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Why Don't More CIOs Become CEO?
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.""
How about, they can be productive, stay on the cool technology, and get good pay with only a fraction of the corporate governance bullshit.
We wouldn't be geeks if we didn't enjoy working with the new equipment.
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You're absolutely right.
CEO's come from a company's profit centers- sales and marketing. COO's come from a company's cost centers- operations, production, and IT. COOs rarely jump to become CEOs. The board that picks the CEO is almost always interested in maximizing profit, never interested in minimizing loss.
What a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can.
IT is considered a "support function", making it difficult from people from that department to break into the top offices.
It's why you only see fighter pilots at the top of the Air Force and past carrier skippers at the top of the Navy, etc. You could be a great transport pilot, sub driver or the logistics guy that ran the Berlin Airlift, but you'll never make it to the top.
Why? I guess you could call it "Institutional Bias".
Look Out Above!
I doubt it's a lack of social skill so much as a lacking social network compared to the friend pool a typical CEO would have. To get that far up the food chain you at least have to have some political skills, which probably implies social skills as well. This is the director level after all, and not the back office admin level.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
"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."
No argument there.
No, they are supremely aware of how one segment of the business works. An important segment, but still a limited view.
No, that would probably be sales/marketing or operations depending on the nature of the business.
I'd suggest pondering a company that has been an aggressive and pioneering user of IT since 1969, Wal-Mart. Despite being one of the most consistently successful firms with respect to IT, their long term strategy has been that IT is a temporary assignment. That managers are "merchants first", something else secondarily. Now a side effect of this is perhaps to spread IT knowledge throughout management.
I would argue that business success is largely based upon stategy, and IT is more of an implementor of stategy, not as much a formulator of strategy. IT skills are valuable, but being a people-person, a motivator, a leader, is critical for a CEO. I'd wager that if we took a close look at those CIOs who rose to CEOs we would find a lot of experience outside of IT. One long term stategy for becoming a CEO is to take stretch assignment outside of one's comfort zone, to work in more than one discipline within the company. I expect that CIO was merely the last such assignment, not that someone spent an entire career in IT and became CEO.
CIOs are nerds. CEOs have to be able to deal with people.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Alot of CIO's aren't seen as trustworthy by other management staff. The fact that they control such a vital part of the business that others know nothing about is frightening. Also they tend to be blamed for others' lack of technological knowledge. People think their IT departments are poorly managed.
You become CEO bcause of who you know.
Hi, Yale! Hi, Wharton!
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Most IT managers I've met are non-technical. They're just managers.
I suspect it has more to do with being stigmatized as a technical guy because they manage IT, rather than actually being technical and lacking in interpersonal skills. When looking for a new CEO, whoever is doing the picking wants someone that has a reputation of being good with people...which, by association (to IT), IT managers are not. Non-IT people seem to think anyone who has anything to do with IT must be a nerd, and therefore incapable of excelling interpersonally.
YMMV, of course.
Now I doubt this is going to go over will on /. but when I was in university we noted a - completely non-scientific - pattern that I'll try to sum up as succinctly as possible:
e land.html
'Those who want to work for someone else go into engineering/IT; those who want others to work for them go into the arts.'
If you don't believe me go check out the Forbes 500 richest people list and see how many of them either dropped out or have liberal arts degrees. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2003/02/26/billionair
Now excuse my while I go round up some flame-retardant clothing.
S.