I attended a conference recently and one of the topics was the changing face of information technology. The speaker caused a stir when he made the assertion that today’s CIO will cease to exist within 10 years. The agitation he caused was especially pronounced since most of the audience was made up of CIO’s.
The speaker outlined the evolution of the CIO and I paraphrase his presentation. The scope of his discussion centered on the lineage that led to today’s typical corporate IT department.
First, starting about thirty years ago, the company gadget guy was the de facto CIO. He was the nerd who wasn’t afraid to play with machines. This may have been a progression of the company A/V guy or someone similar. He wasn’t designated the title CIO but we’re ignoring that finesse for this conversation. This person did the dirty deeds with the gadgets that no-one else wanted to do while they went about doing their jobs. The next step in the progression was the company techie whose specialty was computers. This would be someone who had some expertise with programming or technology. Companies began to realize that their computer assets required some coordination. They had significant effect on productivity and some strategy could do the company some good. Sometimes the CFO would take information under his wing and sometimes IT was significant enough to justify a leader with a title commensurate with the role. Thus today’s CIO was born.
Today’s CIO is the one who creates the vision for a company’s technology needs and puts that vision into place by forging partnerships with stakeholders and vendors, building consensus within the organization affecting business processes and providing a measurable return on investment.
Here is the presenter’s assertion: The future for this person will end and the reason is commoditization and early integration of technology into our lives. Information technology as a specialty will cease to exist because it will be, is being, absorbed into the norm of everyday life of the public at large. This starts at a young age. Today’s children are exposed to technology and utilize it in routine ways previous generations thought of as novelties. The explosion of WEB 2.0, cell phones with text messaging, hand-held computers, interactive media, and electronic organizers has changed the public view of technology. It will no longer be a specialty with respect to productivity for the masses. Another factor is the increased compartmentalization of IT assets within the organization. Anything that can be commoditized and packaged will be. We have seen this happen to help-desk, network services, and software development.
I agree with the evolution description. I don’t believe it will lead to extinction. What he doesn’t acknowledge in terms of evolution is our expectations. While at one time it was satisfactory to have an up and running network and good disaster recovery plan and limited spending, today’s CIO is expected to deliver a whole lot more:
Today’s CIO is the one who creates the vision for a company’s technology needs and puts that vision into place by forging partnerships with stakeholders and vendors, building consensus within the organization affecting business processes and providing a measurable return on investment.
What will tomorrow’s CIO look like? I don’t know for sure but I do know that the person will have grown up with technology. The person will never have known what it is like not to have the internet, or a cell phone or fax. The person has never seen an Encyclopedia Britannica salesman, has used Wikipedia as one of the many resources for references at his/her disposal. The person has never purchased music on physical medium – LP or CD. The person will have never walked into a bank or been to a post office. The person will have a vastly different frame of reference from the leaders of today and so will his/her clients.
In short, expectations will be higher. There will be a CIO. It is just the solutions that CIO delivers and the role of the CIO in the workplace that will change.
Michael Dawisha 