From Technologist to Strategic Leader: Reshaping the Modern CIO

According to a recent survey conducted by the international IT community Global CIO, more than 40% of IT leaders look to professional associations not only for networking, but also for opportunities to learn. This highlights that education remains one of the most important topics for our community. Today, the role of the CIO is rapidly evolving. Business transformation, the rise of artificial intelligence, and new technology trends are reshaping the skill set required from IT leaders. Continuous learning is no longer optional, it is a necessity.

The Global CIO editorial team spoke with Barbara Dossetter, a leading practitioner at CXO Connect, a leadership development firm from London. With years of experience in business and IT strategy, leadership, and programme management, Barb has advised and coached over 300 CIOs and senior IT leaders across the globe. In this interview, she delves into the evolving role of the CIO, the critical skills gap in communication and strategic presence, and how targeted executive education is shaping the next generation of IT leaders.

Interviewer: When CIOs engage with educational programs today, what are they generally looking to gain?

Barbara: Currently, CIO education is very disparate. Typically, a CIO has done something like an MBA, which has very little technology content in most programs. You're lucky if there's literally one module. So, finding something applicable to a CIO is very difficult. When we were first approached, it wasn't to create this specific program but to certify CIOs. As an organization, we've worked with CIOs for about 35 years and were one of the first to push the CIO towards the C-suite. Quite frankly, if an organization is trying to make decisions about its future, and the person who knows about technology is not in the room having that discussion, you are losing an awful lot.

Interviewer: Tell me a little more about that MBA background CIOs and trainees usually have.

Barbara: It's mixed. Some have an MBA because, certainly before we did this, there was nothing specifically for CIOs. Even now, there are only bits and pieces—you might find four or five relevant topics—but nothing that covers the CIO's entire role. If you think about it, only three people in an organization sit across the entire business: the CEO, the CFO, and the CIO. They all have different perspectives, and the CIO is probably the one who knows how it all hangs together and works. That's critical information. For the longest time, that information never entered executive discussions about where they’re going and what they are doing, unless they needed budget for a particular project. Going back 10 or 15 years, the typical CIO, particularly in the UK, was not a good communicator. He or she—and normally it was a he—did not know how to sell an idea or make it important to the executive suite. They didn't know how to articulate what a project would do for the business. So, they would present a wonderfully detailed justification that covered every bit of detail the executives didn't care about. The story at the time was that Marketing would get their budget but IT didn’t. The difference was communication – the marketing people knew how to communicate outcomes that the executive suite cared about. 

Interviewer: I see. Over this 15-year span, did the background of CIOs or trainees change? What was the nature of the change?

Barbara: Initially, it was very much a technical job. They were in the back room, seen as a cost centre, trying to run infrastructure and get projects in on time. IT and the CIO are judged on two things: first, "Do I keep the lights on?" and second, "Can I deliver projects on time?" If you can't do those two things as head of technology, your career is gone. But we need a lot more than that now.

At CXO Connect, we've been pushing for the head of technology—CIO, CTO, whatever the title—to have the presence that when he or she walks into the room, people sit up and take notice, just as they do with other executives. When they speak, people listen and trust what they're told. The crucial mindset shift is that as a CIO or CTO, you are running part of the business, just as the Head of Sales, HR, or Marketing does. You need to be engaged in the whole conversation, not just there to get funding for a project.

Explore the full interview in the IT Leaders Club:

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We've been instrumental in pushing that forward, partly due to our Gartner backgrounds and partly because some of us were quite tenured and realized the role's importance. For over 15 years, we've been running masterclasses, executive coaching, and guiding projects. It's about transferring knowledge, behaviours, and skills—not necessarily technology skills, but the skills of presence: communication, stakeholder management, or as we call it in the course, managing the internal client. We talk about managing boards of directors, managing your C-suite peers, and managing your team and external partners.

