What new skills will CIOs need over the next few years?

A group of top UK-based CIOs discuss their changing roles, and what new skills they'll need to develop to lead their organisations into 2020

Communication and influencing skills, the ability to deliver strategic change initiatives, and a deep understanding of emerging technologies and digital marketing processes. Those are the skills CIOs are going to need to lead their organisations over the next few years, according to some of the UK's top IT leaders.

Computing asked a group of CIOs from our list of the top IT Leaders in 2017 about the skills they'll most need over the next few years. Here are their responses.

Earlier, the same IT leaders explained what's needed to make the step up into the CIO role.

Tom Clark, CIO, Leeds Building Society

The pace of change continues to accelerate and the CIO needs to be able to deliver both strategic change initiatives with longer lead times, and more nimble and inventive tactical change in parallel. These latter ones needs the CIO to be close to understanding how the business works at an operational level, what matters to its customers, and what the options and limitations you have with your technology estate.

With this you can deliver true business value to keep up with the expectations of the business and customers. As markets change and businesses models transform, the CIO needs to contribute to the strategic thinking of an organisation to help shape how technology can be used to to disrupt.

The reality is only a small number of CIOs will be in the position where that is possible for their organisation, but for those that are, the contribution they can make is huge.

John Linwood, former CIO of Wood MacKenzie and former CTO of the BBC

Influencing skills are essential to help drive the strategy for the business. CIOs are increasingly needing to transition from delivery and operational towards becoming the agenda setters for organisations. This means understanding the opportunities for future value creation and success of the business which are unlocked through technology. Of course that also requires that the CIO remains across current and emerging technologies. Here, Information Security remains one of, if not the top risk facing organisations today and typically this is seen as the domain of the CIO.

Charles Ewen, director of technology and CIO, the Met Office

Organisations are finding that speed is increasingly beating scale, in fact scale can be a major disadvantage. It is hard for large and complex organisations to move quickly but it is becoming an ever more important part of a successful business.

To do that, really understanding the strategic advantage that emerging technologies have the potential to deliver, how to make the case, swift and effective execution, recognising early when something is not living up to expectations and responding are all skills that will become more and more important.

[Turn to next page]

What new skills will CIOs need over the next few years?

A group of top UK-based CIOs discuss their changing roles, and what new skills they'll need to develop to lead their organisations into 2020

Mark Ridley, Group Technology Officer at Blenheim Chalcot Accelerate

Let's face it, the same skills are required for success now as ten, twenty or fifty years ago.

The most important job is to be able to sell. Being a CIO isn't about being a technologist, it's about being able to sell technology to a board, and selling a company strategy to your team.

That doesn't mean that you won't need technical skills - they're critical to you holding the respect of your team, and to delivering everything you just promised in the board meeting. But knowing how to interact with people at different levels across the organisation, from
investors to junior developers in interviews, that's what sets you apart.

And if one thing is going to be even more important going forward? Practice learning. The speed of change in technology is furious and getting faster. If you can practice one thing? Learn more, and never stop learning. It's a skill you can develop, like any other.

Julian Bond, head of ICT, Hillarys
I'm not sure to what extent entirely new skills will be needed, but there's clearly a shift in the relative importance and degree of competence that'll be required.

Certainly the ongoing journey of Digital Transformation is going to make it even trickier for people to become IT Leaders through a solely technical career path.

A more-than-cursory affinity with Digital Marketing becomes more important to ensure that occupants of the CIO/CMO/CDO chairs can collaboratively deliver value.

Embracing the mind-set of lean, agile, start-up and then finding the opportunities to take advantage as a pathfinder for wider adoption.