CEOs Are From Mars, CIOs Are From Pluto:  Enhancing the IS-Business Dialogue

CSC Research Services is a global network of innovative thinkers who advise top executives on the business implications of developments in information technology and best practices in managing IS organizations. The following is an excerpt from the CSC Research Services report, "CEOs are from Mars, CIOs are from Pluto":

The personal relationship between the CIO and the CEO is always important, usually broken and generally hard to fix.

The relationship with the CEO is important to the CIO for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most obvious is that no senior management role is ever fully defined in a formal job description. Key aspects are embedded in the assumptions and prejudices of the CEO, which may never be made explicit and which are therefore very hard to fathom without the opportunity for informal and candid conversation. The CIO who wants a leadership role, for example, may end up in open conflict with a CEO who doesn't want a rival, but if CIOs are expected to lead and they don't step up to the role, they will be seen as failures.

Personal relationships are important in the day-to-day work of the CIO too, especially when innovations are being developed and introduced. A formal hierarchy is a good way to establish clear accountability but it is a poor way to establish effective collaboration. Many aspects of the CIO's job require creative thinking and teamwork with other executives, and for these activities a strong working relationship is absolutely essential.

Unfortunately, it appears that in most cases the CIO/CEO relationship does not work properly. Almost half of all CIOs will be fired from their present position -- largely for failing to establish good working relationships with the CEO and the rest of the board. The reason given is usually poor performance -- which means that the CEO does not live up to expectations (whether they are clear or not).

A large proportion of the rest will resign in frustration either because they cannot work out what the expectations are or because they cannot change them; they cannot get across to the CEO and the other executives the growing importance of IS in general or the significance of particular new ideas and technologies.

The problem is hard to resolve because in most cases neither side can identify the underlying cause. The most common result is that each side claims it is the other side's fault, and they both get involved in a cycle of blame that only makes things worse.

Even if the cause of the problem was clear, many CIOs (quite understandably) would not know how to go about solving it. Formal mechanisms, like improving operational performance or making a compelling business case, will not work. Informal structures such as personal relationships can only be influenced by changing the informal aspects of their own behaviour. For many, this is a black art that they are ill-equipped to practice -- and uninterested in doing so.

Once a pattern of relationships and expectations is established it is very hard to shift -- much harder than coming up with a new idea or introducing a new technology. Such patterns are part of the framework by which we make sense of the world and the challenges to them tend to be rejected as nonsense. The effect is that they generate a lot of inertia -- if not outright resistance to change -- and even when you think you have won there is a constant tendency to revert. The only sure-fire way to solve the problem is not to have it in the first place.

Improving this one relationship might be the cheapest and most valuable change that an IS department could make. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most difficult changes to achieve -- and possibly the one IS is most poorly equipped to implement. This is an area where new frameworks are needed both for analysing the problem and developing an effective solution.

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