Executive CIO - part two
Posted by Felix Enescu on March 14th, 2007
I knew I shouldn’t believe journalists.
As Norman Mailer said 
:
Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.
I my previous post I was quoting an article in Computer Weekly about the four types of CIOs.
Meanwhile after some emails exchanged with Brinley Platts, author of the Building Effective IT Executive Teams research and chairman of CIODevelopment.com I understand better the full picture:
Each of them will have strengths and weaknesses based solely on their career track and the experience it has given them, and smart CIOs (and CEOs) will take account of these in building and deploying their top executive teams.
The types are based on previous experience: technology versus other functions and current organization versus other organizations
Every type has it place in an organization life-cycle and culture. The CIO Role-Types Model is also great to plot your career path.
Please go to CIO Development site and download the study. Worth reading it!
March 19th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
I am grateful to Felix for drawing attention to my work and for tracking me down so that I could defend it! His note explains the magazine article but doesn’t convey the effect this work has had on the senior CIO community here in the UK.
For many of them, hearing about the CIO Role-Types is like having a burden lifted. They realise how they can avoid meaningless comparisons with CIOs who may be more effective in some ways but who are obviously different and have less obvious different weaknesses and blind spots.
More important, the model predicts how the different types of CIOs will naturally develop and gives them areas where they can seek out specific experience and training to assist in their all round executive development. The objective of this and our other work is to help enable CIOs step up and become key members of the CEOs top team. This is the best way we know to help ensure the business secures the IT service it needs.
You can very quickly plot your own career track online at http://www.lef.csc.com/performance/survey.asp You can also download the research Executive Summary and other interesting CIO development white papers from http://www.ciodevelopment.com .