Various Personas of a CIO

Now is the right time for the new age CIOs to embrace four types of personas that is the need of the hour as the IT world is witnessing a paradigm shift in technology. Today’s CIOs need to prioritize the 4 I’s : Infrastructure, Integration, Innovation and Intelligence, by CIO India.

As Ray Wang, principal analyst of Constellation Research, rightfully observed, the CIOs were always accountable for the ‘infrastructure’ of the IT department as well as the ‘integration’ of various resources within an organization as it broadly comes under cost cutting procedures which was the signature job of the primal CIO.

"People see you as the chief infrastructure officer. What people also see is you are moving into chief integration officer," says Wang. "But what CIOs traditionally have not done a good job with is really the other two -- the chief intelligence officer and the chief innovation officer."

But with the emergence of innovative technologies and trends like cloud, mobile application, big data, etc. a CIO should not only adopt but also adapt the imperative skills of being an ‘innovative’ as well as ‘intelligent’ in order to facilitate growth of the IT sector and hence of the business too.

In theory, this idea looks fantastic for the CIOs. But practically it is an entire different tale woven complexly. For the CIO should not only be crafty enough to be in the good books of the management by utilizing the available resources in meeting the requisite expectations but also devise ingenuine ways to extract more fund the reasons for which is beyond the comprehension of the management.

This is cardinally because the business wants visible results from the IT sector within the realm of the allotted funds in the form of revenue for the company. But for the CIOs, they have to tread steadfastly. What the boardroom members fail to understand that CIOs have to be cautious in their experimentation, spawning new novel innovations and where a restricted budget is nothing but a constraint in realizing their goals. This is not only utterly suffocating but also outrightly frustrating for the CIOs.

According to the Constellation Research, one other challenge a CIO is fazed with is the selection of the appropriate disruptive technology in their business process which are mainly mobile, social, cloud, big data analytics and unified communications. The only criteria to be considered while choosing a particular technology is the viability of that particular technology to the dynamics of the organization.

In this regard, Wang has put forward the ‘DEEPR’ theory for the CIOs which acts as a guide in their exploration of the elusive disruptive technology where –

D: Discovering new trends and technologies.
E: Experimenting with these trends and plucking out the ones that is most suitable to the business.
E: Evangelizing internal collaboration.
P: Pervasion of these trends within the organization.
R: Realization of the pros and cons of a particular trend and act accordingly.

This highlights the need for the CIOs to contemplate on one more area, i.e. ‘Technology of Teaming’, highly recommended by progressive companies around the world, which is beneficial for establishing co-ordination among team members, moulding the potential of an employee accordingly which initiates the overall development of an individual.

In this tug-of-war between the CEOs and CIOs where budget allocation seems to be the vital ‘bone of contention’, it is paramount for the CIOs to incorporate these virtues in their work culture. Only then, maybe, a CIO will stand vindicated!