What Staffers Are Saying About CIOs

By Lauren Gibbons Paul
Mon, September 15, 2003

CIO — Not long ago, Joanne Birkin got an e-mail from her boss, the CIO of a large Midwestern food company, asking for her feedback on his performance. The CIO asked three of his direct reports: What should I stop doing? What should I start doing? What should I continue?

Sounds like a constructive exercise. But not in this case. Birkin huddled with her colleagues, and they decided to limit their "stops" and "starts" to three apiece. "Any more than three would be too discouraging for him," says Birkin, director of the project management office. (Her name was changed at her request.) On the list: Stop micromanaging experienced team members. Start developing a systems road map for the frequent mergers and acquisitions. There were no "continues."

The employees e-mailed their feedback to the CIO. And never heard another word about it. ¿

If you’re tempted to dismiss this CIO as a tone-deaf jerk from fly-over country, consider this: In a CIO survey done in May with TopCoder, a company that hosts a Web-based community of IT professionals, 400 IT professionals almost universally gave their head honchos a thumbs-down. Among the findings:

  • 45 percent don’t believe their CIOs communicate changes in IT well enough.
  • 52 percent said their CIOs don’t foster a team environment.
  • A whopping 93 percent said their CIOs don’t spend enough time developing future IT leaders.
Those are some of the lowlights (for survey results, see "What You Need to Work On," Page 61). What the results indicate—and interviews with IT staffers and experts reinforce—is that CIOs need to take the time to improve their management skills and cultivate their employees’ skills if they want to retain IT talent and see their organizations succeed.

In this article, we explore some reasons for the low scores and what you can do about them (see "Management To-Do List," Page 64, and "Morale-Boosting Moves," Page 68). Another important story in this issue, "How to Launch a Leader" (Page 70), explains the benefits of developing CIOs of the future now and gives ideas for making it happen.

Savvy Managers SOught

Conducted online, our unscientific survey attracted a self-selected group of respondents. Disgruntled individuals are more likely to participate. But to a person, the 10 IT staffers interviewed for this story were professional and measured in their comments. Most were highly frustrated at what they saw as shortcomings in their CIOs.

So, what’s going on here?

For one thing, despite all the emphasis on business-savvy CIOs, many still come up through the technical ranks and are promoted into the role. Nearly 70 percent of survey participants said their CIOs’ primary background was in IT. Only a third said the bulk of their CIOs’ experience was in business. Those results coincide with a survey of 539 IT executives CIO conducted for the "State of the CIO" issue: 82 percent identified IT jobs as influential in their careers. Consulting was a distant second. (For more survey results, see www.cio.com/printlinks.)

Continue Reading

Are you ready to diversify? The business needs of companies are changing often and rapidly. Open virtualization offers compelling business advantages and shows even greater potential as companies choose diversification over proprietary vendor lock-in.
Find out how your IT department's IT asset and services management strategy compares to that of your peers by using this unique tool. Click on the link below to begin our 10-minute assessment and see how your IT organization measures up!
Custom malware frequently goes undetected. According to Forrester Research, the best way to reduce risk of breach is to deploy file integrity monitoring (FIM) tools that provide immediate alerts. This white paper has been brought to you by NetIQ, the leader in solving complex IT challenges.
This white paper describes the business challenges and opportunities that are driving interest in Identity Governance while discussing considerations your organization should make to help achieve project success.
This paper explores the concept of content-aware IAM, describes the integrated architecture for this new approach, and highlights the benefits that this approach provides.
One of the key strategies that IT teams are pursuing to reduce capital costs while boosting asset utilization and employee productivity is the transition to highly virtualized data centers. However, IDC finds that expectations for further boosts in IT asset use and operational efficiency often surpass the actual results for a variety of reasons. These problems can quickly overwhelm any hoped-for benefits as the scope of virtual server deployment expands.
End User Experience, 30-Min Webinar
Wed. Feb. 22nd ~ 11 AM ET

Are you ready to gain the proactive ability to rapidly respond to end user problems (before they call the help desk)? Then you won't want to miss a webinar that will show you the latest innovation in end user monitoring.
Download this webcast to learn about the design considerations for virtualizing SQL workloads, performance and scalability information and high-availability options, as well as support considerations
Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business
Applications are changing - they're increasingly web-oriented, global in nature and run from multiple device types. Additionally, the volume of data is growing exponentially every year. How do you ensure your applications have fast, accurate, up-to-date information in this new world? Modern applications are data-intensive; delivering data the old way using monolithic databases isn't working. What's needed is a modern approach to data. One that scales-out as needed and delivers predictable high performance, but without sacrificing data consistency or integrity.
VMware View™ 5 simplifies IT management while increasing end user freedom by delivering desktop services from your cloud. Building upon VMware's leadership in desktop virtualization, VMware View 5 delivers a high-performance user experience while giving IT greater policy control.

View this webcast and find out how VMware View 5 can help you:
- Deliver the highest fidelity experience of desktop services across any device and any network
- Simplify and automate IT management, security and control of desktop services
- Reduce the costs associated with your desktop environment
IT professionals are being asked to deliver faster "time-to-value" than ever before. An IDG Research survey found that CIOs are eager to invest in technologies that will enable them to get new applications and services up quickly, achieving faster time-to-value.
Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all Newsletters | Privacy Policy
Resource Center