Has the CIO title run its course?

There’s a lot in a name, and as Tim Wenhold sees it, the time has come to revamp the CIO title so it reflects how integral technology is to business.

“We technologists have disrupted and augmented so many industries, yet that [title] has stayed … we’re really talking about digital leaders now,’’ says Wenhold, chief operating officer and chief innovation officer at Power Home Remodeling, a $1 billion exterior home remodeler.

Power does not have a traditional IT department, so officials have opted not to use the term CIO, he says. But as Wenhold’s role has expanded to include both business and technology responsibilities, he decided to begin a search for someone to serve as chief business technology officer (CBTO).

The title is appropriate, he says, because “we have business technology,’’ while the term CIO “is over 60 years old and harkens back to mainframes.”

Power’s newly minted CBTO is Marc Sule (pictured above), who previously served as CIO of apparel and promotional products company alphabroder for six years.

In addition to having someone he could partner with, Wenhold also wanted someone with a build, rather than buy, mindset who would put time and effort into building software. The company’s business technology group comprises about 215 people, including site reliability engineers who run the data centers, cybersecurity professionals, and helpdesk and desktop support staff — in other words, personnel typically found in a traditional IT organization.

Still, the point remains, calling into question whether the CIO title itself may be past its prime.

Words matter

What we call ourselves and how we think of ourselves matters, says Dan Roberts, an industry thought leader and host of the Tech Whisperers podcast, adding that he renamed the podcast in 2022 from CIO Whisperers.

“This recognizes that the jobs are getting bigger and broader,’’ Roberts says. “Concurrently, you are seeing top CxOs rebranding the name of their department and more are using words like ‘technology,’ ‘digital,’ and ‘business’ in their department’s names.”

Although Roberts is not familiar with the CBTO title, he notes that “the best CIOs/CDOs/CTOs today are intentional about connecting their people with the customer, their North Star. They have stopped saying, ‘We need to align IT with the business,’ recognizing that that further separates us from ‘the business.’”

Instead, visionary tech leaders are embedding a new cultural mindset of “we are the business and we need to show up as business people first, technologists second,’’ he adds. They also don’t just talk the talk — these tech leaders are also training their people to show up this way, to engage as trusted advisors and strategic partners, Roberts says.

“These are the [leaders] who are in the first meeting of new business initiatives versus the fifth meeting when we have little to no influence or business impact,’’ he says.

However, Isaac Sacolick, president of StarCIO and bestselling author, isn’t sure a name change is necessary.

“The CIO title works fine as most executives recognize the CIO as the head technology executive over the enterprise or a specified business domain,’’ Sacolick says. “What’s really evolved are the expectations of the role, which was originally grounded in IT operations and then progressed to partnering with business leaders on executing programs.”

Yet, he says that top CIOs today must deliver business outcomes and lead investment portfolios, as well as prioritize risk-mitigation activities, mentor digital trailblazers, and champion digital transformation as a core organizational competency.   

Setting direction on tech investments

Although Sule wasn’t actively looking for a new position, he was intrigued by Power Home Remodeling’s culture and what Wenhold was envisioning for the role. “I knew if I was going to leave I wanted to go somewhere where I could get back to having more of a product focus,’’ Sule explains. “I love building and creating and certainly, this environment has created that opportunity.”

As CBTO, Sule is responsible for 24 focused development teams that work closely with each of the company’s business units, as well as teams that run Power’s data centers and customer support.  

“I actually was excited that ‘business’ was in the title,’’ Sule says, adding that he hadn’t heard of the CBTO title until he joined Power in January. His onboarding was also extensive — Sule says he was amazed that the company had him spend 14 weeks shadowing every department before starting to work as the business tech leader.

Some of his responsibilities align with those of a CIO, he notes. However, “In this role, I feel like I have a lot more input into the business side of Power Home Remodeling. There’s also a lot of responsibility within our group to set direction in terms of the type of investments we’re making in technology, so there are a lot of parallels, certainly, but it’s also different in terms of how I’ve operated in the past,” he says.

From the outside looking in

Even when Wenhold started full-time at Power in 2012, he knew he wanted to shake up titles. He was also never a CIO there in the sense of “chief information officer” but as chief innovation officer.

“It’s time for the rest of organizations to recognize there is not a single CIO role anymore but layers of CIOs,’’ he says. The chief of technology needs to be a digital leader “and that’s why the name [CBTO] is so important.”

While acknowledging that every company is different, Wenhold says if he were on the outside looking in at a senior executive meeting, “the person sitting there with the CBTO title isn’t talking about keeping the lights on, and the internet connection up, and what technologies we’re using. They’re talking about how is the business absorbing the latest deployment into production.”

The person responsible for keeping the lights on should be a director, he adds, and “I don’t see that role at the table.”

Although technology’s role has been widely elevated in most companies across all industries, Wenhold believes it will take some time for other organizations to understand what the CBTO role can and should be. “I still believe we have a lot of work to do in the [IT] industry. The CIO name is more important to your peers than to the person holding the title,’’ he maintains.

Sule agrees, saying that the CBTO title is effective because it helps to “blur the lines” between technology and business and instills a sense that everyone in Sule’s department is there to serve the business.

“Everything we build, create, all the technology we run in our data centers and the infrastructure, it all services the business,’’ Sule says. “It’s a nice reminder to have the title.”

He sees a shift happening and thinks more companies “want their technology leader to have a business or product mindset in how they approach their investments, which a lot of the time, are the largest investments a company will make.”

The more that tech investments help differentiate a company and align with what the company is trying to achieve, the more successful the company will be — and the person in the CBTO role, Sule says.

In the meantime, Wenhold is intent on blazing a new path forward. “Everyone is stuck in the past with our name,’’ he says. “We’ve disrupted and changed so much about how we use technology that we have to evolve the way we think about people’s roles, and that should include the titles they hold.”