Going from CIO to CEO

CIO Asia — Recently the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) made what, to some, might have seemed a surprising appointment. It selected as its new CEO someone who had graduated to senior management via the CIO role. Admittedly, Ralph Norris had previously been CEO of Air New Zealand. His formative years, however, had been spent in IT at the Auckland Savings Bank (ASB), a subsidiary of the CBA. At the very least the résumé of Ralph Norris is testimony to the fact that a career in IT is not an impediment to anyone who aspires to one day be CEO.

Nevertheless, it is common in this industry to hear talk of a supposed glass ceiling which prevents IT executives from reaching the highest echelons of the business. Yet I have always been mystified why this is the case. The CIO has probably the broadest perspective of anyone in the business. By contrast, finance and sales, the two traditional paths to the CEO role, have an almost blinkered focus on what the business is about.

Stop to think of what CIOs must keep abreast of in their role. They need a solid understanding of all the organization's processes as they have to look at where these can be effectively automated. They need to appreciate the needs of the key stakeholders in the organization because they have the task of enhancing their decision-making. They frequently have to work with external suppliers and clients to eliminate costs by fashioning intricate supply chains. They record the business accounting details and work intimately with the finance department in producing the quarterly reports. Then they have to manage people and projects. Finally, they find themselves at the cutting edge of all the business trends because of the ramifications these have on IT.

Why then do so few CIOs aggressively promote this understanding? My own belief is that a lot of IT people find it hard to relinquish their technological heritage. For many it seems their ability is questioned if they are not familiar with some new technology announcement. I witnessed this firsthand when I ran the InTEP executive forums in Australia for 10 years. The best-attended seminars always seemed to relate to a technology case study. Those sessions that struggled to draw a crowd were those left-field sessions that looked at issues like benchmarking or staff management.

I often wondered if many CIOs had stopped to reflect on just what the Gartner hype cycle really meant. In essence this is advising CIOs to avoid getting too excited about any new technology until it has been around for a while. Mind you, I'm not even certain Gartner practices what it preaches in this regard. I have just been forwarded a copy of the recent Gartner report showing the best placed CRM vendors for 2007 in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. I was left wondering how many of these suppliers had been through the "trough of disillusionment" on the Gartner hype cycle.

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