Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

Advice for Aspiring CEOs

It's never too early to start preparing to become the top executive. Here's how.
Page:

Remember back in university, when you blew off your study group in favour of an all-night kegger? Or when you decided you could live with a 3.2 GPA if it meant meeting more co-eds? Most likely, you've experienced some remorse over strolling through those four expensive years and not making the most of every learning opportunity. How would your life be different if you actually took advantage of all that your university had to offer?

The good news is you have another chance at greatness. Your CIO role, if managed correctly, can be the perfect place to prepare for becoming a CEO. And it's no wonder. With their unique role in the enterprise, CIOs are well positioned to develop the attributes of a great CEO. As Michael Capellas, former CIO and CEO of Compaq, former CEO of MCI and currently, CEO of First Data, puts it, "CIOs have to be experts at solving complex problems. They have to be precise and experienced planners, they have to spring into operational mode, and they have to be more global than their peers."

With their unique role in the enterprise, CIOs are well positioned to develop the attributes of a great CEO

Those CIOs who take advantage of the opportunity to build on these foundational skills -- rather than strolling along in their current role -- may well find themselves in the top corporate spot. So what can CIOs do now to prepare themselves for the corner office? I asked four CIOs-turned-CEOs to share their perspective on what it takes to become a CEO.

Learn to balance internal and external demands. "The CEO has a much larger group of external constituencies including the board, investors, partners and customers, and has to know when to prioritize the internal versus the external," says Capellas. "When I became CEO of Compaq, my first priority was to be the voice of the customer and to go on 100 customer visits and see them all. I thought that it was absolutely the right thing to do until I realized I was on the verge of being an absentee leader."

CIOs have a tendency to prioritize their internal demands over their external constituents. If that is the case, you will have to work on striking a balance.

Change up your management style. As CIO, you manage people with different skill sets -- application developers, operations people, project leaders -- but most of them have a direct relationship to IT. "As CEO, you have a far more diverse group of people to manage -- HR, finance, product development, sales -- and you have to learn to relate to them in different ways," says Capellas. CIOs who find that one management style fits all will have to work some variety into their routine in order to meet the CEO's management challenge.

Page:

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

More about: Boston Stock Exchange, Compaq, CSX, EDS, Evans Data, First Data, Giga Information Group, HIS Limited, Leader, Leader Computers, MCI, Wall Street

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
  • High Availability with Oracle Database 11g Release 2
    In this paper, we review the common causes of application downtime and discuss how technologies available in the Oracle Database can help avoid costly downtime and enable rapid recovery from unplanned failures and also minimize impact from planned outages. We also highlight new technologies introduced in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 that enable businesses to make their IT infrastructure even more robust and fault tolerant, maximize their return on investment on high availability infrastructure, and provide better quality of service to users.
    Learn more »
  • Aberdeen Group Analyst Insight Report: Does Your Enterprise Have a “Dropbox Problem?”
    Without policies, education, and officially supported alternatives for sharing files securely, end-users will often overlook security in favor of getting the job done by using free, readily available alternatives. Read this Aberdeen Group report to learn how top-performing organisations support business objectives of end-users while meeting security requirements and: The "Dropbox Problem" defined; Research findings on the changing characteristics of data; Characteristics to look for when evaluating enterprise-class secure file sharing solutions.
    Learn more »
  • Oracle SOA vs. IBM SOA - Customer Perspectives on Evaluating Complexity and Business Value
    The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) model has become the cornerstone of business computing. Its ability to greatly accelerate the development of business-critical applications promotes business agility, decreases time-to-value and total cost of ownership (TCO), and greatly increases the efficiency and strategic value of IT. SOA implementations tend to be complex, IT decision makers should carefully consider their choice of a SOA platform in terms of its ability to simplify the fundamental development, deployment, and management tasks involved. Read on.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments