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Why Don't More CIOs Become CEO?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Wednesday January 24, 2007 @05:17AM from the because-they-know-better dept.

jcatcw writes "Thornton May is mystified by the very small number of Fortune 500 companies that led by former CIOs. "Knowing what we know about CIOs — that is, that most are smart, hardworking, supremely aware of how the business works and increasingly savvy regarding the workings of external customers' minds — the failure of more CIOs to become CEO has to be one of the biggest mysteries of our age.""

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Re:Who does the picking? by Cigarra · 2007-01-24 05:57 · Score: 5, Informative

"Most board members are chosen by the CEO"

I sorry, what? AFAEK, the Board hires a CEO to run the company. Members of the board themselves are elected by the general meeting of shareholders.

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Re:Who does the picking by heck · 2007-01-24 06:14 · Score: 4, Informative

Face it, engineers are good at engineering, but suck at everything else. That's why they aren't chosen.
According to the September 16-17, 2006 edition of the Wall Street Journal's Weekend Edition, about 20% of the CEO's of the top US companies have engineering degrees.
I've also seen articles that mention that companies that are led by engineers tend to report better earnings than companies led my non-engineers, but that was in the days of Jack Welch (former CEO of GE).