The Role of the CIO
The
Chief Information Officer is the leader of the information technology function.
IS leadership is concerned with the roles, responsibilities, reporting structure,
job titles, and personal characteristics of IS leaders within
organizations. During the 1960s and
1970s, the IS leadership position was commonly titled “EDP[1] Manager”. Today, we routinely call the IS leader,
“Chief Information Officer,” to signify the role’s place
among other top business executives (although contemporary IS leaders may have
other titles such as VP of IT). While IS leaders have traditionally struggled
to earn their place alongside other senior business leaders, IS leaders have
made significant progress during the past forty years.
As students
will be familiar with the role of the CIO, the aim of the group presentation is
to further explore the attributes of effective CIOs.
The group should
find current research on:
- Current issues facing CIOs, such as top ten lists
found in practitioner magazines such as MIS Quarterly Executive, CIO
Insight, CIO magazine, Gartner Group, or Computerworld
- Demographics of typical CIO, particularly for
Fortune 500 companies. This may include sex, age, years of experience,
background. We like easy to read graphs and tables for this section, such
as:
Source:
SIM 2008 Survey (n = ).
- Turnover among CIOs--very few CIOs seem to last in
these positions for very long. Is the average years
of service for a CIO different than the average years of service for other
top executives?
- Please be sure to include 10 refereed articles on
academic articles on the role of the CIO and IT leadership. I put a list
below so you can see the types of journals to search.
- Please stress the importance of business and people
skills required for a CIO. Clearly technical skills, while valuable, are
subordinate to general management skills. http://www.gartner.com/it/products/research/media_products/cio-edge/index.jsp
Case Study on 2
to 3 CIOs:
- Interview 2 to 3 CIOs to determine how they see
their role in the organization. Be sure to pick a large enough
organization of at least 1000 employees or else the person may be titled
“CIO” but really may perform mundane functions like network
management.
- I recommend that international students interview
one CIO from an non-US company.
- What are their biggest challenges?
- How do they spend their day?
- What is their background?
- What keeps them up at night?
- How do they view the relative importance of their business,
people, and technical skills to job performance?
- What is their relationship like with their CEO? How
frequently do the CIO and CEO directly communicate?
- Which IT related project has been the biggest
success under their leadership? Why? What lessons were learned?
- Which IT related project has been the most
troublesome? Why? What lessons were learned?
- How do they compare with the survey data your group
found above?
Finding CIOs to
interview. Most CIOs are very willing to
schedule a ½ interview with students. If you work or have worked at a large
organization, you may try contacting the CIO or CIO’s secretary
directly. If you have never worked
for a large organization, start asking friends or relatives if they can help.
Interview Tip: Very intelligent people tend to provide generalizations,
such as "My relationship with my CEO is good." What you want is to
prompt the CIOs for rich details & stories, such as the frequency of their
communications, who initiates the communications,
if/when do they socialize, etc. If the interviewee gives a generalization or
platitude, prompt him or her for specific examples.
Provide the CIO's Company
Background such as:
- Size of company in terms of sales and profits
- Major products the company sells
- General characteristics of their customers
- Organizational chart--who does the CIO report to?
- How many people work for the IT organization?
- What is the annual IT budget?
Be sure to compare your CIOs with each
other and with the findings from current literature. For example, a cross-comparison of CIOs
might be organized as a table:
|
Attribute |
From secondary Sources like surveys |
Interview 1 |
Interview 2 |
Interview 3 |
|
Educational
Background |
|
|
|
|
|
Professional
Experience (IT and/or business operations) |
|
|
|
|
|
Years
as CIO |
|
|
|
|
|
CIO
reports to |
|
|
|
|
|
Gender |
|
|
|
|
|
Etc… |
|
|
|
|
Another great source is a weekly CIO
Talk Radio show. Go to http://www.ciotalkradio.com/.
This is free if you register and you’ll hear from top CIOs from around
the world. Also check out out local Society of Information Management for
events—students can usually attend for free if you let me know in
advance: http://www.simnet.org/members/group.aspx?id=63333