The Most Critical Attribute of a CIO

As the debate over the CIO role rages on, we wonder which is the most critical skill set: business, technology or, as some argue, the ability to detect bullshit?
The debate about the best background for CIOs isn’t new. It’s been going on since the mid ‘90s, when Johnson & Johnson first appointed a CIO from “the business,” without hands-on IT experience. The argument goes something like this: Technology is becoming an increasingly integral part of business; ergo, CIOs have to be business strategists. So far so good. But then some people continue the argument to say that because business knowledge and ability is so important, technology knowledge isn’t. False!
Whether a CIO also needs to be a technologist depends on a couple of things.
First is the size of your company. At a small business, the top IT person may be the only IT person, or one of just a few. You gotta know how to make the stuff work. That’s not really what we’re talking about.
The arguments start up when we talk about larger organizations. Here there are two issues: how complex the organization and its technology underpinnings are, and more to the heart of the matter, how integral technology is to the company’s strategic operations. The more a business can gain competitive advantage from strategic IT, the more important it is that the CIO really understand technology. Clearly this will be the case for more and more organizations as technology-enabled business continues to evolve.
Google CIO Douglas Merrill put himself on this side of the argument in my interview with him a few months ago. “During the next 10 to 15 years,” Merrill said, “you'll find increased technical focus at the tops of IT organizations and at the tops of companies." As traditional boundaries between organizations shift and dissolve, and as consumer apps increasingly find their way into the enterprise, "suddenly, an understanding of the nature of the technical relationships between organizations are all embodied in [the company's] product. So you’ll see a much higher degree of technical focus in the CIO and a higher understanding of technology in business across the C suite.”
Forrester’s Bobby Cameron picks up the other side of the debate. He believes that as information technology morphs into business technology (see my last post), CIOs will and should have non-IT backgrounds. That’s because while “they’ll generate a lot of work for IT, they won’t be doing IT,” he said.
Cameron believes that non-IT CIOs can be just as successful as CIOs who understand both business and technology as long as they have a good “bullshit meter.” They need to be a “logical, structured thinker with the ability to ask good questions” - whether of vendors or the technical staff.
The problem is, if the CIO doesn’t really understand technology, then the CEO’s going to have to have a pretty good bullshit meter too.
So what do you think? Can you be a truly great CIO without a pretty deep understanding of technology? Does the merging of business and technology make technology knowledge more or less valuable to the individual leading strategic IT?

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Tue, Nov 20, 2007 17:00 EST

most critical...

Posted by: nathaniel_adam_...
Rating:

it's relative. scenarios differ from one to the next, thus needs per follow suit.

personally, i've found that my grasp of all-of-the-above has helped me navigate the respective arena per challenge better than others. though in the end only the answer(s) matter, and not the way you got there. some with great effort can discover that which is needed, while another may blindly fall onto it.

in either case, if it's the correct answer, it's success.

Nathaniel Adam Briggs, Founder, eGenerations.com

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Mon, Nov 26, 2007 15:05 EST

CIO Attributes for Success -a Reply

Posted by: Bob Kotch
Rating:

This is a difficult and relevant debate, albeit one without a single best answer. It is clear that:
? CIOs need to understand business to assist in applying technology solutions profitably
? CIOs need to understand technology to bring possibilities to the business that may aid in attainment of its strategic goals
? CIOs need sufficient understanding of technology to gain the respect of their technical staffs
? CIOs need to have great bullshit detectors, equally attuned to identifying and addressing both business and technical bullshit
? And CIOs are human – they cannot possibly be world class experts in all of the above.

The skills needed for a CIO in a given enterprise are some mix of the above. In part the skill mix is dependent on responsibilities of the position: does the CIO own all development, deployment and operational support for all business units, or is some of that work delegated to the operating units? And it depends, as Abbie points out, heavily on organizational size. It also depends on such items as the strategy and nature of the business, the degree of technical sophistication and knowledge of the business’s senior leaders, where project management reports. etc.

