As the pressure ratchets up for IT to become business focused, innovative and strategic, Deloitte Consulting maps out the obstacles and offers guidance for CIOs seeking to become the "CEO of IT."
By Eugene Lukac, Specialist Leader, and Peter McBrearty, Senior Manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Optimize, June 2007
Congratulations! You've made it to the post of CIO. Unfortunately, the skills that propelled you up the IT ladder won't necessarily help you to stay in the position for long. If you're like most CIOs, you advanced by delivering on-time and on-budget technology projects. Therefore, it might be reasonable to assume that if you can continue delivering successful projects, you will live happily ever after, right? Wrong. If that's your attitude, you're heading for a fall — and given average CIO tenure, probably within two to three years, maximum.
That's right, technical skills along with some people savvy won't take you far enough. Today's CIO must be " first and foremost " a business executive, just like all senior executives. That means being motivated by the same things as other business leaders, using the same language they do and above all, effectively controlling costs. Indeed, managing cost (both within IT and the company at large) is typically "table stakes" for a CIO. If you don't figure out how to be successful at this, you likely won't be around long enough to achieve anything else.
Along with managing costs, successful CIOs today need to also focus on deploying technology to support the company in achieving its goals, rather than pondering the relative "elegance" of technology alternatives. The CIO must be able to talk about business solutions, competitive advantage, innovations, and customers " all of the things that drive the other business executives. Technology is primarily an enabler; business strategy and metrics are paramount.
The CIO with staying power views himself or herself as the CEO of the IT business within the overall company. Here, the CIO's language should reflect a shift to a CEO's priorities to the point where he or she starts talking about the IT organization's products and services, its internal market and its shareholders. It's not enough anymore to be a savvy technologist who took over the top job in IT: the CIO must become a business leader.
A contemporary CIO should help the company establish a clear "line of sight" between technology and business issues. The CIO must also educate business executives as to how technology can drive business results. CIOs should strive to help their internal customers understand technology and mine its potential to better serve not just their own customers but also their customers' customers.
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