Perspective: Getting CIO and CEO to see eye to eye

Throughout my career, I have watched the "odd couple" of the chief information officer and the chief executive officer try to live together.

In the 1980s and for most of the '90s, their paths rarely crossed--the CEO didn't think much about technology, and the CIO rarely interacted with executives beyond his boss--the chief financial officer. With the exception of some techie leaders like Ned Johnson at Fidelity, Fred Smith at FedEx or David Glass at Wal-Mart, chief executives perceived IT/BT (I now refer to information technology as business technology, or BT) as an important underpinning of company operations, but not as a critical strategic tool.

Added to this general ambivalence were the high-profile cases of chief executives having their reputations and budgets scorched by IT/BT projects gone awry: perpetual IRS systems overhauls, Citibank's futile effort to create a "single customer view" in the mid-'80s, and SAP R/3 "kitchen sink" leaps of faith in the early-'90s come to mind.

Then the dot-com collective insanity hit and CEO panic set in (Amazoning, etc., etc.). In those days, I ran a tech session at the Harvard Business School for CEOs. To prepare for the session, I surveyed chief executives at 25 large companies. When I asked them how much time they spent on technology issues, the response was "25 percent." They were lying: CEOs--even the techies--could not afford to devote a quarter of their time to systems.

But they were certainly spending more time on tech than they had five years earlier--even Jack "I've never used e-mail" Welch, on his way out the door at General Electric, got religion and started to preach about the digitization of business. Michael Porter, every CEO's favorite academic, got into the act with a naive Harvard Business Review piece on the Internet in early 2001, just as the curtain came crashing down on The Web, Act 1.

The fact that 60 percent of chief executives believe that CIOs are doing a satisfactory job is bad news, not good.

Fast-forward to 2007. How's the odd couple today? Forrester just surveyed 75 global CEOs, and here's the punch line: Sixty percent of CEOs are satisfied with the overall performance of IT/BT, but only 28 percent see IT/BT as a proactive leader in innovation. And only 30 percent see IT/BT as a proactive leader in process improvement.

Now, you can analyze this data simply and conclude that CIOs are in pretty good standing with CEOs, but they have not stepped up to the plate as innovation and process mavens. I interpret the results quite differently.

The fact that 60 percent of chief executives believe that CIOs are doing a satisfactory job is bad news, not good. Think comparatively: If only 60 percent of your top executives were satisfied with the performance of the CFO, that would signal meaningful distrust in the financial operations of your company. Chief executives' satisfaction in IT/BT has certainly risen through this decade, but 60 percent is still too low.

And the fact that CEOs are not looking to the CIO to be a proactive leader in innovation and process is not bad news. Rather, it is a frank assessment by the chief executive that the CIO should not be, indeed cannot be, the driving force in these two areas.

Why? In most companies, the CIO is too busy keeping the ship's engines running smoothly to come up onto the command deck and make suggestions to the captain on course changes. Leading business innovation and process change is not in the skill set of most CIOs--nor should it be.

Does the CIO have a role in process change? Absolutely. IT/BT typically supports and manages the process backbone--think enterprise resource planning--of most companies. When technology is injected into a company, the effort will fail unless it incorporates process change (the way you do work) and organizational change (the way you are organized to do work). I call this the critical triad--technology/process/organization--and the three must always be viewed collectively and as acting in concert. While the CIO brings technology to the table, business executives (especially the CEO) must spend political capital to change process and organization. This is a collaborative effort, with the CIO working with the business people to get the right mix.

Biography
George Colony is chairman and chief executive officer of Forrester Research.

More Perspectives

[jd1023948]

In my extensive experience...

The CIO's office, and the IT department, spend a lot of time dictating to the enterprise what they can and can't do, and very little time actually facilitating business processes. Corporate America needs to restructure its chain of command to change that.

[debll]

IT & the CIO are more interested

in protecting their system from pesky users than in being innovative. You know why CEOs don't approve of IT? Because IT has made the use of technology an obstacle to productivity instead of an aid to it. There are so many rules and regulations and hoops to jump through for the average staff member that they spend more time trying to navigate the technology than serving the bottom line. Requests for new software or innovation or updates are met with "No, that would be a security issue". And CIOs talk down to everyone about technology and like to keep everyone in the dark, so no one can challenge their kingdoms.