Run IT like a business. For CIOs who truly aspire to the CEO seat, Capellas offers an exercise. "Think of yourself as the CEO of your own business with two truly unique attributes. Demand for your services will always be higher than your ability to supply them," he says. "And everybody is an expert in your consumer business but nobody understands your enterprise business." According to Capellas, if you can manage those significant business conflicts in a way that keeps all your customers happy, you will have developed the relationship and sales skills to make it as CEO.
Develop your "minors". As a CIO with a "major" in technology, you may have quite a few "minors" to develop before you are ready for general management. Just ask Michael Curran. During the late '90s, Curran was promoted from CIO of Scudder Stevens & Clark (now Zurich Scudder Investments) to a series of general management roles, including COO. In 2001, he became CIO of the Boston Stock Exchange, and in 2005, he became its CEO.
"All CEOs have a major in something and they've had to build their knowledge of other functions off of that core," says Curran. CIOs should do the same, he says. "Take a course in contract law and negotiation, learn balance sheets, learn something about marketing. If you're working globally, read a book about each country you're visiting, learn a foreign language." With a pretty serious day job on your hands, you cannot expect to develop expertise in each of these areas, but you can, according to Curran, "get good enough so that you don't embarrass yourself."
Scale your conception of systems relationships. "CIOs live in a systems world, and they understand the interdependencies among the elements of the systems -- the hardware, the apps, the networks, the third-party vendors," says Curran. "If you can scale that notion of interdependencies to a broader level that includes boards and governance, product management, people, services and sales, you will be able to adopt the CEO mindset."
Plan a transitional move into general management. From 1996 to 2000, Chris Lofgren served as CIO of trucking company Schneider National. At the same time, he became president of its logistics business. In 2000, he was promoted to COO. He became president and CEO two years later. "With the exception of a technology company, it is highly unlikely that a company will promote a CIO directly to the CEO position," he says. "It makes more sense that a CIO would aim for a role running a business unit -- one that is driven more by information -- before attempting the CEO role."
Expand your approach to time. "When planning major technology projects, CIOs think about a one- to three-year timeframe," Lofgren says. "When CIOs think about their company, their shareholders and leaving a legacy to the next generation of leadership, the time frame expands to a decade." As challenging as technology forecasting is, if you start working long-term goals into your plans now, you will be better prepared when your job demands it.
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