The life of a chief information officer is challenging and interesting. In many ways, the CIO has the same variety and complexity as the leader of the business. In fact, there is evidence that effective CIO/CEO relationships are fundamental to the success of any organisation.
Whether this is universally true or not, the CIO role is uniquely varied and demanding.
One minute, the CIO may be in high-level strategy discussions talking about the long-term future of the business and the next meeting could be to discuss the help desk delivery statistics, mitigate cyber-security challenges or decide what to do about a major project. In the last case it can be just as difficult whether the project is going well or the reverse.
In between meetings, you are likely to get asked about your opinion of every latest technology toy to just hit the market.
The life of a CIO Studio operative is no less varied. We might see 3 to 5 different businesses in a week. For our clients this is a real benefit; we see common themes and trends as well as common problems as they play out in practical terms on the ground.
When I start work with a new client, I am often meeting a range of new people who I get introduced to as “our new IT consultant”. When this happens people generally nod and smile as if they know all about what an IT consultant does.
It often comes as a surprise to those same people the extent to which we appreciate the business challenges that they have as well as the technology challenges.
Therein lies the intersection between skills that represents the true CIO. A CIO must be able to carry-on a business conversation about the business strategy as well as having a clear understanding of all the details of the various technology options that are currently in use or could be in use to meet the needs of that business.
In fact, we don’t even really like the word “consultant” because that has some negative connotations. A consultant is - in the eyes of many - an individual who asks to see your watch so they can tell you the time (and then keeps your watch).
Instead, we think of ourselves as professionals; IT professionals if you like, although we prefer the term Digital Professional (and sure, this is confusing too because we’re not digital marketing people).
So, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, here is my day in the life of a CIO:
Monday morning 6:00 am: Spent the weekend thinking about the new digital strategy that I’ve been working on with the executive team. Started the day early, keen to get moving and prepare for planned workshop with team later this morning.
Arrived at office 8:00 am: Discovered email system not functioning; chaotic activity on service desk & service desk manager looking stressed.
9:00 am: Chief Marketing Officer swings by my desk to make sure that I understand how important it is that the latest email campaign gets underway this morning.
9:30 am: Senior systems administrator arrived at work starts looking at the problem (issues with her bike, apparently).
9:40 am: Karen from accounts wants to show me the cool new trick that she’s learned with Excel. She knows I’ll be interested because I am the tech guy.
11:00 am: Established that the email problem is a result of an outage with Microsoft’s Office 365 service. Mentally start preparing explanation to CEO as to why moving to a cloud email service was still the right call.
11:15 am: First opportunity to grab coffee since arriving. Sales Director was in the lunchroom by the water-cooler. He’s been reading about blockchain and wanted my thoughts on whether he should be investing in cryptocurrency.
12:00 pm: Sit in on weekly sales meeting as usual. Never quite know why I’m there, since the discussion is always the same and I’ve grown tired of pointing out that if the sales team would just update their CRM details regularly the Sales Director would have better data as to what our pipeline is really like, and who is the best actual rainmaker – as opposed to the best storyteller.
12:30 pm: Message pops on my Teams app to let me know the Office 365 outage is over.
2:00 pm: Finally get to re-scheduled online workshop with team to discuss the digital strategy. Most members of team working from home. One of the team insists on leaving his camera off, another has a dog barking in the background every time she tries to speak. We get through it ok anyway, and everyone seems to be on board with the changes.
3:00 pm: First of two one-on-one meetings with direct reports. About half my team loves these meetings and the other half think they’re a waste of time, but it’s policy, so we do it anyway.
4:00 pm: One-up second interview for new project manager to lead the transformation project. Great resumé on paper, but I don’t think he’s our guy – we’ll have to keep looking.
5:30 pm: Start scanning through email inbox and Teams chats for anything crucial I may have missed.
6:30 pm: CEO wanders into my office and hands me a beer. I start to explain about the email outage, but he isn’t interested – wants to talk about how the strategy workshop went.
Some days end better than others.
Ray Delany is the Founder of CIO Studio, a company built to partner with SMEs and help them solve the “strategy” problem and align their digital investment with their business outcomes.
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