Can CIOs Become Business Leaders?


Bangalore: “Chief Information Officer (CIO) is a job title commonly given to the person in an enterprise responsible for the information technology and computer systems that support enterprise goals.” As defined by TechTarget. But offlate the definition of CIO has changed they don’t just serve as IT leaders, in today’s global enterprise CIOs contribute to critical business decisions and therfore at times they serve as Business Leaders for the progressive growth of an organization. Now comes the big question ‘can CIOs become business leaders’? If Yes, how?

A recent article by Bernard Golden in CIO.In says that CIOs need not be Business leaders, “The general rap against technical IT executives is that they talk about technology too much and fail to communicate with CEOs in so-called “business terms”. The thinking is that CIOs fail to use the language of business and thereby bore-or, worse, alienate-CEOs, with the result that CIOs are dismissed from the inner ranks of corporations.says Golden.  

In such scenario how can CIOs serve the purpose of being bisiness leaders? Ben Kerschberg, founder of BK Advisory Group, outlines three steps for CIOs to become good business leaders, reports Caron Carlson FierceCIO.

Step 1

According to Kerschberg’s post in Forbes, “The first step is to reconcile the need to standardize IT globally with the need to allow regional divisions to abide by regional rules”. In simple words CIOs need to look out and find efficiencies through an organized consolidation while keeping into mind the unique local needs and demands of sales and marketing initiatives.