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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."
Alert: CEOs also don't like CFOs who tell them they are losing money.
Notice: CEOs don't like COOs who inform them that cancelling the pension fund is illegal.
Warning: CEOs don't like CIOs who spend money on "infrastructure" instead of "apps".
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
That's okay. Most CEO's should generally be dismissed as people with no leadership abilities, intelligence, morals, scruples or logic.
Hence, "businessmen" as opposed to "Human."
Consistency is only a virtue if you're not a screw-up.
CIO's are dismissed as suits without tech savvy by engineering.
Go figure.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
This didn't sound like fire-fighting? Though I'll agree, someone that's always busy fighting fires needs to focus more on fire prevention.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I've often gotten the impression that IT is perceived by management as Janitorial services, or Corporate Archives, or the company cafeteria by companies that are not directly selling IT services themselves, as well as government agencies in general. They are a cost center, but not a revenue center. They are not customer facing, so they are just another physical plant cost. Like keeping the lights on, the water flowing, and the elevators running.
In some companies this is in fact the proper place for IT services. If all a company's use of computer technology is merely to process letters and reports, fill out time sheets, and read email you really don't need to attributed a great deal of status or power to the IT staff.
But who uses computers that way any more? Only really small business. Restaurants, plumbers, small stores, small law firms, etc.
IT departments have a problem of perception, because the better they do their job (without being total dickheads about it) the less they get noticed, and the more they become perceived as mere Archivists or telephone repairmen. Its almost like management needs an emergency or outage every 4 years to remind them just how much of their business relies on their IT.
That being said, unless your IT is customer facing (internet services or sales, etc) the perception that CIOs do not bring new business is reasonably valid. They may help you keep the business you have, but just about nothing IT can do will sell one more unit of product, or add one new customer. IT that is not customer facing is in fact still a support service. Support services tend not to make business decisions or grow the company.
So maybe pushing CIOs into the front office and the boardroom was not always warranted. And maybe in a lot of companies they still don't belong there. And maybe CIOs should not be hired from technical backgrounds.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
So many CEOs don't like CIOs? And resort to namecalling? They reveal themselves ...
Such CEOs are very arrogant and resentful of any nay-sayers. Even when the objections are based on physics or established computing capabilities.
The problem is such CEOs have gotten to where they are by pushing people around, and believe physics can be similarly pushed. Sorry, but it won't even notice.
"CIOs are being dismissed by CEOs as too techie and not aligned with business activities."
One of the main purposes of CIOs and CTOs to represent the technology side of the business at the executive level. I work for a client that has no CIO or CTO and middle management is supposed to step up for the technology-side, but their not at the same level as the CEO and they're afraid to tell the executives the truth. CTOs and CIOs report to the board so that they have an equal standing with other executives.
CIOs are in charge of a giant cost center. That a section of the business where money goes to die. The CEO's POV is that anyone who can't make a profit for the company is lacking in business sense. This, of course, misses the point entirely. However, when you take into account who the inevitable audience is (the board and the shareholders) for every single thought, word and deed of every single CEO, the comments make perfect sense. No CEO worth his $10 million salary would ever say that anyone who loses company money has business sense.
In the end a good CEO knows you don't hire a CIO based on their business sense or even their technical know-how. You Hire them based on their ability to successfully deliver on technology promises. That's more a project-leader thing and not something CEOs are known to do very well. Its the same with CFOs. You hire them based on their ability to know exactly where the money went, is going, and will go. Again, not a trait CEOs are famous for.
CEOs don't care about "cutting corners dangerously", causing potential problems in some nebulous "future", they only care about this quarters stock price. By the time problems develop from their shortsightedness, it will be Someone Else's Problem.
In college, all of the IT degrees were part of the School of Business rather than the School of Technology - and all of the professors preached that while tech is cool, it's useless if it doesn't help the business. So far in my professional career, I've found that to always be the case.
To the typical CEO of today, the Sales VPs make money while IT costs money.
CEO: All the CIOs keep saying we should waste money upgrading from IE 6 and our crappy Windows 2000 servers. All IT does is cost money money and I can't raise the share price by staying ahead of the competition when I can just let my infrastructure fall apart and lead by saving money and not innovating. Waaa CIOS suck
CEO: What?! What do you mean my IPAD can't display that IE 6 app properly? I pay for the state of the art outsourced development team. bla bla
Typical BS from CEOs who got promoted up for being good cost accountants with only an eye for increasing efficiency and cutting cost while not saying the forest from the trees.
20 years ago CEOs were former engineers and product developers. They understood investments and did not focus on just costs. WHenever I hear failing to be alianged with the needs of the business. I just picture someone being cheap and thinking all IT is good for is help desk and word and excel. Not anything else like database, ERP, or anything else that adds value. Its just a cost and nothing else.
http://saveie6.com/
CEOs don't care about "cutting corners dangerously", causing potential problems in some nebulous "future", they only care about this quarters stock price. By the time problems develop from their shortsightedness, it will be Someone Else's Problem... because they will have long ago jumped out the window on a golden parachute and now be running for president while claiming they "created jobs" as a Bain Capital Corporate Raider.
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.
The problem is that IT people always think that nobody but an IT person can possibly manage an IT department, and MBAs can't possibly understand the needs.
