Co-CIO's is an interesting trend

There seems to be an interesting new wrinkle in how organizations manage their IT organizations: the Co-CIO. I recently received two presentations from Co-CIO's at a major investment firm. Each presenter brought their own unique perspective to their shared role and their individual and combined set of responsibilities. The focus of their information wasn't specifically to address how they share control or what the challenges and opportunities were with this type of IT leadership model, but because of the intense curiosity and interest in this IT hybrid the class couldn’t stop from making inquiries. Honestly this seemed, at first, to be an anomaly born from a unique set of circumstances requiring a two-headed approach to handle but after some explanation I still haven’t gained a true understanding of why their organization chose to transition from a sole head of IT to the shared approach. Dan’s (let’s call him CIO #2, not in order of importance or decision making but based on order of their presentation), outlook on the position was that it was a natural decision for the organization to make based on their IT circumstances and requirements. Dan was sincerely surprised by our interest in the subject – odd considering we spent a significant part of our MBA program not learning about leadership by panel. Yes. Of course we spent time learning about group communication and taking into consideration all aspects of your project team, but in the end there is always someone making the final decision in certain difficult situations.




In a challenging situation that requires a clear decision, like who gets the surplus money for their respective budget – what if both parties feel that they have the better business case for the funds? Who determines the winner/loser in this scenario? Even if one party capitulates there will still be some hard feelings, right? Dan did provide a good rationale though for minimizing our skepticism when he stated that this is a new trend in the IT field and these same decision making challenges would be present if there was one CIO and two department heads. Well that’s true Dan but at least in that situation neither department head has to be the bad guy, that honor belongs to the lone CIO.



Now back to their presentations. I was definitely impressed with the breadth of knowledge and experience, both Joyce and Dan had worked at several Investment firm in both IT and Business related positions. Unlike Dan, Joyce began in a typical investment firm internship fashion and because of her intellect, motivation and willingness to challenge and confront ineptitude she moved into the emerging IT field at the right time. Dan’s background was IT-centric, but he did work outside of the Financial Services Industry for a period of time. Joyce’s presentation focused on lessons learned from her career experiences. Her stories were very poignant and entertaining and you can definitely see the leadership qualities she possesses. Dan exposed us to his viewpoint on emerging technologies and their impact and challenges for him as a CIO. Security being his overriding challenge, which is something of a trend amongst the various speakers we’ve had this semester. He agreed with my observation that security in IT has to be balanced with the user friendliness of the business consumer that the systems were built for. Excellent speakers and an all-around great in-class discussion.