CIOs Must Have the Ear of the CEO

The Chief Information Officer is not a second-rate executive position as some would claim. Also, CIO, does not, as the saying goes, stand for “Career Is Over”. And the CIO position is certainly not “dead”, contrary to rumors to the contrary. As Mark Twain once said, “rumors of my death are premature”.

There is this notion that CIOs deserve a “seat at the table”. The “table” in this sense is the CEO staff, as a peer exectuive with the CFO, COO, and assorted VPs of Operations, Sales, etc. Much is written in blogs (included my own), magazine articles and discussed in forums about the justification for this belief.  The main idea is that CIOs have to be more ‘strategic’. Supposedly, the mechanism for becoming more strategic is most often termed “alignment”.

Let me so bold as to suggest that things like ‘contribution’ and ‘value’ go right along with ‘strategic’. There are plenty of tactical issues with managing a business. Things are dynamic, a flow, requiring a dexterity of seamlessly migrating through issues of business performance: sales, product quality, customer satisfaction, supply chain, etc.  Information Technology is clearly threaded through these and other areas of the business. However, the trick is to demystify and ‘dis-abstract’ this stuff so that you are not spending half of the monthly strategy meeting talking about who should be allowed to get a Blackberry or an iPhone.

So, the big picture has something to do with not being the “moron in the room”.  True executive ”peers” suffer fools badly. The thought that there is somehow a special microscope for CIOs is nonsense — unless it takes one to see the value that the CIO is delivering. It is more about culture and being in the “club”. The one thing about clubs full of highly-ambitous people is that they are territorial and very picky about letting others inside.

Prior to being hired for a CIO position a few years ago, the HR executive told me that the company was thinking about slimming down the number of direct reports to the CEO. Thus, they were considering having me report to the CFO. My response: a non-starter. If they were trying to reduce the number of CEO reports, I had just the solution: have the CFO report to me.

After an awkward chuckle or two, the HR executive was back to his senses. I wasn’t asking for a seat at the table. I expected one. It is all about grabbing a chair and acting like you belong there.

Bottom line

quit whining. If you do not have the business-savvy to earn the respect of fellow business executives, then you deserve to be seated in the gallery.

For more on this topic: Business Solutions: Death of the CIO?, by Nadia Cameron; The Death of the CIO–Again, by Brian Watson; Is the CIO a “pinnacle” position?, by George Tomko; and
What Do CEOs Want from CIOs?, by Maryfran Johnson.

Image: Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

©2010 George M. Tomko All Rights Reserved

As a long-time CIO and, now, consultant for CIOs, I am seeing that there is a role shift that is happening, ever so subtly, but it is going to be transformational for the role of CIO in most organizations. Perhaps it will not be manifested in a “big bang”, but all CIOs will be affected.

Some have referred to this as “CIO 2.0” as if to suggest that it is a planned and that there is some sort of documented manifesto that has popped out of some lab, university or think-tank. No, this is entirely circumstantial. It is also inevitable, unstoppable, irreversible, unavoidable, and, well, a good thing. A 2007 article by Deloitte and Touche, aimed mostly at government IT leaders, identified the changing roles and imperatives for public sector CIOs and was highly suggestive of the changes brewing for private sector CIOs.

The bottom line is this: a CIO is a broker of business solutions that involve cross functional process stewardship and a provider of a technology and infrastructure framework. Beyond this, there is an opportunity for the business-savvy CIO to contribute to joint enterprise strategy development with senior leadership. As described in an April 2008 blog post CIO 2.0: The Chief Impact Officer:

In other words, the ideal of CIOs becoming key players in the business arena is taking shape. Call it CIO 2.0 — the evolution of the IT czar into the role of “chief impact officer.” Call it the SCIO — the strategic CIO. But whatever you call it, the transformation is inevitable.

Those that are able to transcend the perception that they are zookeepers of the geeks and propeller-heads (as very talented technologists are unflatteringly labeled) will find themselves as thought leaders and key players in making things happen at the speed of business. Any attempt to be controlling, withholding, short-sighted or locked-in will simply generate powerful incentives for the organization to go it alone, underground, in any number of ways.

CIOs that fail to migrate from IT czar style CIO to chief impact officer style CIO will find themselves moved out, passed over or working for a more powerful executive (read CFO), rather than the CEO.

Nothing represents a game of ‘chance’ more than a pair of dice. Even with “loaded” dice, the outcomes are far from certain. Very often there is money on the line, significant money. So, I couldn’t think of a better subject –gambling on the roll of the dice– to compare with the use of consultants for high stakes decisions, intitiatives, etc.

Very often, consultants come to the same conclusions as the company’s own internal analysts. There is a perception that a prestigious consulting firm can 1) validate and therefore ‘certify’ the solution as the correct approach; 2) provide risk-averse executives with a scapegoat if things go bad; 3) increase commitment of the organization’s leaders to justify the large consulting bill.

But, at the end of the day, does any of this lower the possibility of rolling “snake eyes” with respect to the issue or opportunity that is being addressed? Does the lovely PowerPoint presentation leave you ready to “let it all ride” on the next roll?

As the truly great consultant would say, “it depends”. Perhaps, surprisingly, that consultant would actually be correct.

