Discussion on:

How education impacts the journey to CIO

Having served in a CIO role for 11 years of my to date 27 year IT career, I would say that understanding business operations is the key to being successful as a CIO. My undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering gave be a well rounded education and included courses in corporate finance, operations management, communications and engineering disciplines. A solid college education in any field really matters as it develops a necessary skill set, i.e. ability to muti-task, focus on results, collaborate and communicate.

It would be nice for all of us to thank that person who made a difference in our education.

The author could not have been more correct about the communication aspect for most people in IT. When I look back at previous posititions, the greatest indicator of success or failure of prrojects was the ability of IT to work with the business aspects of the company, closely followed by IT knowledge.

The third aspect is the ability to pick up on new concepts and technologies, though in some ways that may really be the most important. If you learn quickly and are flexible it will certainly help you in the other two areas

was that transition from being an analyst or engineer to being a CIO would require removal or destruction of brain-matter, loss of the ability to handle abstractions, and some fixation on buzz-words and B-school fads so that you could reach that miles wide and nano-meters deep way of thinking.