Leading Reasons Why CIOs Get Fired

By Renee Oricchio

Until a few years ago, it was hardly worth it for a new CIO to put out the family pictures on his or her desk, given that the average tenure in the job was only 18 to 24 months. However, times have changed for the better. These days, CIOs  have more of a sense of permanence in their jobs, but perhaps still not long enough to accumulate much dust on those family photos.

"Since about 2004, the average CIO lifespan is longer -- more like three to five years," says John Stevenson, a Dallas-based foundation board member and former president of the Society for Information Management, a professional organization for IT leaders.

That was then
Indeed, from the early 1990s until about 2004, an entire generation of CIOs came and went from enterprises with alarming frequency. High turnover peaked around 2002, during what many view as IT's darkest days.

"A number of corporations just had too many generals left over from ramping up for Y2K," says Stevenson. "It was after the tech bubble burst. There were cutbacks and outsourcing. So there was a thinning out of management."

Partly, it was the nature of IT itself during the 90's. Viewed more as a service department for the rest of the organization, many enterprise-level organizations didn't even have a CIO.

A famous example of this and its disastrous consequences made headlines back in 1999. The Hershey Co. failed to deliver its beloved little chocolate Kisses to store shelves in time for Halloween as the result of a botched SAP implementation. Hershey learned the hard way that it needed IT leadership with a C-level view of the business.

Hershey remains a cautionary tale for both today's enterprise and its CIO.

This is now
Ask a dozen IT industry watchers to profile the most important trait of today's CIO and you won't get a dozen different answers. You'll likely get the same answer over and over again: CIOs have to be focused on the business. IT can now be thought of as BT -- for business technology. For many organizations, IT infrastructure and business infrastructure are one in the same.

After years of a shakeout in the industry, IT finally appears to be maturing into its corporate role. With that, CIOs are getting more time to prove themselves.

"Whereas before CIOs rarely made it past two years, now three years is the make or break point that shows if you're going to be successful in the long run," says Stevenson.

Top reasons CIOs are fired
For those CIOs who don't make it past their third year, it's usually for one or more of these reasons:

• Not focused on the business How does a CIO measure success? The rollout of a new application comes in on time and on budget. For many CIOs, that still sounds like "mission accomplished." But if it doesn't deliver a measurable and worthwhile ROI for the business, it's a failure. "CIOs need the ability to run their IT departments in a business-like way. Too many can't talk the same metrics as their colleagues on the business side," says Laurie Orlov, a principal analyst from Forrester Research.
• Major application failure  Earlier this year in the aftermath of an ice storm, JetBlue Airways, crippled by a breakdown in logistics and communication, left thousands of passengers stranded at airports all over the country. At the enterprise level, when an IT department makes mistakes, they usually make big headlines. The CIO is often the first to go in the aftermath. (Although in this case, JetBlue was already in the process of transitioning in a new CIO during February's debacle.)
• Project never gets finished or goes too far over budget Just five months before Kmart filed for bankruptcy protection in early 2002, the IT department had to scrap its new and notoriously overpriced and overly modified $130 million EXE software distribution system and start over. The company also started over with a new CIO in the aftermath.
• Non-compliance or a high-risk issue compromises the organization  In the post-Enron era of Sarbanes-Oxley, compliance and transparency are a top corporate priority on everyone's radar at the C-level. Failure can mean not only losing a job, but getting sued or even going to jail. 

Beating the odds
Even for what is considered a successful run in the CIO chair, longevity is not typical. Stevenson suggests CIOs focus on the following areas to ensure that their tenure on the job is a long one:

• Leadership skills "A CIO has to demonstrate the right level of sophistication for the job. A lack of leadership will be the first thing to expose a CIO's incompetence," says Stevenson.
• Management skills More so than other departments, CIOs have to manage multiple groups (staff operating within the IT department, as well as extended across other departments, outside vendors, projects, and, of course nowadays, the performance of outsourced contract workers, as well).
• Alignment with business executives "It's essential today that a CIO knows how to fit like a glove with the other C-level executives and other influential leaders within the organization," says Stevenson. IT is no longer just a service department making sure the computers work and stay online. Companies count on IT for new technologies that will give the business an edge against competitors.
• Good style match Is the company more comfortable with the conservative button-down type or the risk-taking maverick? For the new CIO recruited from outside the organization, it's especially important to quickly get a sense of the corporate culture -- and adapt.
• Strategic thinking There's a reason why 35% of all CIOs today, according to Forrester Research, come from a business background and not IT. Increasingly, the core mission of IT is less about implementing technology and more about implementing business strategy in the form of new technologies.

An MBA is now a basic job requirement for many CIOs. An IT background is increasingly not.

"It's increasingly a rotational job for other C-level executives being groomed for the CEO job," says Orlov, who adds it's a trend that's on the rise.

Renee Oricchio is a freelance writer in Norwalk, Conn. For the past 20 years, she has been writing and producing news segments about technology and business for CNN, MSNBC, Ziff-Davis, CNet and a variety of Silicon Valley-based local news outlets.