I attended a few conferences lately where the question on why the CIO or the CTO is not sitting at the CEO table. There were many theories and explanations. There were many funny pictures of the jargon ridden CIO that is always bewildering his colleagues with SOAP, Orchestration, SOA, XML, Cloud, and Virtualization! Pictures of suffering CEO's whose heads are filled with financial numbers, profit margins, ROI, PE ratios, and market strategies were plastered on the big screens with the CIO way in the background with his head swirling with a different kind of programming language and encryption algorithms! Obviously, the CEO decipher was "blablablabal ... ". After the barrage of the pictures of the geeky CIO, a slew of smart speakers came to the defense of why "IT Matters"! Many years have passed since Nicolas Carr published this work and still IT is all worked up defending its value. Then there were a slew of book and authors speaking on how the CIO preferably not know much about IT so they can run IT better! And there were a slew of other books for the technical CIO's on how to re-program their heads to speak business form the CEO can understand so they may be one day able to get a seat at the table. The total sum of the speakers theme on the topic of CIO exclusion from the CEO table is that the head of the CIO needs to be re-programmed to speak a new language! Not a programming language! But the language of the deal. There were even slides that had a parallel set of geek speak mapped to CEO speak which really did not match! But I guess if you splash a set of geeky terms out there and map them to general business and marketing strategy taxonomy everything goes.
I personally find these presentations rather silly and shallow in their intellectual depth, honestly! Every CIO I worked with and observed has yet to use SOA, XML, or any of these terms in their strategic plans or in every meeting or message they give to their team. What I have experienced thus far is CIO's who are very able and adept at talking about business value, finding means to improve cost cutting practices, applying technology to increase profit margins or reducing cost, tackling spiraling operational costs and improving efficiencies, systematically introducing operational excellence and standardizing processes, revitalizing customer service, and sustaining competitive differential through technology. I am not sure which CIO's or CTO's these speakers are talking about and why do we continue to accept this self flagellationin IT. Let us face it! how does any business run its business today without a solid technology backing that ensures the organization's security, network connectivity, operations processing, business intelligence and understanding of the market, collaboration within and outside the boundaries, innovation and delivery of new business models based on technology solutions and a whole list of capabilities that can only be delivered by the CIO! None. IT does not only matter! IT is the core engine without which there would be no business running as we know it today. And that my friends in IT, is the real deal.
Comments