Someone needs to guide technology. Someone needs to act as an educational focal point on technology matters for the enterprise. Depending on organizational size and CIO organization depth, someone needs to set email, network and security standards and implement them. And someone needs to address tradeoffs between each business unit doing its own deployments vs. some sense of integrated corporate response.

There is no generic answer to this question. I believe that the answer lies ion a careful and reasoned look at the organization’s size, business strategy, development plans, staffing (both at senior levels and within the technology organizations) and to a lesser degree, its history. From that review, the best current answer can be designed.

I have seen organizations both succeed and fail with technically excellent CIOs and with technically naïve CIOs. The successful solution is one that best fits the organization's reality, as I see it.

Bob Kotch
rak@simassoc.biz
www.simassoc.biz

Mon, Nov 26, 2007 17:17 EST

Huh?

Posted by: Anonymous
Rating:

I'm sorry, but after the 5 well-written bullet-points above, the "Dancing-around-the-answer" meter starting going off! ;-)

Mon, Nov 26, 2007 19:58 EST

Well said!

Posted by: Abbie Lundberg
Rating:

Bob, very well articulated, and I was with you right up until the second to last line. I don't see how a technically naive CIO could possibly be successful. Do you have examples?

Wed, Nov 28, 2007 14:49 EST

Success models - a reply

In response to Abbie’s comment, yes I have examples.

The nature of my business and client confidentially prevent me from disclosing company specifics and names, but consider the following matrix focused on the business and technical sophistication of the CIO.

Given my limited HTML skills, consider a 2x2 matrix. Across the top is technical sophistication with the leftmost cell labeled low, and the rightmost cell labeled high. Along the side is business sophistication, ranging from high followed by low.

Hence the top right quadrant is the high technical sophistication and high business sophistication quadrant, whereas the lower left quadrant represents low technical sophistication and low business sophistication. In the high technical sophistication - high business sophistication quadrant, success is achieved through close alignment with business strategies, needs and leadership combined with realization of those needs through active technology direction setting. In the Low/Low quadrant, failure is the most likely scenario. One wonders why this person was placed in the position in the first place.

Obviously the top right quadrant represents a high achievement and high success scenario, and the lower left quadrant represents the opposite. Of more analytical interest are the remaining two quadrants, and I have had the opportunity to see success in each of those two quadrants in action.

Characteristics of the other two quadrants are as follows:
? High technology and Low business sophistication (High/Low) - Strong technology leadership with few effective links to the business, leading to frustration by business leaders who come to believe that the right things were not being realized
? Low technical sophistication and High business sophistication (Low/High) - Emphasis on defining business needs and maintaining relationships with business leaders while leaving implementation and architectural direction setting to subordinates

In one example of the High/Low quadrant, the startup company involved needed to build a baseline infrastructure to operate. Their CIO possessed a high degree of technical sophistication and an understanding of the industry’s technology platform needs (but neither a strong relationship with the business’ leaders nor a strong understanding of their specific strategies, needs and expectations). For a time, the CIO succeeded in building the needed infrastructure, but eventually lost power and influence due to lack of business support.

In an example of the Low/High quadrant, a newly named CIO with limited technical background but significant business connectivity replaced a technically talented CIO with more limited business connectivity. This CIO opted to rely on the CIO’s technical team to define technical direction while focusing primarily on business need definition. This approach has met with early success. My prediction is that ultimately this arrangement will become difficult as responsiveness suffers and technology costs increase due to a lack of architectural leadership for the enterprise.

My conclusion from my experience in seeing three of the four quadrants above in action (I have not personally experienced a client living in the Low/Low quadrant) is that CIO success can be achieved with different mixes of business and technology sophistication at a point in time. Needs of an enterprise are time and circumstance sensitive. Said another way (and please excuse the gender of this comment), for every man there is a season and for every season, there is a man. There is no perfect forever solution, but instead the best mix of available skills for a given time and circumstance can succeed

The Most Critical Attribute of a CIO

Topic: Enterprise Management

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