Naked CIO: No outstanding CIOs? Pah!

Why is it so difficult to find a great CIO? Because the business will not support them, says the Naked CIO.

I read with interest a recent article by fellow silicon.com columnist Tim Cook about how hard it is to find good CIOs and how the job market is still quite active.

It got me thinking about how companies work at senior levels.

The article began with a profound anecdote, in which an executive asks his board whether any of them had worked with an outstanding CIO.

The response?

"Not one of them had. Some of them had worked with good ones but not great. All of them had examples of poor experiences with the role," Cook wrote.

I have the answer as to why: there is no incentive for other executives around the boardroom table to help a CIO succeed. Moreover, many executives in actually set up IT leaders for failure and succeed themselves because of it.

This 'breeding of failure' increases the challenges that companies face to really capitalise on the power of their technology projects.

Senior executives see IT leaders as slaves to their desires, not business partners trying to reach the same goal. They also expect technology departments to get things done in record time without proper clarification of what needs to be done. They just expect us to get it.

When CIOs ask the business to get involved in IT projects, it gets someone of marginal seniority to take part - and refuses to get involved as much as it expects the CIO to be involved in business projects.

What is more, in many cases this is a calculated response. Senior leaders and board members love having excuses and there is no better scapegoat in any company than IT and the CIO in charge of it.

Businesses need good CIOs but no CIO will ever succeed with his/her peers working towards his/her ultimate failure. This is one of the reasons why CIOs need to be represented on the board, so they have a forum to out those who implicitly are have negative effect on the value of IT in an organisation.

I do not want to stereotype all corporate executives - I realise some are supportive of IT leaders. To all those executives I will say: in order to have a positive impact on IT in your organisation, you must be an active rather than passive supporter.

That means you must ensure your departments are involved and act as a champion to those IT projects that impact your business area. All IT systems are tools for your employees to perform their jobs and helping IT design the best tool will ultimately help your business.

It confounds me that senior executives often don't support IT within their organisation. I just don't understand why they wouldn't.

The only answer I can come up with is that it is strategic for senior executives to have a failing IT department to blame - they can then deflect criticism directed at them and point to others' failure, all to make themselves look better.

This type of attitude is cowardly but so common in modern companies and modern boardrooms.

Next time a CEO asks his board whether anyone knows of a good CIOs, maybe he should start by asking them if they have are willing to let a CIO be great even if it may show up some of their own weaknesses.