The head of technology is often the first senior manager in an organization who has experience with outsourcing and running virtual teams, even in a multinational company. The amount of knowledge these people have acquired without developing a strong presence is quite amazing. So, we push them to develop that presence. This doesn't mean technology knowledge is wrong, but their challenge is to stop trying to be the best technician in the room.

This is especially true in the one-on-one executive coaching I do. If I were coaching you as a CIO and you told me, "Barb, I don't have enough time," I would help you unpick what you do in a day. Nine times out of ten, I find you're involved in tasks your team should be handling, not you. You have to learn to lead, not just be the top technician.

Interviewer: In recent years, are your trainees more prone to communication, or do they still share the same problem?

Barbara: They're better, but they're not all there yet. My mission is to get them all there.

Interviewer: How have the learning and development priorities for IT leaders shifted in recent years? Were there any new challenges?

Barbara: To be blunt, there was almost nothing specific for CIOs. Management training from HR, unless followed up, doesn't change behaviours. We're in the business of changing behaviours. Our Global CIO Leadership Certification course is written from the CIO's point of view. For example, in the program and project management module, it's not about how to do project management; it's about what you should expect from your project managers. What does good look like? What issues are you likely to handle? What questions do you need to ask to ensure your people are doing their job? It's that kind of thinking.

Even today, most courses for IT people teach you how to do a job, like project management, not how to manage the people doing that job. It's a different mindset.

Explore the full interview in the IT Leaders Club:

From MBA to AI: what really matters in education for tomorrow’s CIOs?

It's about managing the people who are doing the process. As the CIO of an organization with five projects, I might have program directors and project managers. I can read progress reports, but I need to know enough to look at a report and say, "That doesn't make sense." For instance, if a project is burning through resources and spending more money than expected at that stage, yet the status is still green, there's a mismatch. I need to be smart enough to spot that and ask, "Please explain why this is still green, and what are we going to do about it?" That's the conversation I need to have as the leader.

Interviewer: What is the proportion between professional community networking and one-to-one expert advice in CIO training? Which is more important?

Barbara: One-to-one executive coaching probably has more power because you can address individual challenges right then, though it's more time-consuming and costly. The important thing is that because the CIO role is so varied, they need to hear different voices, different experiences.

Building networks is really important too. Organizations like Global CIO are good for this. But they also need to build local networks wherever they are — Singapore, Tashkent, etc. They need to connect with other CIOs and senior executives. The premise behind CIO Connector, which we started 35 years ago, was that the CIO role was the loneliest in any organization because nobody understood what you did. You didn't have peers, you didn't communicate well, and the executive suite didn't like you. It was about friendship building.

Now, there are many events in places like London or New York. I always encourage people to get involved with groups, and LinkedIn, and engage in conversations. Build your own network of like-minded people outside your organization because they will give you different ideas. A network only works when both people contribute; you don't go just as a receiver, but as a sender too. You pay it forward.

Often, people are surprised when they start talking to peers outside their organization how good they actually are, because nobody inside their organization tells them that. Over a beer or coffee, talking about shared challenges, they realize, "It's not just me." It's still a lonely job.

Interviewer: To wrap up, could you pinpoint some developments and challenges top IT talent is about to meet in the next three to five years?

Barbara: The top challenge will be identifying the needed skill sets in IT. My concern is how temporary these skill sets will be or whether they will be overtaken by AI. Another challenge we're working on is how to consider AI as part of your organizational design for the technology function. We're looking at three scenarios: one where most IT work shifts to business colleagues due to AI; the opposite end, where IT controls all AI; and a middle ground.

That's the kind of thinking we bring. Because of the senior level of our practitioners and our engagement with clients and future trends, we can propose these ideas. CIOs may not need to implement them today, but they need to think about what they'll be doing in one, two, or three years. The CIO must be a forward-thinking strategist engaged in the business, with presence, valued for their contribution, listened to, and decisive. Apart from that, the job hasn't changed much.