CIOpedia

Following is a curated list of resources that reflect current thinking on a topic of interest to IT leaders. You can assist this effort by contributing insight from your own real-world experiences, and are invited to suggest changes or additions here.

Current Thinking Includes:

The CIO Role is a topic that generates a tremendous amount of copy, with little consensus on the state of the role for today’s practitioners, or what the future holds.  A cursory reading of analyst materials may leave one with the impression that the CIO role is already dead, or dying.  The Cloud is either the last nail in the coffin for IT as we know it – or, a great opportunity to transform the way services and value are provided to the business.  Others see a renaissance of sorts for the role as industry comes out of the recession and CIOs are needed to help drive new growth for their respective organizations.

For the purposes of this post, Current Thinking includes a sampling of discussions on current challenges for the CIO, reporting points, impact of the Cloud and desired traits for the position. Alternative Views will include a selection of contrarian posts that may counter much of the negativity that is so easy to find in discussions on the role of the CIO.

Any discussion on the role of the CIO must begin with a side trip to Business Alignment,  as those two topics seem to go hand-in-hand:

CIO.com: The New New CIO Role: Big Changes Ahead

CIOs are not oblivious to their decades-long struggle: They know they need to be more “strategic.” And they’re certainly sick of hearing about “business-IT alignment.” Has there ever been another department so ruthlessly grilled about the value it is (or is not) delivering? But facts are facts. Those perceptions of the CIO who doesn’t get the business big picture still linger today.

Historical and current challenges for CIOs include the rationale that the role has both tactical responsibilities for complex technical environments, as well as those of a strategic business leader, perhaps making it unique at the C-level(?)  Mention is made of how the CFO role evolved over the years from the tactical corporate controller to one of the more powerful positions in most large organizations.  Yet, CIOs haven’t been able to ‘make the sale’ in many organizations, leading to a diminishing role or the elimination of the position altogether.  Indeed, the situation is apparently so dire that even the lack of mention of the IT function within annual reports is tabulated and viewed as another warning sign of doom.

CIO Dashboard: Will the CIO Lose the C?

We believe that one of the key problems is that the CIO is the only member of the executive team who is both a staff executive, providing support for all the other functions of the company, in a manner similar to the director of human resources, and also a line executive — akin to a vice president of manufacturing, because at many companies — banks, insurers, and airlines, the CIO’s job is to run the factory too.  We feel it is this dual role, of staff executive and line executive — a Jekyll and Hyde of the organization — that confuses the goals and roles of the CIO.

CIO.com: The New New CIO Role: Big Changes Ahead

Yet even if a CIO does master operations, that doesn’t mean a CIO will suddenly be seated next to the CEO in the boardroom. That comes from the second role that a CIO has to play today. Harris calls it the “change agent” role—”finding ways to enable the strategic opportunities within the company.”

Bill Crowell: Why is being a CIO such a tough job?

CIO’s should take a page from the CFO’s book. First, delegate day to day IT operations to a competent IT executive and get the CEO to support your assuming a more strategic role in championing the use of technology to enhance the performance and productivity of the organization.

Eric D. Brown: The diminishing role of IT and the CIO?

At the end of the day, the CIO role and the IT group are diminishing in many organizations because they haven’t been able to provide what the organization needs.  It’s as simple as that.

Dr. Jim Anderson: CIOs In Crisis: Do We Have A Problem Here?

If firms feel comfortable getting rid of their head of IT (the CIO) and not replacing that person, then clearly there must be a crisis here. It sure looks like today’s CIOs have not done a good job of advertising just how valuable they are to the rest of the company’s executive leadership team. This is pretty easy to understand. However, there’s a problem with this explanation. You would think that all of the upper management positions would be faced with this same challenge of conveying their value to the company. However, it seems like the CIO is the only position that companies feel comfortable leaving either open or in the hands of a less senior member of staff. You can’t say the same for operations, finance, human resources, etc.

CIO Insight: Big Changes Ahead for IT

Fewer than 25% of employees currently within IT will remain.  Many activities will devolve to business units, be consolidated with other central functions such as HR and finance, or be externally sourced.  CIOs face the choice of expanding to lead a business shared service group, or seeing their position shrink to managing technology delivery.

