Nobody needs a Chief Information Officer

When the acronym CIO first emerged, many joshed that it stood for “Career Is Over.” Many others couldn’t see the need for a Chief Information Officer at all, because they perceived such a role to be that of a super-librarian, rather than custodian of crucial commercial intelligence (sic).

Despite widespread ennui about the acronym, the CIO role has persisted, indeed flourished in some instances – although it remains poorly defined in too many organisations. Furthermore there is no consensus about whether a CIO truly belongs at the top table, or should continue to play a subsidiary role to the CFO or COO.

So the CIO role is not a must-have, no-brainer, corporate appointment. I contend that this is because the role was wrongly posited in the first place. I believe that we have never really needed a Chief Information Officer. Look at your own enterprise and think seriously for a moment, do you really need a CIO?

I have participated in so-called CIO forums for many years now and followed the debate about the role very closely. Here are some of the most frequent issues that have been cropping up for at least ten years:

The CIO has the best overall perspective of the enterprise
Why don’t CIOs have a de facto place on every Executive Board?
We could do even more with technology, if I was properly empowered
My colleagues don’t really think of me as a business-person

I have now reached the conclusion that the role of Chief Information Officer is not only redundant but was never needed in the first place. My belief is based on the fact that few, if any, CIO roles have been properly founded on the principle of responsibility for providing effective information systems. Far too many CIO roles still translate into Chief Infrastructure Officer with the incumbents embroiled in the bowels of technology, instead of managing the life-blood of an effective enterprise.

Some may agree with me to the extent that they wish to translate the CIO term into quite a different beast: i.e. Chief Innovation Officer. But that is a non-starter for me because it is an even more ephemeral and potentially slopy-shouldered appointment than the current Chief Information Officer designation.

We are all facing challenging times, regardless of geography or line of business. Hard times call for hard thinking, supplemented by effective action. A good first step, therefore, would be to scrap the role of Chief Information Officer and create a genuinely useful role: Chief Integration Officer.

I will write more about this new role over the coming days and weeks. Please let me know if I am barking up the right tree.

You may also like to read:

http://www.gandanet.com.hk/ Roy Grubb

Whether you are barking up the right tree with Chief Integration Officer your readers will only be able to see as you develop the description of the role. If integration means silo-busting, it might be a good choice of bark (though not exactly new), but to be effective that also needs Board level empowerment.

But “… incumbents embroiled in the bowels of technology, instead of managing the life-blood of an effective enterprise” is still, sadly, oh-so-true.

I’ve been looking at Bates and Green’s VPEC-T ‘thinking framework’ for information systems over the past months and am beginning to believe that this is a way change the focus on technology. For decades, the IT community has been talking about “must focus on the business”. It happens sometimes in some groups, in my experience, but it needs a ‘hero’ to drive it through. VPEC-T, horrible name as it is, looks like a mechanism for this change. It is strong on integration and determinedly pushes IT to the later stages of a project.

Tom Graves has a post on it here:
http://weblog.tomgraves.org/index.php/2008/07/26/vpec-t/

Roy Grubb
G&A Management Consultants Ltd.
Hong Kong
http://www.gandanet.com.hk/ Roy Grubb

When moderating, please correct my previous comment: s/b “Bate and Green” not “Bates and Green”.

Thanks

Roy
John Milner

I have often thought COO are supposed have an intimate understanding of how a business operates. As the processes, both administrative and technical, underlying most businesses are now IT based then it surely follows that the roles of COO and CIO should merge. Wasn’t this the principle behind the concept of “hybrid manager”?

As the new generation of young managers has been brought up with IT as an everyday part of their lives maybe the day will be here soon when such animals are a routine part of business
http://whoisthewatchmaker.blogspot.com/ Mike Shields

Ok, you’ve converted me. You can ignore my comment on Linked In.
Carl Waring

Anyone working at board level, in order to materialise value for their existence must be in a position to deliver innovative strategies that will give the organisation competitive advantage that supports sustainability in one form or another.

Experts within the field of Information Systems who are capable of developing and implementing strategies that optimise the use of information within the business, so that the business achieves its investment objectives should play a prominent role within the organisation.

Whether this role is permanent or not is another matter. For example, once the information system has been implemented it is debatable as to whether the information system will require continuous large scale improvement; maybe in a few years time perhaps when the objectives change.

The skills involved in developing information systems strategies require an in-depth knowledge of the operation of the business and a clear understanding of the business plans and objectives. In addition, the ‘Information Systems Practitioner’ must be conversant with the capabilities of technology and how that can be applied, be aware of the changes that are needed within the business to instigate the information systems and clearly understand the benefits that the information systems will bring.

A good example of an information system is that described by Peter Checkland and Sue Holwell in Information, Systems and Information Systems: Making Sense of the Field ISBN-13: 978-0471958208; the information system designed to bring down enemy aircraft during the Second World War. If ever there was justification for a CIO then this is the sort of scale of information systems CIOs should be working with although clearly not necessarily having the same purpose!

Unfortunately from all of the CIOs I have met very few meet this criteria with a large proportion seemingly involved in technical matters and having little regard or understanding of what their business is about.
http://www.pantheonmanagement.co.uk Karim Hyatt

I have spent the last decade managing the technical operations of companies across verticals. Mostly I reported to the CEO, but sometimes also to the entire board.

The question that keeps arising is why we need a COO/CFO-type person who is responsible for the technical/IT side of the business? Why are CIOs so often undervalued or underestimated? Comments have been made here suggesting that the role is not well defined. In my experience, it can only be well defined by the incumbent. The CIO defines the role and the responsibilities, just as the CEO and COO do in every successful organisation. The problem is that most ineffectual CIOs (and this applies to COOs and CEOs as well) either do not understand the technology they are trying to manage or the business there are trying to service.

This stems from a several factors:

1. There is no real definition of what an IT practitioner is. You can define a barrister or a CPA or doctor, attach a speciality and you know exactly what you’re buying. With IT it’s more the case of “many years experience of IT”. What does that mean? Support? Security? Application Development? Integration? Once we, as a profession, can properly define the product we are selling. CIOs like CFOs and CEOs will naturally evolve and float up to the board.

2. The perception of the profession is a real problem. Because everyone has a PC at home, they all think they’re experts. How many times have I heard: “IT isn’t all that difficult!” or “This is a very simple system. I want to communicate in real time with all my offices around the word and I don’t want to spend more than £20K”. If these systems are so easy to build (anyone can send an e-mail!) then the person to run the technical function doesn’t have to be of the highest calibre or can be in a completely different profession – like an accountant. Oh yes, let’s make the CFO head of IT! Excellent! Problem solved!

We do need a head of technology as technology allows a business to run. If it is badly managed, the bottom line suffers. In one way you are right. We don’t need the hordes of CIOs who think they know what they’re doing, but are completely out of their depth and can’t make a difference to the balance sheet. This function requires a professional technology practitioner with the right entrepreneurial mix and the ability to lead. I doubt I’ll see such a change anytime soon.
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TroubleShooter

Nobody needs a Chief Information Officer