CIO - the best job in the world?

Duncan Stott, CIO of engineering firm Kier, explains why he thinks technology leadership is the best job in the world

Being a CIO is the best job in the world, according to Duncan Stott, CIO of engineering firm Kier.

Computing recently spoke to Stott, who placed 12th on the IT Leaders 100 list for 2017. He explained that the role is fundamentally about understanding the way in which technology is evolving, and marrying this to business needs in a clear, simple strategy.

The transcript of the interview is below, and the video will be available soon.

Duncan Stott, CIO, Kier

"It is absolutely the best role. The whole world is going through a technology revolution. It's affecting every single person on the planet. Frankly, everyone is struggling to keep up. Our job as CIOs, our priority and our privilege is to harness all of that technology and make it happen. Make it deliver value. If the technology wasn't so wonderful it would be a difficult job. But the technology is so amazing that we're spoilt for choice.

"Fundamentally the CIO role is about seeing the future. You've got to see the future of where technology is going and what your business is doing. You've got to have a vision for that. Then you have to marry that vision of the future with really knowing what your business is about and what the people, the executives, are about, and understanding the strategy behind the strategy.

"When you've got those two together, seeing the future and understanding the business, that's your base camp.

"In both cases it's about scanning, keeping networked, reading and harvesting the information that's on Computing and other places, and keeping up with what's going on. As far as understanding your own business, there's nothing better than knowing the people, then you can understand what the business is about. That gives you your place to move forward.

"Once you've got that, the first thing to do is to create a model, which describes what you're trying to do as CIO. Over the next say two years, what are you trying to achieve? That's got to be simple, you have to be able to communicate it, and it has to endure. A model, you could call it a strategy or a vision, but you need to be able to communicate it in [the time it takes for an elevator to go between floors].

"To make that happen there's two things you need to do. One is engineering the solutions. The trap that CIOs can sometimes fall into is getting stuck on the technology of the solution. We have excellent people who can give us all the options and all the solutions we want. Our job is to choose between them.

"The choice depends on the model, which depends on the strategy of the business and our vision of the future, but still, it's up to us to choose the solutions. And then we have to give our people time to build them."

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CIO - the best job in the world?

Duncan Stott, CIO of engineering firm Kier, explains why he thinks technology leadership is the best job in the world

"The other side of the coin is we've got to build the teams and the alliances within the business and between IT and the business. Building those solutions, and building the teams is actually the bulk of our jobs. Both take years. You cannot do quick fixes here, there is a place for patches, but these are two big things, and they take years to build. The teams have got to work for years, and the solutions have got to be in place for years. That's the job of the CIO.

"One thing that's overlooked a lot is emotional intelligence. Choosing people where you can see that's a strength, or an appetite of theirs, they want to work and grow in that way, and then developing a working environment which encourages emotional intelligence, that's working together and listening to one another, being open and honest and having tight conversations, where that's part of the fabric of how you work.

"IT is so dynamic, there's a new flavour every quarter. We have to respond to business emergencies, but if we keep changing our direction, then all is lost, we're never actually going to deliver these things. So, a CIO's job is while this is going on to keep the ship stable. I've already talked about having a model and strategy which endures for years, so you can pin your intentions on that, but you've got to enable your teams to complete.

"Starting is fun. Raising business cases is cool, but we've got to complete. The CIO role must be to enable the ship to sail in a stable fashion so you can take a breath and move on. Once you get things done you can move on, you can build platforms, and you can build more upon that.

"This overall strategy is above and beyond the individual methods and techniques and technologies that come along. So we might choose an agile way of working and a different solution, but we are not changing the overall model that we're developing and the direction we're going in. So it's understanding what do we keep stable, and where do we allow variation."