New skills are needed for CIOs to ride the changes that
will transform IT, according to a CIO Connect survey.
The report said that CIOs should be confident of thriving as the
pace of change in IT quickens and that forging effective new
relationships both outside and within the business would be
vital.
For the past three years, said CIO Connect, being a CIO has been
extremely pressurised.
While other parts of enterprise have enjoyed a mini-boom, CIOs
have been called to task to spend less money, provide functionality
to the business "on demand" and at the same time deliver secure
end-to-end service across whole corporations. Such pressures have
reduced the IT function to that of cash cow and strained
relationships with IT suppliers with whom, according to the survey,
three out of four CIOs still feel that their efforts to build
strategic relationships are simply not reciprocated.
Des Lee, founding director of CIO-Connect, said that the new role
for the CIO was that of "change warrior" and that fulfilling this
role required a totally different approach and a new skill set. “If
we are to examine the new skill requirement for managing change,
then of course you still need the CIO's staple capability of
analytical skills backed up with a good grounding in technical
knowledge," he said. "But here is the rub: to be a good change
manager, you also need excellent communication skills and political
nous. Sadly, these qualities have never been top of the list when
recruiting a new CIO.”
In addition, Lee said that all of the CIOs interviewed believed
that significant IT-related opportunities had yet to be exploited
in their organisations. Lee said there was almost unanimous
agreement on the need to improve relations with the business by
adopting a realistic two-way method (or three-way by including
suppliers") of communicating with the business, end-customers,
suppliers and all who need to know.
