A Fork in the Road for CIOs

There’s been a lot written recently on the topic of how CIOs should go about obtaining a board of director position. It’s not as easy or logical as it might seem, and there is a very good reason for that: CIOs and boards of directors don’t have strong working relationships, certainly not when compared to other functional areas. 

This statement might cause some consternation among some CIOs who have what they perceive to be strong working relationships with their boards, but the hard truth is that they are in the minority. For the majority of CIOs, the board of directors is a superior body to which they delivery regular operational and financial reports, but the dialogue usually stops short of the kinds of strategic business technology discussions that are so desperately required in these transformational times. 

I attended two industry conferences held in San Francisco recently -- InsureTech Summit, and Dreamforce. Both events experienced overflow attendance, with an interesting mix of industries, startups, and venture capital firms looking for opportunities. Both events were fast-paced, much like the transformations that are occurring across virtually every industry sector.

Where were the CIOs?

At the InsureTech summit, the format consisted of a series of seven consecutive panels, each with four panelists. The twenty-eight panelists represented a dizzying array of titles and functions: CEOs and founders of startups, chief marketing, innovation, and digital officers from large companies, chief investment officers and portfolio managers from venture capitalists, and a couple of industry standards bodies thrown in to boot. There was not a single CIO on any of the panels, nor were there more than a handful of CIOs present at all. The same pattern held true at the Dreamforce conference, where CIOs seemed to have been replaced with some other set of recently invented initials.

Recent research conducted by Novarica on CIOs’ working relationships with their boards indicated that boards lack the technology experience and savvy to really engage with CIOs in a strategic manner. While this research was focused on the insurance industry, it seems that some reasonable extrapolation can be applied to other industries. These findings are the direct result of boards not bringing the kind of experience to the director side of the table that could assist them with the very thing most of them and their CEOs are saying is the most transformational and disruptive issue they face: the rapid pace of technology.

Scarcity of Strategic IT Leaders

This seems like a classic chicken and egg problem. If boards aren’t recruiting technology-savvy directors, and CIOs aren’t getting the strategic technology support and guidance they need from their boards, something has to give. There’s an argument to be made that rather than CIOs and other technologists turning themselves into well-rounded business people so that they appeal to boards who are recruiting, boards should target people with deep knowledge, experience, and passion for technology. That’s the way that many CIOs and boards can begin to build that strategic bridge so desperately needed when it comes to technology, in any industry. 

As a former CIO, the current state of affairs seems a distressing one, and it does not bode well for those CIOs fighting to maintain a strategic foothold in the process and technology transformations barraging almost all industries. Here is a fair question to ask: have CIOs abdicated their strategic technology role to the plethora of outsiders flooding into the industry claiming new positions? Or have CIOs been weighed, measured, and found strategically wanting? 

Neither answer seems a positive one over the long term for those with a CIO title. Since its inception, the role of the CIO has evolved steadily, and many CIOs now find themselves at the strategic nexus of business and technology. This is due, in large part, to their intimate knowledge of every business process, scrap of data, and technological capability that could facilitate the transformation of their businesses.

What’s missing are relationships with those in the company who wield the strategic and financial wands. That’s why the role of the CIO as the center of strategic technology direction seems in jeopardy now for many CIOs across many industries. Whether through transformational politics and money, board access, or their own timidity, I fear CIOs are losing the battle for strategic relevance in the brave new digital world.