Tag CIO Tenure

Entries 2 Total

CIO Tenure – Current Thinking for IT Leaders

Sep 2, ’10 7:11 AM

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:

Multiple surveys completed over the last 18 months show CIO tenure to be flat or actually increasing throughout this difficult economic period, although their methodologies differ:

SearchCIO.com: IT executive jobs average 6.3 years, a testament to both IT and the business

The average tenure for senior IT executive jobs is now 6.3 years, according to TechTarget Inc.’s annual salary and careers survey.

An upcoming Gartner survey still underway is showing that CIOs average tenure in their current positions is about 4.4 years, about the same as 2008, [Mark McDonald] said.

Forrester Blogs: CIO Job Tenure Rises – Long-term Trend or Fleeting Phase?

CIO job tenure is now averaging 4.6 years, according to the Society for Information Management. That’s up – way up — from the 2-3 year average that we saw just a few years ago.

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CIO Tenure: Measure it in Dog Years

Apr 2, ’09 12:25 PM

CIO.com and Human Resource Executive have a new study out that reports nearly one in four CIOs are let go for poor performance.  And the larger the company, the more likely it was that the CIO would be fired or downsized.  What interested me more was the statement that:

CIO tenure is six years and three months, the same as for heads of sales but less than HR heads (six years, four months) and CFOs (seven years).

This seems high based on my own experience.  Other sources put it at four to five years, with a 2008 Gartner survey stating that:

CIO tenure has stabilized at an average of four years and four months, giving CIOs ample time to work with executives to transform their enterprises. In addition, more than half of CIOs report having responsibilities outside of traditional IT, reflecting their enhanced business leadership position.

Setting aside the claim that four years is ample time to transform an enterprise, four years seems more like the reality that we are living with.  CIO.com itself had a prior study, completed in 2007, that reported a 4-5 year tenure range.

Update 4/3/2009: Gartner again pegs CIO tenure at four years and four months.

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