Debate: the future role of the CIO

Professionalism, a seat on the board and the use of social media

Adam Thilthorpe: Arguing for IT professionalism

An IT conference nearly always provides the opportunity for some navel-gazing about the future role of the CIO. This week’s 360IT conference was no exception.

The CIO in his or her current embodiment is an endangered species, under threat of extinction by the tech-savvy business manager, Peter Birley, director of IT and business operations at law firm Browne Jacobsen LLP told delegates.

“Will future IT leaders come from an IT background?” Birley asked. “Not unless today’s IT leaders can bridge the gulf between IT and business. Future business managers will have more intimate knowledge of IT because they will have grown up with it. Industry knowledge may be more important than technical knowledge.”

The old-fashioned IT manager who knows a lot about technology but little about the business, is no role-model for an aspiring CIO.

“I don’t think any CIO can do their job without a sound knowledge of the business,” David Jones, CIO of the Crown Prosecution Service argued. “The CIO had better be a person who knows how to exploit technology but to do that you have to understand the aims of the business.”

If IT is viewed in anyway separate from the business it will be viewed as a cost, said Jones. “I don’t like the term IT project, it implies cost, whereas I focus on return on investment in terms of operational effectiveness.”

No one disagrees that CIOs need business skills, but do they need an MBA?

Not necessarily, but it might help, said Adam Thilthorpe, director for professionalism at BCS.

“Not every CIO needs a computer science degree, although it helps. Not all business managers need an MBA, although it helps. Qualifications set standards and that’s how businesses like to recruit,” he said.

Lee Bryant, founder of Headshift, sees a role for IT in helping the business exploit social technology.

“The traditional leadership skills of good communication and charisma, need translating into the networked world and IT can help to do this,” he said.

Social technology is important because it is “swinging the pendulum back from processes to people,” said Bryant. Business is based on trust and used to be based on personal relationships between trustworthy merchants. Socialising businesses increases trust among people and thus reduces risk: risk of fraud or the systemic failures of blind processes seen in the financial crisis, he explained.

But does this kind of strategic work necessitate a seat on the board? Here the panel was divided.

The BCS lobbies hard to increase the professionalism of IT, working with academia and industry to instil business knowledge in IT employees and to elevate IT to a board-level activity.

“If the CIO is on the board it can have an encouraging trickle-down effect on the organisation and a good knock-on effect when it comes to recruiting new talent to the IT department,” said Thilthorpe. “It shows ambitious people don’t have to move out of IT to get to the top.”

However, IT has a long way to go before it can be considered a profession.

“A profession is something you have to pass exams to get into and get struck off of for doing something wrong,” a chartered accountant in the debate audience reminded the panel.

Besides, elevation to the c-suite is a mixed blessing because it breeds conservatism and makes people protect budgets not innovate, argued Bryant. He advised against “premature optimisation”.

“Pick carefully what you professionalise in IT but don’t solidify current practice because it isn’t very good,” he said.

Whether the CIO is in every board meeting is less important than what he does when invited to attend, argued the panel.

“I’m not on the board but when I’m in a board meeting I take the lead on operational effectiveness,” said Jones.