On the organizational chart between IT Director "Ray Walton" and his CIO is a vice-president of IT whom he considers dangerous.
Why? Because that VP came from finance. He's not technical, and worse, he maintains a financial mindset. "In his mind, everything in technology can be reduced to dollars and time," says Walton, who, to protect his job, asked that his real name not be used.
Walton angrily maintains that this finance-first attitude works only when everything is a commodity, which hasn't yet come to pass in technology. "It's still an art to determine risk and rewards in IT. If you only look at ROI, you'll never build a network, because it's infrastructure. There is no 'payback.'"
But because this VP doesn't understand technology, and in Walton's view can't interact with either network or software engineers intelligently, he dismisses those arguments. "He's a leader of IT, but he doesn't understand technology. That's a problem because he doesn't take it into account in his decision-making."
This is neither a first-year startup nor an isolated occurrence. Walton works for a Fortune 500 company that's a household name, and in fact, the situation he faces is part of an increasing trend.
Though recent statistics are hard to come by, a Forrester Research report from 2005 did peg 39% of CIOs in large companies as coming from outside IT. That figure is corroborated by a wave of anecdotal evidence from consultants and industry watchers -- including Jack Cullen from IT staffing firm Modis, Suzanne Fairlie from executive search firm ProSearch Inc., and analyst Bobby Cameron from Forrester -- who agree that more companies are moving executives into the CIO role from other places within the organization.
The very strong feelings of techies like Walton notwithstanding, these observers say the question is not so much whether hiring non-technical CIOs is right or wrong, but rather, how do you make having a non-technical CIO work? After all, there are ways non-technical CIOs can make a company stumble, and ways they can make it rumble.
As technology becomes inexorably woven into everything the business does, it's crucial to have someone act as a "translation layer" between the two, sources say. Whether that person is a non-technical CIO who can articulate the value of IT or an up-from-the-ranks IT manager who's gained business savvy along the way, there has to be someone who knows the right questions, who knows how to bridge the gap between business and technology, and most important of all, knows what they don't know.
"In the emerging IT organization, CIOs are more frequently looking at issues around business strategy and how technology can enable that," says Cameron. "It requires driving a cultural change and moving toward the new world."