So you want to be a CIO someday. Great. However, there may be a bit of a problem with your goal — the position of CIO may be going away. In fact, in about 10 years or so (is that when you are planning on seizing the reigns of IT control?) the position may look completely different from how it looks today. Hmm, a moving target. Maybe we should talk with some current CIOs to find out just what’s going on here…
Do CIOs Still Need To Have Business Skills?
Over at CIO Insight magazine they just got done doing their annual survey of CIOs. The results were, to say the least, eye-opening. The answer to the most asked question about the need for CIOs to have business skills is still a definite YES.
Current CIOs report that they are acting as much as business leaders as technology leaders. The days in which a CIO could lost himself / herself in the world of IT and be left alone appear to be long gone.
There is a bit of a double standard going one here however. CIOs are reporting that although they are being asked to implement programs that will result in fundamental business improvements, the position of CIO is still being pushed back to the second tier of senior management.
What Skills Do CIOs Need To Have Today?
With all of this talk of business skills, won’t CIOs need to have solid technical knowledge going forward? The answer appears to be yes, but. CIOs are saying that the job skills that they use most include finance, business process modeling, written and spoken communications, and just a bit of sales and marketing skills. I sure didn’t see servers, bandwidth, application security, or API knowledge anywhere on that list.
In fact, CIOs are reporting that the folks who are currently getting hired into IT positions have, can you believe it, even less business knowledge than people did just two years ago. This is quickly going to cause a problem: there are going to be very few qualified candidates to become CIO over the next few years. Can anyone say “opportunity”?
Skills That CIO-Wanna Bes Need To Be Working On
You might be asking yourself, so what skills do I need to be working on to take advantage of the need for business savvy CIO candidates that will be coming in the future?
The list is actually fairly short. To start with, you need to have very good public speaking skills and the leadership skills that will be required to implement what you talk about. A detailed understanding of the business that you are working for (like how they REALLY make their money) and a solid understanding of corporate finance.
There is, of course, more to this list. Once you’ve mastered the basics, then you’ll have to keep adding skills. Today’s CIOs report that you’ll also need to know how to master the strategic use of information, how to lead enterprise-wide changes, perform business model innovation, and improve business processes.
What All Of This Means For You
The report from today’s CIOs is not all good. It sure looks like CIOs are currently being treated as second-class citizens in the C-suite. However, as we all know, IT is not going away and it sure is not getting any less important. I’m thinking that CIOs are actually going to become more important over time.
CIOs are reporting that although business skills are becoming an even more important part of the set of tools that a CIO needs to have, fewer and fewer IT hires are coming with these skills. Clearly this is opening the door for those who dream of someday becoming the CIO.
Although it looks like you might have a shot at the top spot, it’s not going to be handed to you. You’re going to have to work at it. We’ve laid out the skills that you need to develop. Not go out there and get ready for the day that they call your name to become the firm’s next CIO…!
Do you think that the position of CIO will still exist in 10 years?
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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
Forget the whole alignment thing, is it possible that a CIO’s behavior is the root of the problem that the IT side of the house and the business side of the house have never been able to get along? Could it be that this is the secret as to why there has always been such a gap between these groups?