ComputerWeekly: CEOs don’t care about IT, says Forrester

Of the top 100 CEOs, only a very small number referenced IT in their annual report letters, George Colony, chief executive at Forrester Research, has told Forrester’s IT Forum EMEA 2010.

The reporting point for CIOs is a topic of much discussion within CIO conferences and analyst materials; specifically, the large percentage of CIOs that report up to CFOs rather than the organization’s CEO, and the limiting effect that might have one’s influence within the organization.  Many will state their insistence in reporting to the CEO of an organization, perhaps passing on CIO opportunities that are not be structured in that fashion.  Others would counter that the reporting point is but a small factor in one’s potential influence within an organization, and perhaps too much is being made of this single item.

CIO Insight: The CFO Runs IT

53% of CFOs surveyed say they’d like to have IT departments report directly to them.

CIO.com: CFO: IT’s New Boss?

The CFO-CIO reporting structure is an ongoing raging debate among most organizations around the world, with CIOs pining for long-overdue recognition of their department’s vital importance to the enterprise.

eWeek: Who’s the Real Boss of IT? Probably the CFO

“[W]hen the executive team makes the decision to have IT report to the CFO, it is mainly because we (the IT management team) have failed to ‘earn the seat’ at the top by not clarifying the value that IT is contributing to the organization, nor being clear about where the IT budget is being spent and why that is the best return on that investment.”

The CIO role is changing in many ways, and the advent of Cloud Computing is the most mentioned driver for current change.  In this model, CIO the role changes to one of selecting and managing outside services that (hopefully) meet well-understood business needs, with much less emphasis on the details of internal infrastructure.  The promise here is one of establishing a new role for the CIO that is much more aligned with business strategy; the challenge will be to ensure that IT isn’t completely disintermediated in the process, with users going directly to vendors to satisfy their needs.

It should be noted that channel sales materials have begin suggesting a move away from considering the CIO as primary decision maker in this new environment.  It’s likely that the impact of the Cloud breaks down for IT leaders similarly to every other change – some will see it as an opportunity to enhance their role within the organization (glass half full), while others will tend to view it as a threat and treat it as such.  No doubt that office politics, historical grievances of business partners and control dramas are all playing out in their own ways as part of this transition.

Computing UK: The curious CIO

This can be either an entirely beneficial and supremely opportune moment for IT to step up and embed firmly within the business or signal the gradual, eroding, death of the influence and necessity for the internal Information Technology department as we know it today.

SearchCIO: Adoption of cloud computing: How does it affect the CIO?

Currently, CIOs dedicate almost 70 percent of their time to technology and just 30 percent to business. As Neena Pahuja, the CIO of Max HealthCare Group says, “CIOs spend time managing infrastructure, servers and day-to-day technological issues. Adoption of cloud computing will allow them to focus more on business delivery.”

CIO.com Blogs: The Shifting Role of the CIO | CIO

Now, in the age of the cloud, it’s clear that the role of CIO has shifted again from high-level IT and vendor evaluation to highly collaborative and business-oriented decisions. Today’s CIOs don’t just select a platform that will guide decisions on operation systems, databases and applications—they are more deeply involved in relationships with cloud partners on every level.

TechAlpha: Five Ways the CIO Role Changes in the Cloud

The CIO will be expected to shift focus from operational excellence in IT delivery to orchestrating alignment of internal and external resource pools with business needs, according to TechAlpha’s Urbanski. CIOs will spend more time defining capabilities that can deliver business value (including innovation), and selecting, monitoring and managing multiple vendors. Their performance will not be measured by the size of their IT budget, but the effectiveness of IT in supporting business functions.

Computerworld Blogs: A sneak preview of enterprise IT in 2020

Conventional wisdom is that corporate IT departments will remain pretty much the same but they just need to get cozier with the business. But an equally plausible scenario is that the traditional IT department will fade away, with parts of it subsumed by an internal “shared services” unit and parts of it outsourced to external service providers (including cloud service providers).

