The question you forgot to ask when you hired your last CIO

One of the things that still causes some confusion with organisations looking to appoint their next technology leader is just what ‘CIO’ means.

Many consider the job titles of IT Director and CIO interchangeable, but actually, for those that take the CIO role to its full potential (and not all do), CIO means something really quite different.

A CIO is someone who helps realise business advantage from technology. A CIO is someone who considers anything with an on-off switch as part of his or her sphere of influence, regardless of whether that thing is directly under their control. CIOs are of course managers and operators – often with the help of a CTO, but they are also influencers, persuaders and business people. That’s why every year the proportion of CIOs who are part of their organisation’s boards has increased.

Part of the challenge with recruiting CIOs is that the way organisations recruit them still consider them ‘IT Directors’.