Organizations often struggle to find and appoint CIOs since the list of skills they require runs scarce in the market.
Solid communication skills, deep technical expertise, an eye for commercial opportunities and a strategic mindset are part of the must-haves, according to analysts and experts.
Enter AI, tools and services that have brought more promise, scrutiny and dependency on enterprise leaders who know how technology works – and who know where the tech bodies are buried.
“It’s not easy to be a CIO,” said David Ulicne, executive director of executive education at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. “It requires a special skill set to be successful, no matter what you do. For large enterprises, the demands of that role are much more heightened now because of the unbelievable expectations put upon it.”
More than 4 in 5 CIOs agree that their role has significantly expanded, leading initiatives across business and technology, according to Deloitte data.
When businesses look for candidates with a specific background, especially around niche markets like manufacturing, the skills gap looms ever larger. If companies want to deploy a more nascent technology like AI or tackle specific use cases, the challenge gets more complex.
“You can’t just go and find 20 people who have done this same thing in similar companies, because they don’t exist,” Charley Betzig, managing director at executive search firm Heller, told CIO Dive.
The CIO shopping list
Companies searching for their next CIO must compile a priorities list — one that reflects their vision for the role.
The rapid skew toward the business and strategy side for the CIO has also had an effect on the kinds of skills that companies look for, according to Ashley Constable, VP and senior managing director at Robert Half.
“The requirements that you normally see for other C-suite executives like a CEO — having great communication skills, being able to speak in front of boards, being highly polished — these are just some core things that are being required of CIOs today,” Constable told CIO Dive.
CIOs are also more commonly reporting to CEOs now, a sign of expanding influence. Nearly two-thirds of CIOs sit directly below the CEO in the org chart, up from 41% in 2015, according to Deloitte.
As companies prioritize growth and revenue generation, they look for CIOs who can tie technology investments directly to business results. Especially, Constable said, if they’ve previously been involved in large-scale transformation efforts.
The focus on business, though, has not relegated the need for technical chops.
“They’re still there,” Constable said. “Leading candidates have a track record of managing enterprisewide transformation, whether that’s in AI adoption, cloud modernization, cybersecurity initiatives or data strategy. But not all candidates are going to have all those aspects.”
Seth Robinson, VP of industry research at CompTIA, also highlighted the shift in the CIO role, its increased strategic side and the list of skills companies look for.
“A CIO 20 years ago might not have necessarily needed to consider the ROI of a technology investment,” Robinson said. “They were being held to different cost-center-type standards.”
Now, leaders are tasked with ditching the project-based approach to digital transformation, Robinson said. Instead of having a fixed endpoint, successful CIOs understand transformation to be a constant discipline.
In addition, CIOs looking for their next role might find themselves needing to counsel an organization around skills development and talent strategies, a task once siloed in HR departments.
“I think that there is some leadership that a CIO could take around building that skills taxonomy and being very specific about what the process might look like for finding those skills in the market,” Robinson said.
Change management and commercial mindset
As AI adoption efforts throw a wrench in old ways of working, incoming CIOs are measured on their ability to steer change — with extra points for prior examples of success.
The right change management strategies will ensure employees don’t try using a tool once or twice, and then go back to their old way of doing things, according to Betzig.
Without effective communication, CIOs can also flounder.
“They’re going to have to have some difficult conversations with their peers within the C-suite, perhaps the board,” Ulicne said. “It’s a matter of having the wherewithal, the guts and the confidence to have those difficult discussions.”
Amid rising technology cost concerns, boards are looking for CIOs who can fire up technology in favor of growing revenue or cutting costs.
“Think about somebody who is really adept at working with the business closely,” Betzig said. “Almost like a hunter-type profile, somebody who works with the business and looks for opportunities to leverage AI and either generate revenue or save money through technology.”
Rather than a single skill being the missing link, the rarer profile of a CIO — and what companies work hardest to find in the market — is a candidate who has the right balance of managerial and technical prowess.
“It’s really important that CIOs can be cross-functional leaders,” Constable said. “They’re not so segmented anymore, and they’re touching every aspect of business.”
