You need to excel in technology supplier management," Gartner's global head of research Peter Sondergaard says. "Half your dealings will be with companies you have little or no contact with today."
The survey among recruitment specialists also found that 58 percent of CEOs would look outside the company to recruit a CIO, with only 31 percent expecting to recruit internally. That's doesn't add up to 100 percent because some CEOs no longer want to replace the CIO next time that role is vacant. Instead, they may opt for the new position of a chief digital officer (CDO).
Technology experience is taken as a standard, but business experience is a plus.
Chris Howard, Gartner
A CDO will be the digital evangelist setting the marketing agenda and using emerging technologies to lead their business into the digital era. They're more likely to come from an anthropological background than an IT background, since the role needs somebody who understands people, the way they want to operate and how to turn their actions into money.
"CDOs are comfortable with not knowing what the answers are," says Howard. "They're interested in shaking things up to see what happens. They know how to run a budget and have some kind of strategic background that's more business than technology."
The four future CIOs according to Gartner
Integrator and Optimise. IT as global service provider
Integrative or consultative leader
* Capability purveyor
* Multidisciplinary experience (such as IT, HR, service development)
* Leading change and transformation, partnering, marketing
* Risk management, service innovation, negotiation, operations analysis IT as a service provider is an expanded and integrated shared service organisation that runs like a business, delivering IT services and enterprise business processes.
Explorer and Pioneer. IT 'is' the business
* Visionary leader
* Ideas purveyor
* Entrepreneurial, venture capitalist
* Business innovation and development
* Exploitation of risk
* Strategic thinking, conceptualist
* Challenges frontiers of the industry
IT 'is' the business - above all it is about differentiation: information is the explicit product of the organisation or is inseparable from the product.
Broker and Engineer. IT as engine room
* Pace-setting or controlling leader
* Solution purveyor
* Background in technology management and service delivery
* Managing quality and service, conflict, cost control; relationship management
* Risk mitigation
* Technology and sourcing innovation
The IT engine room rapidly delivers IT capabilities at market competitive prices. It succeeds by monitoring technology and market developments, and building expertise in IT asset optimisation, sourcing and vendor management, and IT financial management.
Enabler and Conductor. Everyone's IT
* Affiliative/coaching, leads by example
* Facilitation and connection purveyor
* Background in technology exploitation and innovation
* Building shared purpose, influencing and lobbying; relationship-oriented
* Consensus and collaboration drive
In Everyone's IT, information and technology are used aggressively by business leaders and individual contributors to break through traditional perimeters of business and to drive ambitious collaboration.
First published in the February 2014 issue of ITWeb Brainstorm magazine.
Share