I think part of the problem is the perceived short shelf life of a CIO. From what I know, they usually don't last very long. I think the solution could come from the business schools. A business school degree that emphasizes both core business skills, management skills and technical skills would be a start.

A possible road map is as follows:

Computer Information Systems Bachelor's degree from a College of Business -> Engineer level certifications -> Engineer level experience for minimum 10 years -> Management experience for 10 years -> Master's degree from College of Business.

Not every IT master's degree program emphasizes lower level skills. Increasingly, many are focusing on high-level strategy and management issues. Quality graduate programs are responding to the needs of those aspiring to upper-level IT management ranks. While a business degree could be helpful, I haven't seen one yet that properly addresses the unique demands of enterprise IT management.

I think the biggest problem is that the in all but a few cases the CIO position is usually used as an interim stop gap. Either to provide a particular area of expertise and advice to the CEO/board or to be used as a scapegoat for an impossible/incredible (nearly) project that has been flagged as hostile/dangerous territory to the established CXOs.

Yes, there have been several notable exceptions, but once the major initiatives are running smoothly (like the light switch), the CIO position tends to be assimilated or just downsized. This is regardless of the CIO's initiative, foresight or business acumen. Businesses tend to gravitate to their core (manufacturing, distribution, etc.) and IT becomes a utility tool more often than not associated as a cost center -- even if the various users recognize they could not possibly do the work without it (just like the electricity.)

So trying to develop a training and development path for a situational position is nearly impossible. The best solution is for senior IT managers to be able to create and manage a profit sheet to assume the role(s) of CFO to CEO.

Our firm works extensively with "troubled" IT organizations. Most often the trouble comes from a CIO or IT director that has exceeded their level of competence, and the clearest indicator of that is that the rest of the executive or management team no longer communicates with or has confidence in the CIO's abilities. In our experience, this is most often related to the CIO's inability to speak to business concerns and to use business issues and process as a framework for resolving IT problems.

Some CIOs and IT directors seem to have a more direct connection to and deeper knowledge of the business processes, systems, units and managers they support, and are better able to partner with their peers. These are the successful ones.

Oftentimes, their educational path is upside down from the traditional IT path - they are business graduates (generalists) first, and have learned technology as a necessity of their position, perhaps, but not necessarily, adding formal training. When you consider the number of technology workers who do not have college or post-graduate degrees, it becomes more clear that computer science as historically or currently taught is more for people who do want to code for the rest of their lives, or solve interesting and higly complex technical or engineering problems, and not for those who want to manage people and solve business problems.

The big challenge is the one quoted above - how do you get some of those MBAs to look at the CIO role as a ticket to the executive suite - many of them have to be good technicians and perhaps even good communicators of technical or strategic ideas. If the CIO role were more flexibly defined, it might be seen more as an entree to the executive suite (like the CFO or marketing EVP) rather than as just a terminal technical position.

The CIO "problem" is often inherent to conflicts in "learning style." To fit in with the larger organization, the CIO probably needs to resemble a typical line manager's profile: extroverted, a "feeler," somewhat detail-oriented and judgmental (i.e., I know what I like/want when I see it).

To be a good technology leader and possess an architectural sense, he/she needs to be more introverted, a thinker, intuitive and option-seeking. No one person can be both, so in most successful IT operations there is a Mr./Mrs. Outside and a Mr./Mrs. Inside.

To follow on Bill Branan's comment, I've also seen CIOs get into trouble because they are too focused on strategy and weak operationally. This is where an MBA won't be of much practical value. Those who work their way up through the IT ranks understand fully what it takes to keep the lights on and that is a foundational requirement of a successful CIO. This is why the job is so difficult. The spectrum of skills required is wide and the demand for political management finesse is high. It's a high-profile position with more ways to fail than most other C-level offices.

As the current CIO at my company I have to say that the biggest problem facing CIO's and "wannabe's" is the actual definition of the position.

At my company (a single-site casino) I was promoted to the role because I had the greatest ability to solve the technical problems that faced the business. That is not to say that I am a complete tech-head and can't communicate, but I am a technologist first and a business person second.

At some companies it is exactly the opposite. As a matter of fact, there are those companies out there that the CIO doesn't honestly know the difference between USB and ethernet.

Ask anyone what a CFO does, you get a solid answer, and I think you will find that for all CXO positions with the exception of CIO. So the biggest question facing existing CIO's and those looking to be, "what exactly is a CIO?"

Any wonder there are problems.

About 25 years ago, a CIO said to me that somebody who wants to be a CIO should first learn something else. My question to her was, do you mean technical things or non-technical things? Her answer was, whatever interests you. In her view, people are too young to decide that their track is specifically to be a CIO when they're making decisions about courses of study in college. So, if geology or French literature interests you, study one of those so that you become an educated person.

More and more I realize the importance of being that educated person. A technologically oriented person who is also broadly educated nearly always has several paths to follow at decision points in his/her career. The result, for me, has been that the kinds of positions I am offered and have taken always challenge me and nearly always use the breadth of knowledge and skills I've acquired.