If so, then what does it depend on? While each situation is different, my take is that the biggest factor is matching the consultant to the mission. If you need ideation and strategies, hire a consulting firm that has demonstrated success in such engagements. Be wary, however, when the partner tries to sell you the implementation work. The firm may be great at analytics but does it have impeccable execution and delivery credentials?

In a very recent blog post, Chip Camden comments on the reasons why a client should hire a given consultant:

Prestige comes at a price that fewer companies are willing to pay for these days. In this economy, it comes down to the bottom line: What is your net effect on profitability (short- and long-term), and how does that compare to their other options?

So, basically, it ultimately depends on who can step in and “deliver the goods”. And it is this point that, to me, is the most important. Has the consulting firm or individual ever delivered a complete and successful solution? Have they ever had to live with the outcomes of delivered projects? Maybe, but usually, the consultants are long gone a month or two after the project is ‘complete’.

The world is now full of people who are mid to late stage career professionals that have early retired or have been let go in staff reductions due to the troubled economy. Some will come back to work at their former employers, albeit at lower cost to the company because the worker will be responsible for overheads like health benefits.

Others will become entrepreneurs and start their oun consulting practices, either as individuals or banded together as small “boutique” firms.

In any case, their “brand” will be etched on their faces, come through in their resumes, be evident in their wisdom and show in their been-there, done-that attitude. Their accomplishments and decades of experience will be a compelling option for managers looking to increase the odds of winning in this business version of the game of craps.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I think it is a healthy exercise, from time-to-time, to pressure test what you are doing, why you are doing it and would you keep doing it?

In conversations with CIOs in my consulting practice and when I network with them in forums and interest groups, I like to bring up the question of “knowing what you know now, would you still be in the profession that you chose years ago?”.

I am glad to see that, for most people to whom I ask the question, the answers I get back are that there are few or no regrets. Where there are issues, it appears that it is not so much the profession but more the environment that a particular executive works in.

The strategic CIO of today, in my opinion, is a well-educated and experienced practitioner of technology and business management. While having a rich background in technology management, they were able to build an experience portfolio that included stints in other functions i.e. engineering, finance, operations, sales, etc. They know about business process management, Lean and Six Sigma and have led transformation initiatives.

There is also a high degree of portability. Deploying ERP, SOA, BPR and other alphabet-soup solutions are generally skills and experiences that are transportable across many industries. Portability plays well — we have choices — maybe, more than others.

You do not have to go back too many years to the day when there was no such thing as a ‘CIO’. I remember being a young CIO in 1999 when the average tenure in such positions was about 18 months. There were a number of reasons for this. Organizations were adjusting to the idea of having IT represented by its own executive and sitting at the management “table” as a peer. Expectations had to be adjusted to fit the realities of business, relationships had to be formed and galvanized. CIOs had to be given a fair and reasonable chance to deliver the “goods” in the wake of some high profile systems project failures.

Successful CIOs are also a resourceful bunch, knowing how to get things done in organizations where the other executives have little understanding, patience or the desire to increase their understanding of IT. This segregating or isolating approach to IT and the person who runs it has, perhaps, cost CIOs a clear shot at the CEO chair.

The more comments I read about the connection, or lack thereof, to getting to the CEO chair, the more that I think about the fact that the CIO is often a pinnacle position in its own right. Thus, it has many of the same characteristics that one might find in a CEO role. I think that what happens to a lot of us is that we ultimately move on to starting our own companies (or become independent consultants) and become CEOs that way. Or, we run the IT function as a company within a company. Most IT functions have their own engineering, legal, finance, regulatory, HR, and sales/marketing components. Ultimately, there are many outlets for a CIO to satisfy the drive to lead and accomplish great things.

In my own travels, I have seen where a number of people have made the move from CIO to COO. I think that is an outstanding development which totally makes sense to me. I have felt for a long time that the CIO could, over time, wind up leading supply chain in a number of industries, in addition to IT. That would seem a natural building block to the COO.

But, it gets better. Two years ago, Kim Nash, currently Senior Editor of CIO Magazine and cio.com, wrote a story about CIOs becoming CEOs for Baseline magazine. She found that “It’s certainly not a conventional way to the top but there are more who have made that leap than you might think. At that time, I’d found 56 who’d done it recently….with the majority at non-technology companies.” Her article can be found here.

So, while this is certainly good news for CIOs with aspirations, it is more likely that successful CIOs are at the pinnacle. Notice that I did not use the word ‘plateau’. This is due to the fact that a wealth of portable skills and experiences lead to industry and geographic cross-over possibilities and greater scope positions at larger, more expansive multi-national organizations.

At the end of the day, the CIO has become a true C-level executive, in many cases worthy of changing out the “I” for another letter (“O”, “E”, “F”, “A”).

George M. Tomko is CEO and Executive Consultant for Tomko Tek LLC, bringing game-changing knowledge and experience for transformational analysis and decision-making; planning and execution of enterprise-wide initiatives; outsourcing; strategic cost management; service-oriented business process management; and technology investment assessment. He can be reached at gtomko@tomkotek.com or on Twitter @gmtomko. Profile: www.LinkedIn.com/gtomko