The end of the CIO as we know it — and IT feels fine

It’s a painful irony: As technology permeates the workplace, the CIO is becoming less relevant. I predict the position’s stature will further decrease in the coming years for many — though not all — companies.

I’ve been watching CIOs try to reinvent themseves for most of the last decade, and I’ve heard all sorts of new roles for the CIO proposed: chief innovation officer, chief process officer, chief strategy officer, chief digital officer, chief integration office, even chief information officer (as opposed to chief technology manager, which is what most CIOs actually are). I’ve watched CIOs chafe about reporting to the CFO a decade ago to seeking a “seat at the table” (meaning being treated like COOs, sales chiefs, and CFOs in CEOs’ eyes) half a decade ago to now seeking to be “more strategic.”

[ What’s driving the consumerization-of-IT trend. | Subscribe to InfoWorld’s Consumerization of IT newsletter today. ]

CIOs don’t want to be the digital version of the head of facilities or the technology purchasing manager. Instead, they’ve been trying to find a big role for themselves for much of the last decade. They’ve failed, and there’s a reason for that.

The CIO rose under an extraordinary set of circumstances

The CIO job is about 15 years old, created in the aftermath of the Y2K crisis and the simultaneous rise of both ERP and e-commerce in the late 1990s. Before then, we had MIS (management information system) directors who ran the mainframe-era data centers in large companies. They were specialized departments that had little to do with the rest of the company’s routine operations, though they were critical to key functions (usually financial).

The Y2K crisis and the ERP and e-commerce pushes made companies realize that technology was fundamentally important to the entire company and needed an elevated position in the corporate hierarchy to do the equivalent of the Manhattan Project or lunar landing: implement massive information systems that had never existed before. Thus was born the CIO.

By the mid-2000s, though, e-commerce and ERP were deployed at most companies, and Y2K was a distant memory. The CIO role became more about maintaining and operating those systems, and some CIOs began to miss the heady days of figuring out the brave new world. Many more were happy to get back to an operational role, managing IT as they had MIS, though it was now more complex because PCs were on nearly every desk, networks were widespread, and the amount of data to manage was several orders of magnitudes greater than it had been pre-Y2K.

After 9/11, CIOs got a boost to their strategic value due to the focus on security, which many CIOs used as a way to assert control or entrench themselves further, whether strategically or operationally, depending on their ambitions. Security became a convenient way to say no, and the cautionary joke about CIOs and their IT departments being Doctor No became common.

Then the financial meltdown hit, and most companies made their CIOs focus on operational efficiency through cost-cutting and automation. As a result, IT was less able to say yes and simultaneously recast it as an operational sink hole that could always be squeezed further.

CIOs seek to new glory days Progressive CIOs wanted to do more than manage systems, compliance, budgets, and security. As the recession lifted, they again cast about for a strategic role, leading to all those proposed roles mentioned earlier.

That search continues because there’s no need at most organizations for a CIO who runs all technology, all information, all innovation, and so on. Information and its use belong to the business units, as they always had — being digital doesn’t change that.

Innovation and technology belong to everyone; arguing that because technology is pervasive a CIO should manage it all and everything that runs through it is like saying that facilities should manage all work done in the buildings and furnishings it provides and maintains.

There’s a reason that CMOs are predicted to have bigger tech budgets than CIOs by 2017: Good marketing requires extensive information collection and analysis, and good marketers know what information to get and how to use it to make money — not their CIOs or IT departments. (If there is to be the role of chief digital officer, it will be part of marketing, a person who specializes in analyzing “gray” issues like human behavior via data and connecting it to sales and marketing programs.)

It’s often argued that because IT has a view into most of the company’s operations, it is in the best position to strategically manage those operations. That’s foolish; if it were true, companies would need only IT departments, as product designers, marketers, salespeople, and so on would be redundant to IT. Not all tech systems need to be governed and integrated across multiple departments, though some do — those are the tech systems IT needs to handle. But it’s not at all clear that requires a CIO; an MIS director should suffice for the task at most organizations.

