How well CIOs balance three pairs of contradictory roles has
profound effects on the performance on their employer firms, says
thefirst
CIO studyby the IBM Institute for Business
Value.
The global study published this week is the result of almost
2,600 face-to-face interviews with CIOs in 78 countries and 19
industries.
The researchers found that CIOs must not only balance
conflicting roles, they have to do it within the limits imposed by
the history and culture of their employer organisations in a
volatile and financially challenging economy.
The roles CIOs need to assume, as the IBM researchers describe
them, are Insightful Visionary and Able Pragmatist, Savvy Value
Creator and Relentless Cost Cutter, and Collaborative Business
Leader and Inspiring IT Manager.
Integrating these roles allows CIOs to produce truly innovative
solutions, improve the return on investment in IT, and increase the
impact of IT on the organisation's operations, researchers say.
"For example, The Visionary may see a new opportunity, but it takes
a Pragmatist to seize it," they say.
The researchers found that differences in how CIOs manage these
roles show up on the bottom line. The researchers used profit
before tax for the years 2004 to 2007 as a benchmark to split the
employer organisations into high, medium and low growth firms. It
then looked at the characteristics of the CIOs in each
category.
It found that CIOs in low growth firms focus on the IT Manager
role. This heavy concentration ultimately short-changes focus on
the other five roles, the researchers said. CIOs from medium growth
firm were evenly balanced across all roles.
CIOs in high growth firms were also balanced, but peaked on
three aspects, Visionary, Business Leader and Pragmatist roles, at
the expense of IT Manager. This meant they spent significantly more
time on these aspects rather than keeping the lights on and cutting
costs, which are the keynotes of IT Managers.
"These peaks correspond to high growth CIOs' heavy emphasis on
proposing innovative change, collaborating with colleagues across
the business, and putting innovation into practice, respectively,"
they said.
The findings showed that CIOs earned their seats in the
boardroom firstly by running basic IT operations well, and secondly
using that credibility plus a convincing analysis of information to
help generate innovative solutions to problems or opportunities in
other areas of the business.
The researchers said CIOs could improve their performance in all
aspects, especially communicating IT's true value to the
organisation.
But how effective their moves prove depends on the company
culture and management beliefs. The study found that 63% of high
growth CIOs expect their business models to be well-established,
unique and hard to copy in five years. Just 49% of low growth CIOs
felt the same.
Action points
To become more visionary CIOs need to:
• Push business and technology integration
• Champion innovation
• Extend CIO influence
• Enable the corporate vision
• Make working together easy
• Concentrate on core competencies.
To raise the ROI of IT, CIOs need to:
• Make the data "sing"
• Reach customers in new ways
• Enhance integration and transparency
• Standardize to economize
• Centralize the infrastructure
• Keep cost reduction a top priority.
To expand business impact, CIOs need to:
• Know the business
• Get involved with business peers in non-IT projects
• Present and measure IT in business terms
• Cultivate truly extraordinary IT talent
• Lead the IT forces
• Enhance the data