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.

In my experience goals must be:

○ Attainable
○ Relevant
○ Specific
○ Measurable, and
○ Time bound

I have always set goals, even when I have been employer free. I have not always written them down – That is a change I have made in recent years because if we write them down we tend to focus on them more in our everyday lives.

All of our milestones need to be tangible – but often in a business environment they need to be focused around business cycles. e.g. if you are selling sun-tan lotion then reaching and perhaps exceeding targets is easier in July than December.

Every goal needs to to be challenging, yet inspire a person to reach them, e.g. getting up at 6 am to complete your exercises  before going to work at least twice per week may be an important personal goal. A person needs to remain committed to achieving them, it helps where it is tied to a personal desire – less so when it is a boring work task e.g. delivering the weekly status report by 10 am every Monday morning. Yet as a goal the boring task is as important to business success as the exciting one.

The goals need to be flexible. Personally I have 30, 60 and 90 day goals for me personally and for my business. I write these down and then check progress against them as time goes on. Flexibility is important, especially where a goal involves other people – they may not have the same desires as you or fee that the target is as important as you feel it to be. I had a December 31st goal that could not be achieved because of the inaction of others, yet it was more than achieved on January 5th, the second working day of the new year.

My 30, 60, and 90 day goals allows me to have attainable deliverables. The problem with annual targets is that we tend not to think about them in the first half of the year then panic about them in the last quarter. Breaking the target down into 30 day segments makes the focus more achievable, nail the first 30 days (or better still do better than expected) then you are well on you way to the annual goal. I have always found it curious that when when you reach one target other things start falling into place to enable you to reach others, like wasting for a bus then six arriving at the same time.

I tend to re-write my goals every day – this helps me focus on the contents. It is about getting things done. Then I reward myself when I reach milestones. At a recent Toastmasters meeting someone talked about writing down your goals, diary-ing them, and sharing them with others. It has always been the later that has been my greatest personal challenge.

Well as I was preparing for my week ahead last Sunday I was updating all my various tasks for the week ahead, including clearing down my hand written notes as I often do. In doing so I sat down and re-did the action list that I was working on with my business partner at our meeting on Friday and at midnight on Sunday sent out my new list. Trouble was I had forgotten that he had already amended the document and sent me a new version on Saturday, something he reminded me of bright an early on Monday morning. That was my D’oh moment for this week, at least I hope it is anyway.

So here is my question, and please add your answers in a comment.

We are sane, intelligent human beings – so why do we do these things? It is not about whether we are organised or not, that is the worst of it. I can can equate the effect to a computer failure. Have you ever had a computer go wrong on you when you have done the same task 3,000 time before without incident? I wonder if there is a parallel? In the same way as the computer has a blip, yet when you restart it and perform the exact same steps everything is fine, does our brain go through a blip of stupidity?

At the end of the day we all experience such moments yet most result in minor acts of stupidity, or loss of face. People do not normally get fired because of one D’oh moment, but put a string of them together and that could be another matter. Is there anything we can do to stop those D’oh moments? I am not sure there really is, we want to make sure we don’t do them in public too often.

Levinson states “You know you should tailor your résumé to the job to which you’re applying and to prospective employers’ needs and challenges”. I have heard this statement on many occasions over the years but have always disagreed with it. To me crafting a new resume to suit the current role that I am applying for  is to me too much hard work. I do however invite your comment on this and other topics in this article.

I think it is important to have a good resume that demonstrates the value you can bring to an organisation. I have normally only had one resume, which has gone through countless generations (as I learn and adapt). In fact I am considering doing another version in the next few weeks and to please David this one will be entirely Guerilla in origin built from the ground up. With my active resumes I have found it necessary to have two: one with a Financial corporate focus; and a ‘normal’ one. The main reason that I have done this is because banks and financial institutions want ‘special words’ included that normally bore everyone else to tears. This way I can satisfy two audiences.

Anyway back to the title subject. We all know that SEX SELLS. It is one of the basic rules of marketing. But if you take the viewpoint that sex does not sell, I will agree that it does cause attention. I would love to make my resume extremely sexy using pictures and not words (NO NOT THOSE ONES! Get your mind out of the gutter!). Sometime last year one Mind Mapping software supplier challenged people to put their resume in a mind map – I liked this idea but worried that my audience (Presidents and CEOs) will not appreciate it.

If you want your résumé to get you to first base with a potential employer, it has to push the all the right buttons.Very true! You can do that with logos and with recommendations – printed in the body of your resume, but is there space?  According to David Perry there is. For more on David Perry’s views read “Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunters“. This does mean that you have to learn how to use Microsoft Word properly. Much will depend on the use and placement of text boxes in order to fill the space effectively. Funnily enough I have had some very competant programmers ask ‘what is a text box?’ when I make such a statement.

