April 2000
Volume 16
Number 1
Saving the CIO
The chief information officer job is not getting any easier. External pressures including the rapid onset of e-commerce, the deteriorating throughput of the Internet (while Internet2 technologies are still a ways off), and the shortage of qualified staff are all too evident. While information technology on campus is less insulated from trends in the world than it was even a decade ago, the major problems confronting the CIO remain rooted on campus. And it is there, too, that some of the solutions can begin.
Leadership role in eclipse
At one time the CIO was viewed as an expert to be trusted by all, even those
without much understanding. While that might seem a topic for nostalgia, from an
institutional standpoint it was a naive and unwise way to make major decisions.
Since then, a lot of the shine has come off the position. Major planning
processes with wide participation on campus were the next phase in the history
of IT governance, but they also ran their course in recent years. Now a frequent
phenomenon is the uneasy stand-off, where senior administrators and CIOs feel
frustration with each other and go about their roles, beset by uncertainty as to
what to expect of the other. Both parties feel that IT should by now be less
exotic and exceptional in the suite of issues facing institutions, but the truth
is that we are not there yet.
Isolation
The isolation of the CIO has also been exacerbated in many cases by the
difficulty of building a solid staff who can shoulder more of the leadership
burden. IT organizations of all sizes have settled into flat organizational
schemes where the CIO has too many direct reports, and very few of the unit
leaders get the chance to broaden their experience and function as understudies
to their bosses. Turnover in any of these positions also leaves the entire
organization in double jeopardy: the local skill of the last tenant is missing
and the vacuum is at least partially filled by drawing time and attention from
the CIO.
The proliferation of technical specialities to be covered has no doubt contributed heavily to spreading the talent and flattening the organizational shape. Furthermore, IT units feeling short-staffed will inevitably fill slots for specialized staff before adding or protecting associate director positions, but this dynamic ultimately works to the detriment of the CIO directly and the whole organization indirectly.
To round out the woes, CIOs appear not to have made significant progress on the whole towards shedding the status as technical specialist within a layer of management where most colleagues are valued for their wider portfolio of skills. One token of this blockage is the rarity of promotion above the as-hired level for CIOs. Most CIOs would prefer to feel more comfortable with their administrative peers and to see those colleagues more engaged in IT issues.
The perception that there is not yet a Aprofession@ of IT (see Brian Hawkins, ALooking at Our Professional Field,@ Educause Review, January/February 2000) certainly detracts from the standing of CIOs, particularly when compared to the professional-school formation of librarians and the senior-faculty credentials of deans and provosts. Hawkins argues that IT-involved people on campus need to broaden their views and build professional credibility by transcending their specialized skills. While development of Ainformation studies@ curricula in graduate schools will be worth watching, it is clear that even in the best of scenarios they will not have much impact on the profession in the foreseeable future.
Saving the CIO
What could be sources of support and improvement of the lot of the CIO?
Looking first on campus, several avenues might be tried.
Enlisting more help from within the IT organization can be built from direct investment of time and care in the development of staff. While this activity is always at least implicit in the CIO job description, it is all too easy to short-change under workload pressure. There are practical and psychological reasons for raising and protecting the priority given to staff mentoring. To the extent that junior colleagues can share in the directors= issues, they will feel encouraged to help address them. At the same time, they will gain the experience and self-confidence to step up to executive tasks.
Because the tenure of CIOs is, on average, four or five years, no time is too soon to accelerate the development of staff who might carry more weight during that term.
Network of colleagues
Another by-product of work overload is neglect of the network of peers and
colleagues who are often best situated to provide useful advice and moral
support. Skipping meetings, conferences, and lectures has a way of growing from
a short-term expedient to a pattern of disconnection and isolation. We all have
the (frequent) experience of finding that these colleagues are wrestling with
the same trials and frustrations. But just as commonly, we hesitate to speak up
unless asked, even when we know that another is struggling. With the increasing
tendency of colleges and universities to join in consortia there is close at
hand an almost-automatic connection to potential allies and supporters. An
exchange of get-acquainted visits is an easy way to open that communication.
On-campus colleagues
Administrative retreat meetings are a good opportunity to educate and
encourage colleagues to understand better the issues that they should be able to
help address in the course of their normal and ordinary activity (as opposed to
special occasions). Where a few years ago many such peers would hold back,
saying they had too little knowledge of technical issues to participate, that
attitude shows signs of receding. Every office and department on campus has
learned the importance of IT to its own operation, and once they get beyond
insecurity about depending so much on another department for basic support they
can be convinced to look realistically at the role they can play in helping the
institution normalize the place of IT among the issues it faces. Retreat
settings are traditionally supportive of thinking outside one=s
basic portfolio and a good opportunity to draw out others with some
encouragement.
Small occasions for enlightenment are not hard to invent. We too often overlook our own ability to give lectures or technology demonstrations for colleagues. Here, too, the benefit is mutual. There is nothing quite like an appreciative audience to give a boost to one=s morale and the chance to give some insight as to what we feel is important.
Writing
Not everyone is a comfortable or effective writer. But few skills are as
important to the success of any administrator or leader than the ability to
write persuasively. For some reason, the IT profession seems to harbor a
mistrust of writing even among those who write well. For many, IT first appealed
as a discipline where hands-on engagement with the machines came as a relief
from the academic regimen of reading and writing. But at the CIO level, those
are exactly the skills that are most important to cultivate. Besides, good
writing can win support and respect beyond the forum of committees and meetings.
And like the sources of help and support, the activity of writing can be
rewarding in itself, if it is not excessively painful to do in the first place.
What of the future?
All signs point to the need for CIOs to assert themselves as generalists and
campus citizens. They also suggest strongly that the ability to cooperate
comfortably with an ever-widening range of colleagues will be at a premium.
As IT continues to mature as a campus issue for the long term, we can expect more participants in the discussion about its nature and value. IT used to be about control; now it is about re-shaping work and the life of institutions, which it cannot do as long as it is regarded as a technical province.
Whether on one campus, among a system of institutions, or within a consortium of some type, the practice of IT will develop in the direction of collaborations and partnerships, which should also help to distribute helpfully the load of making expensive, high-risk decisions.
IT workers at all stages of their career should watch the evolution of the wider profession very carefully. We will recognize that our line of work has truly become a profession when formative and in-course educational opportunities become more substantial and correlate to improved prospects for advancement. For now, the profession is short of that threshold; we can and should help each other rather than just wait for change to happen or, worse yet, just complain. TW
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