How to nurture the next generation of CIOs

Tech­nol­o­gy has trans­formed busi­ness over the past two decades, empow­er­ing organ­i­sa­tions to do things bet­ter and do new things. But as the per­va­sive­ness of the IT func­tion has increased, so too have the demands placed upon its lead­ers.

On the one hand, technology’s ascen­dance from a back-office neces­si­ty to some­thing that cre­ates tan­gi­ble, attrib­ut­able val­ue and growth has been a good thing. IT func­tions and their lead­ers have risen in promi­nence, cast­ing aside their lega­cy as an “order entry”, reac­tive func­tion and play­ing a more strate­gic, proac­tive role.

On the oth­er hand, these his­tor­i­cal­ly inward-fac­ing func­tions have been thrust into a spot­light which demands much greater inte­gra­tion with the busi­ness and its growth efforts, along with a much more exter­nalised mind­set.

Ear­mark those who you see have the begin­nings of lead­er­ship poten­tial, then tell them

Recent years have seen a recast­ing of the role of the CIO. This is part­ly due to ris­ing expec­ta­tions from boards, but it’s also thanks to lob­by­ing on the part of the IT pro­fes­sion itself to be embraced as legit­i­mate mem­bers of the C‑suite, with respect and influ­ence on a par with the CFO.

Yet amid this grow­ing promi­nence of tech­nol­o­gy and its lead­ers, rip­ple effects have emerged. Many organ­i­sa­tions now face cur­rent or loom­ing suc­ces­sion chal­lenges.

Greater specialism, greater silos

Advances in tech­nol­o­gy cre­ate increas­ing com­plex­i­ty, which in turn requires greater lev­els of spe­cial­ism with­in teams. In and of itself, this is no bad thing – it has enabled busi­ness­es to devel­op tech­ni­cal capa­bil­i­ties which have yield­ed advan­tages over their peers. But from a lead­er­ship path­way per­spec­tive, increased spe­cial­ism tends to lead to nar­row­er and less gen­er­al­ist com­pe­ten­cies.

Build­ing teams with ever-deep­er lev­els of exper­tise will only lead to “smarter silos” unless efforts are made by today’s CIOs to spot­light future lead­er­ship tal­ent for the CIO roles of tomor­row.

“Can­di­dates today have to be more adept than ever at man­ag­ing a breadth of knowl­edge,” says Car­o­line Sands, part­ner and head of CIO & tech­nol­o­gy offi­cers prac­tice at glob­al exec­u­tive search firm Odgers Berndt­son. She points to evolv­ing areas like robot­ics, AI, machine learn­ing and cloud, the chal­lenges which come with lega­cy sys­tems and infra­struc­ture, the grow­ing cur­ren­cy of data and the rapid­ly increas­ing focus on cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and risk. 

“But beyond this, as CEOs increas­ing­ly turn to their CIOs to help shape busi­ness strat­e­gy and oper­a­tional deci­sions, CIOs also need strengths in rela­tion­ship man­age­ment, com­mer­cial acu­men and cus­tomer aware­ness,” Sands says. “This is a tall order unless peo­ple are pre­pared for it.”

You’re not just there to talk about infra­struc­ture or engi­neer­ing, in the same way that the CFO doesn’t just weigh in on costs and the CMO doesn’t just talk about ads

So how can busi­ness­es har­ness the ben­e­fits of deep, spe­cial­ist capa­bil­i­ties, while enabling lead­ers to emerge with the breadth of com­pe­ten­cies need­ed to meet boards’ expec­ta­tions?

Sands believes the first step lies in being proac­tive. “Ear­mark those who you see have the begin­nings of lead­er­ship poten­tial, then tell them. You need up-and-com­ing tal­ent to under­stand that they have been iden­ti­fied for a path­way, and you need to know it’s some­thing they’re inter­est­ed in.”

This pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty to begin broad­en­ing their devel­op­ment with career steps, projects and respon­si­bil­i­ties that will stretch them and build lead­er­ship foun­da­tions, Sands adds, “but would oth­er­wise – with­out that com­mu­ni­ca­tion – seem a dis­trac­tion from their assumed spe­cial­ist career track”.

Shedding your functional skin

A defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the C‑suite – and a com­mon stum­bling block for those join­ing for the first time – is the shift­ing role expect­ed of its con­stituents. Like oth­ers around the table, CIOs are expect­ed to shed their func­tion­al skin and oper­ate strate­gi­cal­ly and effec­tive­ly as a mem­ber of a col­lec­tive lead­er­ship team, able to make deci­sions requir­ing sig­nif­i­cant cross-func­tion­al aware­ness.

While CIOs must rep­re­sent tech­nol­o­gy at the high­est lev­el in the organ­i­sa­tion, there’s a broad­er role to be played, argues Patrick Knight, a tech­nol­o­gy and trans­for­ma­tion expert who’s held CIO roles at TUI, Ren­tok­il Ini­tial and, most recent­ly, Travis Perkins. 

