Evolution of the CIO Role: Is Your Organisation Ready?

Even as the initial feedback loop on my previous post “Will your organisation need CIO by 2020” is getting completed, I came across this very topical post by Jessica Twentyman, titled “Do CIOs need to shout louder?”. She quotes a provocative piece of research from management consulting firm Oliver Wyman and the US-based National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) suggests that their voices simply aren’t being heard in the boardroom. While almost all of the 204 company directors surveyed acknowledge that IT will have a significant impact on their company over the next five years, it appears that many boards do not have the skills or information they need to manage IT risk effectively.

This topic is linked to the question of how will the role of CIO evolve in coming years? I had written another post a few months back on CIO evolving to become a Chief Innovation Officer for instance. To refer some relevant extracts….

“Comparing the typical role of CIO (information) with that of CIO (innovation) – I do see some natural extensions of abilities which a competent CIO should possess. A good CIO should understand the language of the organisation as he / she serves a cross-section of business unit customers. Prototyping should be one of the core abilities for a CIO. And cross-delivery functions of modern IT dependent organisations should help him / her to unlock the creativity. So on the face of it a good competent and credible CIO should be easily double up as CIO (innovation).”

The tricky question to be tacked though is will an organisation allow it’s CIO to branch out? For instance I had written…..“The question however is will organisations trust or want their technology functions to lead path to innovation. Or would they rather drive this from commercial, functional or marketing perspective? It can also be argued that, CIOs are already one or two steps ahead in the game of innovation given their leadership in automation, optimisation aspects. Either way the CIO (information) should play a major role in enabling and making the innovation plans successful.” 

And Oliver Wyman and NACD is not the only recent study to suggest that CIOs’ skills and input are not sufficiently valued at board level. When research company Gartner recently conducted a survey with the Financial Executives Research Foundation, it found that “the chief financial officer is increasingly becoming the top technology investment decision-maker in many organizations.” The survey reports,“In 41 percent of organizations, the senior financial executives (mostly CFOs) who responded to the survey viewed themselves as being the main decision maker for IT investments. This response occurred in most situations where IT reports to the CFO, but it also occurred in other reporting models”

So even if the CIOs are ready for evolution of their role will the organisation have enough trust for them to take charge of matter beyond IT?

Image credit – digital art