There have been considerable misconceptions and differing opinions even amongst the same communities as to the difference between the IT Director and the CIO “Chief Information Officer” role.  Even though definitions differ from business to business, ego to ego, and individual to individual my goal is to help distinguish the two on the open market which may help bring some clarity to the casual observer by explaining the ambiguity and why on occasion one takes great insult by being referred to as another.

What are the differences between the IT Director and the CIO?  The definition that they are both the same and one definition came from America may have been true in the past but I think that they have evolved to quite different but critical roles within an organization.  Going forward this is more a question of leadership vs. management or rather the percentage of focus applied. CIOs are 80% focused on leadership and 20% focused on management. Conversely the IT Director is 80:20 aligned to the management of the department.  Both are critical to businesses but not necessarily at the same time.  Businesses can operate a very long time, especially when they are running in a stable or in an expected steadily declining environment, without a CIO.  It would be very difficult to contain one major incident such as a telecom failure, power failure or some third party attempting to breach your IT security if there were no IT Director at the helm (this occurs quite frequently behind the scenes without you noticing). Equally businesses would be at a considerable disadvantage if they appointed an IT Director with little experience in merging two departments, divesting a business, buying a separate business or extending a business’ profitability by designing new ways of providing innovative cutting edge solutions to its clients which is where the CIO shines.

The IT Director is responsible for managing the day to day technical and operational issues of the IT department including front and back of house IT services, for instance managing virus outbreaks, enabling the newest phone or PC to receive the company’s service catalog, or improving the internal customer experience using the service desk. At a minimum, they lead the Programme Office, Infrastructure, Application Development, Service Desk and, on occasion, the business relationship management group (BRM). They are accountable for achieving the contractual SLA’s set per service offering. Depending on the business and their priorities, the IT director is likely to report to the CEO, CFO, COO or CIO.

When they exist within a business, CIOs are board level members responsible for identifying, defining, selling and championing the long term technology strategies used and implemented by their teams for the business.  They normally lead a team consisting of the IT Director, Quality leader (process), Security officer, CTO, and in some businesses the BRM group. They rarely get involved with operations aside from severe escalations and only actively interact with the IT operations during major transformation activities.

Very much like Allan Leighton describes in his book (On Leadership) focused on his experience on being a CEO, I believe it is the appropriate time for CIOs to be appointed as reoccurring interims or members of a consortium shared across multiple businesses depending on scale and expertise.  Allan Leighton coined, “Going Plural”, that fits, CIO’s are likely to evolve into a type of non-executive director with a technology focus.  In the end, the role of CIO is to help shape the future direction of the business understanding how to use IT as an enabler, they are not separate from but equal to and necessary additions to the other CxOs driving and representing the business.

These are my thoughts, do you agree? I, as well as many of the other readers, would be interested to read your opinion.

Through Willard Enterprises, I specialise in helping businesses achieve successful lasting change through IT transformation, process improvement, smart sourcing and providing IT transparency such as assisting you in completing department health checks. As always, if there is something I can do to help your business or someone you know deliver their next challenge, please contact me for more information.