Could an interim CIO be right for your business?

MacKen­zie is one of a grow­ing num­ber of busi­ness lead­ers who choose to recruit inter­im CTOs, CISOs and CIOs. Rather than bring­ing a full-time, per­ma­nent tech­nol­o­gy leader on board, tem­po­rary exec­u­tives are hired for peri­ods of six months to two years. 

Demand for short-term tech­nol­o­gy exec­u­tives has boomed in recent years. Between 2020 and 2021, demand for inter­im CIOs, CTOs and CISOs grew by 83%, accord­ing to Busi­ness Tal­ent Group, a sub­sidiary of exec­u­tive search firm Hei­drick & Strug­gles.

The key ben­e­fit of hir­ing CIOs for the short term is that busi­ness­es can bring on board an expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­al with a spe­cif­ic skill set. For a start-up com­pa­ny such as RankedRight, an inter­im CTO means hir­ing some­one with expe­ri­ence in build­ing an SaaS infra­struc­ture from scratch and who can sup­port rapid growth. 

In younger busi­ness­es or a com­pa­ny new­ly spun out from a par­ent com­pa­ny as part of a merg­er or acqui­si­tion, an inter­im CIO can help to lay the right foun­da­tions. “Star­tups and com­pa­nies acquired by pri­vate equi­ty are unlike­ly to have any IT lead­er­ship,” says Jaco Ver­meulen, port­fo­lio CTO at con­sult­ing firm BML Dig­i­tal. In those cas­es, he says, an inter­im CIO will rec­om­mend and estab­lish IT require­ments, and this requires dif­fer­ent skills from those used in BAU work.

“Of course, a per­ma­nent CIO can do that. But their focus will typ­i­cal­ly be on long-term strat­e­gy and expe­ri­enced, per­ma­nent CIOs want to step into sta­bil­i­ty,” says Ver­meulen.

After a year of work­ing with an inter­im CTO, RankedRight brought in a new CTO with expe­ri­ence in grow­ing mar­ket share. The com­pa­ny has cho­sen to recruit anoth­er inter­im exec­u­tive, explains MacKen­zie. First, because the busi­ness is chang­ing so rapid­ly, the skills demand­ed of its CTO will like­ly be dif­fer­ent in a year. Sec­ond, work­ing with inter­im CIOs reduces risk, says MacKen­zie. “It means you’re not going to be in a sit­u­a­tion where six months down the line, it’s not work­ing out and you realise you should have hired the oth­er guy,” he says. 

Most impor­tant­ly, RankedRight is head­ing into a round of seed fund­ing and the decades of expe­ri­ence that the new inter­im CTO has brought to the busi­ness is crit­i­cal. “When we talk to investors, the idea of not hav­ing a tech­ni­cal co-founder is frowned upon mas­sive­ly. But we can say to investors, here’s how we got from A to B and now we have this CTO who can bring us to C. Our cur­rent CTO has years of expe­ri­ence and helps us to nav­i­gate this stage of our busi­ness and avoid mis­takes he’s seen hap­pen before.” 

RankedRight is typ­i­cal of the younger com­pa­nies hir­ing inter­im CIOs and CTOs today, says Ver­meulen. “Com­pa­nies can always appoint a per­ma­nent CTO or CIO if need­ed,” he adds.

How­ev­er, it isn’t just star­tups that are recruit­ing inter­im CIOs. Ver­meulen recent­ly com­plet­ed an inter­im CIO assign­ment with a UK hol­i­day park oper­a­tor with 30 sites across the UK. As the company’s CIO, he helped dri­ve a mod­erni­sa­tion pro­gramme that includ­ed build­ing a work from any­where (WFA) pro­gramme for employ­ees and migrat­ing mul­ti­ple on-premise sys­tems to a cloud-based appli­ca­tion suite. 

In estab­lished organ­i­sa­tions, an inter­im CIO can offer a fresh per­spec­tive that com­bines expe­ri­ence and inde­pen­dence, says Ver­meulen. “I have a degree of free­dom as an inter­im CIO, and I can say things that per­ma­nent staff mem­bers might not feel com­fort­able say­ing,” he says. “For exam­ple, com­pa­nies often approach trans­for­ma­tion projects with a fixed idea of what they need – for exam­ple, that they need AI. As inter­im CIO I’m in a great posi­tion to chal­lenge those pre­con­ceived ideas and say, okay, what do we want to deliv­er and is this the right tech­nol­o­gy to do that?” 

For larg­er organ­i­sa­tions, inter­im CIOs can play a valu­able role in dri­ving for­ward dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects, often bring­ing years of expe­ri­ence with them. “Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, we saw lots of organ­i­sa­tions that per­haps didn’t think IT was crit­i­cal to their busi­ness realise that actu­al­ly, it was com­plete­ly crit­i­cal, and they’d been left behind,” says Ver­meulen. “We are now at a point where boards are hap­py to invest in IT and appoint­ing an inter­im CIO could be the key to mak­ing the most of this oppor­tu­ni­ty.” 

It’s impor­tant to note that an inter­im CIO isn’t right for every busi­ness or every sit­u­a­tion, says David Bran­don, CTO at Rota­Cloud and the cur­rent inter­im CTO at RankedRight. Get­ting the right cul­tur­al fit and agree­ing expec­ta­tions is crit­i­cal because an inter­im CTO doesn’t have the lux­u­ry of spend­ing a few months find­ing their feet, he says. “Both sides need to do their due dili­gence to make sure it’s a good fit. You have to be able to get under the skin of an organ­i­sa­tion quick­ly and hit the ground run­ning,” he says.  

With RankedRight, Bran­don spent lots of time with the company’s senior man­age­ment before agree­ing to join the team. This builds trust so that MacKen­zie is com­fort­able giv­ing his inter­im CTO the free­dom and auton­o­my to make deci­sions for the com­pa­ny. “Although we have an inter­im CTO, I talk to him just as I’d talk to any­one we employ. We have had to build a cul­ture where he feels com­plete­ly part of the team,” MacKen­zie says.  

Being ful­ly involved as an inter­im has advan­tages for Bran­don. “It’s always a chal­lenge fit­ting into a new cul­ture, and it can be tough. But I wasn’t an expert in the secu­ri­ty indus­try before I took on this role. I’ve learned a lot about reme­di­a­tion and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty man­age­ment that I can take back to my oth­er role,” he says.