Should CIOs Want To Rise Up The Corporate Ladder, Or Just Enjoy Their Jobs?

CIO insecurity is an oft debated subject. The CIO, as the argument goes, is being overwhelmed by the marketing department’s sudden access to technology and this is hurting them emotionally. It is suggested that the sudden democratisation of technology has rendered the role of the CIO at the crossroads. CIO panelists at various conferences vehemently argue against that premise and some of them offer suggestions on how the CIO should reinvent himself to emerge as a true business leader. Have you noticed for some strange reason that IT folks do not seem to consider themselves as part of the business? So much so, that they often times refer to their internal customers as “business”.

Several thousands of trees have been felled to provide paper to print discussions and debates on this topic. Several IT magazines and Research Analysts stoke up the storm from time to time. ‘How can the marketing department cause so much angst in the life of the CIO?’ I mused. Didn’t the CIO have enough on his plate catering to the demands of Operations, Sales, Finance, HR, Supply Chain and his own Infra/platform modernisation projects to keep him busy? To make it more interesting ,it is even suggested that the CIO should take on larger roles since he is intelligent, process oriented and has a complete view of the enterprise. Now imagine the poor CIO’s plight - on one hand he is told that he’s marked out for a greater purpose in life and on the other it is being suggested that marketing is taking away what he should have been doing in the first place. Sigmund Freud would be rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of having one such CIO on his couch.

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I am completely unsure if this is just an Indian phenomenon or a global malaise - or whether CFOs, CPOs and their ilk are also battling with a similar mid-career crisis. But from the CIO context if I were to conjure a theory, it is this:

Most CIOs have worked their way up into positions they now occupy. They have been hands-on technologists who were great developers or infrastructure architects. The turn of the century brought with it some complexity in enterprise IT but they coped marvelously. Over the years, positions have been consolidated and the newer age technologies especially relating to the WWW deployed successfully. Now the next wave i.e. Cloud, Mobility, BI (Ok! Big Data!), Social and BYOD are beginning to the hit the enterprise. The CIO in the meanwhile has evolved into more of a ‘generalist’ and a little less of a ‘technologist’. The fact that his ‘hands-on’ ability has waned to some extent seems to trouble him no end. This is not very different from great batsmen struggling with the newer cricketing formats. The CIO has to rely on his younger, more technology adept team members and partners to understand and deploy these solutions. But all of this in no way makes the CIO any less valuable to the organisation. In fact, juggling many components of technology and keeping an eye for the next big thing calls for amazing dexterity. What gets me is not the evolution of the CIO but the constant suggestion that the value he brings to the enterprise is diminishing.

The suggestion of a broader role comes as a life line to our CIO. He is told that he can contribute in higher roles. Now these roles demand completely different skill sets from what he has been honing for most of his career. For example, the skills required to sell a technology project are very different from turning around the fortunes of a business division. Also, the ability to study business numbers and quickly interpret them into actionable insights may not be something CIOs do in their technology role. Most people get into IT roles (myself included) because they enjoy technology. Why change that? Why venture into something which one had not aspired for in younger days late in one’s career?

In my limited wisdom I feel CIOs should be cognisant of the fact that they won’t be able to carry on forever. Catching up with technology is a continuous process and after a while it is just not worthwhile if one stops enjoying the process.