CIOs who believe managing technology means they should manage the company should look to their CFO and COO colleagues, who have similar overviews of the entire company, yet don’t manage or direct it all themselves. The CFO and COO positions have been around much, much longer than the CIO’s; if such horizontal roles were able to manage the entire company, they’d’ve already done so. (In some businesses, where information is the business, a CIO can strategically manage the company just as COOs in manufacturing companies often strategically manage their companies — ditto with CFOs in companies where money management is the business.)

The rise of consumerization — meaning a broad swath of technology-literate employees who know their subject matter very well — has also reduced the need for IT to get involved in many day-to-day operations. The training wheels are coming off, and the notion of IT-as-coach is less necessary.

I see a post-PC equivalent movement happening to IT overall, and thus to the CIO. Call it “post-IT.” Just as post-PC isn’t the end of the PC, post-IT is not the end of IT. But something different is being formed, and straight extensions of the past IT model — the broad but specialized operational department — should not be counted on.

How the CIO role should evolve As I said, the CIO job has only a 15-year history, and I believe it is a transitional executive role. Just as companies no longer have an electricity department, they may no longer need an IT department. So what is a CIO good for, if anything? The answer depends on what the company needs, and that’s the key to the future of the CIO.

In most cases, forget about being equal to the CFO, sales chief, or COO in the CEO’s eyes. Look instead to the key supporting roles that have less stature but are critical to the company: HR, legal, risk, and strategy. When done well, these roles mix strategic leadership with policy-oriented management and only the minimally necessary amount of operations. HR, for example, doesn’t manage employees, but it helps managers do it better through policies, counseling, and crisis management. The risk officer doesn’t manage security directly, but helps the company assess risks, prioritize prevention and remediation, and manage crises.

In many organizations, the CIO role should evolve to a similar mix, using its broad oversight to identify areas of innovation within and across individual departments, as well as establish standards for technical integration and information exchange — not just at bits level but at a semantic level. What we tend to think of IT — purchasing, specifying, managing the data center, networks, support, enterprise applications, and (decreasingly) users’ devices — should be spun out into a facilities-like department. In other words, forget being an equal to the CFO, sales chief, or COO; instead, be one of the key “lubricating” leaders.

Perhaps this operational IT — the reborn MIS department — reports to whatever the CIO is renamed, or perhaps it stays separate so that the CIO isn’t pulled into operational issues constantly. Some organizations separate the chief risk officer from the security operations for the same reason, while others combine them — that’s a decision for each company to make. The same goes for where MIS belongs.

By letting go of the ambition to be just as important and powerful as the COO, CFO, or sales chief, CIOs might actually find a better role for themselves and for their companies. Current CIOs who just want to manage operations can manage the reborn MIS departments, while those who want to be strategic can do so as supportive partners to the rest of the company.

Other CIOs — those whose companies are essentally about digital assets and services — should look to become the equivalent of the COO, a role that manages the operations of the business-defining physical processes and therefore is deeply intertwined with the business strategy. There, operations is not a key supporting function but the key function, period.

In a nutshell, there are three possible archetypes for today’s CIOs in a post-IT environment:

• The CIO (recast as a CTO) is more of a policy adviser around the use of technology than technocrat, more akin to a chief risk officer, HR director, or chief legal officer.
• The CIO is the digital COO orchestrating processes and flows as a traditional COO does in a manufacturing environment.
• The CIO (recast as the MIS manager) owns the technology platforms as both a sourcing manager and integration specialist, working as an infrastructure expert with CMOs and other business executives.

However the role changes, it should be clear that when a whole profession keeps trying to find a purpose for itself, that’s a red flag indicating it’s not needed. But smart, strategic technologists and information experts will always be in demand.

This article, “The end of the CIO as we know it — and IT feels fine,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Smart User blog. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.