No, actually, the problem comes from MBAs thinking they don't need all the skills you mentioned. And then, won't someone think of the poor, poor executives when they start playing over par as they struggle to understand why the minimum wage delivery drivers don't like the new "smile or we fire you" morale-boosting initiative; why the AR clerks raise an eyebrow when you explain to them how even though we lose money consistently from the same set of deadbeat customers, we need to keep those same deadbeats happy so just let it slide again this month; why the nurses keep talking about stupid shit like "patients dying" when forced to work 18-hour shifts.
Yes, the truck driver (or the highly skilled engineer, for that matter) doesn't necessarily understand the world of business. But the business side most definitely does need to understand the operational details of what their company does.
The problem is that IT people always think that nobody but an IT person can possibly manage an IT department, and MBAs can't possibly understand the needs.
Uhhhhh.....
That's true.
It is not arrogance either. According to your logic i dont require an understanding of accounting, finances, etc to manage the accounting department. I can just jump in and fake it till i make it.
That's disrespectful of IT and trivializes their field. If you are not in IT you most likely dont have the breadth of knowledge required to manage the department well.
I could relate anecdotes for hours about shortsighted managers and executives where "not aligned with businesses interests" translates to "i am butthurt because you pointed out technical flaws or the unrealistic cost and time projections of my ideas".
A CIO and CEO can act like mature adults and bring both their skillsets together to find a solution that is both technically feasible and aligned with business interests.
Or we can continue with the stereotypes and attacks and accomplish less. I wonder why there are so many problems.........
CEOs don't care about "cutting corners dangerously", causing potential problems in some nebulous "future", they only care about this quarters stock price. By the time problems develop from their shortsightedness, it will be Someone Else's Problem... because they will have long ago jumped out the window on a golden parachute and now be running for president while claiming they "created jobs" as a Bain Capital Corporate Raider.
Corporate raiders are people too, my friend.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
>Are Shipping Operations Managers hired from the driver pool or the mechanic pool?
Are CFOs hired from tellers or account clerks?
Are hospital administrators selected from the best nursing staff or even the interns?
Once upon a time they were. Back in those days you could actually WORK your way to the top of a firm. Loyalty and effort were rewarded.
Nowadays, if you didn't choose to study MBA kiss any hope of ever earning an executive salary goodbye... and that is a big part of why business is in the fuckup it's in.
Why be loyal in an age of "headcount reduction" ? Why work hard for a company if your continued employment from one month to the next is mostly a lottery thing.
In fact... you're better off NOT working too hard. If you work the least, you'll be out of there - but if you're the best you also get fired because you're the most expensive.
Once a company goes public - quality of work loses all value to those who really run it (people who own shares - and their goal is to sell them for a profit THIS quarter). So what happens ? Nobody cares if the business is bankrupt in a year. What matters is maxing out the profits right now - and you do that by firing all the talent (and selling all the useful assets).
About the same time companies started calling people "resources" they started treating them with the same respect they give other resources... like staplers, so of course the people responded by treating the companies with that same (lack of) respect... voila - economic collapse.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
This is just a rehashing of the classic arrogance of the executive class -- that "managing" is the skill they specialize in, and there's no need to have any specialized knowledge of the area you manage.
The justification for this perspective often boils down to some combination of:
* I'm a decision-maker/course-setter. I hire area experts to explain complex details to me in simplified terms and then I make decisions and set future directions based upon this information. Structuring the management decisions is what's really important.
* I'm well educated and intelligent. I can figure most of this stuff out on my own. So-called "experts" in this field aren't as smart as they think they are (and I actually am) and dramatically overstate the complexity of their fields and the amount of information needed to make decisions.
While these two positions are somewhat contradictory, I've seen plenty of executives who hold both positions simultaneously. The former is actually somewhat reasonable and is more or less how most large organizations have to function.
The problem is that arrogance creeps in, and executives tend to cherry-pick -- when their area experts don't tell them what they want to hear, they fall back to their belief that they are the smartest guy in the room and make poorly informed decisions based on their own "understanding" of the topics at hand.
The real problem is the MBA degree, which i've been saying for 30 years is destroying the US. They're the ones with "long-term thinking" == "next quarter".
In terms specifically of IT, I recently realized that the major problem was the complete idiocy, started AFAIK in the 80's, of declaring each part of the company "profit" or "cost" centers. Everywhere I've worked, if they had that, they kept trying to make IT a "profit" center... meaning charging other divisions for the work, leading to:
a) other divisions buying their own equipment and software
b) other divisions creating half-baked software to get around paying IT to do it, which is why you find
mind-bogglingly big spreadsheets instead of databases, and
c) cut spending by IT on hardware, software, and, I mean, why would you want to spend all that money on
experienced people, we can hire two or three folks right out of college who are "fresh", or maybe outsource
it to Asia or eastern Europe for a quarter the price.....
mark "then there's HR...."
"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.
Companies bankrupt under Bain: 30%.
Companies that bankrupted within 2 years of being "spun off" from Bain: 80%.
The Bain Capital methodology was simple.
Step 1: Buy out a company.
Step 2: Sell off all the assets you can, and raid the pension fund.
Step 3: Hide stolen assets in tax shelters and overseas accounts.
Step 4: Put the company into bankruptcy to shift the burden of pension fund and other debts to taxpayers. If necessary for state law, "spin off" company into unowned status first.
Mitt Romney: corporate thief and fraudster. Bain Capital's corporate raider scheme wasn't just fraud, it was fraud that put the burden of its behavior on the taxpayers.
Make the T-shirt and wear it to the office!
MANAGEMENT is the BIGGEST COST CENTRE