Six Tips For Technology Leaders Aspiring To Become CEO

With the digital age well and truly established, the notion that every business is now a technology business is no longer in doubt. Given this new tech-driven business dynamic, CIOs can be forgiven for eyeing the CEO office as the next natural step-up. CIO’s like Mario Harik, who will soon make the transition from CIO to CEO at XPL, make this leap seem even more realistic.

But getting to the CEO office typically requires CIOs to also have experience outside of IT, as is the case with Harik. Having some experience outside of IT, especially in sales and marketing, provides the CIO with a better understanding of how technology is used at the leading edge of the business. Unfortunately, it’s still relatively rare for a CIO to gain this experience in the typical career ladder. By sharing my own experience, I’m hoping to pave the way for more technology leaders to build a broader business-based resumé.

From Consultant to CIO

I was fortunate to land in the role of CIO of Reebok UK when I was still in my twenties. Reebok was a consulting client and the Chairman & CEO, Chris Brasher, wanted me on his team. And while I was very tech savvy compared to my peers on the executive board, I was incredibly inexperienced in management and leadership. You could say I had a baptism of fire. My first degree had prepared me academically for business technology leadership, and my consulting experience provided me with a modicum of tact, but I still had so much to learn about business. To help accelerate my learning, I studied for my MBA while I was still working as CIO.

Use An MBA To Accelerate Technology Transformation

The MBA course I selected had a strong focus on marketing and international business, two aspects of business that I was most interested in. I soon discovered that studying for my MBA while working as an executive gave me a unique perspective on the case studies, and a unique opportunity to apply what I was learning to the business. It also helped that our business was in a period of rapid growth, despite recessionary influences in the market.

I soon found myself with opportunities to apply technology to transform business operations across the board, from warehouse automation to retail sales forecasting for customers. I also applied a lot of what I was learning about managing people, encouraging the company to establish an HR department and recruit an HR manager – something the CEO had not felt the need for while the company was relatively small.

The Power Of Meeting Customers

I learned the value of going on the road with the sales team to meet with customers. On one meeting with a big customer’s senior buyer, I asked what we could do to help him grow his business. His answer was simple and challenging: “If you could help me forecast how many of each product will sell in the season, I would have more confidence placing bigger orders.” Challenge received and accepted.

As a technology team, we were advanced relative to our peers and we were already developing sophisticated product sales forecasting models. As we were in the footwear and apparel business, these had to predict sales across each style by size. We needed to expand our forecasting models to drill down to customer and even store level forecasts. As we used to say, it was a SMOP – a simple matter of programming! Before long, our store forecasts were helping our sales team close bigger orders and take the largest UK market share vs. our competition.

A Passion For Marketing

Through my MBA, I discovered a passion for marketing. To broaden my experience, I decided my next role should be in marketing.

Before long, Reebok UK was acquired by Reebok USA and folded into one Reebok global brand. It wasn’t long after that I was asked to move to the USA to help transform the technology team in the Massachusetts global headquarters. Which is how my young family and I relocated three and a half thousand miles.

So keen were they to have me in the US that I was asked to move without having a defined role – a leap of faith if you like. It was clear to the leadership in the USA that I understood the business inside and out and that experience was impossible to get easily. The role I ended up in was Director of IT Marketing and Services.[1] After introducing marketing disciplines to IT and building out the IT operations and technology services teams globally, I was invited to use my consulting experience to help Reebok’s Retail division select and implement new retail merchandising systems. This role introduced me to the ins and outs of a retail business rapidly expanding its store footprint, which included the roll-out of new in-store technologies. And that set me up for my move into sales and marketing.

Learning To Sell & Run a P&L

After Reebok, I moved fully into sales and marketing leadership for a well-established UK software firm – developing advanced retail merchandising and operations systems – looking to expand into North America from its UK base. Here I learned the cut and thrust of sales where I was the one pitching to CIOs and CEOs instead of being on the other side of the table! My experience at Reebok also helped me close a $3m deal with a global brand and set a new sales record for the firm.

This experience gave me the confidence to startup a couple of companies, one in vehicle telematic systems, and another in eCommerce research. By the early 00’s I was researching eCommerce technologies and advising retailers on how to digitize their commerce on the internet.

Taking On Fresh P&L Challenges

When Forrester was looking for an executive with a mix of technology and marketing background to launch its new Leadership Boards business, the pull of a fresh challenge – one that would lean on all of my experience to-date – was too hard to resist. My experience across a wide range of business operations, especially in sales and marketing, gives me a perspective on business technology that’s very different from a traditional CIO. It’s this perspective which serves me well advising many leading CEOs, marketing, digital and tech leaders in the world’s largest firms.

Five Recommendations for Aspiring CIOs and Digital Leaders

Based on my own experience, and on my years of business and technology research, my recommendations for CIOs who aspire to be future CEOs (and anyone who wants to be a great digital leader) are:

1. Get sales experience. Sales training is perhaps the most valuable training any employee can get. We are all selling something, especially ourselves. But “sales” is a misunderstood profession. At its heart, sales is all about identifying customer needs and effectively satisfying these needs through the product or service you’re providing. More than that, great sales people understand that sales involves a transfer of enthusiasm. Understanding sales helps a technology leader simultaneously understand customers and the technology needs of the salesforce. A CEO must know how to succeed in sales.
2. Meet your customers every month. Contrary to the belief of some CIOs, customers are not those employees to whom IT provides technology services. Customers are the people who buy your firm’s products. By regularly meeting with customers, you will gain a greater empathy for their needs and identify opportunities to use technology to create customer value. CEOs must be obsessed with creating customer value.
3. Learn to nurture tech-driven innovation. CEOs of the future must understand how to fuel the creative potential of the organization. They must harness the full power of employees to innovate. Despite all the hype around innovation, too few CEOs see it as a core part of the CIO’s role. CIOs must demonstrate a capability to nurture innovation around technology.
4. Gain experience in business operations. Understanding a process from the outside is never quite the same as working in the process. Working in operations reveals many quirks of a business that employees have given up trying to change.  CEOs must understand how their business really works in order to know which levers to pull to execute a given strategy well.
5. Get your MBA. While some may suggest getting more education on emerging tech like AI and machine learning, my advice to CIOs, and aspiring tech leaders, is to get educated in the area where you are likely weakest. For CIOs, this is often reflected in a lack of business savvy. An MBA can help bridge that gap, even if it’s an executive program. And many universities offer remote learning options that allow working executives to study at-home. Having an MBA can also open doors to opportunities to gain experience outside IT. It will also help you be a more effective communicator with your peers in the leadership team.
6. Give your technology leaders business experience. As technology leader, you are in the unique position of being able to give business leaders technology experience (something many business leaders want and need). You should also ensure your technology leaders get equal experience across different aspects of the business.

Are you a technology leader who has made the move to business leader? What tips would you offer in addition to the ones above?

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[1] This is also how I learned the hard way that a director in a USA firm is not the same as a Director in a UK firm!