For some in the industry that ability to be a specialist is the driving force behind the whole of their career – they wish to develop their skills and showcase an ability in a specific area. Yet for others that is not sufficient. So what knowledge and skills does a good CIO need?

Finance:

Generally there is nothing more important to a corporation than its finance solutions. It is a core capability and IT has a very important role to play. The astute IT leader needs to understand the impact of financial solutions and how they add value to the organisation.

Business Intelligence

A working knowledge of the contribution made by Business Intelligence to the corporate well being is a key skill. This is not purely about financial reporting, but is interlaced with marketing and operational elements and the contribution they make to corporate growth.

Managing Budgets

Managing projects is the starting point. Projects all have their own budgets that have to be controlled but this is only the starting point. The more complex the budgeting scenario the more prepared an individual can become for the step up the ladder.

Strategy

The more the IT Leader develops the more they are involved in strategic thinking. There are any number of new imperatives that impact the business. The majority change the organisation to some extent, but not all impact IT systems. It is essential to develop a strategic mind, which includes both business and technology futures.

Corporate Architecture

The CIO has to take a more holistic view and consider the single system within a wider context. An understanding of the key architectural assets: applications; data; storage; security; network. It is not necessary to have a detailed knowledge of each but a detailed knowledge of two specialities and a broad understanding of the others. This is still applicable as the architecture goes into the cloud.

Marketing

This demonstrates an understanding of the markets in which the corporation is active. Communications, positioning, and promotion are key parts of marketing and skills an IT leader should develop. Marketing is another client of the Business Intelligence solution which underpins finance, marketing and operational activity.

Communications

Any leader must have an ability to communicate well with the business community and senior executives. Business analysts and project managers typically develop this ability during their project work but many others in IT can be afraid to venture out of their shell.

Operations

Develop an understanding of the business operations. Parts of the business, like manufacturing, may not seem sexy, but IT systems have an impact in each area and should add value to each.

Organisational Change

All businesses change, it is a simple fact of life, growth, diversity, mergers, etc. all impact the way that a business is managed. The CIO needs to understand the way that an organisation is changing and to some extent anticipate this. Processes and systems do need to change in response to the ever changing business landscape.

Legal Understanding

IT is becoming increasingly impacted by legal change. SOX is merely the tip of the iceberg here. The IT Leader does need to consider the systems impact of new laws implemented in their jurisdiction and ensure their department is prepared. One current example here is e-discovery in the case of any legal action.

Organisational Development

In addition to contributing to change the CIO should be involved with ensuring that the people side to the organisation develops. This is not just a matter of IT people getting appropriate training, but in ensuring that the business community develops appropriate skills. This is normally managed in association with HR.

Conclusion

Armed with skills in each of these areas the young IT professional that is seeking can develop to become a future CIO. It is essential to understand that the ground is changing and the role of CIO is not the same today as it was perhaps ten years ago and the role is also changing right now. These are the skills that are necessary to develop as a future leader. Most importantly the CIO must add value to the organisation. Additionally it is important to build a network of business connections, that network is essential for your future growth.

Irrespective of your technical background I have heard it said you are hired because of your technical brilliance but you remain employed because of your understanding of the needs of the business and your ability to contribute to appropriate growth in the organisation. This is particularly true with additional layers of seniority. A good technician can become a good manager, but in doing so it is necessary to move from the technical confines of your job to understanding how the business functions holistically.

There is a progression in many jobs from being a generalist in your field when you start working. In IT you may be taken on because of your general technical prowess. At that stage in your career you have little skill to support specialisation. People then tend to focus on a specialism, whether by accident or because they have a natural talent for a specific field. But then as one takes on supervisory or management roles it is necessary to put your speciality behind you in order to focus on the more general needs of the business. Your specialism may assist your management career.

From a career perspective being too specialised can (too technically brilliant) can limit your upward movement. This is something I did find in varying roles. Yet in some specialisms it is possible to leverage your technical skills for the holistic improvement of the company. My key skill was Business Intelligence, and as part of that I was able to focus on financial reporting needs, marketing analytics, activity based costing, sales analytics thus for me it was my specialism that brought holistic growth. I enjoyed bringing all of this together through a single source of the truth.

It is important to understand how other people’s roles fit into the corporate whole. Each person within the corporation should add value to the whole business. This is more that understanding that Joe has to complete a task before you can start it and that once you have completed it you pass it on to Mary. Don’t for one moment think that another person’s role is not as important as yours. We know that most organisations have ineffective processes if you do spot one then you can be sure that someone else has already seen it, think of a solution. Be a solution provider, even if it not your problem.

