The Road to CIO, Part 3: Grooming Future CIOs

Computerworld - This is the final installment in a three-part series of articles addressing the career path of the IT executive. Part 1 discussed the road to CIO. Part 2 addressed the emergence of the next generation of CIOs -- chief executives who are redefining the profession by becoming business thought leaders as well as technology leaders. This article discusses the importance of identifying and developing the CIOs of the future.

There are some CIOs who are well known for grooming and developing future CIOs. But overall, there is a need for IT as an industry to take a greater interest in developing its future leaders. Quite simply, the baby boomer generation is approaching retirement age. Over the next 10 years there will be more people retiring than coming into the workforce, particularly in IT, with universities graduating fewer IT students now than five years ago. Technology, frankly, is not perceived as the "strike it rich" field it was during the technology boom of the '90s, before the dot-com bubble burst. Additionally, there is a perception that jobs are moving offshore and there is less money to be made. As a result, fewer college students are going into the IT field.
The relatively high turnover rate of CIOs only compounds the situation. With an average tenure of three to five years -- about the length of time to complete a major IT project -- CIOs who are considering moving on to other challenges should be grooming their replacements.
Unlike their CFO counterparts, however, who have a fairly well-defined "CFO track" for career progression and for educational and certification requirements, the CIO career path is less formal. In fact, the Regional Leadership Forum (RLF) offered by the Society for Information Management (SIM) is one of very few nondegree programs dedicated to training future IT executives. While the RLF teaches leadership, team-building, creative thinking, listening skills, global business skills and business ethics, such programs alone are not enough to ensure that current IT executives will be prepared to take over as the next generation of CIOs. Instead, CIOs themselves need to take an active role in grooming future leaders.

Identifying Emerging Leaders
Nobody becomes a CIO by accident. Traditionally, they have started out as programmers and analysts and worked their way up to project management. Along the way they have been given more and more leadership, business and administrative responsibility, until their managerial tasks start to outweigh their technical responsibilities. They continue through further promotions to the director and vice president levels until they