Well, as a career consultant, let's see: I've worked with over 100 different organizations across all levels of technology- from basic implementation to being the chief architect for a 1 billion dollar enterprise. I've had to establish my capability and ability in short time frames, put out fires, work with all levels of an organization to precipitate change and then repeat these steps over and over.

Because I've worked with so many organizations I've seen it all- what works, what doesn't, why things fail, why they succeed and what really makes an appropriate application of technology to a business problem.

I've worked with every major technology vendor and dozens of products and integrated them time and again. I understand how to pragmatically reduce IT complexity and cost, and have built teams from scratch, mentored, and built business.

Yeah, consultants couldn't possibly make effective CIO's....no vision, no ability to manage change, no ability to lead diverse teams, control budget, build business, establish effective relationships at the C-level, etc.

I think more businesses should look to career consultants who can actually bring a wider variety of experience to the table....

In my humble opinion, there is nothing that precludes a consultant from becoming a successful CIO. As the first commenter said, the broad experience in a variety of industries, plus the people skills that they are required to have, may make them more qualified.

To be clear, I am not and have been a consultant, but I am a working CIO. It has been my experience that there are skills that a consultant does not have automatically, but can learn. Those skills have to do with longer term management with one company as opposed to moving to different engagements. The art of budgeting, which they often aren't required to know. And dealing with a different form of company politics which again, they may not been exposed to.

The point is that I don't know if you are seeing a trend or not, but a consultant is no more or less qualified to get into the CIO ranks. The key metric to success will be to measure how long they stay. Then you will know if the move was a good one, or not.

Take care!!

Mike

Again, my 30 year mish-mash career has seen no real change of attitudes per se. Some corporate cultures I have found are set against "expensive unnecessary" consultants and run to a calculator to take that hourly rate x 2080 to compare to a salaried person in house. The numbers are of course, misleading. Then, I have been offered and accepted (OK'd in engagement agreement) some great positions as VP or CIO. It's just that the companies didn't remain around long enough (another story).

I guess, after rambling a little, I never have seen a real pattern in this area. One radical belief I allow myself is that CIO's from unrelated industries can make fine CIO's for a client in search of the best talent. The real big, dark and upsetting secret is that most industry segments have very similar problems once you get past the "industry segment jargon". Once, I proposed how a "Bill of Material Procesor" program's (Manufacturing) mainline logic could be directly applied to a complex issue in solving a problem in a Health Plan Membership.

The bottleneck, (after the HR department) in the CIO selection issue, is Executive Management won't shake the perception "we really are different" or "our CIO candidate must have direct industry specific experience..." blah blah.

A successful, seasoned manager, with a broad accumulation of business accumen who is willing to learn the "secrets" new to the industry segment (not that difficult by the way...perhaps an attribute of the Consultant?) can and often does make an excellent CIO.

A final thought. Any time you've been around Information Technology long enough to think you see a trend, hang on for the shift back, past center to the "other side"...apply, lather, rinse, repeat.

Cole Porter said it: "Everything old is new again...

As one who has been both a consultant and CIO I'd say that the main difference between the two roles is that as CIO you have to live with the consequences; as a consultant you can walk away leaving mayhem behind you but claim a successful job.

Typical of this is consultants recommending changing the business to fit the software (so they have it easy installing the software) and leaving the business trying to be competitive wtih alien processes. CIOs should avoid this (altho they often don't)

And another problem with consultants is that they can be "Always certain, seldom right". CIOs need more finesse.