Posted onin Leadership/Management
Recently I was on the CIO Talk Network and we were discussing on the emerging and changing role of the Head of IT function and I was pleasantly surprised with the co-speaker introducing himself as the Head of CPO (Chief Process Officer). During the course of the interview, he explained that he preferred the title of the CPO v/s. CIO as it describes the real role that he is playing.
Before I give my views, I would like to ask all of you:
What do you think is the role of the Head of the IT Organization? Is he/she the Chief Information Officer ? Is that what the role is ? or Is it something else ?
While the word “Chief” would be constant as each one of us would like to be the Chief. But what are we Chief of ? I would like to welcome your thoughts and tweets of what we are and more importantly of what we want to be. I went to my senior management and asked them what do they want me to do and their answer was
- help me improve what I have – Enable;
- help me bring what I don’t have – Enhance;
- but most important is ‘co-create’ with me. – Engender.
If I were to explain the kind of the role – than should I say that our role at particular level is to keep the lights on and keeping the lights on in such a way that they never felt there would have been an alternative.
The second part – if you have to enable them, then one would wonder who knows the processes and the system of the organization best:
- Is it the Business Person, CFO or someone else ?
- Could it be you or Is it ‘You’ / IT Department ?
And if we were to think or at least have the best bet and best opportunity to be there:
- Do we want to be there ?
Which is why before addressing the good point my co-speaker made during the interview – I feel that of all the areas covered by CIO’s, ‘co-creating’ is probably more exciting even as the other two are important and vital to the organization’s success and prosperity.
I would look forward to your inputs on the emerging role and title (of Head of IT)
- Chief Value Delivery Officer, Chief of Transformation
I would like to add couple of points to get the discussion started.
- In the new context of the business terminology and environment – what is the real role of Heads of IT of large corporations? And therefore what is the appropriate title?
- Where does the person make the most important contribution?
- What does the person spend most of the quality time on?
- Should we use “inputs” by the person, the “process” she / he goes through or the “output” the person generates?
- What is the most compelling in the minds of the “Constituents”?
- What would attract the best talent into the role?
- What would clarify to all what this role does ?
