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Sit Down, Stay Awhile
CIOs who can quickly earn the trust of execs and make technology pay off for the business will be rewarded with longer stints.
By Tom Kaneshige
For a time, it looked as though CIO tenure was on the upswing, steadily stretching longer than the 18 months that Meta Group (now Gartner Inc.) reported in 2000. Unfortunately, the 2007 CIO Decisions Midmarket Salary and Careers Survey tells a different story: Job churn appears to be growing, with 66% of our CIO respondents on the job less than five years, compared with 50% last year.
That gap is even wider among IT executives with other titles: 70% of vice presidents of IT have held their job for five years or less, compared with 34% last year, for example (see chart, below).
For CIOs at midsized companies, the median time on the job is four years: Half have been in their current position for more than four years, and half for less (see chart). And similar to a Forrester Research Inc. survey that found that 41% of CIOs have been on the job for one to three years, our survey shows 46% have been on the job that long.
So what's the problem? "The thing that would drive people out of jobs is a disconnect in expectations between themselves and the CEO," says Laurie Orlov, an analyst at Forrester. That's particularly true with so many CIOs now reporting to the CEO: 48%, as our survey shows.
On the upside, visibility in the C suite and the dynamic nature of midsized companies give these CIOs the opportunity to make more of a difference in their business than their large-enterprise counterparts. That can lead to the desire to stay and grow with one company, as 70% of survey respondents indicate they hope to do in the next few years.
CIO Jim Thome was one such executive when he joined Shaughnessy Kniep Hawe, a St. Louis-based provider of graphic design materials, 16 years ago. He quickly showed his business value. "I was able to show [executives] the technology's ability to increase our business," he explains.
Thome helped move the company from an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system running on proprietary hardware, software and a fixed-index file system to a package from Infor Global Solutions that's based on an integrated relational database running on a cheaper RISC-based server. The new ERP system allows customers to connect securely to Shaughnessy's Web site, which in turn helps the company better serve customers with little to no additional support. As Shaughnessy expanded into additional locations, Thome partnered with SBC/AT&T to move from dial-up lines to frame relay and, eventually, to meshed Multiprotocol Label Switching circuits. He implemented PPTP IPsec encrypted DSL tunnels for rapid growth into new regions. "These were the main decisions that have supported our growth," Thome says.
Along with introducing a new data network, Thome ushered in a hybrid telephone system from Tadiran Telecom Inc. to cut costs. The new system routes calls to a call center that can handle the volume and also sends calls to sales folks, simultaneously ringing on office, home-office and cell phones. "Much of our business is call driven, and not being able to have a flexible voice solution to maximize our internal sales staff adds additional cost or lost revenue from missed calls," he says.
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