Leader: Should CIOs want to be CEOs?

This week silicon.com conducted two surveys which gave an insight into IT leaders' career ambitions.

Our CIO Jury voted with a two-thirds majority that being the IT boss is not realistically the limit of most IT executives' career ambitions, with jurors saying any 'glass ceiling' would be self-imposed and would only exist because a particular individual did not want to move on to become a COO or CEO.

That lack of ambition was revealed in our second survey of 250 IT directors and CIOs. Two-thirds said they did not see themselves moving up the corporate ladder into an executive 'C-level' position. Just five per cent expressed a desire to become a CEO while two per cent could imagine becoming a COO or other general business executive.

All this, at a time when IT leaders are being called on more and more to be businessmen first and techies second.

Certainly if CIOs are not just techies anymore, and do possess the business skills necessary to run wider operations, they should be allowed to move up.

There's evidence of this already among our CIO Jury, with David Yu moving from CTO to COO at Betfair.com and Ric Francis, former CIO at Safeway, becoming operations director at the Post Office.

Yet a fact pointed out by the dissenting minority in the CIO Jury was that this happens much less frequently than, say, a finance or sales director going on to become a CEO.

The big question is why. If it's because there's some prejudice against promoting the IT guy, even if he's the most qualified candidate, then of course that's a foolish attitude which should be changed.

But if it's because CIOs are happy with their lot, then there also should be no pressure for them to feel they must move on just to be deemed successful - especially because, as organisations become more dependent on IT, their powers are ever-expanding.