Silicon ceiling: why aren’t more CIOs becoming CEOs?

The role of the CIO is evolv­ing. His­tor­i­cal­ly pigeon­holed as ‘tech bods’, CIOs are mak­ing high-val­ue con­tri­bu­tions that are often insep­a­ra­ble from their com­pa­nies’ wider busi­ness strate­gies.

It’s nat­ur­al to won­der what’s next for them as their work becomes ever more piv­otal: giv­en their grow­ing influ­ence as strate­gic deci­sion-mak­ers, sure­ly there’s a strong case for more of today’s CIOs to become tomorrow’s CEOs? While those in the top job typ­i­cal­ly emerge from the oper­a­tions and finance func­tions, are there qual­i­ties that are unique to CIOs that could strength­en their lead­er­ship cre­den­tials?

“The peo­ple over­see­ing the data and tech­nol­o­gy strat­e­gy in a com­pa­ny make good can­di­dates to be its next CEO. But it is not their tech­nol­o­gy or data ana­lyt­ics skills in iso­la­tion that are impor­tant,” stress­es James Berry, lec­tur­er and direc­tor of the MBA pro­gramme at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don School of Man­age­ment. “A good CEO will not only under­stand the func­tion and poten­tial of tech­nolo­gies; they will also have a broad enough under­stand­ing of the wider busi­ness to know how the data pro­duced by those tech­nolo­gies will be used by the organisation’s core func­tions.”

There is no deny­ing that rel­a­tive­ly few CIOs become CEOs, espe­cial­ly out­side the tech indus­try. One rea­son could be that the CIO’s realm of exper­tise may not be broad enough. A com­mon­ly held view is that CIOs don’t get as much expo­sure as most of their C‑level col­leagues do to oth­er key func­tions in the busi­ness, which is seen as a nec­es­sary pre­cur­sor to gain­ing the top job.

Jon Faulkn­er is the founder and CEO of design con­sul­tan­cy 6bythree Dig­i­tal, but was pre­vi­ous­ly CIO at the Lon­don School of Hygiene and Trop­i­cal Med­i­cine. He sug­gests that entrenched atti­tudes about what some­one who’s come up through the IT func­tion can bring to the par­ty are hin­der­ing the fur­ther progress of CIOs.

“I’ve had many IT lead­er­ship roles,” Faulkn­er says. “But there was a gen­er­al belief that, because of my tech­ni­cal back­ground, I didn’t have all the right skills for step­ping up to a broad­er role as a CEO (or even COO). I’ve since gone on to set up and grow two dig­i­tal agen­cies. I now have full account­abil­i­ty, cov­er­ing finance, sales, mar­ket­ing, gen­er­al man­age­ment, lead­er­ship and our deliv­ery of strat­e­gy and con­sult­ing ser­vices.” 

He con­tin­ues: “CIOs absolute­ly do have the right skills to step up, as they will invari­ably have sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial respon­si­bil­i­ties, albeit per­haps not full prof­it and loss. A CIO is con­tin­u­al­ly engag­ing in part­ner­ships, both inter­nal and exter­nal, and devel­op­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive solu­tions that reduce oper­a­tional fric­tion and align with their organisation’s imme­di­ate needs and future direc­tion.”

Dan­ny Reeves is anoth­er for­mer CIO who’s moved up to the top job. Hav­ing served as CIO and direc­tor of client ser­vices at con­struc­tion giant Bal­four Beat­ty, he is now CEO of data man­age­ment com­pa­ny Exonar. He argues that CIOs should be gain­ing all the skills they require to become CEO in the course of their role.

While Reeves believes that “being a good CIO does not nec­es­sar­i­ly make you a good CEO, you do expe­ri­ence the com­plex­i­ties of peo­ple, oper­a­tions, mar­ket­ing and sales (usu­al­ly to inter­nal stake­hold­ers) and bud­gets, all of which lead well to the CEO’s role. For me, the most impor­tant skills are man­ag­ing peo­ple and devel­op­ing inclu­sive and pos­i­tive cul­tures. That’s the same whether you’re nav­i­gat­ing the twists and turns of start­up life or deal­ing with cor­po­rate com­plex­i­ty.”

Car­o­line Sands is a part­ner at exec­u­tive search com­pa­ny Odgers Berndt­son, where she heads the CIO and tech­nol­o­gy offi­cers prac­tice. Draw­ing on her expe­ri­ence of work­ing with firms to appoint for­mer IT chiefs to CEO posi­tions, she says that the pan­dem­ic-induced uptick in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions has “led to a new appre­ci­a­tion for the skills that CIOs can apply holis­ti­cal­ly to organ­i­sa­tions”.

Sands observes that the strong appetite among cor­po­rate boards for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion has “neces­si­tat­ed the appoint­ment of lead­ers with a deep under­stand­ing of enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy. In some cas­es, this appetite has been vora­cious and has required lead­ers who under­stand when bud­gets should be allo­cat­ed to tech­nol­o­gy projects, just as much as when they should not. It’s mak­ing a com­pelling case for CIOs step­ping up as CEOs.”

But are they ful­ly equipped to han­dle some of the oth­er demands of the top job? Sands argues that, while they may be focused on tech­nol­o­gy, CIOs are still func­tion­al lead­ers. This gives them a good ground­ing for tak­ing cer­tain strate­gic ini­tia­tives from their CEOs.

Such assign­ments might include “lead­ing on a firm’s inclu­sion and diver­si­ty strat­e­gy, its approach to sus­tain­abil­i­ty, or the cul­tur­al aspects of a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion”, she says. “In an ecom­merce or B2C busi­ness, for exam­ple, CIOs may also have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get involved in prod­uct devel­op­ment.” 

Sands con­tin­ues: “We often advise CIOs to seek ways of show­cas­ing their strate­gic skills. Such oppor­tu­ni­ties com­mon­ly include turn­ing around a fail­ing busi­ness unit and bring­ing a new prod­uct or ser­vice to mar­ket. Tech­nol­o­gy under­pins almost every aspect of a busi­ness, which means that there’s plen­ty of scope for a CIO to gain broad lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence.”

Offer­ing a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, Matt Cock­bill, man­ag­ing part­ner of the IT and dig­i­tal lead­er­ship prac­tice at Berwick Part­ners (part of the Odgers Berndt­son group) ques­tions why CIOs would feel a strong need to seek out the top job.

“They are capa­ble and ambi­tious peo­ple who have a box seat at the fore­front of the future of work,” he says. “Where they may have gone down the CEO/COO path in the past as they out­grew an inward-look­ing role, today’s CIOs are adept lead­ers with the capac­i­ty to add val­ue to col­leagues and cus­tomers. Undoubt­ed­ly, some will con­tin­ue explor­ing that path. But, where busi­ness­es are util­is­ing the ever more dex­trous lead­er­ship skills of their CIOs, enabling them to broad­en their role and max­imise their con­tri­bu­tion, why would some­one in that role change lanes?”

The increas­ing pace of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion has put CIOs in a unique and ele­vat­ed posi­tion. As Sands notes, they have been required to “build bridges between dis­parate busi­ness units; ‘sell the sto­ry’ of trans­for­ma­tion to the whole busi­ness; and man­age any cul­tur­al fall­out caused by the imple­men­ta­tion of new tech­nol­o­gy. These tasks call for the fun­da­men­tal skills of peo­ple man­age­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and lead­er­ship that any CEO would need.”