Note: By the time I met my friend, I already had a Ph.D. in a discipline most people don't think of as having anything to do with any aspect of computing. I didn't specifically have CIO as an objective until about 15 years into my career. And, by the time I met my friend, I had embarked on broadening my knowledge of information technology so that I could deal appropriately with the issues that might come up in a CIO or CTO position, though both were rare birds back then.

I agree with Allen's comments - there are indeed graduate-level programs out there that do a great job of combining business strategy and leadership acumen with the necessary understanding of engineering and technology.

The challenge is in distinguishing between the 'Mickey Mouse Programs' that simply churn out degrees from the truly high-quality, academically rigorous programs with practical relevance.

Personally, I chose Northwestern's MS in Information Technology program for this very reason. Although I had an MBA, I needed to refresh my business skills while ensuring I had a thorough understanding of the technical issues facing businesses today. This program gave me what I was looking for; it combines business classes taught by Kellogg School of Management faculty with engineering classes taught by professors from the McCormick School of Engineering. Sure, it's a significant investment, but this two-year program combined with relevant IT experience has prepared me well for a position in IT upper management.

In case you're interested, here's the link for the program I'm referring to:
http://www.infotech.northwestern.edu/

Well said, Jorgen. Established graduate-level programs at reputable colleges and universities will give you the best educational experience overall. Look carefully at both the curriculum and school accreditation. I chose the MS CIS program at Missouri State University. The curriculum and faculty are outstanding and the business school is AACSB accredited.
http://www.mscis.missouristate.edu/

To help narrow down the responsibility of a CIO, we have CEO (Execution), CFO (Finance), COO (Operations), CSO/CISO (Information/Security), CRO (Risk), CTO (Technology), CCO (Compliance, merged with CRO?), etc., and CIO (Information); so it has to do with protecting/guarding (security overlap?) and making use of information, an increasing corporate intangible asset, to provide - as close to real-time as possible - business intelligence (trends, competitors, customers, KPI's (Key Performance Indicators, KGI (Goal), KRI (Risk)) to the organization to help set business strategies, assist IT and business objective alignment to create risk-adjusted added value, and achieve sustainable business competiveness.

The key roles of a CIO are:
- Create Data/Information Governance (Define data governance structure (committee, roles/ responsibity), data security and privacy policy, compliance enforcement policy, standards / best practices, standard decision-making process, etc.)
- Data Warehousing Management (DWM), Master Data Management (MDM), Data Integration Management (DIM for consistent, single view of data across the organization), and Data Quality Management (GIGO - Garbage In/Garbage Out)
- Real-time (a key goal) Business Intelligence Analytics and Reporting, Business Activity Mornitoring (BAM), Business Performance Mornitoring (Dashboard, Balance Score Card)
- Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Management

I do not believe there is a problem. We are simply trying to solve the wrong problem. There is no shortage of candidates eager to fill the CIO ranks. Unfortunately, we ask them to solve technical problems. It is not about the technology; it is about business. We have enough technology. We just have no idea how to apply it to solve business challenges. I do have one idea to help groom the next generation.

The best way to groom the next generation is to start early. Corporations should identify talent early -- as early as 10 grade -- and teach problem-solving skills through competitions that solve real business problems with existing technology. The solutions that high school students provide to problems are limited to what they know and are often free from the prejudices developed later.

From these individual and team competitions, corporations offer scholarships and internships that increase the student's awareness of business challenges and available technology. Encouraging the students to consider improvements and/or new technology is also part of the program.

The goal is to create a team of problem solvers who understand that the challenge is a business problem and not a technology problem -- we have more than enough processing power to solve most business challenges, yet Intel continues to develop faster and more complex processors. Consider this: if your car does not start in the morning and you need to get to work by 10 a.m. for an important meeting; it is not a car problem but a transportation problem. One must decide based on money and time, the best transportation method to get to the office by 10am for the meeting. The same applies to business and technology -- it is a business problem, not a technology problem. The business (corporations) must take responsibility in developing business leaders who know how to understand and use technology. We must create leaders who understand when to open the hood and when to find transportation.

I agree with the comments of the author that educating future IT executives is a real challenge. Generic management development programs are not the answer. IT is new enough and different enough that you need a management development program in which IT professionals can attend together, learn from one another and offer support to one another.

At Santa Clara University, we are now into our tenth year with the IT Leadership Program. It is a modest attempt to put together a short (three days) program on executive level skills for senior IT professionals. Our model works and has gotten praise from attendees and academics alike. What we need, however, is a much more extensive curriculum for future IT leaders.

Pete DeLisi
Academic Dean
IT Leadership Program

The CIO has a difficult task. They must be able to understand their technical staff and explain the concepts to the business executives. Many CIOs start out in the computer science and computer information systems majors at universities only to find that the courses they took in college this year are already 3-5 years out of date in the real world.

The key for aspiring CIOs is to gain the business knowledge and constantly read about the latest technologies that are available that can be used to help the business achieve their goals. Also, it is imperative that technology managers begin to understand how each department outside of their own functions and how all of the departments come together to build the company's complete infrastructure.

So in short, should the business schools offer more education around technology? Yes, but students should focus more on the business skills that will allow them to interact with the non-IT folks as typically CIO's are brought up with the technology.