What CIOs needs: Contrariness, courage and compassion

Spare a thought for CIOs. Depending on whose views your read they are an endangered or embattled species, or both, or they are in pole position to advance their influence in the corporate pecking order.

And of course, like just about every other change that has swept through IT, this one is being driven by technology: cloud computing; IT as a service; mobility, etc. But, as I said, spare a thought for them because the more they read to try and understand the new world that they inhabit and what they should do to survive and thrive in it, the more confused they are likely to become.

One thing that stood out from a couple of documents that came into my inbox recently was how the way CIOs see their roles and opportunities differs from the way CEOs see these things.

Take for example this comment from recruitment firm Harvey Nash’s 2013 Global CEO survey, released earlier this year: "CIOs rate themselves less happy than they were before the recessions of 2007 and 2010 (no surprise there), but their strategic influence has never been stronger.”

Contrast this with the views of CEOs as reported in a Harvard Business Review Article in June (reproduced as a blog by the author)  “Almost half of CEOs view their CIOs as out of step with the business and about the same percentage think IT should be a commodity service, purchased as needed.”

However that does align with another belief of CIOs, as reported by Harvey Nash. "CIOs are recognising that their importance is increasingly defined by their influence, rather than what they control." That presupposes that they will be able to get themselves into a position of influence, because on one view, there will soon be nothing left for them to control.

Computerworld US recently carried an article headlined “IT departments won't exist in five years." According to the Computerworld article “Consumerisation of IT and self-service trends will lead to a restructuring of the today's IT shop, leaving behind a hybrid model consisting of tech consultants and integrators.”

In support of this claim ComputerWorld quoted members of “a four-person panel of technologists who answered audience questions during a town hall-style meeting at the CITE Conference and Expo [in San Francisco].”

About the only certainty in all this is that the 'game' of corporate IT is changing, and so are the rules. So in this context the HBR article gets to the heart of the matter, from a CIO's perspective. It's based on a webinar sponsored by Harvard Business Review, Dell and CIO.com called “Change the Conversation, Change the Game," that focuses on "what CIOs need to be doing differently to meet this brave new world in which IT can no longer afford to be just a service provider."

The article pulls out a few gems from webinar participants, but I really like this one, because it focuses on personal qualities that don't usually feature in such conversations: contrariness, compassion and courage.

"You have to be a contrarian in your heart. You have to be able to look at what everybody else takes for granted and say, is there another way of doing this? Number two, you have to have a lot of courage today. You have to be able to look beyond what everybody else takes as best practice. And I think the third and most important thing is, if you really want to be a change leader, is you have to have compassion. People have to believe that you are not fighting your corner. This is not about IT; it’s not even just about the business. It’s about working from the customer backwards.”

Put the customer first. That's the mantra that's pervading just out everything these days. Can't be a bad thing for CIOs to be singing from the same song sheet.