If there is one tip here it is to gain finance literacy, gain marketing literacy, gain operational literacy, gain a sales literacy. That is develop an understanding of each of these areas, not in order to change roles, an accountant’s role is not for everyone, but in order to enhance your value to the organisation. The finance aspect is of course of particular importance. I have known a few IT people who have taken the trouble to qualify as a chartered accountant, not in order to change roles, but in order to improve how they do their own job and the value they offer to their employer. Personally I qualified as a Lawyer to better understand the numerous compliance challenges.

It is important to continue to build knowledge in you own competency as you grow in other areas.

Reference Material:

How to think like a CEO by DA Benton

Are You Leadership Material? By Michael Harrison

Leadership development methods and tips by businessballs.com

So, are you leadership material? By: Melanie Menagh

The Hollywood gossip blog should easily achieve thousands of hits per day, but it is more complex making a specialist site reach its target audience. I do not this eZine to achieve a readership of hundreds of thousands, yet I am seeking to focus in on those people who are looking to receive advice about technology leadership and social media strategy.

When I started this site it was with the intention of reaching a specific audience. Realising that I sought advice about improving my following and increasing traffic, so that my target audience were aware of my site, and feel that I have been moderately successful in this goal. The key method to build readership was through the search engines. This should be obvious really, because for all of their shortcomings search engines like Google and Bing are out indexing the web day-in day-out, ans they can drive traffic to your site. Search engines today are responsible for over 60% of all traffic coming to my site, and they bring in punters even when we are tucked up in our beds.

Yet I still find myself asking the question of whether I have done enough. In fact I can be sure that I have not! According to some “guru’s” there are many tactics we can use to build traffic. The truth is that some work and some do not. The problem is that the landscape is also continually changing and advice written a year ago may not apply today. You have to study and change your site’s visibility.

When building a blog in WordPress is is essential to include addins like SimpleTags and the All-in-One SEO Pack. I do have to apologise to those who use other blog tools as I don’t know what tools, if any exist for them and spent many years wrestling with Google’s Blogger and could NEVER be found. According to many experts (See for example Jack Humphrey of The Friday Traffic Report) blogs are the darlings of the search engines. Yet they do have to be setup correctly in order for each post to be found and do remember you are driving traffic to a specific page on your site, not the overall site. It is the ‘findability’ of an individual article that drives your page rank.

Gaining success is usually achieved over time and is unlikely to be an overnight sensation. That said I did a search for the topics surrounding one of my articles and found that it was number 1 on Google’s search the very next morning, even eclipsing some sites I had used for reference material. Generally each article has to have SEO Tags added to it. This is one fact I wish I knew before writing my very first article. I have since added tags and trackbacks to those early articles.

Post titles are important and need to satisfy both the search engine and the human audience. A post’s permalink structure should also be set to include words rather than simply the post number. The search engine will find an article more easily because it has a keyword in it, however the human won’t read the post unless it looks relevant to them. They will make their decision based on the title and the one sentence displayed on the search results. This is sad, but true. Tags are vital for the search engines to operate, and I have found that my list of keywords for any article has been increasing over time. Again I have paid some attention to old articles and gone back to improve them.

One of the strongest ways to get exposure is to build cross links with other like minded people. Commenting on posts is important, and I often look for material to comment on. I would love it if you were to post a comment on my site. The best thing about comments is to include links to things you have written on other people’s sites. This is powerful from the viewpoint of SEO as it brings another link to your site. I also believe that providing outbound links is as important as inbound links – I am not sure whether this is good for SEO, but I do know it is important to credit others for the things they have said, even when you are providing a counter argument. The technical term is a Trackback. Also remember that there is no limit to the number of links to can add into a post. YOU must spend a time adding these to the ‘Send Trackbacks’ field underneath the body of your article. As far as I can tell the link is less active than if set in ‘Trackbacks’.

In building blogs we have the potential for the largest discussion in the history of mankind on any topic you care to choose, sadly the majority of articles are badly structured and poorly written and do not assist in building knowledge. A large chunk of the remaining ones cannot be found easily because the SEO has been poorly managed.

So you have written your article, done the SEO and set all the Tags. Now you have published it. Surely this is the end of it, there is no  more work that needs to be done we can sit back and reap the rewards. Well sadly no. This is where you have to continue by publicising the article. Sites like Stumbleupon.com, Socialmarker.com and digg.com are an essential part of getting your article known about. The purpose of Stumble Upon is to comment on specific web sites. Most people are happy recommending and bookmarking other people’s sites but think it is not right to do your own. Get over it! Write a little review of your article and why you think it is worth reading – you are best placed to do this as you should believe in what you say. Keep it at between 50 and 150 words, as you don’t want the review to be longer than the main article.

