CIO of what?

The acronym CIO has already populated the dreams and imaginary of many information technology professionals. Recognized worldwide and associated with the higher and strategic role of a company's technology, it has undergone profound transformations, mainly due to external vectors. However, in practice, this title has never really meant the same thing when looking inside organizations.

By definition, the CIO or Chief Information Officer should be the executive responsible for the technology strategy that pervades the organization; responsible for drawing the future and determining the digital transformations necessary to achieve it. He should have intimacy with the business; work as a partner and thus side by side with the CEO, Chief Executive Officer; as well as to direct the E2E (end-to-end) structure that operationalizes the business with a holistic vision, but mainly seeing technology as a medium and not as an end. In addition, he should also be responsible for multi-annual planning; the P&L; the study of trends; building the roadmap; the prioritization of investments; the establishment of partnerships and, above all, the role of acting as a guardian of the digital strategy not only making it support business plans but also influencing them and sometimes enabling innovative and potentially disruptive opportunities.

But the business world is a strange animal. He transforms people and their positions almost silently. When we realize it, the professional is no longer exactly what they said he would be. Or, the title ends up entering the equation as a currency of attraction for a new external recruitment or compensation for that unmotivated professional who needs reasons to continue producing, even if his scope of work does not justify it. This strange animal is also able to give the same title or label to people with substantially different assignments, whether by hierarchical, geographical, functional, technical, and even by virtue of the size and position of the company in a given industry.

Proof of this is trying to gather professionals labelled as CIOs in a single room to investigate their performances and authorities. Surely, we will find very operative people sitting on a modest budget, but with the freedom to define practically everything regarding the adoption of technology. Beside him, we may find another individual with a budget dozens of times larger than the previous one, but without freedom, with hands tied and only managing the relationships and service levels of centrally established technology vendors. It is also likely that we will find executives who are among the first two, I mean, with freedom and autonomy, but limited by a smaller geographic scope; by an IT service category only; or, if not limited by these factors; by a purely tactical performance without any participation and influence in the strategy. And look that we do not even talk about the lines of report that, by themselves, would tell us much more about it.

The acronym has definitely lost its function. The title of CIO means nothing more without being accompanied by a description of what, in fact, composes the attributions of this professional. In fact, I venture to say that regardless of the limitations already described, if the professional is not effectively responsible for thinking and elaborating the company's digital strategy through a holistic-multidisciplinary view and influencing the business working in partnership with C-Level, it will be CIO of what?!

> Download the document The Ultimate CIO Job Description by Heller Search Associates to learn about the new assignments of a real strategic CIO.

Marcos Semola is Computer Science BSc, IT Executive, Governance, Risk and Compliance Specialist, CISM, MBA Professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, writer, speaker, VP Member of the ISACA Board of Directors, Vice-President of CyberSecurity at SmartCity Business Institute, Director of Founder Institute Rio, StartUp Mentor and Angel Investor. www.dhirubhai.net/in/semola | www.marcossemola.com