CEOs pursuing sustained competitive advantage (SCA) by improving their levels of digital maturity need to create a new learning space for their technology leaders

Failure to do so results in demotivated leaders, who, unable to manage the increase in competing demands for operational excellence and continuous innovation often find easier to move to the competition rather than stay and fight their corners.

CEOs tolerating sustained and relatively high levels of turnover, particularly amongst CIOs should expect a downturn in the development of organizational capabilities for exploiting the benefits of rapid advancements in digital technologies[i].  

However, demotivation, a direct consequence of continued role ambiguity can be avoided if CEOs are willing to help their CIOs remain abreast of current trends and practices as roles continuously evolve. On the face of it, this appears easier said than done when one considers the obstacles facing IT professionals as they progress their careers

Getting Started – Tertiary Education

Individuals preparing for a role in IT continue to be let down by universities and colleges, who remain fixated on maintaining a split between ‘computing’ courses and ‘business’ courses with many subjects taught in silos[ii] quickly fall into obsolescence[iii].

Early Career Training

Whilst some institutions have attempted to bridge the gap between computing and business subjects, early career practitioners find that much of the training available to them has been abandoned to IT vendors and consultancies whose sole aim is to tie their clients into long term, increasingly profitable relationships[iv].

Further, those returning from such training often find themselves unable to implement their newly gained knowledge due to organisational intransigence[v].

Professional Development

Whilst several professional organizations have sought to develop a variety of knowledge frameworks for aspiring technology leaders[vi], these frameworks, based on never-ending lists of what technology leaders are supposed to know, fail to account for the development of the skills needed to apply this newly acquired knowledge in real world environments.

This situation is further exasperated as increasingly dynamic, rapidly changing business environments demand a continual evolution in an individual’s knowledge and (in many cases) their skills.

Attitudes to Capability

A study of 3000 UK CIO job adverts in 2021 reveals that these factors contribute to the current attitudes of those attempting to define the CIOs role. Whilst one may expect recruiters to reel off increasingly long lists of role requirements (from increasingly long lists of attributes provided by researchers, professional bodies, vendors and consultancies, etc), it is surprising that we tolerate increasingly poor and inconsistent descriptions of these attributes. Adding to the confusion of the CIOs increasingly ambiguous role, recruiters prefer to take the easy route, prioritising three characteristics above all others i.e. the applicants previous:

• Rank: perceptions on ‘positional power’ attributed to reporting line
• Status: usually in terms of the number of direct reports, budgetary responsibilities, etc.
• Knowledge of a specific technology: in many cases this ‘knowledge’ should stem from demonstrable, hands-on multi-year experiences (often for technologies that have only been available for several months!)

Recruiters, attempting to reassure CEOs that these are the most important characteristics to consider, are perpetuating the myth that past glories inform future performance.

Learning on the Job

So, what can be done to help motivate technology leaders as they deal with conflicting and changing demands to exploit installed capabilities whilst exploring the relevance of rapidly evolving technologies?

Whilst some universities have realised the importance of including more practice orientated teaching into their courses, training providers remain steadfast in peddling trendy ‘silver-bullet’ solutions.

Knowledge acquisition is not the same as knowledge application.

CEOs therefore now need to create new mechanisms and interventions that help their IT leaders continually learn on the job[vii].

Whilst each intervention will need to be tailored, CEOs already have access to tried and tested approaches for continual executive learning. For example, CIOs can:

1. Learn from work colleagues, perhaps via communities of practice[viii]; or
2. Access tailored coaching and mentoring programmes[ix]

To be successful in such endeavours however, CEOs must address underlying assumptions, that:

• Organizations are able and willing to develop and support communities of practice; organizations that fail to promote and support the development of communities of practice risk a reduction in the levels of effective knowledge sharing and overall rates of learning
• The learning objectives of the individual and the organisation remain aligned over time
• Assessments of the expected changes in ‘performance’ following a learning intervention are relevant, robust, and effective in helping the individual maintain motivation for continuous learning

As a CEO, how would you prefer to spend your day – moving your senior leadership team forward or continue to tread water as CIOs come and go?

