What Nobody Tells You About Becoming a CIO

Veteran CIO and executive coach Larry Bonfante has watched talented IT leaders chase the CIO title for all the wrong reasons—bigger paycheck, bigger office, more power. He explains what the job actually requires and why it's worth it for the right people.

There's an old expression: be careful what you wish for.

Many of the leaders I've coached have asked me to help them develop the skills to become CIOs. When I ask them why they want the job, they look at me like I have two heads. Press a little harder, and they roll off a laundry list of seductive reasons: a bigger paycheck, a bigger office, a nicer title, the "prestige" they imagine comes with it. They're also drawn to the emotional power of being "the boss."

What they don't realize is that the CIO job has almost nothing to do with what made them successful up to that point—and that the power they're chasing comes with a cost most people never see coming. I've coached leaders who wanted my old job, and more than once, watched them talk themselves out of it in a single conversation.

Here’s what nobody tells you: the job is harder than it looks, the perks are thinner than advertised, and sometimes you have to be the one everyone blames. But it’s also one of the most rewarding roles you’ll ever have. You get to impact not just the organization’s bottom line, but the career trajectory and quality of life of the people that you lead. I want anyone considering this path to walk into this role with eyes wide open, understanding both the challenges and the upsides that come with it. 

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

Early in my leadership career, I started asking my direct reports a question during their annual reviews: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" The phrasing usually got a laugh and broke the tension of a performance review. It also gave me insight into their aspirations, so I could help them build the skills and experience to get there.

When I was a director of global infrastructure services at Pfizer, I asked a talented direct report this question. His answer was immediate: "I want your job." I said, "That's awesome—let's talk about what that actually entails." Fifteen minutes later, he realized that while he wanted my salary and my office, he sure didn't want my job.

The Swiss Watchmaker's Syndrome

You might be thinking: come on, Larry, what's so different about the top job versus being a direct report? Isn't it just a matter of degree? It's not.

Many talented leaders rise through an organization based on deep subject-matter expertise. They're brilliant architects, engineers, project managers, or developers. A large part of the satisfaction they get from work comes from these contributions—seeing the tangible fruits of their labor in a new system or business process that delivers real value. I call this the “Swiss watchmaker's syndrome”.

I always told my people two things.

First, if your CIO is the smartest technical person in the building, you're probably in trouble. A CIO is usually a jack of all technical trades and a master of none. You need to understand every technical area you manage well enough to have a finely tuned "BS meter" for vendor promises, and you need to be a resource your people can bounce ideas off of. But you can't be the subject-matter expert in every discipline that reports to you. That's why you have them.

Second, I used to half-joke that as CIO, I didn't do any actual work. I spent plenty of time and energy at the office, but there wasn't a single tangible artifact left behind because of my personal effort. I didn't write a line of code—the last code I wrote was in COBOL and Fortran. I didn't plug a single Ethernet cable into a switch or router—the last time I did that, we were working with Synoptics hubs and Cisco AGS routers. The job required a completely different set of muscles than the ones that got me there.

What the Job Requires

The competencies that make an effective CIO have very little to do with technical expertise.

My focus was building a high-performing culture: a team greater than the sum of its parts, built on trust, loyalty, accountability, and resilience. I had several situations where a team member was dealing with something personal. I always tell my coaching clients to remember that your people are human beings first and human resources second. When you show small kindnesses—letting someone leave work early to see their daughter’s soccer game or work remotely to take their elderly mother to treatments—the message you are sending is that they matter to you, not only as a “cog in the machine,” but as a whole person.

I also had to become a skilled relationship manager, someone who could influence C-level peers, the board, and people at every level of the organization whose support my team needed to succeed. One board member was cynical about how much money we were investing in IT. I invited him to join our IT Steering Committee so he could see firsthand how the sausage was made and understand how our investments connected to the organization’s mission. This turned him from a detractor into a champion for our efforts.

I managed and balanced budgets and resources across dozens of projects and operational services, spanning geographies and business units. When I started in my role, I had an analyst supporting four operational systems. Two years later, after significant growth, he was supporting over 40 systems. When I told my board we might kill him with this workload, their response was, “If you kill him, hire a new one.” That shocked me at first, but I realized the fault was mine. I’d framed the issue around what I cared about, not what they cared about. Two months later, I came back and explained that the systems this one person supported represented more than $250 million in annual revenue, and that without a backup, we were putting that revenue at risk. I got approval to add two more people.

And I had to become a capable storyteller, someone who could motivate leaders to invest in things they didn't fully understand, support initiatives that weren't always intuitive, and trust someone who came from a part of the organization that often felt foreign to them. When I first became CIO, I realized that we were terribly underinvested in our infrastructure. We made some investments which drove greater demand for our services. A year later, I needed another infusion of capital. If I’d told the board we needed to build out additional technology infrastructure (a term they really didn’t understand), they would have seen me as just another CIO always looking for money. Instead, I explained it in layperson’s terms: our first investment built a solid foundation for a three-bedroom house. Now, demand for our capabilities had grown so much that we were supporting a ten-floor office building, and heating and powering that building cost far more than supporting the three-bedroom house. Explaining it that way made it easy to say yes.

This is the real work of the CIO role. None of it shows up on a technical résumé, and none of it is what got these leaders promoted in the first place.

The Cost of the Power

As for the "power" of being the boss? Leadership is a serious responsibility, not a perk.

I was accountable for everything that happened, from a help desk ticket to a multimillion-dollar rollout. I felt responsible for the careers and livelihoods of the dozens of people I represented. I had to make difficult, sometimes unpopular decisions that affected people's lives.

During the economic downturn of the mid-2000s, I knew my board and CFO would eventually demand budget and personnel cuts. The good news is that we got ahead of it. We proactively built a new IT organization and sourcing model that addressed our financial situation before anyone forced indiscriminate staff reductions. The bad news is that the new model required sunsetting several positions. One person I had to let go was deeply respected and well-liked in the organization. I hated making that call, and I lost more sleep over it than anyone ever knew. Plenty of people saw me as the villain: the "hatchet man" who pushed out a beloved colleague.

It wasn't fun. But it had to be done. We survived and thrived under the new model. The psychic cost, though, was heavy.

The Step Up Is Bigger Than It Looks

When I left my CIO role at the end of 2016, I asked two of my most senior direct reports whether they wanted to throw their hats in the ring for my job, and whether they'd like me to put in a good word for them. Both told me, in no uncertain terms: "No thanks—your job sucks. I don't want it."

The step from direct report to CIO looks like one small step up the ladder. It isn't. It's a big step, one that deserves real thought and preparation—developmentally and emotionally—before you take it.

I run 5K races, which for me is about as far as my body will comfortably carry me these days. And they’ve only gotten harder as I’ve gotten older. When people ask me why I keep running them anyway,  I tell them that the payoff of finishing the race and seeing the clock as I cross the finish line is worth every bit of effort it took to get there.

CIO jobs aren’t easy. But if you do them for the right reasons, the legacy you might leave behind is one of corporate and personal growth, and the people you led will remember the impact you had on their journey. I can’t think of a greater payoff for the time and energy you invest.