Good CIOs universally excel at two things: technology and business. Great CIOs, however, have another skill that some of their peers lack — they know how to deal with the human dynamics of being a leader, both internally within an organization and externally with consumers.
Going from good to great means working on competencies such as relationship management, marketing and branding, interpersonal communication, and collaboration. These are the essential skills needed to bring people together to really understand what the business needs to transform and identify the right opportunities to create that transformation.
But CIOs who embody all of these skills are in the minority today. Too often, CIOs are more comfortable behind the scenes, elbow deep in the technology. Also, I think most CIOs today are really struggling to let go of the “command and control” model of how organizations are typically run. They are used to being in charge, making the decisions, and telling people what they’re going to get, when they’re going to get it, and how much it’s going to cost.
It's time to throw out this model. Now more than ever, we need to be collaborators. We need to shift toward a model where it's less about who owns what — who is the “leader” — and it’s more about how we make decisions as an organization.
In the past, a leader was the decision-maker — the person who was driving the train. In a collaborative model, a leader is a person who’s facilitating the effort of bringing people together to make those decisions and drive business outcomes. CIOs are uniquely positioned to do that because of our breadth across the entire organization. But it's a mistake to try to own those decisions or make them in a vacuum.
What we may see more of in the next few years is the emergence of the Digital C-Suite. This would be a close partnership between the CIO, CMO and Chief Digital Officer — an alliance solely focused on digital transformation and collaboration.
In the meantime, CIOs who want to help prepare their organizations for the future must work on rounding out their skill set with collaboration in mind.
Larry Bonfante is a practicing CIO and an executive coach at CIO Bench Coach. As an award-winning CIO, Bonfante's mission is to help develop world-class technology leaders and teams who enable their organizations to deliver outstanding business results. Bonfante has been recognized as a leader within the industry having been nominated for the CIO Hall of Fame in 2013, receiving the 2011 CIO 100 Award and the 2009 Premier 100 IT Leaders Award.
