At our CIO leadership forum event in London in March, Dave Aron and I ran a panel discussion session with 4 top executive search consultants who specialise in information and technology leadership roles.
In the course of a rich debate for over an hour we covered many issues. Here are just a few of the insights from the panelists.
- Demand for top tier IT leaders is up year over year – by around 40%
- There’s a big trend in CEOs asking for digital leadership skills
- The CEOs are asking for both CIOs with more digital skills and for distinct ‘chief digital officers’
- On the majority of occasions where a ‘headhunter’ is assigned, the last CIO was pushed out (rather than resigning, or retiring)
- CIOs who lose their jobs rarely understand why – even afterwards
- Performance related pay is becoming a bigger part of the package and examples of pay related directly to revenue growth are appearing.
However, when I asked the audience, how many of them would like to consider becoming a chief digital officer in the next 2 to 3 years – only about 15% raised their hands. Dave and I were surprised that the appetite isn’t stronger. Today’s CIOs should probably be more bullish and lean into this opportunity. Ask what ‘digital’ means to your business today. It probably isn’t as exotic or challenging as you imagine - deeper online market penetration, more use of social and some mobile apps are usually the first things that get mentioned.
Our thanks Cathy Holly, Olaf Pripp, Kevin Sealy and Tim Cook for delivering an excellent session to the audience of over 250 CIOs who attended this year’s forum.