Washington Monthly: Cloud Computing and the changing role of the CIO

The chief information officer role as it is today is going to be obsolete because “you’re not going to be primarily operating servers that you own in a data center,” said Chris Kemp, NASA’s chief technology officer and the force behind Nebula, NASA’s cloud computing environment. “But I think the role changes significantly and will become more difficult. You actually might need more resources to pull it off, he said. “If you can’t provide a service to your employees for less than what Amazon offers then they’re going to bring that into your enterprise” ….CIOs have to figure out how to deliver services for less money and more conveniently. As a result, enterprise architecture will become more significant aiding in issues of integration, interoperability and portability, he said.

Assuming the role of CIO remains intact, the consensus among desired traits is both the ability to effectively manage the shop (the cost of entry), and increased alignment with the business, resulting in a strong business leader.  It has been stated so often as to be a cliche that it is no longer enough to be a great technologist.  Indeed, some have praised the role of CTO as a potential avenue of escape from the constant pressure for technologists to expend energies on activities that they may not feel suited for.  The number of years wherein business surveys have reported lack of IT-business alignment as a pain point may be convincing proof that many CIOs are simply not going to succeed at this task.

BusinessWeek: What Makes a Great CIO?

Great CIOs are technologists who have mastered the art of leadership. They are leaders who possess technical acumen, but also understand how to improve and grow the business, influence others, deliver results, and drive strategic change. Unfortunately, most leaders, and CIOs, are good, but not great.

CIO Blogs: Stephen Gillett On The Changing Role Of The CIO

The CIO should not be viewed simply as the “highest ranking IT person.” The CIO should be both the leader of the company’s IT discipline and a key contributor to the company’s overall business strategy.

CIO Insight: Bill George on CIOs: Get Out And Lead

If I’ve seen a fault in my 40 years of working with my IT executives, it’s that they don’t engage with the business often enough. They engage with their own—they engage with IT. They have to engage with the head of sales, the head of research, the head of customer support and say, “How can I help you?”

CIO.com Blogs: Being a Strategic CIO

First of all, being strategic is not primarily about the IT strategy; it’s about the business strategy and how IT contributes value to it. But for this to happen, the CIO must understand the business strategy, and understanding it, know how and where to position IT for maximum advantage.

CIO.com: CIOs talk about staying strategic

“Strategic thinking at the right level of maturity is more a ‘state of awareness’ than a concerted effort.” Elkin says a CIO should have a mature level of understanding of the business and its industry, the micro and macro environments, and emerging trends and technologies so that the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the organisation from an ICT perspective frame discussions and issues.

ComputerWorld: How are CIOs Meeting Evolving CEO Expectations?

The best CIOs are those that can operate from the 50,000 to five-foot level, and know when they need to be tactical and cost-focused, and when they can be more strategic and transformational.

Cutter: Echolalia: The CIO is Dead! Long Live the CIO!

This will require a full-time expert with plenty of leadership ability and a whole new set of skills in the areas of business strategy, corporate information dysfunction, personal and organizational technology adoption, and the role IT plays in shaping and reshaping corporate culture.

One question is whether CIOs are becoming more specialized in a particular business domain rather than being viewed as individuals that can use their technology background to cross industry lines, with health care being the most mentioned.  While business domain expertise may become more specialized when seeking a new CIO, the role clearly requires an adept, constant learner that can adapt to the needs of the organization.

Forbes.com: CIO Specialization On The Rise

The role of the CIO is becoming more specialized. In corporations, an increasing number of CIOs are deeply rooted in the particular business sector rather than the technology used to run it. Nowhere is that trend more evident than in hospitals, where CIOs are either being replaced or now work side-by-side with chief medical information officers, whose credentials emphasize their physician training rather than a technology background.

CIO Essentials: Generalist as CIO

…as Drucker shares, “…Three years of study are by no means enough to master a subject, but they are enough to understand it.” For most of his life, Drucker took this approach, studying one subject at a time which not only gave him a huge (generalist) knowledge store from which to draw on but also forced him to be more open to disciplines, methodologies and approaches…CIOs today more than ever need to be taking a generalist view to running their businesses. Change is rapid and keeping up and staying relevant is getting more difficult.

