Dr. Jim Anderson looks into why so many high-profile CIOs have been getting fired lately — could it be because they weren’t great CIOs?
Dr. Anderson identifies the 5 different things that every CIO needs to do in order to become a great CIO.
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Dr. Jim Anderson tackles the question that all CIO’s are asking: just exactly what is “cloud computing”?
Dr. Anderson identifies the 4 different flavors of cloud computing that are available and points out how a CIO would go about using each one of them.
Get a free subscription to The Accidental Successful CIO newsletter by visiting the sign-up page at: http://goo.gl/NOfh2
Subscribe to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter
It is with a great deal of pride that I am finally able to announce that free subscriptions to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter are now available!
Subscribe to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter now: Click Here!
You might be asking why I felt the need to create a newsletter – isn’t this blog enough? Well in all honesty, I thought that it was; however, a bunch of the 400+ folks who read the blog didn’t and they let me know about it.
For the past year or so I’ve been getting a steady stream of emails asking all sorts of questions about just exactly what steps you need to take if you want to develop the leadership skills that every successful CIO must have. Some were simple like “do I need an MBA?” (no), to the more difficult “what should a CIO’s career goal be?” (it depends). It’s pretty clear that most of us know what we want to achieve; however, we’re just not quite sure how to get there. Ultimately everyone seems to be looking for some solid career guidance – mentoring if you will.
That’s the purpose that motivated me to create the newsletter. In the blog we cover a wide range of topics – nothing’s off limits. The newsletter will have a laser-like focus on you and your plan to become a CIO. We’ll talk about the skills and tools that you’ll need in order to be successful, how best to manage your time in order to get the most important things done, etc. This is the kind of information that you desperately need to get your hands on, and now you can.
Subscribe to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter now: Click Here!
Careful – if you never become the CIO, you’ll have plenty of time to read it. Think about how much training you’ve received this year so far – I’m betting not much. Your career is your responsibility, nobody else’s. No matter if you are a party of one or if you are supporting a family of 5, you need to keep improving your skills so that you be ready to step into the CIO spot when your time comes.
Take just a moment and click on the “Subscribe Now!” link. All I need is a name and an email address and you’ll be ready to get the first issue of The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter. Because it’s the right thing for you to do…
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When you become CIO things are going to be different aren’t they? You’ll be one of those CIOs that has the respect of both their peers in the company and in their industry, right?
Lisa Yoon over at CIOZone.com just got done interviewing me for an article that she was writing titled “CIOs and the Road to Validation in the C-Suite”. I think that she’s done a pretty good job of answering the question of what CIOs need to do in order to get some credibility.
For her article, Lisa and I had a free ranging discussion that covered a lot of different points. The big issues that we touched on included just exactly why today’s CIO’s don’t seem to be able get a seat at the company’s planning table with the other C-level executives.
The reason that I think that you might want to pop over and take a look at Lisa’s article is that instead of just talking about the problem, we also discussed what an up and coming CIO (like you) needs to do. I don’t want to give the answer away, but let’s say that just like with everything else in life it has to do with who you know…
What do you think that a CIO needs to do in order to get a seat at the company’s strategic planning table?
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When you become the CIO, you’re probably hoping that you’ll be spending your time setting the strategic direction for your company’s technology future. However, perhaps you’ve forgotten about the lawyers…
So you want to be a CIO someday. Great. However, there may be a bit of a problem with your goal — the position of CIO may be going away. In fact, in about 10 years or so (is that when you are planning on seizing the reigns of IT control?) the position may look completely different from how it looks today. Hmm, a moving target. Maybe we should talk with some current CIOs to find out just what’s going on here…
Over at CIO Insight magazine they just got done doing their annual survey of CIOs. The results were, to say the least, eye-opening. The answer to the most asked question about the need for CIOs to have business skills is still a definite YES.
Current CIOs report that they are acting as much as business leaders as technology leaders. The days in which a CIO could lost himself / herself in the world of IT and be left alone appear to be long gone.
There is a bit of a double standard going one here however. CIOs are reporting that although they are being asked to implement programs that will result in fundamental business improvements, the position of CIO is still being pushed back to the second tier of senior management.
With all of this talk of business skills, won’t CIOs need to have solid technical knowledge going forward? The answer appears to be yes, but. CIOs are saying that the job skills that they use most include finance, business process modeling, written and spoken communications, and just a bit of sales and marketing skills. I sure didn’t see servers, bandwidth, application security, or API knowledge anywhere on that list.
In fact, CIOs are reporting that the folks who are currently getting hired into IT positions have, can you believe it, even less business knowledge than people did just two years ago. This is quickly going to cause a problem: there are going to be very few qualified candidates to become CIO over the next few years. Can anyone say “opportunity”?
You might be asking yourself, so what skills do I need to be working on to take advantage of the need for business savvy CIO candidates that will be coming in the future?
The list is actually fairly short. To start with, you need to have very good public speaking skills and the leadership skills that will be required to implement what you talk about. A detailed understanding of the business that you are working for (like how they REALLY make their money) and a solid understanding of corporate finance.
There is, of course, more to this list. Once you’ve mastered the basics, then you’ll have to keep adding skills. Today’s CIOs report that you’ll also need to know how to master the strategic use of information, how to lead enterprise-wide changes, perform business model innovation, and improve business processes.
The report from today’s CIOs is not all good. It sure looks like CIOs are currently being treated as second-class citizens in the C-suite. However, as we all know, IT is not going away and it sure is not getting any less important. I’m thinking that CIOs are actually going to become more important over time.
CIOs are reporting that although business skills are becoming an even more important part of the set of tools that a CIO needs to have, fewer and fewer IT hires are coming with these skills. Clearly this is opening the door for those who dream of someday becoming the CIO.
Although it looks like you might have a shot at the top spot, it’s not going to be handed to you. You’re going to have to work at it. We’ve laid out the skills that you need to develop. Not go out there and get ready for the day that they call your name to become the firm’s next CIO…!
Do you think that the position of CIO will still exist in 10 years?
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Forget the whole alignment thing, is it possible that a CIO’s behavior is the root of the problem that the IT side of the house and the business side of the house have never been able to get along? Could it be that this is the secret as to why there has always been such a gap between these groups?
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