What have we learned in the past 18 months since the onset of the
global economic downturn? What have we discovered about our
companies' priorities, competitive standing, and revenue drivers?
What insights have we gained into not just what CEOs want and
expect from their CIOs and IT organizations, but what they
demand?
What's different about the CIO job than 18 months ago? Or 12 months
ago? And what's it going to look like 12 months out from now? And
if you're tempted to say that nothing big will change in 12 months,
I would just ask you to think back to what you were faced with in
June 2009—while that might seem like decades ago, it was only
one year ago.
I think we've learned that CEOs' tolerance for CIO isolationism has
disappeared forever; be engaged or be gone. I think we've learned
that a CIO can have all the good intentions in the world aren't
worth a plugged drachma if the CIO is detached from revenue
drivers, from process optimization, from innovation as a
competitive weapon, and from the core themes that bind all other
C-level executives to the wheel of business.
I think the unsettling trend toward CIOs reporting to someone other
than the CEO is a damning indictment—and not of the CEO but
rather of those CIOs who choose to fall back on what they know
instead of diving into what their companies need.
And I think a lot of CIOs are going to lose their jobs in the
second half of 2010—not because they don't work hard, not
because they don't know their traditional stuff, and not because
they're not committed to the company's success. Rather, they'll
lose their jobs primarily because they have continued to resist
change rather than embracing it as a strategic weapon.
And I think that if you recognize yourself in more than three of
these 10 points below, you'd better schedule some quality time with
your favorite headhunter.
The top 10 reasons for CIOs to
get fired in 2010
(And I'm leaving out the obvious ones like embezzlement, selling
corporate secrets to competitors, taking kickbacks from vendors and
such).
1) Failure to attack 80/20. Several years ago,
CIOs simply didn't have the tools to begin flipping this ratio
between maintenance (for many IT shops, it now consumes 70 percent
or 80 percent of IT budgets) and innovation (the lifeblood of
growth, new products, and most importantly new revenue). The tools
are now available—the at-risk component is the will of the
CIO to fight a long and grueling battle.
Next come two deadly failures:
2) Failure to embrace
mobility. In just the past few weeks, two of the world's
most influential IT vendors—Hewlett-Packard and
SAP—have stated very publicly that mobile will unequivocally
become the primary enterprise computing output device in very short
order. They're not saying that to try flog their own mobile
products—right now, each company generates more than 95
percent and probably more than 99 percent of its revenue from
traditional computing platforms. But that's changing rapidly, and
the customers of HP and of SAP are clearly telling them that
mobility must be #1.