CIO Insight’s article on CIOs who take on more roles in the business brings up many issues to ponder. One of them is a potential career path beyond CIO that might be facilitated by a willingness to add roles and responsibilities to a CIO’s portfolio. The story of Beth Perlman, CIO of Constellation Energy, is interesting:
Perlman’s success managing IT and real estate for Constellation Energy resulted in CEO Mayo Shattuck III expanding her role even further, giving Perlman the added title of chief administrative officer [CAO] when he reorganized his executive staff a year ago. She now oversees human resources, …read more

CIO Insight’s great reporting uncovered another trend related to CIOs expanding their roles. Forrestor’s Alex Cullen commented on how CIOs might fit into other parts of the organization:
“We see the broader role more and more in areas like real estate management,” he says. “CIOs make really good chief operating officers for other parts of the business, because there is no more process-oriented or project management-oriented job in the organization.” Adding responsibility may not be a stepping stone to the CEO job, he adds, but it could have positive career consequences.
Process orientation and project management skills seem to be the key, …read more

What frustrates me about most surveys and studies is the lack of definition of the terms. The result is a survey that means virtually nothing. CIO Insight uses the phrase “strategic mindset” when discussing responses to one of it’s survey statements to CIOs:
“There are some companies where the head of the information technology department is considered a leader on par with other C-level execs. But those companies are the exceptions, not the rule.”
Strongly Agree 19%
Agree 51%
Disagree 27%
Strongly Disagree 3%
Doubts about CIOs’ strategic mindset have led many business leaders to consider the role of CIOs as less important than that of …read more

Projectmanagement411 had a fantastic February with lively discussion on a plethora of business project topics. Those who participate make me better for it- hopefully they feel the same as we all grapple with the thorny business issues of the day.
Here is what we talked about. Just click on the topics to gain immediate access to some of the most lively, and at times meaty, business conversation on the web:
Social Security- Tied to Financial Services Industry Failures? Privatization Is a Ruse?
Knowing Yourself and Communicating It
Green Business- Can Result in Green Anxiety, Green Anxiety? Apply Business Basics First, Green Hype Can Distract
Barriers …read more

Continuing from yesterday’s post , another great point made in David Brumby’s Computerworld article “Risks Pay Off in Brand Building ” relates to how we evaluate projects. Clearly, he makes the point that financial criteria can hurt innovation; a better approach is to evaluate how a project contributes to strategies:
“Some of the most innovative ideas I have seen would never get off the page if they were decided solely on financial criteria like payback period. For example, we initiated a centralized program services office to manage how we did projects across the company. We knew we would need to demonstrate …read more

You may know by now that I am not a fan of increasing the CIOs role. Rather I see tremendous value in centralizing non-IT executive control of projects (IT and non-IT) supported by a PMO-like organization. Even so, I’m am NOT saying I’m against CIO role improvement; what I am saying is that other executives need to become more familiar with what IT is doing, and the projects they are working on, as they relate to company strategies FIRST.
Darin Brumby deals with the CIO role as a “brand” (i.e., “what do you think of first when you hear CIO”) …read more