The role of chief information officer (CIO) brings with it a lot of power and responsibility. However, under the shiny new door plaque and business cards, there are a few things that no one tells the new CIO about the position. Sadly, many new CIOs may have to spend their first few months figuring out how the office works.
The CIO operates differently in each business, and while no one can tell you exactly how your position operates, those who have filled the role for some time can give general pointers to help newbies navigate the waters. To this end, 15 members of Forbes Technology Council share a few essential tips to help new CIOs get acclimated faster to the new office.
1. Find Your Niche
Identify your personal strengths and weaknesses as a leader. Perform an objective inventory of your skills and expertise, and then build a team to augment your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. Surround yourself with a team that complements you so you can thrive and excel in your niche. - Hassan Tetteh, Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center
2. Communicate With Transparency
As a new CIO, establishing transparency in communication and decision-making will be of utmost importance, especially during the initial period. Frequent and clear communications such as team meetings or town hall sessions are helpful to share insights into your leadership and communication styles. Provide examples of servant leadership and encourage your teams to reach out with recommendations. - Jahn Karsybaev, Prosource IT
3. Know Thy Customer, Know Thyself
You should have deep knowledge of the customer—their needs, concerns, challenges and aspirations. Businesses compete these days based on who can provide the best customer experience, whether that's online or at a physical location. Technology plays a huge role in ensuring the best customer experience, so CIOs need to know who their customers are and what they most care about. - Tom Buiocchi, ServiceChannel
4. Get Better At Recruiting
Too many technical leaders leave the very difficult task of building a world-class technical team to the HR department alone. Even if you have a highly competent recruiting team, they need support and enablement from the CIO/CTO/SVP of engineering to get their job done. Without this partnership, you'll quickly find yourself either understaffed or with a team that you don't want to work with. - Tigran Sloyan, CodeSignal
5. Be Ready To Support
To thrive amidst continuous innovation and disruption, businesses need to adapt and transform faster. Be ready to support change and transformation. As a CIO, you are expected to drive business growth through modernization. You should be prepared to justify technology investments and clearly communicate how new solutions will benefit business in the long run. - Katherine Kostereva, Creatio (formerly bpm’online)
6. Step Up Early
As a new CIO, you will immediately have lots to learn, plan and do. Use your skills to combine business understanding with technology and start creating value as soon as you can. Also, try to tackle a business problem that will scale the role of IT overtime—this way you can get an early win on your side while setting the grounds for major impacts. - Nacho De Marco, BairesDev
7. Enhance Your Emotional Intelligence
It is just as important for a CIO to have emotional intelligence and the ability to connect with people, including the customers that you serve. Technology has the power to enable and infuriate people in the accomplishment of their careers and jobs. As CIOs, we need to understand how deeply personal technology and people's preferences are. - Ganesh Iyer, NIO
8. Be A Generalist
Get to know the whole business. You need to be able to speak in terms of business results, not just technology—and you need to be able to judge new technology according to how it will affect business processes and productivity. Understanding how your company operates generally and how it makes and spends money will help you make the right call when it comes to investments and prioritization. - Ron Cogburn, Exela Technologies
9. Sharpen Your Team-Leading Skills
All too often people assume that a CIO’s job is solely focused on innovation. It’s true that innovation and imagination are crucial qualities of a great CIO. But you also need the ability to lead people. Being able to align your employees around your vision is the only way to execute it. Motivating your team members is the only way you can transform your ideas into reality. - Marc Fischer, Dogtown Media LLC
10. Be A Learner, Not A Knower
There is something that occurs to highly achieving individuals more so than others—at some point, they transition from being learners to knowers. This causes intellectual stagnation that is self-imposed or culturally imposed. We tend to think that we must know all things because of our position or success and we stop asking questions when we need it most: when we are the boss. - José Morey, Liberty BioSecurity
11. Elevate Influence Skills To Drive New Initiatives
One of the most challenging parts of a CIO's role is change management and providing influence to the organization on the technology strategy and ROI. People who've advanced to the C-Suite based on their technology knowledge may need to elevate their influence skills to successfully drive new initiatives. This requires managing up, as well as taking on new leadership of their direct reports. - Tammy Hawes, Virsys12
12. Extend Your Influence Beyond The Server Room
Being a tech executive, you should start building the reputation of a tech leader from day one. Initiate meetings with other executives, ask about the major challenges they face and work out specific plans on addressing these issues to help the company meet business goals. Then be sure to come up with KPIs to estimate how efficient your team is and report upon results. Be ready to think business. - Ilia Sotnikov, Netwrix
13. Get IT And Cybersecurity On The Same Page
New CIOs want to make sure that IT teams are well aligned with cybersecurity programs. Not all of an organization’s IT and security teams have the best working relationship, and it's up to the CIO to prevent an "us vs. them" mentality. If a cyberattack does occur, there will be plenty of blame to go around, so it's better to foster a partnership mentality and focus on team building from the get-go. - John Shin, RSI Security
14. Reach Out To Other Members
You are a business executive first. Your passion for technology needs to take a back seat to business goals. Every technology department, project and concept needs to bring the business value. To build that business mindset, reach out to line executives, the chief operating officer and others to learn about their personal goals, department goals and needs. - Nelson Cicchitto, Avatier Corporation
15. Don't Overlook Culture
Your IT culture reflects your corporate culture. As a new CIO, you have a unique chance to take a fresh look at your workplace IT and assess whether it will support and nurture the corporate culture you strive for. Look for collaboration tools that support teams as they pursue these core elements of success: shared vision, transparency, responsibility and individuality. - Dave Landa, Kintone
