Short tenure
There is a surprising volume of commentary online about this apparent issue of CIOs having short job tenure — with no research information, on the other hand, about how many go on to be CIO in a number of different organisations. Most of the time it is used as a jumping off point for opinions on how a CIO can be visibly and clearly successful and the usual sermons about speaking fluent business as opposed to tech-speak and jargon. And building relationships with their key colleagues, of course.
Sometimes it does seem that there is a lingering aura of geekiness around IT people as viewed by the commentariat. Never mind the sexism, that’s a universal risk in the workplace and the media. But not every promoted IT executive is an unreformed electronics engineer lacking social graces. This column’s experience of Irish CIOs and senior ICT people is of articulate, competent leaders who are well in command of their roles and do not need the comfort of winking LEDs and whirring air.
Do they understand the business side? Well of course they do. To be blunt, it’s mostly not rocket science and they do not see it as an intellectual challenge because so much of it is social, intuitive and common sense stuff. Yes, we do understand your workflow processes and what links with what. In fact we can actually map it conceptually and graphically, which is probably more advanced than anyone else in the business ever bothered to do.
The argument goes further: all business processes today are carried out through IT systems. Some are traditional and just automated in applications. Some are new generation, like inspection photos from field service engineers or inspectors directly into a database or specific customer account file. Some processes that are now common were not even technically feasible a decade ago, like real time infographics on smart phones individualised for specific people and their responsibilities.
So perhaps much of the media chatter about the CIO and the role is actually based on a degree of ignorance, prejudice and a failure to appreciate how much about the business an IT person needs to understand to do a good tech job in the first place. It could even be suggested, with never a hint of spite, that the general understanding of ICT from the business side is not remotely at the same level of depth or sophistication.
Four to five
As for the typical tenure of a CIO, let’s accept that it is probably in the four or five year bracket on this side of the world and on this island. So what? We are well into the 21st century and the notion of a job for life has dissipated along with pension schemes. Well, outside of the public sector. In truth, that is potentially unfair because talented senior people in public service move jobs — across as well as up — pretty much as frequently as in the private sector. The point is that at the C-suite level that four-five year tenure is mainstream and normal.
No one would even bother commenting if the average job duration of a marketing manager was found to be the same. Some leader level roles are actually, if not always, openly based on refreshing and renewing the top people and teams. Whereas one might expect a financial or production director to be a bit longer in role, horses for courses one might say, CIOs need to be sprinters — or at least short course steeplechasers.
Ltd
