When you grow up, do you want to be a CIO or a CDO or a CTO or what? Actually, when ICT bulks out and adds some muscle and is on the team as opposed to the support staff, what position do you aspire to? Striker, outhalf, corner forward? Perhaps your talent and inclinations are more towards the defence, holding your ground and occasionally in a position to ensure those cheeky opposition guys accidentally trip themselves? In any team sport we all know the defenders are the real tough guys and gals. They have goals to protect and they take it quite personally when someone gets past them.
The team sport metaphor probably runs out of value round about now, other than to point to rugby where there is still pretty much a role for every body type and temperament. In ICT in the organisation that is not universally true but there is no doubt that personality types do inform decisions and careers. Who aspires to be a CDO? You may not have caught up with the new nomenclature but apparently a Chief Digital Officer. Yep. In there on the C-team with all the other CxOs. Alternatively, CDO could be Chief Data Officer, which is a different role altogether.
Apparently CDO has become a regular term, title and role in the USA. Apparently also it revolves around the fact that most businesses have effectively become digital businesses. Check. Here’s what two Forrester analysts wrote: "Digital business describes the increasing use of mobile, social, and cloud-based technologies to energise systems of engagement (systems used to communicate and collaborate; systems of engagement touch customers and employees in contact with customers). Today, many customer experiences centre on critical touch-points involving these digital systems of engagement." We are, of course, talking here about mobile, social media, cloud and to some extent Big Data-today’s ‘Big Challenges’, according to the media, although in truth, ComputerScope is not particularly questioning that perception.
So the idea is that the new CDO role would lead the organisation’s response to all of that-our new striker or goal kicker or outhalf or general charisma carrier. Could it not be Digital Business Officer and a bit more self-explanatory? Would Digital Marketing Officer not be a closer fit in business enterprises? Why does it need to be ‘Chief’ anyway? ‘Too many chiefs…’ Is a venerable, but valid, truism. Here’s another bit from Forrester’s Fenwick and Gill: "Because the role of designing digital business requires understanding of technology, e-commerce and marketing, the emerging chief digital officer role will be a hard one for many organisations to fill."
Now this column is experiencing a bout of blood boiling on behalf of the hard-pressed CIO. The weasel word there is ‘marketing’. There is an implicit notion behind that CDO trend that your traditional or typical or current CIO is just not up to it in this brave new e-world. There is another implicit perception, it certainly suggests, that organisations and especially businesses have been somehow taken by surprise to discover themselves in a digital world-as if the Rip van Winkles in the C-suite have slept their way through the past decade.
It is also, in an odd and slightly paradoxical way, just a tad oldfashioned. It suggests that ‘digital’ is different and something other and we need an officer for that. Sweet, really. Unless we take special action those Big Challenges could pose a threat to Business as We Know It. It’s almost a politician’s thing: here’s a possible threat, let’s set something up to deal with it. Except that in organisations a new Chief Officer for That Sort of Thing is seen as more positive and decisive than a Committee. It has the same faintly dated air as ‘e-business’ and ‘e-commerce’. As ComputerScope quoted way back in 2000 from that eminently sensible Internet guru and futurologist from the right side of the Atlantic, (ours), Ray Hammond: "If you want to understand eCommerce-just drop the e". Quite.
It is also, whether consciously or not, a threat to the CIO and indeed the CMO. Think about it this way: everything about surviving and thriving in this connected world falls between the CIO and the CMO in a business and between the CIO and either the COO or CEO or both in other kinds of organisation. Is there some lost area of electronic engagement that the current corporate structures are not engaged with, for which no one has responsibility? That seems a very dubious proposition. Not doing it well enough? Not really top class? That’s a whole different ball of wax, or whatever today’s business consultancy jargon is.
Gartner has predicted that 25% of organisations will have a CDO by 2015. That more than a little coloured by the kinds of large organisations which Gartner surveys in the first place. On the other hand, Gartner also estimates that 20% of CIOs have already taken on the responsibilities of a CDO"
Gartner has recently predicted that 25% of organisations will have a CDO by 2015. That is of course, with no disrespect to the leading market research outfit, more than a little coloured by the kinds of large organisations which Gartner surveys in the first place. On the other hand, Gartner also estimates that 20% of CIOs have already taken on the responsibilities of a CDO-right now, today. Bluntly, that seems a lot more revealing. In fact it surely suggests that there is a perfectly natural home for those responsibilities, assuming that they can be separated from those of the existing Chief Officers in the first place. Somewhere else in the online literature on the new CDO role there is a piece headed "CDO-Foresight or Fad". You will have inferred by now, gentle reader, where this column is headed.
The truth is that titles in themselves are not all that significant. Or rather they signify broad thrusts of management responsibility, usually to be understood in a specific corporate or even sectoral context. The nomenclature style will vary for historical, cultural, linguistic and other reasons. The North American ‘Vice President’ title and its general use, for example, does not translate readily to European business. Managing Director equates pretty well with CEO and perhaps General Manager with COO. But then a Production Director hardly sounds right in services business.
What most certainly is significant and the real heart of the matter is the structure and leadership of organisations and the organisation of business. The apparent structure and job titles may not always reflect what actual lines of authority and responsibility are in place. There are also changes over time. Some organisations may still have a Print Room, nowadays more a replacement for formerly outsourced jobs, but few if any still have a Central Registry for all paper files. Its digital equivalent for shared corporate files or confidential data is, on the other hand, right at the heart of any organisation.
So there are subtle and not so subtle differentiations in titles. A CIO is broadly the equivalent of an IT Director (or even ICT Director today). But if we have both a CIO and an IT Manager we can be fairly sure that one role is strategic and the other largely operational. That is why so many of us in or watching ICT as a sector and across all human activity welcomed CIO. ‘Information’ seemed and indeed still is the real core asset, resource and responsibility. The digital stuff is just apparatus to create, compute, store and communicate. As we have seen for over five decades, it changes all the time. Mobility and anywhere, anytime ICT was a revolution or paradigm shift or what have you. In fact we now take the ‘Any’ capabilities of the Internet/Web for granted-Anytime, Anywhere, Any device, Any user. We should shorthand it to AAAA.
Yesterday it was the netbook and the day before the laptop. Today, we still have the ever smarter smart phone and the new star of the show the tablet. Tomorrow? Another easy example: in a year or two will we need to know or care what an operating system is? If a data centre can be virtual and soft, need we care about hardware beyond the user device? Which could be one of a personal set anyway so ‘screen of choice.’
This digital world is constantly changing, sometimes in leaps that extend the bounds. We live in it, work in it, are entertained by it. It is all too often how we find life partners. or more temporary arrangements. It is just ubiquitous and inextricable from 2013 life.
So why retrofit ‘Digital’ as in CDO when CIO already has the only universal and perpetual element-Information?
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