The other thing I do is have the articles automatically posted on Twitter once I publish. There are a number of services that will assist here, including Social Oomph.

Staying in work or getting a new job depend largely on having a strong network. Within your network quality is usually more important than quantity. However you may need to build a large network in order to make that all important connection that results in the next job.

Please leave comments about your own networking experiences. I think this is an area where we can all continue to learn and share our best tips

Building a network usually means talking to people, connecting.  Traditionally this has been done face to face, which has often been difficult for technologists. However the world is now changing, which is in part good news for tech folk. We are now able to leverage social media as a way to build our network. Mind you it is important to turn electronic connections into real ones.

This necessitates talking to people, either by picking up the phone, using email, etc. Quality is certainly more important than quantity when it comes to building an active network, but today you do have to talk to a wider audience in order to guarantee success. Tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and others will help you grow your network and make new connections. I believe that it is best to build a wide set of connections on-line in order to connect with those that can help you, but you MUST always treat every new connection as a previous jewell. You are privileged to be a part of their network. Not the other way around!

Networking is about helping the other person, not about YOU! You win as a consequence of offering assistance. Part of the problem is that the whole process can seem very slow. You do have to remain focused on your goal in order to succeed. Payback will eventually come.

So as I previously said IT has changed. The new world leaves us with smaller corporate IT departments. So we do have to be more incentive in the work that we do and we certainly need to have a Plan B that will get us through the lean times.

The future is going to be a complex one and we may have to be incentive in order to survive. Trouble is we have invested heavily in our skill-set in the first place.

I am talking to out of work IT people on a daily basis and to them there is definitely no skills shortage in the industry. According to Yuri S.S. Tan, Software Development and QA Manager said to me “One IT recruiter I am in regular contact with says that things are completely dry currently”, a story that I have heard much recently. This article is based on real knowledge of the North American and European situation, but I am speaking to IT professionals on a worldwide basis and I think the trend is repeated everywhere. It seems that weekly I receive emails from Indian IT Service firms trying to drum up new business.

There are certainly a number of trends active at the moment. Tan says “I have observed over a number of years that IT service firms are quite obsessed about the latest technology and finding people with certifications in this latest technology, to the point that a paper certification may be worth more than experience”. I think more recently it is the recruitment firms that have become obsessed with certifications rather than skills. As a hiring manager when listing a skill on the job specification I have had recruiters turn this into a list of certifications, to which my response was to tell them in no uncertain terms that I prefer skill and knowledge to certifications. But this is only part of the story.

In my view the trend started quite a few years ago, probably in the mid-90′s. It was at this time the question of ‘build versus buy’ swung firmly in the direction of purchasing pre-canned solutions. many of the early solutions did not survive till today, and others have been the subject of corporqate buyouts. On the whole out-of-the-box solutions have become increasingly sophisticated and large corporations have had less need to employ large IT teams, other than during initial deployment. However the list of IT Requirements sitting on the CIO’s desk has not decreased with many IT leaders estimating that they have an unstarted pile of work that would take 3 years to complete.

Between 2005 and 2007 questions were already being raised in the IT press about the future role that IT would need to play within business. That necessitated a shift to providing real corporate value from IT solutions. The focus of IT should have started to shift from deployment of operational applications to a contribution to improving business results. The traditional provision of operational applications was rarely added value to the corporation and some instances there was no positive ROI. The problem was that many IT leaders had cut their teeth on operational solutions and were very slow to change to new business needs. As a result IT has become an adjunct of corporate operations (with the CIO reporting to the COO and not the board), and in some instances the budget is under severe attack.

In addition to this pressure the arrival of Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platforms as a Service (PaaS) brought additional pressure to cut costs, with external service providers promising great savings. The fact that SaaS solutions are on the whole immature and unproven has not diminshed demands for their use.

In 2007 and 2008 there was a definite recession emanating from corporate IT that either halted projects or caused a rething in implementation strategy. The Banking collapse in September simply added fuel to the raging fire that was the IT industry.

To answer the question posed of whether a skills shortage exists in IT. This supposed skills shortage has been a standard quote in training company adverts for as long as I can remember. Today business has less and less need to employ technical IT resources. Even many IT Service providers have reduced staff due to either greater automation or increased off-shoring. Obviously projects were being deployed, but these were largely implemented by either software solution providers or other consulting organisations. I would have to say the answer is a resounding NO – there is no skills shortage in IT, quite the reverse we have some highly skilled workers looking to other professions for an income.