CIOIN

Helping the CIO profession fulfill its desired and necessary strategic role is the reason the CIO Executive Council developed the EQ competency assessment. To measure yourself, visit https://www.cioexecutivecouncil.com/programs/ futurestate/simple_csuite.html. The Council partnered with global executive recruiting company Egon Zehnder International.  In 40 years of assessing executive talent, Egon Zehnder chose this set of competencies because of its predictive value in identifying top-performing executives. These are the behaviors that differentiate good executives from great executives, says Stephen Kelner,  global knowledge leader of Egon Zehnder's talent management and management appraisal practice group.

Your CEO sets the benchmark for performance across all executive competencies. The good news is that the best CIOs stand up well against their bosses and even outperform them in many competencies. The bad news is that they under perform significantly in competencies unique to strategic business leadership. This gap defines the development goals IT leaders need to set in order to advance their individual EQ, their careers and the CIO profession as a whole.

Kelner describes the competency of Market Knowledge in detail to illustrate the range in performance levels. The Market Knowledge score indicates how well an executive understands the marketplace, including customers, suppliers, competitors and regulators. "Level 1 CIOs are doing the basic," says Kelner. "As they move to Level 2, CIOs can describe what the industry is doing and the basic forces of the market, including typical customers and obvious competitors." At the higher levels, CIOs know their market well enough to spot, anticipate and capitalize on trends. The highest performers make an impact on the marketplace by creating new businesses or new products through their understanding of technology, customer needs and market trends. Market Knowledge, according to Kelner's six years of accumulated data, is a weak spot for CIOs.

CIOs vs. CEOs

Studying competency performance data based on interviews and 360-degree assessments of 25,000 executives, we find:

1. Outstanding CIOs (those in the top 15th percentile) score highest in Results orientation, Strategic Orientation, Change Leadership and Customer Focus.

2. Outstanding CIOs perform much better than average CIOs in all competencies except  for People and Organizational Development, where they are equivalent.

3. People and Organizational Development scores are relatively low for all types of  executives assessed, particularly CFOs.

4. Outstanding CIO scores slightly surpass good CEO scores on most competencies.

5. Outstanding CEOs - the most well-rounded strategic leaders - perform significantly  better than outstanding CIOs only in Market Knowledge and External Customer Focus.

How to Improve Your Executive Quotient

How to Improve Your Executive Quotient

CIOs who want to devote more of their time and energy to driving business strategy and innovation should focus on developing and leveraging the three competencies most particular to the business strategist: Market Knowledge, Strategic Orientation and Commercial Orientation.

However, to get a chance to be a business strategist, CIOs must be strong in foundational competencies such as Change Leadership,Collaboration and Influence, and Function Expertise.

CEOs, who often rise from the sales ranks, have an intuitive customer focus and often form close relationships with key customers. Conversely, in most industries, CIOs concentrate on internal stakeholders and have not had much need to interact with external customers. An exception is George Chappelle, senior VP and CIO at Sara Lee Foods. He credits his external customer focus to his 20-plus years in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. "CPG is all about the external customer. I have to have these skills as CIO because I am involved with customers from market research, new product innovation and throughout the supply chain," says Chappelle. For CIOs who want to connect to the external customer, Chappelle suggests getting involved with new product or sales information initiatives. "Both require heavy IS support and will get any CIO linked externally," Chappelle says.

The Management Vacuum

When it comes to People and Organizational Development, from the CEO on down, C-level executives are relatively poor performers. Rajinder "Raj" Gupta, adjunct professor and executive director of the CEO Perspective Program at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, has interviewed more than a dozen CEOs from companies including Walgreen's, AON and Northern Trust about the competencies data. "In general, I found that the premium for CEOs as they rise through the ranks is a deep understanding of the business and customers, not necessarily on how they manage their people. The CEOs I spoke with are definitely aware of the need to focus more of their attention on people development," says Gupta.

What Do CEOs Want?

What Do CEOs Want?

According to Gupta, CEOs want strategic-minded CIOs. The biggest deficits CEOs see in the current crop of IT chiefs are the lack of a deep understanding of business opportunities and the inability to communicate strategically with high-level internal and external stakeholders.

Market Knowledge, Commercial  Orientation and Customer Focus plug in there. "In industries where business is closely entwined with technology, or where it can be used as a competitive advantage, that's where CEOs are looking for CIOs with high EQ," says Reynold Lewke, Egon Zehnder's North American CIO practice leader.

This trend is personified by Kumad K lia, CIO of Direct Energy, and his CEO, Deryk King. King specifically recruited Kalia for his EQ. "I took great care to recruit someone with a good track record of operational excellence, strategic thinking, experience in customer service and a diverse career background," King told the audience at the spring CIO Leadership Conference.

"I expect a much broader contribution from my CIO; he has to be prepared to talk about issues outside of his immediate responsibility." Kalia concurred: "The role of the CIO is more than just keeping things running," he said. "We've had to acquire a lot of the skills of a traditional general manager."

Direct Energy was ready for a strategic CIO with an expanded role, but many companies still have a traditional, constricted view of the CIO as operations-oriented function head. CIOs need to create awareness and acceptance of their strategic potential. CIO