Opinion by Thornton May

Changing roles inside the C-suite

To figure out the future of CIO, pay attending to the changing roles of the CEO, the CMO and the CFO

Contributing Columnist, Computerworld |

We spend a whole lot of time in the IT world wondering near the future of the CIO role. It'south a question of endless fascination, merely we mustn't forget that CIOs are not the only C in the C-suite. And the fact is that the success of the CIO and the Information technology organisation is very much a function of our relationship with those other executives. That ways that if we want to become clues about the futurity of the CIO, it is incumbent upon us to be aware of the irresolute roles of the CEO, the CMO and the CFO.

Everything changes, even the CEO

No one is insulated from change. Two hundred years ago, the boss was the boss. The 1815 CEO was a "my-mode-or-the-highway" whip-cracker (think Andrew Jackson and Napoleon). Fifty years ago, the CEO archetype achieved corporate objectives by architecting incentives (think Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and his very quantitative arroyo to managing the Vietnam War). Today, many view the part of the modern CEO as a designer-in-chief of corporate culture with the objective being take a chance-savvy employees able to independently recognize issues and fix them.

I'm not maxim that all CEOs take evolved in lockstep. Fifty-fifty today you can probably detect more than a few Simon Legrees in corporate America. And to revert to the military example, Earth State of war Ii saw an early flowering of the empowering CEO. According to Paul Johnson, author of Eisenhower: A Life, when Dwight Eisenhower reported to Gen. Marshall at the War Department in December 1941, Marshall explained the role of a senior executive:

"Eisenhower, this Department is filled with able men who clarify their problems well but feel compelled to always bring them to me for the final solution. I must take assistants who will solve their own problems and tell me later what they take done."

In direct opposition to McNamara's direction-by-the-numbers arroyo, mod CEOs create environments where employees can solve their own problems. They focus on inputs over outputs. Outputs are metrics similar sales figures and market share. Inputs are ineffable things similar creating an surroundings where employees experience both safe and motivated enough to fail when trying something new.

Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and author of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Hereafter, is an entrepreneur and hedge fund managing director. In an interview with Tyler Cowen, writer of Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Peachy Stagnation, Thiel described his concept of the leader of the future:

You desire people who are both actually stubborn and actually open-minded. That's a little flake contradictory. You want people who are idiosyncratic and actually unlike, only and then who can piece of work well together in teams.

According to the Wolff Olins' Leadership Report 2015:

Leaders are learning to be less the visionary, less the sage, less the objective-setter, and more than the shaper, the connector, the questioner. And yet at times, they as well demand to intervene, to insist, to control. It's a fluid role, its shape not even so clear.

Gary Loveman, CEO at Caesar's, believes the mod CEO's office is to inquire tough questions:

Do we recall or do we know? It is not my job to have all the answers, but it is my task to ask lots of penetrating, disturbing and occasionally about offensive questions equally part of the analytic process that leads to insight and refinement.

The CMO confronts the customer

Considering of the obvious importance of customers and the widespread embrace of pinnacle-of-the-house-initiated campaigns to become customer-centric, the CMO role is thought by many to be expanding. And in certain cases, it is. Andy Childs, CMO at Paychex, owns not just traditional marketing, but strategic planning and One thousand&A as well. But such is the importance that customers have achieved that other corporate officers are getting involved in the quest to nurture them — including the CIO. Meanwhile, in that location are indications that the status — the "executiveness" — of the CMO is declining. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, a recent Korn Ferry survey found that 34% of respondents said they call up their CMO could exist a likely CEO candidate. But when the aforementioned question was posed two years ago, 54% of respondents said they thought their CMO was poised for the company's summit job.

CMOs take always been in danger of self-limiting by focusing too narrowly on marketing and promotion. The danger of that is more than astute than ever. Some career watchers advocate that today'due south CMOs must own the entire customer feel and correspond the customer'due south perspective in corporate strategy. But in 2015, but 22% of CMOs focus on customer retention as a height priority, according to Cliff Condon of Forrester. If CMOs go along to underperform in this area, CIOs should exist prepared to step into the alienation.

The CFO and the power of no

Believe information technology not, the CFO office is not ancient. Indeed, fewer than 10% of the major companies in the U.Southward. had CFOs before 1978 — compared to 80% or more each year after 2000. At its inception, the CFO job was pretty straightforward: to ensure the integrity and command of financial information, to interface with capital markets, and to mensurate and report business concern results.

Today, the CFO has to be a catalyst for change, helping companies focus on the capabilities that drive value. "It's more than of a leadership role," says Philip Rewcastle, CFO of the Consumer Lending Group at Wells Fargo, "versus the back up part information technology was x years ago."

Some things don't change. Many remember the CFO's virtually powerful weapon is the word "no." A joke told around Mahogany Row: How practise you know your CFO is becoming more tolerant? He lets Marketing nowadays its entire upkeep before maxim no.

This is not totally fair. It is essential that someone exist in a position to say no to the many proposals of marginal benefit so that the few of real promise accept the resource needed to thrive. Where CFOs are evolving, they are empowering and educating others in the organization about the power of no, so that many people are able to enquire the correct questions and provide the right insights that atomic number 82 to an agreement of when to say no and when to say yes.

As these roles continue to change, it volition affect how the CEO, the CMO and the CFO interact and coexist with the CIO. For that reason, we need to be paying attention.

Futurist Thornton A. May is a speaker, educator and adviser and the author of The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics. Visit his website at thorntonamay.com, and contact him at thornton@thorntonamay.com.

Futurist Thornton A. May, author of The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics, is a speaker, educator and adviser. More information is bachelor on his website at thorntonamay.com.

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