Tak­ing a C‑suite posi­tion means weigh­ing in and adding val­ue to debates and deci­sions across the busi­ness, Knight says. If a CIO has spent their career focused inward­ly on their own func­tion, with­out get­ting under the skin of the busi­ness, its mar­ket dynam­ics and the com­plex­i­ties of its oper­a­tions, they’ll strug­gle to add val­ue at the top table. 

“You’re not just there to talk about infra­struc­ture or engi­neer­ing, in the same way that the CFO doesn’t just weigh in on costs and the CMO doesn’t just talk about ads.” 

This shift in focus won’t occur overnight. It requires today’s lead­ers to cre­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty for their teams to devel­op broad expe­ri­ence and a thick skin. And it requires indi­vid­u­als who aspire to such roles to take the ini­tia­tive them­selves and invest in their own devel­op­ment.

Dan­ny Attias, chief dig­i­tal and infor­ma­tion offi­cer at blood can­cer char­i­ty Antho­ny Nolan and cur­rent­ly the UK’s num­ber one ranked CIO, says there’s a par­tic­u­lar moment when he can spot if some­one has the poten­tial for exec­u­tive lead­er­ship.

“It’s when an indi­vid­ual begins to pri­ori­tise cross-func­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, stake­hold­er man­age­ment and out­comes, rather than the nit­ty-grit­ty detail of the ‘stuff’ that’s being done,” he says. “When some­one real­ly starts to lean-in to nur­tur­ing rela­tion­ships and the impact of what’s being cre­at­ed, rather than how to cre­ate it – that’s the point at which we say ‘you’re ready’.”

Attias says he then starts to del­e­gate – and not just in func­tion­al tasks. He pro­vides expo­sure at senior lev­els, aim­ing to “empow­er peo­ple to grow into a CIO-poten­tial can­di­date”.

IT as a business partner

As organ­i­sa­tions use more tech­nol­o­gy, there’s inevitably more peo­ple in the tech­nol­o­gy func­tion to design, build or man­age it. In larg­er organ­i­sa­tions a CIO can find them­selves lead­ing hun­dreds or even thou­sands of tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als.

This car­ries a risk of a silo men­tal­i­ty, with grow­ing num­bers of peo­ple oper­at­ing in iso­la­tion from the busi­ness and its out­comes.

Can­di­dates today have to be more adept than ever at man­ag­ing a breadth of knowl­edge

“Part­ner­ing is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant – that can­not be under­scored enough,” adds Knight. “If your engi­neers or prod­uct folks are buried in their own silo and detached from the busi­ness, how can they hope to advise solu­tions? Or to iden­ti­fy areas in which tech­nol­o­gy can bring val­ue, be that through reduced cost or greater effec­tive­ness? If we’re not embed­ded with­in the busi­ness, we abdi­cate our respon­si­bil­i­ty to add val­ue.”

Attias agrees. “It’s cru­cial to ensure that your peo­ple over­lap as much as pos­si­ble, both with­in the IT func­tion, but also across the organ­i­sa­tion. Agile project teams are a pow­er­ful way of get­ting dif­fer­ent peo­ple and diverse expe­ri­ence togeth­er, and focus­ing every­one on the out­comes, not the process or the tech.”

Searching for talent

At first glance, the grow­ing vari­ety of func­tion­al knowl­edge and organ­i­sa­tion­al, stake­hold­er and com­mer­cial savvy demand­ed of today’s CIOs may seem a size­able recruit­ment and devel­op­ment chal­lenge. But it is in fact open­ing the door to a wider and more diverse pool of tal­ent than would have been avail­able in sim­pler times.

“We’re a char­i­ty so we can’t com­pete for tal­ent in the same way as a bank or a retail­er,” says Attias. “So we have to be cre­ative.” For exam­ple, Antho­ny Nolan uses appren­tice­ships, which Attias says “are wide­ly mis­un­der­stood and under­val­ued”, to bring in great peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly those from dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds and school leavers, for instance. 

About 5% of its work­force is enrolled in a dig­i­tal lit­er­ary appren­tice­ship, he adds, help­ing to build a poten­tial pipeline of tal­ent with­in the organ­i­sa­tion. “We retrain peo­ple from oth­er dis­ci­plines and we retrain our own inter­nal col­leagues.”

Such claims are often made, usu­al­ly as proof-points for diver­si­ty claims. But in the case of Antho­ny Nolan, cre­ative ways of find­ing tal­ent have paid off. “We recruit­ed some­one from our inter­nal admin oper­a­tions team. She had no back­ground or train­ing in tech­nol­o­gy, but she under­stood the char­i­ty, our patients, our plat­forms and how we oper­ate. Five years lat­er she’s our direc­tor of prod­uct, respon­si­ble for prod­uct design and devel­op­ment for the entire organ­i­sa­tion.”

The charity’s diver­si­ty efforts have also been suc­cess­ful, Nolan says, with half of its devel­op­ers being female. It’s also work­ing to ensure diver­si­ty in cog­ni­tive, soceioe­co­nom­ic and racial areas, he adds, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant giv­en the risks of build­ing bias­es into AI.

Sands agrees. “It’s about mind­set, not skillset – that’s what will yield strong future CIOs.”

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