I read this article in Strategy + Business about the cycle of CIO turnover in large corporations.
The article is well reasoned and the points are all relevant.
But the challenge comes down to leadership. The article says that there is a large percentage of CIOs that report to the CFO or someone else…but don’t have a direct line to the CEO. Which is strange to me.
As tech is more and more a bigger part of the driver of business growth and efficiency, the CIO’s role has to be that of a partner to all business units….and the successful organization is going to look at the CIO as a direct partner of the CEO and COO. Because ultimately in larger corporations, the technology is going to be a big driver of a team’s ability to execute strategy and in many cases having a savvy CIO will be a differentiator for businesses as the CIO can hunt for and forecast technologies and trends to get the organization ahead of the curve and beat their competition to a competitive advantage.