Our research suggests that those charged with maintaining motivated IT leaders should avoid focusing solely on ‘what’ should be learnt but should instead prioritise on ‘how’ they learn. Continual learning, critical in these increasingly dynamic, digitally maturing environments is no longer an option. CEOs avoiding this investment should expect a downturn in the effectiveness, relevance and motivation of their most critical resources.

Image by Dominik Fuchs from Pixabay: water-3418649_1280

References

[i] According to (Chowa, 2010), a study into the effects of a change in CIO not only demonstrates a significant disruption to the CIO-CEO relationship, but also impacts strategic alignment between IT and the business, as in the longer term, ‘…the rate of decline in IS alignment in companies experiencing CIO change is faster than that experienced in companies with no CIO change,’ (p.5)

[ii] The trend has been noted by researchers since the early 1990s. For example, (Applegate and Elam, 1992) note that education providers should develop programmes that ‘…reflect the broad business and IT backgrounds that will be required by organizations in the future,’ (p.488), (Karimi et al., 1996) find that education providers should develop programmes that help prospect CIOs learn to ‘…add business value, to develop new business products and services and to become technology specialists,’ and again, in 2010, (La Paz et al., 2010) suggests that universities should ‘…offer programs that integrate the current relation between business and ICT,’ (p.2)

[iii] However, not all researchers agree about the long-term relevance of a university education. For example, referring to the earlier study by (Applegate and Elam, 1992), (Gottschalk, 1999) suggested that ‘Education, though examined in previous studies, seems to be a less important factor because of the amount of time that has passed since obtaining the degree,’ (p.394)

[iv] In 1992, researchers declared that executive education in IT has largely been ‘…abandoned to consultancies and vendors,’ leaving information executives with ‘…no option but to the ride an ever changing IT boat down the turbulent river of information management,’ (p.lxii) (Ives, 1992)

[v] For example, in 2016 (Beer et al., 2016) found that executives returning from training programmes often have ‘…less power to change the system surrounding them than that system had to shape them.’ ‘’Senior executives must first attend to organisational design.’ (p.53). Leadership training (in particular) is perceived as an ongoing, time consuming process (Hickman and Akdere, 2018). Executives are busy, they can be very demanding and may not remain in the same role for very long (Sampietro, 2019) and constant retraining can be perceived as expensive and unproductive  (An et al., 2019)

[vi] E.g. The UK based global professional body directly supporting IT professionals, the British Computer Society, the BCS (See: https://www.bcs.org/it-careers/sfiaplus-it-skills-framework/ (accessed October 2022)) and UK governmental body targeting senior executive leadership development (through level 7 apprenticeship standards), The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (See: https://www.instituteforapprenticeships.org/ (accessed October 2022))

[vii] Experience is the culmination of knowledge best achieved when ‘learning through working’ (Brown and Duguid, 1991). Analysing a case study to investigate the gap between espoused practice and actual practice, the researchers suggest that the ‘…most conventional learning theory, including that implicit in most training courses’, endorses the view that abstracted knowledge is favoured over actual practice, and as a result learning away from the place of practice (using abstracted knowledge) is ‘unsound’, (p.41). Those wishing to gain experience by learning in their place of work should adopt the view that they should become a practitioner and not learn about practice (p.48).

[viii] Cf. (Lave and Wenger, 1991) who stress the importance of not isolating learners from their colleagues

[ix] E.g. (Karimi et al., 1996) who recommend that CEOs should provide new CIOs with mentoring programmes that provide ‘…a broad knowledge of the firm and access to a broad network of organizational contacts,’(p.82) and (Hickman and Akdere, 2018) who conclude that ‘IT leadership development should involve formal mentoring, robust feedback that is integrated into the development plan, and should be treated as a core process for long-term success.’