In my experience few users understand more than about 5% of Word’s functionality, but that said you can do a lot with that 5% of functionality, but that is another story.

Your resume has to be good! Nothing less than your future career is at stake as soon as you send it out. I have always sought to be at the cutting edge of resumes, however in the current climate it is necessary to shine out like a bright light. However draw solace from the fact that the reason you are not being contacted by employers may be more due to the state of the economy than the state of your resume.

Do you include logos of your former employers into your resume? I would love to do this, but do find that the size of the file goes up as soon as you do. This is a question of balance. and recruiters can be afraid of pictoral resumes – I have tried it and gotten feedback they do not understand what I am showing them and if the recruitment agend does not understand it they will not pass you along to the approved pile. Think about all of the audience with what you are presenting.

More jobs are found today through networking than through recruiters today (and that percentage is going up with the current hard times). In an earlier article on this site I stated “Staying in work or getting a new job depends largely on having a strong network” so what do you do if you don’t know anyone? This is a problem you can face when moving to a new area. This is discussed by Furtune Magazing in the article “How to get a job when no one is hiring“. This is where a different approach is required.

Every tried sending a fold-up chair to a prospective employer? Buy a cheap fold-up chair and sent it to the target manager (know the name of the person) with the message “You can’t say you don’t have a chair for me now!”  as well as your resume added to it. This is another suggestion made by David Perry – You can guarantee you will be seen in a different light. Even if the company is not hiring the manager may see you, and you may get the chair back if you ask nicely to do the same trick on someone else.

During the course of my search I have found it essential to develop a good Plan B that will make you money (even if it is below your prior standard of living). Develop your Plan B early and even make it your Plan A at the appropriate time. I am working on Plan B right now and do have 3 clients.

Earlier this year I wrote an on-line post called “IT Skills Shortage A Chance for Unemployed Workers?” where I stated “We see it every day, ‘Fantastic opportunities for those who are willing to re-train into IT’. This has been a standard advertising slogan for training companies for as long as I can remember”. There is certainly some differences of opinion on the future of IT. CIO Canada’s editorial comment was talking about long-term outlook and my article was examining short term demands. I still think it is important to understand the changing nature of IT work, and in particular the impact of the current economic situation on IT. There are two distinct areas impacted:

• Corporate IT – the departments that supply solutions to and support the end-user community
• Software solution providers (including professional services)

Corporate IT has been restructuring much over the past and the question of what value IT provides is constantly being asked. In a recent article I  questioned whether IT is providing extraordinary performance. I also stated that “the role of the Head of IT (normally either the CIO or CTO) is changing. The role is becoming one of Chief Change Officer, in other words they are being seen as the best agent for change in the corporation”. IT has a background in identifying corporate requirements, and implementing change where needed. I also questioned whether IT leaders are spending enough time focusing on the areas that deliver the best value to the overall corporation?

This goes to the heart of my many corporate IT Departments have changed over the last 18 months: The head of IT (irrespective of title) now reports to the COO or the CFO in many corporations rather than reporting to the board. This is because the value proposition has changed and IT has not. IT must contribute to improving business results otherwise its role will be one of operational systems management.

The other part of this equation is provided by the software application provided. Out-of-the-box applications are plugging the gap in corporate IT and as a consequence departments that once were 300 or 400 have now more than halved in size. This is consistent with my own experience over the past 5 to 10 years. Have these jobs gone to the solution providers? Whilst it is true that there is often a knowledge gap, particularly in relation to the latest technologies, that does not in itself create a new job.

As we know solution provider’s are headquartered in all corners of the globe and a job lost at a corporate IT department does not equal one added at a solution provider. Unemployment amongst IT professionals is an acute problem, not just in Canada, but all around the world as a change occurs to the corporate IT structures. Retraining IT talent is frequently a challenge as many corporations will not invest the training dollars they should to ensure their staff remain up-to-date.

Ultimately this is one issue that I would prefer to be wrong about. Personally I prefer BCE’s Stephane Boisvert view that “This IT talent gap represents Canada’s greatest human capital challenge” and “The IT talent gap is about hundreds of thousands of career choices. It is about Canadian companies and their ability to hire top IT talent to grow and innovate”. However I fear the alternative view that ITs involvement in the corporate world will be severely diminished. If we look at the new corporate model there are many new businesses without a traditional IT department. These have their services managed by an external company where a single technician services multiple corporations in an area. Adding into the mix Software as a Service there are clearly alternatives available to corporations than spending on their own IT departments.

This is a developing issue that will continue to draw a wealth of views and continues to need to be aired for the benefit if the industry.

See also:

CIOs vs. Canada’s IT Talernt GAP by The CIO Association of Canada

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.