State of the CIO 2009
State of the CIO 2009
By FmMonteverde
Created 12/03/2009 - 2:46am
By Chee Sing Chan and Emily Chia | Mar 12, 2009 |
The CIO role by nature will always be dynamic and evolving. Technology itself develops at a searing pace leaving slowmovers cliaging to the coattails of pioneers and groundbreakers.
As such CIOs must be constantly re-evaluating their priorities and objectives to ensure they are delivering the maximum value that technology can deliver to the business?
So what does it take to be a successful CIO today? Is the role being diminished as som e argue or has it in fact been elevated to another status, one which finally lays to rest the perception of a back office cable-pulling software programmer.
According to a recent report by CIO Connect, a professional peer network for CIOs, "CIO leadership is all about keeping ahead of executive and user demands." The report further adds that for modern and relevant CIOs, "it is all about driving new attitudes and behaviors in the organization. And it is all about delivering increased levels of business value."
Kim Eng Securities CIO, Tony Tay, noted that the role of the CIO has clearly evolved from a more CTO in nature to one that is more business-oriented.
"CIOs have had to learn to align IT to business and be forced to upgrade themselves to step into the business realm," said Kim.
To enable IT to effectively drive business, he recommends IT heads to engage in the industry and be ahead of user demands.
Cream of the crop
CIO Connect brings together CIOs and technology leaders in UK and Europe with a growing Asian membership to develop thought leadership and best practice sharing within its members.
Its annual CIO Horizons study of over 100 key CIOs highlights the attitudes and attributes of successful CIOs and includes for the first time CIOs from Asia Pacific.
The study identifies leading CIOs as vanguard CIOs - those who are seen as setting the benchmark for high performing CIOs and are taking an active leadership role within the organization.
Published in November 2008, the report notes that leadership at the top of an organization depends on relationships first and foremost, and the vanguard CIOs are spending more of their time with their colleagues in the business compared to the rest. This gives these CIOs a unique breadth of oversight of their organization and an unparalleled and invaluable perspective in the current downturn.
These vanguard CIOs spend on average 27% of their time in formal and informal discussions with fellow CxOs compared to other CIO counterparts - referred to as "core" CIOs. (See chart 1)
Core CIOs can be seen to spend much less time with executive leadership - 17%. Another point to note is that core CIOs generally spend more than time than vanguard CIOs working within the IT team and with IT suppliers and customers.
Time management
The CIO Connect study finds that the more time CIOs spend with executive leaders the better placed they are to build on their knowledge of business and organizational practices, and change management processes.
Past experiences with transformational change programs such as ERP gives the CIO the broadest enterprise-wide view of operational business processes and activities, and is best placed to maximize the benefit that technology can bring to the business.
Tan Hock Hai, CIO at ST Engineering in Singapore estimates that he spends up to 10% of his time on business strategy through participation in the IT steering committees of various business units. Transformational change, including ERP implementations and group-level roll outs of IT programs and initiatives keep him busy up to 60% of the time. Meanwhile, managing internal IT services and vendor management take up about 20% and 10% of his time.
It must be noted that the time spent on these various responsibilities does not necessarily mean that one CIO is doing a better job persay than another. It's a measure of strategic involvement rather than effectiveness in the role. If the CIO role is defined by the business to be more a maintainer or systems and project management then by definition the role involves much less strategic planning with the business. Reaching vanguard CIO status should be a goal if the CIO aspires to it and is in a position to attain strategic influence and leadership.
Determining focus
The CIO role today becomes even more critical given the level of uncertainty and high levels of disruption. It is the CIO who will be helping leaders interpret how their organization should be set up best addresses the complexities of an economic downturn.
The study identified the main focus in CIO discussions with the executive leadership:
- Business strategy (for 55% of respondents)
- Transformational change proposals (54%)
- Issues of business profitability (39%)
- Project briefings and program status updates (39%)
It is interesting to note in chart 2 the difference when vanguard CIO responses are placed against core CIO responses.
Many more vanguard CIOs tended to spend time discussing strategic business planning and transformational change as well as business profitability. While many of the core CIOs highlighted project briefings and status updates as a key discussion topic.
Lemming to leader
The vanguard CIO group display subtle differences in behavior which is accelerating their influence within their organizations even further, setting the agenda for the future role of the CIO.
"It's the top-performer Vanguard CIOs that can take the CIO role on from what they are explicitly asked to do and are able to act in a more holistic way, working out that a good career move would be to develop the office beyond just the technology, and taking on shared services, taking on reengineering processes, and really helping shape the business," said Simon La Fosse, La Fosse Associates, a specialist in recruitment of technology executive leadership.
In the past there has been criticism that IT has unable to satisfactorily anticipate the future needs of the business and slow to react to change.
However, the CIO Connect study shows vanguard CIOs have already started to address this area by improving their forward planning capability. Notably the study found more vanguard CIOs strongly agreed that there is a need to carry out scenario planning exercises to test and prepare change alternatives. More vanguard CIOs were also found to be using IT portfolio analysis to manage and prioritize future program investments, and more vanguard CIOs periodically carry out skills forecasts to check they can meet the likely future business demand.
Tang Wai Yee, assistant commissioner and CIO at Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS), stressed that CIOs today have to manage HR issues well.
"When a staff resigns from a team, there will definitely be a knowledge gap," she said. Thus, Tang takes a keen interest in her team's feedback about their work. She is also keen to help staff develop specific skills, relevant competencies and encourages her team to attain skills certification.
CIO type
A key point to note throughout this is that not all CIOs necessarily have to fit this vanguard CIO profile. Depending on the nature of the business and the maturity of the business, the CIO role may well be limited to managing projects and supporting business processes.
According to Gordon Lovell-Read, former CIO, Siemens, "The perspective of operations and IT delivery, team management, and cost management all have to be balanced with the strategic side and business needs."
He added that, "the skill of the CIO is in achieving the right level of blending, so that there is a linkage achieved between the dynamics of business direction and the IS/IT strategy, and a flow between the two."
The full CIO Horizon report can be found at www.cio-connect.com [7]
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