{"id":905,"date":"2007-10-04T18:05:47","date_gmt":"2007-10-05T00:05:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=905"},"modified":"2007-10-04T18:05:47","modified_gmt":"2007-10-05T00:05:47","slug":"twilight_of_the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=905","title":{"rendered":"Twilight of the CIO"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The CIO doesn’t matter,” writes<\/a> vnunet’s Silicon Valley Sleuth. “In [the new] reality, the average firm doesn’t need a CIO \u2013 or at least doesn’t need one as part of the management team. Such a role warrants an IT organization that is constantly raising the bar on its vendors and software. Companies like Google, Merrill Lynch or Wal Mart need a CIO. But for the majority of the economy, a CIO demonstrates a desperate attempt to appear innovative.”<\/p>\n

The Sleuth’s comments come in the wake of a new survey<\/a> of UK CIOs that reveals “a 15 per cent drop in the number who believe that their boards see IT as a key strategic function.” Concerned that “the strategic influence of CIOs has eroded in recent years” nearly 60% of the surveyed execs “are planning to move jobs in the next two years.”<\/p>\n

In a post titled “The Ultimate Demise of the CIO” on the CIO Weblog, Scott Wilson writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I believe it’s simply the ultimate destination of most technological endeavors – a complete assimilation into the fabric of the organization, as the technology becomes better adapted and easier to use than the pioneering iterations of it (which are what we have seen over the past forty years or so) … After all, if it were so clear that technology is and is going to be complex, at least from a technical standpoint, who would be seriously worried (as many CIOs are) about users bypassing them and usurping their role of the IT department as solution provider? And if this is the case, then really, why SHOULD there be a CIO position in the organization?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

InformationWeek’s Bob Evans, as staunch an advocate for the IT function as you’ll find, recently examined<\/a> the web sites of a dozen large, respected companies and found that most made no mention of their CIO: “Go to the sites for CocaCola, eBay, Genetech, Goldman Sachs, Google, Walgreens, and Yahoo and just try to find a listing for that company’s CIO. CocaCola listed 15 execs, but no CIO; Google showcased 45 execs, but no CIO; Goldman Sachs 10; eBay 11; Walgreens 16; Yahoo 20; and Genentech 7 — and not a single CIO among them.”<\/p>\n

Are CIOs disappearing? Evans wondered. He later answered<\/a> his own question:<\/p>\n

\n

Until recently, I believed that as long as … IT continues to be increasingly indispensable in all types of industries[,] then the role of the CIO would endure as the steward of business technology strategy, purchasing, and deployment. Sure, the priorities for CIOs would change over time, and the centralized\/decentralized pendulum would swing back and forth eternally, and there’d always be some low-level chatter about fighting for “a seat at the table,” and many CIOs would chant the sacred mantra of “we need to align the technology with the business,” and so forth. But all that aside, I was just dead certain that the use of technology in businesses absolutely mandated the coexistence of a CIO to strategically oversee all that stuff and use it to drive business value.<\/p>\n

Boy, was I wrong.<\/p>\n

Because we have hit a tipping point in the evolution of the CIO. Until recently, that evolutionary path was pretty much linear — DP manager to MIS director to VP of IS to CIO — with little or no question about what the ultimate expression or end-state of that position would be: the CIO. But the new evolutionary track branches off into many directions as traditional line-of-business managers become far more sophisticated about technology, as more IT processes and services are outsourced, as companies integrate IT into global logistics and operations — and as some companies begin to doubt the ability of a centralized IT czar to drive the level of business- and customer-driven change required to compete in this 21st-century economy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We’ve entered the long twilight of the CIO position, a sign that information technology is finally maturing. Technical expertise is becoming centralized in the supply industry, freeing workers and managers to concentrate on the manipulation and sharing of information. It will be a slow transition – CIOs will continue to play critical roles in many firms for many years – but we’re at last catching up with the vision expressed back in 1990 by the legendary CIO Max Hopper, who predicted that IT would come to \u201cbe thought of more like electricity or the telephone network than as a decisive source of organizational advantage. In this world, a company trumpeting the appointment of a new chief information officer will seem as anachronistic as a company today naming a new vice president for water and gas. People like me will have succeeded when we have worked ourselves out of our jobs. Only then will our organizations be capable of embracing the true promise of information technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don’t think the most accomplished CIOs will shed many tears over the fading of the CIO post. Careerwise, it’s been as much an anchor as a sail. Titles come and go. It’s talent that matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The CIO doesn’t matter,” writes vnunet’s Silicon Valley Sleuth. “In [the new] reality, the average firm doesn’t need a CIO \u2013 or at least doesn’t need one as part of the management team. Such a role warrants an IT organization that is constantly raising the bar on its vendors and software. Companies like Google, Merrill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}