Mark McDonald

This is a question that CIOs ask either formally in search of a performance yardstick or informally as they ponder their own career and success. I have written a few posts in the past about this issue and the other day I came across a quote that provides another dimension worth thinking about.

“I knew that I was going to make it when I stopped thinking about being a CIO and started thinking about building a great company”

The quote makes an extremely valuable point — namely that its not who you are that matters, but rather its what you create that matters.

That is the difference between a good CIO and a great CIO.  A good CIO successfully leads the IT organization and the enterprise in the strategic application of IT.  These are CIOs who know their job, can motivate teams and operate

The good CIO is a steward of the organization’s information assets, technology resources and transformation skills of their people.  Good CIOs use these resources to enable business performance while delivering results on time, within scope, and on budget.

Great CIOs recognize that information, technology and IT people are a catalyzing force in an organization that contributes to raising business performance and can be the core of a differentiating factor in enterprise competitiveness.  These are the CIOs who think about building a great company rather than concentrating on the performance of the IT organizations.

Every CIO has the potential to be great and there are many things that differentiate a good CIO from a great CIO.  One of them is the way they think about themselves and their relationship to the rest of the organization.

Related Posts:

What makes a good CIO Great? (Post with links to other posts)

The path from good to great for the CIO

Is it time for CIOs to lead from the front?

The CIO Edge — the soft side is hard.  A book review

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Category: CIO Leadership Management     Tags: CIO, CIO Leadership, Technology Leadership

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