The key to succeeding as a CIO without IT skills

Dear Bob …

Your fellow columnist at InfoWorld, Dan Tyson, recently wrote “IT personality types: 8 profiles in geekdom.” One of the types is Empty Suit, which he described as “hired to be a liaison between top-level management and the techies.” The description seems to fit the job description of the CIO.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Watch the Empty Suit and other geek profiles come to life in the IT personality types slideshow. | Keep up on career advice with Bob Lewis’ Advice Line newsletter. ]

I have been reading your columns for many years. I believed your main audience were people who started out with computer-related skills, but who wanted to improve their managerial skills to move up the organizational chain of command. Dan’s “empty suit” description prompted me to think about the opposite situation.

What are your thoughts about the ability of a person trained in the skills of the company’s product/service being the CIO (e.g., lawyer in a law firm, accountant in an accounting firm, baker in a bakery)? Could a person be a successful CIO even though the person has no programming or system administrator skills, but is strong on business process analysis and understanding of how computer software functionality should be integrated into the business? Or would the folks in IT just look on the person as an “empty suit”?

To phrase the question another way, what technical skills do you feel are the minimum to be CIO?

– Non-techie

Dear Non-technie …

First of all, I’m not sure what Dan was thinking about when he defined liaisons between top-level management and techies as empty suits. Without a doubt, there are some in that role who are empty suits, but that could be said of any management role. There’s a big difference between empty-suitedness as a personality trait versus a job requirement.

That being said, I sure hope “liaison” isn’t anyone’s job description for a CIO. Liaisons connect people. CIOs had better lead them or they really are empty suits.

Sometimes leadership calls for liaisonship, of course, but that’s just one small part of a CIO’s responsibilities.

Which brings us to your question: whether a nontechie can succeed as CIO. The easy answer is yes. The more useful answer: It depends on a few factors, one of which is what you mean by “succeed.”

As is the case in any management role, CIOs have to lead in four directions: “north” to their own manager, “east” to their organizational peers, “south” to the IT staff, and “west” to everyone who makes use of IT’s services. I call this the “management compass,” and one of its most interesting characteristics is that most leaders fall into one of two camps: Those who face northeast and those who face southwest.

The northeast-facing crowd do well in their careers. They “manage up” well and handle peer relationships with finesse — but can’t deliver anything worthwhile because they don’t know how. Those who face southwest are exactly the opposite: They don’t relate well to their manager and vice versa, and they handle both peer relationships and company politics ineptly. All they’re good at is getting the job done.

Leaders who come from the business generally end up as successful northeasterners. The CIO role serves as a career stepping stone, and they’re generally canny enough to move on from that role before anyone figures out they’re not actually delivering anything.

To become truly effective CIOs, they face two challenges. The first is learning the trade. Compared to most other parts of the business, IT has a lot more moving parts (150 — we’ve counted). People can’t effectively manage what they don’t understand, so a CIO coming in from outside IT has an enormous amount to learn just to understand what those he/she is supposed to be leading are saying.

That’s the first challenge. The second is gaining the respect of everyone in the IT organization. That isn’t easy for someone who knows little about the discipline and yet is responsible for such niceties as setting direction, obtaining the necessary resources, establishing goals, and so on.

It can be done. It isn’t easy, requires serious interest in both the subject matter and the people, and in particular calls for someone who can explain, credibly, how it is that northeasterly competence qualifies them for the top position in IT.

One answer, in case you need it: “My most important jobs right now are learning everything I can about what you do so I can make sure we get everything we need to be successful. Getting everything we need is something I’m pretty good at. Understanding what you do is something I plan to become pretty good at.”

Without both the interest and the good answer, most from-the-business CIOs probably will be viewed as empty suits … because that’s what they’ll be.

– Bob

This story, “The key to succeeding as a CIO without IT skills,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bob Lewis’s Advice Line blog on InfoWorld.com.