Executive Advisory Program: CIO Types

I recently had forwarded to me a piece from Dimension Data. It was one of those marketing blurbs, highlighting their CTO. This is an excerpt:

Ettienne Reinecke, Chief Technology Officer, shares his thoughts on the recession, and the three types of CIOs
<…>
    CIO Type A is very conservative and works in organisations that do not understand the business value of IT; he is expected to cut costs during a recession and, if there is to be any investment at all, is permitted to invest only in IT that will deliver more savings.
    CIO Type B lives in a sort of middle ground, where the boardroom has some understanding of the business value that IT can add. So, while he’s is focused on both cutting costs and investing for further savings, he is also cleaning house and preparing his company’s systems for the new projects that will make their demands on those systems when the economy turns.
<…>
    CIO Type C sits at the boardroom table. And he sits at the boardroom table because the business has understood that business is about process and systems - and that the person who knows most about how those processes and systems should work optimally is the one who enables them through technology.
    CIO Type C therefore has already gone through the cost cutting exercise – long before the recession hit. He invested for savings, long before the recession hit. And he cleaned house. Now, continuously, he’s investing to support the business’s strategy.
    CIO Type C isn’t really a CIO any more. He’s the COO of IT, in charge of executing the strategic growth plan. His business will be ready for the upturn. His business will be one of the first to profit from the upturn. His business will have happy shareholders.

So the bottom line of his comments are that a CIO's success has more to do with the business’ perceptions and expectations of IT, rather than the CIO type. It would be more appropriate to speak to this in terms of “types of organizations”, and recognize that the true CIO (type Z) knows how to manage with respect to his corporate culture, and has techniques to help companies move between the cultures.

Inherent in his analysis is that type C is best, while I would submit that there are companies that succeed (read: make a profit within the timeframe defined by the stakeholders) with all three types of companies. So to paraphrase:

The best CIOs have the skill
to accept the things they cannot change;
courage to change the things they can;
and wisdom to know the difference

That all said, given the context of the article I am reminded of a joke:
Did you know there are three kinds of people in the world? Those that can do math and those that can’t.

Comments

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Posted by: Moncler jackets | September 28, 2011 at 08:31 PM