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Alternative Views Include:

Alternative views include those that would counter the prevailing gloom about the current and future role of the CIO, including a request to let go of the old stereotype that CIOs don’t understand their businesses, and a call to some personal responsibility in gaining the trust of the business (rather than sitting back and waiting for it).  Also lost in many dire predictions on the future of the CIO is a thoughtful admission of the value and complexity of the systems in-place and providing value today, as well as the impact a complete dismantling of IT might have on those enterprises being supported.

ComputerWorld: It’s past time to drop the CIO stereotypes

And yet two stereotypes about IT professionals just won’t go away. One is that IT people don’t understand business; the second is that IT people lack social skills — that we are somehow semi-autistic when it comes to dealing with other carbon-based life forms. Isn’t it time for society at large to move away from 1980s and 1990s thinking about CIOs? Isn’t it time for journalists and academics to let go of long-held stereotypes of what CIOs know and don’t know? All of the Fortune 500 CIOs I’ve met know their businesses inside and out. Most of the IT professionals who appear in these pages know the strategic, tactical and technical realities of their enterprises. Any CIO who has completed the difficult task of implementing a global ERP system knows his organization’s business. Indeed, every CIO I know personally has business insights that his company’s CEO is eager to hear.

Biz-Tech 3.0: The Death of the CIO–Again

Is it me, or does the debate over the death of the CIO never end? I haven’t been covering IT management since the “CIO” first came on the scene, but it seems that since that time, the CIOs’ demise has been predicted over and over again.

CIO Rant: Reports of CIO ‘Death’ Premature

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.

Cutter: Echolalia: The CIO is Dead! Long Live the CIO!

To argue that the CIO role will disappear is to suggest that IT is no longer complex or dynamic and does not rise to a level of management difficulty that requires a C-level executive to attend to it. This means that at some level in the organization, and probably very high, dabblers and part-time professionals will be sufficient. Perhaps. But the kind of competitiveness in industries that heavily use IT is not for armchair strategists or part-time enthusiasts.

CIO.com: Why the New Normal Could Kill IT

…the modern-day IT shop—a fiefdom that has long wielded influence even though it suffered from a perception of little business competence—has become too big to fail today. Let IT keel over, and watch everything you hold dear go to hell. Just try it.

Another positive note in the volume of material being generated on this topic is what appears to be an increasing willingness to challenge the methods used in the studies that are so often the basis of IT analyst projections:

FierceCIO: Study of CIOs is weak in methods and conclusions

Evans’ smackdown begins with a look at the methods employed in the study. While the researchers said they evaluated 600 people, only 30 of them were CIOs. In other words, the researchers attack an entire profession based on an examination of 30 individuals, or about 5 percent of the study’s total subjects.

Finally, while a convincing argument can be made that the function of CIO isn’t going away, some would call for an even larger and expanded role for the CIO over time, based on factors such the still un-tapped leverage of business information assets, as well as the likelihood that enterprises will be in greater need of capable CIOs when coming out of this economic slow-down, rather than less.

CIO.com Blogs: Future CIO Role

There are some things that argue for the increasing importance of the role. Charles Handy and other leading management thinkers argue that the new source of wealth is information and knowledge. In the industrial economy it was the means of production. Traditionally, the group that manages the source of wealth has been the “operating group” within companies and other groups have been viewed as support functions.

FierceCIO: Recession boosts CIO stature

The recession is still exerting its influence on CIOs, according to a survey by Harvey Nash and PA Consulting Group, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. The majority of IT leaders polled said they expect to play a larger role in strategic decisions in the year ahead, and the top skills considered necessary for the job these days are influence and communication. According to the survey, “CIOs and IT directors are gaining the right to help shape the next phase of growth by helping their companies through this unprecedented time of global economic turmoil.”

InformationWeek Global CIO: The Golden Age Of IT Has Begun: 6 Reasons Why

I think all the gloom and doom is a lot of garbage. Is the IT profession under pressure? Absolutely—but when, really, has that not been the case? Capabilities like IT that sit at strategic junctures in operations, customer engagement, product development, supply chain, and corporate agility need to be held to the highest possible expectations. Otherwise, what’s the point? If we can’t live up to that sort of responsibility and accountability, then every CEO should make the CFO’s day by giving that CFO the order to call a good outsourcer and flush the whole IT organization down the tubes, with all its detached mumbo-jumbo priorities and secret languages and navel fixations.

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