The CIO needs to reapply for his job
In my FT piece today I am pushing CEOs to suspend their distrust and let their CIO lead them through these difficult market conditions. But before they hand over the reins the CIO in effect needs to reapply for their job. Click here to read more.
What do you think?
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I am a student at IESE Business School and I was delighted when I read the FT today. This is the exact reason why I had decided to do an MBA. The difference in understanding of a problem between business users and technical users is one of the key bottlenecks of most IT projects. IT has a tendency to over-complicate simple requests from business users and on the other side business users can make very complicated, almost impossible requests to IT because they do not understand the system.
A person who has a strong background in IT and is knowledgeable about the business would be able to devise more technically feasible solutions since he understands different technologies as well as different requirements at the business side.
The aspect of having management who can communicate effectively with both business users as well as technical staff is important to the productivity of any IT team. From my personal experience implementing different e-business suites in different organizations, a lot of time and effort is wasted because of the difference in understanding of a requirement between business and IT teams.
For e.g. in banking, MBA’s with a good IT background and a strong interest in finance would add a lot of value to an investment banking information systems by being a bridge between the analysts and researchers who design the system and the system architects who has to implement the solution.
Thank you, once again, for the article. If it’s alright with you, I would love to pick your brain further about this.(abdul.vallarkodath-at-iese.net)
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Great feedback. Thank you for taking the time to reply.
In my view you represent the future of IT/business.
Happy to talk. Drop me an email and we’ll take it from there.
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Nice column, Ade—very timely and thought-provoking. I blogged about it at https://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/12/the_cio_needs_t.html as part of the Global CIO blog I run. InformationWeek reaches about 2.5 million readers per week and many of them will no doubt learn some things from your piece. Keep pushing CIOs to become business leaders with deep-domain expertise in technology! Cheers.