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FEATURE

7 business skills every IT leader needs to succeed

Today’s CIO needs more than technology mastery. Long-term career success also demands a
commitment to developing a set of core business skills.

By John Edwards
CIO |
APR 13, 2021 2:00 AM PDT

The days when CIOs could glide into a long-term career based solely on their technical abilities
are rapidly fading.

“It’s no longer enough for IT leaders to be tech experts,” warns Bob Hersch, a principal at
Deloitte Consulting. The best-in-class CIOs of today are also business savvy, using their
knowledge to embed IT as a service capability.

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“This business-centric approach integrates IT into an overall business strategy,” he adds.

The best way any IT leader can augment his or her current technical knowledge — and
strengthen their long-term career prospects — is by committing to acquiring the following
seven essential business skills.
×
1. An entrepreneurial mindset
CIOs, regardless of their organization’s size, have to act like entrepreneurs, operating with speed,
agility, and ever higher levels of passion, empathy, and creativity, advises Ram Nagappan, CIO at
global investment firm BNY Mellon Pershing.

Disruption is the new constant. “Competition is coming from all corners of the market, with
fintechs and startups moving at light speed,” Nagappan says. To meet competition head on,
CIOs must think like entrepreneurs and act as agents of change. “They need to constantly think
about how their business could be disrupted at any point in time and how they can creatively
deploy technology to get ahead of potential disruptors and future-proof the business,” he
suggests.

2. Strong leadership skills

Leadership is a core competency that paves the way to successful technology transformation.
“To truly lead, you must have business acumen in addition to technical understanding,” explains
Richard Cox, CIO at media conglomerate Cox Enterprises. “Our jobs are really to leverage
technology to unleash the potential of the business, and you simply have to have an
understanding of the business landscape in order to exploit these opportunities.”

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Leadership is a combination of internal and external engagement. The problems CIOs face
today are growing increasingly complex. The future is ambiguous, and answers are often not
clear or simple. “The only way to navigate in ... these uncharted waters, is to build an
environment that allows people to bring ideas, perspectives, and input to solve problems,” Cox
says. “Building teams that create aligned empowerment is more important today than ever.”

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Poor IT leaders often make the mistake of setting project plans, gate reviews, and delivery dates
without educating the IT team on the who, what, when, and why of how the effort will help the
enterprise, says Harley Bledsoe, CIO at BBB National Programs, a nonprofit organization that
oversees more than a dozen industry self-regulation programs that sets standards for business
advertising and privacy practices.

“Bringing the team along on the journey as they execute on their deliverables is critical to
developing an effective solution,” he explains.

3. A consumer-oriented focus
Technology has never been more powerful and accessible. Most employees — technical and
non-technical — now have easy access to an array of sophistcated device, software, and
network tools. CIOs need to ensure that workplace and work-at-home technologies at least
keep pace with consumer products and services. Employees will quickly get frustrated if
×
enterprise technology and services are more difficult to use than their home counterparts,
Hersch warns. “When IT is perceived as an obstacle, the entire department is at risk,” he says.

Shadow IT typically emerges when enterprise employees become dissatisfied with IT-provided
tools. “These alternative IT capabilities diminish the CIO and IT’s role,” Hersch explains. “Over
time, this can create the perception that the central IT department is an expensive and
expendable infrastructure that doesn’t enable the organization for growth.”

4. Financial acuity
Once a CIO recognizes and understands the various factors that influence their enterprise’s
finances, they can more accurately pinpoint the technology investments that promise to make
the greatest impact.

“It’s extremely likely technology can help solve any major problems or expand upon new
opportunities,” says Martin Christopher, CIO of insurance provider CUNA Mutual Group. “It may
be in accessing data for analytics, accelerating products to market, growing or optimizing
channels, or [providing] automation and AI for better customer experiences, but inevitably
there are tangible ways technology can help.”

Christopher recommends spending time working with the enterprise finance planning and
analysis (FP&A) team. “Too often, CIOs limit their focus to their own budgets and may only have
a general sense of what’s causing changes to the company’s quarterly performance,” he says.
“Your FP&A teams will often have the best sense of what’s happening ‘below the waterline,’
which could lead to a larger impact on company performance, positive or negative.”

