CIO — Wanted: CIO. Must be a strategist, technologist, operations expert, supply chain manager and department chief.
Does this sound like an imprecise, all-encompassing job description? In fact, it reflects what many IT leaders are finding about their jobs: It’s hard to put them in a box.
That’s as opposed to the classic, Gartner-approved definition of what a CIO does: Lead supply and demand for the IT function. "The CIO maps to strategy, anticipates requirements and needs in terms of technology, and then needs to be able to supply it," says Ellen Kitzis, group vice president for the Americas division of Gartner Executive Programs.
Well, maybe that was true for your father’s CIO, but it isn’t anymore. Indeed, one can almost hear Kitzis smile as she recounts the job description; she knows that today’s IT executives face many more tasks in organizations, as companies become more information-centric.
Catherine Brune, senior vice president and CTO at Allstate Insurance, says her list of jobs includes the expected range?project manager, business funder, vendor manager and security specialist?and some extraordinary things as well, such as innovation incubator, referee, psychologist and fortune-teller. "And when my crystal ball isn’t as good as it needs to be, I need to be a good Houdini," she jokes.
Kitzis says that "in many ways, CIOs today are being asked to wear many CXO types of hats." Because IT crosses most, if not all, levels of the corporation, CIOs "can be the glue or the enabler that brings the whole organization together," she says. It’s difficult to be everything to everyone, but that’s the reality of the current CIO job. Here’s how to make all the hats fit.
The All-in-One Executive
At the highest level, CIOs must have the vision thing down; they need to be able to see where technology is going and what will matter to their companies, and then have an ability to lead the organization in that direction. That kind of leadership skill resembles what a CEO does for the overall company. CIOs must also manage costs and deliver returns on investments like a CFO, particularly in today’s cost-conscious, results-oriented business environment. There is increasing and steady pressure on CIOs to optimize performance and manage operations internally, much as a COO does for a company as a whole. Finally, CIOs also have to serve a variety of other business units, which Kitzis says makes their job more complex than just running a department.
Indeed, CIOs have so many duties and get involved in so many facets of corporate life that it’s easy to argue they wear more hats than anyone else.
