When setting out to achieve a career oriented goal, it seems
like a logical step to sit down and work out what your career progression will
look like in order to achieve that goal.
Since I’m sure that I am not the first person who has decided that they
would like to move from a technical role into the upper levels of IT management,
I thought it wouldn’t be hard to find what that career path from a technical
role to the CIO would look like.
Unfortunately all my searching seemed to come up with were stories of
people who went from a technical role, to some sort of management role, and
then became CIO, or simply a list of the 5, 8, or 10 skills needed to be a CIO.
If I want to progress my career in the school system, the
military, or even the public service, there is a set path of progression up
through the ranks that can be mapped out.
So why then is it so hard to find a simple path to the position of CIO? The answer lies in the fact that from the top
down, no two IT departments have the same organizational structure. The CIO may have a place in the boardroom
reporting directly to the CEO, or they may be like my current employer where
the CIO reports to the COO, or IT may still fall under the finance department. There may be multiple C-level IT executives
with the recent invention of the Chief Technical Officer (CTO), Chief
Information Security Officer (CISO) and Chief Digital Officer (CDO). A smaller organization may only have a single
layer of management below the CIO, or there may be many layers of management
with a convoluted organization structure, such as Cisco, who in August last
year were reported to have 419
presidents and 2,420 directors.
So does this mean that those articles where people somehow
got into management and then rose to the level of CIO is the true path to
follow? Yes. And no.
While it is the case that someone in a technical role will most likely
have to weave a path through the various levels of IT management, there is
nothing to stop the business from hiring a non-IT person for the CIO role, such
as David Weymouth who was named as Barclays CIO after he was COO of Barclays’
business banking division. In fact there
are numerous debates raging online regarding whether the CIO should come from a
technical or a business background, which will likely be a topic for a future
post.
Since there is no set career path to become a CIO, I’ll
provide what I see as some logical steps to take in order to reach an executive
management role in IT from the point of someone that is currently in a
technical support role. Although I’ll
cover this in more detail in future posts, the most important thing to remember
when seeking a promotion is that you will not be promoted on the promise that
you will perform at a higher level, you must demonstrate that you can do your
current job well while displaying some of the qualities necessary for the
higher position, bearing in mind that the management and leadership skills
required will be different at each step.
Step 1 - Team Leader
The team leader’s position adds some managerial
responsibilities to what is essentially still a technical role. On the management side, a team leader will be
responsible for the correct resourcing, such as managing rosters, managing and
improving technical processes, and be the point of communication between the
team and management. A team leader
drives performance on the technical side through leading by example and
coaching or mentoring junior members of the team. In an organization where a team leader
position does not exist, you need to not only stand out technically, but be
proactive in seeking responsibility and taking any opportunity for greater
engagement with the business. Examples
of this would be to take responsibility for the delivery of projects and
working with other departments to ensure that the project will meet or exceed
the business requirements.
Step 2 – Junior manager
At this level you may be the manager of a service desk or a
small team, such as a team of SysAdmins.
While this is likely to be a hands-off managerial role, you will still
be expected to have a deep technical knowledge and be capable of mentoring
junior members of the team. At this
level the emphasis is more on the management function rather than leadership:
implementing strategy rather than developing strategy. A junior level manager is focused on making
effective use of resources, planning, budgeting, controlling and problem
solving. A junior manager may be
responsible for delivering small projects delivering value to one or two
business units.
Step 3 – Senior manager
At the senior management level you may be in charge of a large
team or a number of teams, such as an IT infrastructure manager or operations
manager. Senior managers are expected to
both assist with the development of strategy and to drive the implementation of
the strategy as well. Senior managers
require less of a specialized technical knowledge, rather they need to have a
broader base of technical knowledge as well as strong connections to the
business in order to ensure that the services that IT delivers assist the
overall business to achieve its objectives.
Senior managers would be responsible for delivering large projects that
will deliver value to the entire business.
Step 4 – CIO/Executive manager
The number of executive managers will often depend on the
size of the IT department. In a smaller
IT department this may simply be the CIO, or in a larger organization it may
include a number of C-level executives along with a number of IT directors or
presidents. The executive level of
management is skewed towards the leadership function, rather than the
management function, responsible for establishing an IT strategy that is designed
to assist the organization to achieve its business objectives and to motivate,
inspire and align people in order to deliver on the strategic vision.
While there is no set career path, hopefully the above steps
have provided you with an idea of the career steps that can be taken in order
to reach the position of CIO. Keep in
mind that there is no single path to take and the path will vary based on an
organization by organization basis. In
future blogs I intend to cover in more detail the steps that I am taking to
reach each level of management along with discussions on the management and
leadership skills needed at each level of management and how they differ.