Christopher adds that business unit leaders will generally be grateful to see the CIO’s interest in
what makes their business tick and how technology can help accelerate delivery of their
objectives.

For CIOs working for a regulated industry firm, such as insurance or financial services,
Christopher suggests spending time with the organization’s governance, risk, and assurance
(GRA) team.

“CIOs who misunderstand the frame of external requirements their company operates within
will find it difficult to honor commitments to their business partners,” he says. CIOs who aren’t
× issues may also inadvertently discourage creative thinking,
fully informed on regulatory
subconsciously fearing that the innovation may, in some way, violate a regulatory mandate.

Bill VanCuren, senior vice president and CIO at NCR, believes that IT leaders should possess at
least some formal accounting and finance education. Even more important, he adds, is
maintaining a close working collaboration with the CFO team to review costs and other key
financial issues.

“You should also facilitate formal benchmarking of your IT costs and benefit tracking for
comparison to best practices both within your industry and more broadly,” he recommends. “I
personally participate in business case reviews to stay current on where IT investments are
being positioned across the company.”
5. Strategic thinking
IT leaders should never stop refining their strategic reasoning abilities skills. “CIOs need to
envision the future state of their business, spearhead strategies that create new products and
business models, and influence change,” says Thomas Phelps, CIO at Laserfiche, an enterprise
content management technology provider, and an adjunct professor at the University of
Southern California Marshall School of Business. “To do this, you need a deep understanding of
your business, your industry, and be willing to try bold new ideas.”

CIOs are increasingly expected to stay ahead of existing and emerging technologies and
evaluate them within the context of business goals. “They have to work more closely than ever
with the CEO and every business line within the company,” BNY Mellon Pershing’s Nagappan
says. “They must bring to the table their business knowledge as well as the creativity needed to
deploy technology to advance business goals, and to deliver a seamless, superior client
experience and greater efficiency.”

6. A technologist’s mindset
A technician has a basic knowledge of general technology principles and applications. A
technologist, on the other hand, is someone who’s fully aware of current and emerging
technologies and their impact on business operations and services.

“It’s more than understanding technology — it’s also truly understanding business,” says Alicia
Johnson, consulting principal of technology transformation at professional services firm Ernst &
Young.

A successful CIO must ×

be able to set an enterprise’s IT direction while planning for future
expansion. “To do this, they need to be transparent, exhibit strong communication skills,
partner with other business units, develop a reliable team, and demonstrate a vision for the
business,” Johnson explains.

A major challenge for CIOs is knowing how to do more with less, particularly when planning
budgets. “If a CIO can think logically about the direction and growth plans of a business, they’ll
be able to understand available budgets and which investments are most important in reaching
the overall business goals,” Johnson says. “This skill is essential, because it will help CIOs succeed
when it comes to business investments, partnering with the business, communicating, setting
expectations for stakeholders, and team development.”
Being able to articulate a clearly defined future vision will also helps build trust within the IT
team as well as with enterprise peers.

7. A strong business communicator

An IT leader must express ideas and concepts in a manner that business colleagues can easily
understand. “Lose the tech-speak,” advises Seth Harris, a partner in executive search firm ON
Partners.

CIOs should speak in terms that a non-tech expert can understand and, whenever possible, use
metrics that mean something to the business. “For example, don’t talk about upgrading a web
platform, talk about driving revenue via ecommerce and the critical components needed to
make that happen,” Harris suggests.

Being an active listener goes hand-in-hand with strong communications skills. “To meet and
exceed customer expectations, mutual understanding is critical, which can only be achieved
through a strong relationship built through open and active back and forth communication,”
BBB National Programs’ Bledsoe says.

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John Edwards is a veteran business technology journalist. His work has appeared in The New York
Times, The Washington Post, and numerous business and technology publications, including CIO,
Computerworld, Network World, CFO Magazine, IBM Data Management Magazine, RFID Journal, and
Electronic Design.
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