Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

You Say To-may-to and I Say To-mah-to

As the debate continues to rage over whether CIOs should ascend to the role via the ranks of business or IT, CIO decided it was time to gather the opinions of the people who know best - the CIOs themselves
Page:

Arnott's CIO Sue Sutton saw clearly from the very beginning of the Internet frenzy that the hype and the predictions about the so-called dotcom revolution were mostly "just crap". While it was obvious the Internet would play a valuable role as a new and extremely useful channel, Sutton knew without a shadow of doubt - as if the future had already been written in stone - that the Internet would never be a business model in its own right. A less technically savvy CIO might have been more easily misled, she says - indeed very many clearly were - but the 29 years she had spent in IT since she started as a programmer had equipped her well to assess the technology's true potential.

While debate continues and the sands keep shifting on whether organisations are better served by CIOs who come from the business and fully understand its priorities or ones who have gained the most thorough-possible grounding in technology, Sutton has no doubt those who came from within IT have a couple of major advantages. A better bullshit detector is just the start of it, she says.

On the other side of the debate, Qantas CIO Fiona Balfour, who pits her 25 years in IT against Sutton's 29, but who comes very much from a business background and has no technical qualifications to speak of, knows just how many advantages CIOs with a business background have to bring to the table. With the changing role of the CIO and corporate governance of IT assets more critical to the business, Balfour says business background and business acumen are now essential to fulfilling the CIO role, with technology nous far less so.

Clearly, the ideal CIO would be as familiar with the business and business fundamentals as he or she is with every area of technology. But CIOs have to start somewhere, and most will have to pick up gaps in their skills and knowledge on the job. So CIO set out to find out what advice some really well-rounded CIOs who originally came from a business background have to offer those from more technical streams, and vice versa.

Coming from the technical stream, but with high levels of business knowledge, are Sutton, RACV CIO Charles Burgess, WorkCover Queensland GM IT Lynn Kincade, and BankWest GM IT and CIO Joe Deragon.

From the business stream we have Defence Department CIO Patrick Hannan, CSR CIO Ole Elsaesser and Balfour, all of whom have had time to learn an awful lot about technology.

Page:

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Arnott's, BankWest, CSR, Defence Department, HIS Limited, Qantas, RACV, Speed, Workcover

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Server and Storage Optimization Techniques
    By meeting the requirements to deploy new applications and support a larger number of internal and external customers, IT organizations are facing a space, power, and cooling crunch. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • Top 10 Mistakes in Data Centre Operations: Operating Efficient and Effective Data Centers
    For years, the data centre industry has accepted that human operational error, not poor data centre design or engineering, is the number one cause of data centre downtime. Now is the time for companies to evaluate their data centre operations programs. They must be able to clearly articulate operational requirements and design an operations program based on the risk profile of the data centre. However, the road to creating an industry-best operations program will not be easy, especially for those companies whose core expertise is not in business critical facilities. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • Why Hackers have Turned to Malicious JavaScript Attacks
    Website attacks have become a serious business proposition. In the past, hackers may have infected websites to gain notoriety or just to prove they could—but today, it’s all about the money. Reaching unsuspecting users through the web is easy and effective. Hackers now use sophisticated techniques—like injecting inline JavaScript—to spread malware through the web. Learn about the threat of malicious JavaScript attacks, and how they work. Understand how cybercriminals make money with these types of attacks and why IT managers should be vigilant.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.