CIO career plan: How to get to the top

Want to climb the IT ladder - and perhaps land the CIO spot? Andy McCue offers some advice on how to make it to the boardroom.

There are many things we plan for in life. Take property, where people work for years to move up the property ladder, into bigger houses and more desirable areas. The same long-term planning goes into personal financial investments such as stocks and shares.

It's amazing then that many IT professionals leave one of the most important parts of their daily life to chance by taking a cavalier approach to career planning, particularly if they have aspirations to become CIO.

Bryan MacDonald, partner at executive search and CIO headhunters Heidrick & Struggles, says: "Careers are often established by chance rather than by design and you should leave it open to chance - but there should also be some element of design. It is entirely acceptable in your early 20s and 30s to drift around. After that you have to be making good decisions to broaden your experience."

So where do you begin with a career development plan?

Plan, plan, plan
CIO headhunter Simon La Fosse, MD of La Fosse Associates, says: "Don't plan in a granular way but there are certain things you want to be achieving. You need to approach it in that perspective."

Someone who has made it to the top is David Weymouth, currently director of IT and operations at insurer Royal & Sun Alliance, via a 30-year career at Barclays and a spell as an independent board-level advisor and consultant.

Weymouth says it isn't easy nowadays to just drift into the ideal job. "I think you need to plan. The important thing is not to plan it as 'I want to be promoted' but 'I need to have this set of experiences and I need to have demonstrated I can do this'."

For a mid-to-senior level executive in their mid-30s, who has climbed up through the IT department via roles such as business analyst and project manager, the career development plan should be targeting the CIO role by the time they hit their mid-40s, according to MacDonald.

Broaden your horizons
One of the foundations of any career development plan is plotting roles that will broaden your experience.

La Fosse says: "Do something that has got that profile. If you are doing something deep in the bowels of the IS department, you are way off. What are you doing for the next one or two years and how is it progressing your career? How will it improve your marketability and what will it position you for?

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"How will this enable you to move up a step?"

The kind of roles aspiring CIOs should be taking on include customer-facing positions, large operational roles and strategic high-level influencing roles that demonstrate the ability to influence people without having direct control over them, advises MacDonald.

Anyone gunning for board-level director roles also needs to be prepared to put themselves above the parapet and that means exposure.

MacDonald says: "This is the most critical part and this is about getting a better lens on the outside world. A lot of these [IT] guys are internal-focusing. "

In practical terms this means building a peer network of people outside of the organisation in similar roles who can share experiences and challenges. Picking up contacts in the advisory world with the likes of McKinsey & Co and specialists such as Gartner is also important.

Wider external exposure is important too, says MacDonald. "By this stage they should be beginning to go out and build their own brand out of the organisation - conference speaking, paper writing, thought-leading stuff."

Exposure also means thinking about how you are perceived both internally and externally - and giving off the impression of someone who makes a real difference to the business.

"What is your brand among board and execs, your peer group, people below you?" asks MacDonald.

La Fosse adds: "If any business leaders were asked for a reference on you, there's three things they can say about you - good stuff, bad stuff or 'who?'. Think about the impression you leave them with."

To MBA or not to MBA?
Education is another vital career building block but one that divides opinion, particularly when it comes to the question of whether to study for an MBA.

Weymouth is an advocate of the business qualification. "I did an MBA and I think that is probably something you need to do," he says.

MacDonald adds: "It is important to continue professional development. That's maybe about doing an MBA or more professional IT and business administration qualifications."

But La Fosse disagrees: "Clearly it works for some people but from where I am sitting it is better to use real-world experience."

Weymouth says the mistake most people make with their career is focusing on promotion instead of concentrating on building up the right experiences and capabilities.

Based on his own career path, he says: "You need to demonstrate fairly early you can manage a significant number of people. You need to be able to simplify complex problems. You need to have led some form of programme of change. You need to demonstrate a good understanding of technology and at a later stage you probably need to have run a P&L [profit and loss operation]."

Finally, La Fosse advises aspiring CIOs to push themselves and get out of their comfort zone. For example, if they become known for big SAP implementations they need to avoid taking on only those roles. If they do they risk becoming typecast.

"Get out and scare yourself a bit," he says.