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CIOs Dismissed As Techies Without Business Savvy By CEOs
Qedward writes in with a link about the gap between the tech side of business and the bean counters. "CIOs are being dismissed by CEOs as too techie and not aligned with business activities. According to recent Gartner survey of 220 CEOs across the world, business leaders expect spending on IT to rise, but without a corresponding rise in the importance of the role of the CIO within the organization. CIOs appear to be failing in the eyes of CEOs in terms of alignment with the rest of the business. The research showed the stereotype of the head of IT being too preoccupied with technical issues to be effective business leaders persists. He said they were perceived as unable to bring a breadth of business perspective to the table."
Imdustry shouldn't have followed the government's lead when they instituted titles like that. Is industry going to start using the term Tsar soon, too? Or maybe they want their CIOs to multitask and also work as bean counters now. Kind of like industry wants me to design systems, administer them AND be able to program like a pro. Everybody needs to do more to ensure we keep that unemployment rate high, employment insecurity high, fear levels high and wages real LOW, right? "According to the Computer History Museum, the C-level position for IT is believed to have started in military and government, then becoming adopted by industry. William Synnott and William Gruber get credit for coining the term in 1981."
Walgreens pharmacy. Their CEO is concentrated on building revenue by letting all the help go in order to pay his bonuses. I went by there yesterday and the place was backed up, the wait for a prescription was over 2 hours and they had one guy, the Pharmacist, manning the phone, the drive-thru window and the counter plus he was trying to fill prescriptions. This was never the case until just recently but now it's an everyday thing there. I hate to move to another pharmacy because that one is only 3.5 miles from the house but if this keeps up I'm outa there.
Bob Nardelli of Home Depot. Nearly ran the company into the ground with his corner-cutting. Walked away with a $200M golden parachute. It's amazing the company is still around.
Enron, MCI-Worldcom, AIG, etc...
The question is not if IT is customer facing or bringing in new business; the question is if technology needs to be discussed at board level. Those aren't discussions about buying iPhones vs. Androids for staff, nor is it about buying IT stuff at the right price or making the right purchasing deals; it is about technological developments or decisions that can have an impact on the company strategy or internal workings of the company. If you use IT for bookkeeping and handling orders, then your IT just needs to work, and there's probably no need for a CIO at the board level. But if you're a knowledge-intensive, innovative company, then your edge may depend on adopting new tech to do and manage your business differently. You may need a CIO for that, and a good one isn't a business person nor a techy, but a bit of both. If you're going to discuss the impact of technology on your business strategy, you need to know about business, your business, as well as have very strong knowledge of what is happening out there in tech land. I've seen strong performers in such roles from both technical and business backgrounds, but all the good ones have a very keen interest in technology, and the wherewithal to understand it at least at a high level.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I thought Dilbert was a joke until I left the private sector and moved to the corporate world. Exec positions should require minimum 15 years actually working actual jobs....
Yeah, I'm keeping my options open, though I'm not aggressively looking right now due to some personal & financial reasons. But as soon as I get some of those things tied up... you bet. I'm low-UID slashdotter here (under 10k) posting anon for obvious reasons.
The above story is only the beginning of the story, really. I've joked that maybe there should be a large wall somewhere in the building that can be alternatively either torn down or rebuilt again every six months or so... again I've only been at this job for 6yrs or so, and I've watched a part of a warehouse (attached to office) get transformed from storage for [primary product], then a new mail office (three walls, roof, windows and doors inside the warehouse), that new office torn down, build a new mock showroom, then that was torn down, and most recently the company's fitness center was moved there (its third location since I started). Yeah, now people walking from the locker rooms (connected to the fitness center in the first incarnation) must now potentially cross forklift traffic. It's asinine.
Public sector: Ran with public funds (i.e. government).
Private sector: Ran with private funds (essentially everything outside government and often includes government owned by privately managed companies).
"Chainsaw Al" Dunlap is another, nearly destroying Sunbeam. Once known for quality products, Dunlap's constant mass firings of the most experienced employees resulted in Sunbeam becoming yet another bottom-shelf manufacturer.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
You are technically correct, according to the technical definition you provided, but not necessarily correct for colloquioal definitions. The economy is not simply divided into two sectors. There are the "Private Sector", "Corporate Sector" (sometimes known as Banking Sector), Public Sector, Home Sector, Retail Sector... you may also choose to divide your sectors by field in an even more granular fashion.
We have a winner!
Here's some reasons that an executive needs at least a passable understanding of the skills of his subordinates:
1. Without that understanding, he's going to hire and promote the people with the skill to hoodwink the executive rather than the skill to lead the team they're in charge of. That not only means you end up with badly run departments, but also you end up with lousy morale from those who do actually know what they're doing.
2. The executive will have some clue what he's telling his subordinates to do, and what's feasible and what's not. That is vital to establishing his credibility with his subordinates, because without that credibility his subordinates won't follow him.
So I might not need to know all the intracacies of finance to manage the accounting department, but I absolutely have to know what the difference between EBIT and gross revenue is. I don't have to know all the techniques of sales to manage a sales team, but I should know enough about how salespeople work to be able to usefully direct them towards their goal. And with IT, I don't have to know how to correctly set up a firewall, but I should know what a firewall is and what it can and can't do for me. And if I'm a CEO, then I should have some of that knowledge about every department, so I can make sure that the team directly around me is one I can trust.
I should point out that the best CEOs did in fact make the effort to both understand the core of their business, and to know enough about the other departments to manage them effectively. For instance, Bill Gates really understands computer software, but he also has some knowledge of marketing techniques and reading balance sheets.
I am officially gone from
CEOs pause from giving themselves another raise and more stock options to exercise their egos. In other news, sun rises in east.