There is a trend afoot in organizations that threatens the career path of everyone in the IT department. For many years Chief Information Officers have come from within the IT organization. While there, they rarely learned how to speak the language of the rest of the organization. Instead they talk about technology. This leads to a lack of effective communication between the CIO and the rest of the organization. That lack of communication leads to a lack of results.

That lack of results is leading organizations to come to the conclusion that CIOs should come from elsewhere rather than from the technical ranks. Organizations are looking for leaders in all departments who speak the language of the business in which they operate. For many organizations that person is most likely to have an accounting background. Accounting professional organizations have spotted this trend. They are providing training for their members to help them understand the technology in the context of the business. They are marketing themselves as business leaders who can drive technology where technology leaders cannot drive business.

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Is this your next CIO?

 

 

 

When working in IT, we tend to develop people for their technical skills, project management abilities and perhaps, people management. We are not developing strong skills in general business leadership. In most cases the IT organization lacks people capable of doing this. Thus we are not preparing the senior leadership in IT to become the leadership of the entire organization. If we in IT do not wake up to this trend, we are all going to be working for accountants.