Make Room at the Top

CIOs who are serious about developing leaders in their group have to be willing to invest time in their people and to give them opportunities to grow, even if that means letting them fail sometimes. It might also mean getting out of their way when the time comes.

Hess Corp.'s Walton says that his goal at all of his jobs has been to identify and develop replacements for himself. "You do that by creating opportunities for them, you make them look like leadership heroes in the eyes of their business and let them take all the glory," says Walton, who is 63 and retired from Hess for the second time last month after the company named Jeff Steinhorn, who served under Walton, as its new CIO.

Like most CIOs who aim to develop their staff, Walton has used a multipronged strategy for helping people along — he mentors, he provides role models and he moves staff into new opportunities. He invests heavily in education — selected top managers were sent to a Harvard Business School executive program, and IT has two memberships to the BSG Concours Group, a strategy and executive education firm.

He sees the coming leadership challenge as a plus, not a minus.

"There is a gap, but it's an exciting one to fill," says Walton. For one thing, he thinks the blend of experience and technical savvy available when you mix Baby Boomers and Gen Y is a powerful one for companies that work to bring these generations together. He is talking with Hess about how to do it and may want to take on such a role in the future. But now that a new IT leader is in place at Hess, he can relax for a bit. "I'm going to get my handicap down," he says.

Michael Fitzgerald is a freelance writer.