Research: Anatomy of the perfect CIO

The CIO occupies a unique position in the boardroom. Unlike other executives CIOs are often drafted in to fix a specific issue, after which they may well pack their bags and move on to pastures new. And unlike other senior roles the CIOs remit is not defined by a particular discipline. Getting to grips with the nuts and bolts of technology plays a diminishing part in what a CIO does day-to-day; rather the role is about applying technology to help the business to innovate in all sorts of interesting ways.

That said, keeping the lights on remains an crucial task, and CIOs must prove themselves capable of managing the core IT function before they are allowed a free rein to innovate.

In some ways the CIO is the perpetual outsider, fully at home neither in the boardroom nor the server room, yet needing to be fluent in the language of both.

Given the peculiarities of the job, it takes a particular set of character traits to become an exceptional CIO. To find out more Computing interviewed a dozen leading IT heads from a range of different sectors to see what they had in common.

The vision thing

The most important characteristic of a brilliant CIO was widely agreed to be clarity of vision. After all if you are drafted in to drive through a transformational task within three or four years, its no good being woolly about it.

Without a clear vision, how can you possibly influence others? said Charles Ewen, CIO at the Met Office.

Vision is the starting point from which other key attributes such as adaptability, strong communication and the ability to influence others flow.

I dont think you can be a good communicator unless you really have a clear vision. Those two are tied that way. Im sure you can have a clear vision and not be good at communicating it, but youll really struggle to get buy-in, said Colin Rees, IT director at Dominos UK

Despite its pivotal importance these days, technology still tends to be considered as difficult by the rest of the business, and so frequently finds itself shuffled off into a side alley rather than considered as an intrinsic part of the overall business strategy. It is essential that IT has a place at the boardroom table, and the successful CIO must be able to communicate often complex technical subject matter at an appropriate level.

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Research: Anatomy of the perfect CIO