Why would you care? As many businesses grow they have a need for not only supporting an IT infrastructure, but to also have develop IT leadership. Many strategies for acquiring this knowledge are used. Some outsource, some hire a captain of IT (COI) with a variety of job titles, and some assign this responsibility to someone on the support team. Thus, many of the following realities are true for all of us.

 

The role. What is the role of the CIO in any organization? Peter Drucker explained it succinctly. He said, "Most CEOs still believe that it's the chief information officer's job to identify the information he requires. This is, of course, a fallacy. The information officer is a toolmaker; the CEO is the tool user."

 

As such, the role includes acting as the organization's eyes and ears to learn and understand new technology opportunities and how they will improve the potency of the information at the CEOs disposal for decision-making. Educating, training, transferring knowledge, and championing the continued professional development of IT are also essential elements. Finally, overseeing the successful execution of vision, to create the tools for the CEO and other management is critical.

 

Balancing constituencies. In organizations, there are many constituencies that are directly impacted by every IT initiative. Some include management versus users, finance versus users or management, and even people focused on long-term versus short-term strategy. The CIO must be capable as serving as the liaison between these groups of effected people to build consensus for the overall direction of IT and yet still listen and understand the needs of each constituency.

 

Included in this reality is the delicate nature of ROI (return on investment) and defining cost of ownership. One of the most difficult questions is always whether certain IT initiatives are investments or costs of doing business (i.e. normal business expenses like customer entertaining may be).

 

The challenge of meeting these first two realities may be one of the reasons that many employment surveys show that the average length of employment of a CIO is under two years. Therefore, as employers of COIs, we must be particularly sensitive to finding the right matches for our organizations and trying to understand the roles that we have assigned to them.

 

Vendors stink. Obviously not all vendors stink, but one of the toughest obstacles of IT in any organizations is the reliance on vendors who can be unreliable. For example, if the NASDQ is not safe from a paralyzing WAN outage during the business day, why should anyone else expect immunity from such events? Or take Microsoft, a company that is arrogantly leveraging its dominance in the marketplace by effectively significantly increasing licensing cost -- because it can! The powerless nature of controlling your own IT destiny based on long-standing vendor relationships makes steering IT very time-consuming and frustrating.

 

And my examples are of initiatives that are moving ahead and applications that are stable! For initiatives still underway, vendors that change midstream of a project that involves internal resources and users can become even more difficult to resolve.

 

Beyond the hype. Adding to the nightmare of bad vendors is the marketplace's technology fad mentality. We have all been guilty of it both with our investing dollars in the Market and with our IT budget. Still, the challenge of a COI is to balance management's intrigue with the newest technology that is being hyped with the deliverability of that technology as a organizational tool.

 

As I write this, two stories in USA Today demonstrate this point well. On the one hand, last year's hype, mobile Internet browsing and commerce, is not doing well - "Mobile commerce snags on disinterest." On the same page, we are told that "'doing e-business is an imperative everybody will have to embrace to be competitive,' says IDC analyst…" The question that remains is "huh?"

 

Eating your own dog food. This was one of the biggest transitions for me. As a consultant you are somewhat insulated from the outcomes of your advice. As a CIO, you have to live your decisions and recommendations. While this is a challenge to a CIO, we must remember this distinction every time we use a consultant. Ultimately, he or she is not living their recommendation.

 

Role models. While there are inspirational CEOs to help define other's roles like Jack Welch and even Jeff Bezos (as a pure technology guy), many of the gurus of technology leadership are merely consultants. Some are good consultants and some are even great, but they are not speaking from the same perspective as someone "in the trenches" or sharing insight in a real, nonacademic fashion.

 

Searching for a guide for what is a good job is difficult. For now, this must include extensive reading in the IT industry and attending networking events with other IT captains in your industry and other industries. Note that letters to the editor in many magazines can provide much needed input in what "really is going on out there."

 

Communication. Every leadership role requires a fair amount of communication. In the role of CIO, this means communicating with fellow executives, users, staff, vendors, peers and even customers. Use the variety of technology already implemented in your organization and make this communication a valuable tool. No one has the entire picture or the only creativity input in developing decision-making tools!

 

Do you have a technology toolmaker? Or as T.S. Eliot is quoted as saying, "Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"