CIO Skills Gap?

Post date: Jun 02, 2010 6:1:24 PM

Our profession has been getting a little bit of a tough rap in the WSJ over the past few days. The gist of the discussion has been that many CIOs are lacking in the skills needed to become key contributors to business success, thus dooming them to being second class citizens. Link. Key skills that are seen as lacking are leadership, communications, vision, influence, and relationship building. Luckily no one thought that technology knowledge was lacking :-) One respondent to the article doesn't think that we as a group care much about our professional development, either, by which he meant soft skills development.

My initial thought on this is that it can be true that if an individual grows career wise within an organization, from a technical start, it may be challenging to assemble the synthesis skills needed to participate at the officer level. Also, the personalities and aptitudes that define successful technical resources are different than leaders and visionaries.

In reality, I think the imbalance of skillsets and attitudes is likely rampant across the organization. Isn't this one reason why the diversity of experience and expertise should be appreciated and nurtured? It certainly is in high performing teams! One experience I had at a recent networking event reinforced both the imbalance and the value. My collegeaue's comment was "You guys are all terrible" by which he meant technology types in general. My first reaction was wow you have been working with the wrong people, but my second reaction was that you don't value the function or its potential in your organization at all.

On a positive note, I agree with others that think that the CIO is in a unique position to help move the business forward, because he or she touches and supports all the aspects of the business - thus gaining insight that Sales, Ops, Admin, Finance, etc do not have. We need to use this, and all our leadership/management skills too to help our organizations succeed!! And a little marketing of our successes in this regard doesn't hurt either.