After more than three decades in enterprise technology at IBM and years advising organizations on digital strategy, here is what I have learned about what it takes to reach the top technology role and thrive once you get there.
At some point in my decades at IBM, I stopped being the smartest technologist in the room. Not because I got worse at technology, but because the people working for me got so much better at it. That shift, when it happened, was disorienting. My identity had been built around technical mastery and suddenly the job required something else entirely.
I have been thinking about that transition, including during my years as a consultant at Citibank and in my work with the MIT Sloan CIO community. I write about it regularly on my blog. I keep returning to it because I keep seeing talented technologists get stuck at the same inflection point on the way to the CIO role and other senior executive roles. They are waiting for their technical credentials to carry them the rest of the way. They won’t. Here is what will.
A role transformed
When I started my career in the 1970s, enterprise technology was largely about dealing with the overall IT infrastructure, including the computers and the software in the data centers, and the networks that reach out to the users.
The CIO often reported to the CFO because cost control was the primary concern. The internet changed that permanently once ERP forced every part of the business to integrate around shared systems, raising a question that elevated the CIO’s standing for good. If a technology transformation touches every corner of the business, who leads it? Not the CEO. Not the CFO. The CIO stepped into that space and never stepped back.
From cloud to mobile to AI, each technology wave has compounded the scope and strategic weight of the role. The CIO now occupies a position comparable in importance to the CFO. No organization can afford one who is not trusted, capable and deeply connected to the business. If you want this job, you must understand the weight being put on your shoulders before you pursue it.
Technical credibility is the floor, not the ceiling
Here is where many aspiring technology leaders get stuck. They assume that the path to CIO runs through deepening technical expertise. Get better at the technology, they think, and the rest will follow. In my experience, that is precisely backwards.
Yes, you need genuine technical credibility, and you need to understand what is possible, what is risky and the tradeoffs. However, beyond a certain level in any organization, the people who work for you will know far more about the specific technology than you do. That is not a failure. It is the natural and healthy state of a large, capable team. The CIO who believes their primary job is to be the most technically expert person in the room will likely not make it, because they are misreading what the job requires.
When I moved out of pure research and into broader leadership roles at IBM, I had to absorb this lesson quickly. My job was no longer to produce the best technical work myself. My job was to identify where technology was heading, to build and lead the teams that could get IBM there and to connect their work to the realities of the market.
The transition from technologist to technology leader is the first major inflection point on the path to CIO. Build your technical foundation early and deliberately. Then consciously shift where you invest your personal development energy.
The skills that get you there
When I think about what separates the CIOs who reach the top and stay there, I keep coming back to three things: management capability, the ability to earn trust across the organization and the ability to communicate effectively.
On management: The CIO oversees some of the most complex programs in any enterprise, balancing in-house capability against vendor partnerships, keeping security embedded rather than bolted on, maintaining momentum on multi-year programs that cut across every business unit. None of this is learned from a textbook. It is learned by seeking out progressively larger management challenges early and often.
On trust: the CIO must be trusted by the business. That means speaking the language of the boardroom as fluently as the language of IT. The heads of manufacturing, finance, sales and operations all must believe the CIO understands their problems, not just the technology.
I saw this dynamic play out repeatedly across my career at IBM and in my advisory work. Capable technologists fail in CIO roles because the business does not trust them. Less technically brilliant executives thrive because they have earned genuine organizational credibility. They long ago identified this business alignment as the defining differentiator for a CIO that creates lasting enterprise value.
On communication: if you cannot explain what technology does, why it matters and what it will cost to the board, to your peers, to the press and to your customers, you will not make it. I have watched smart people fail at this level for exactly that reason. Communication is not a soft skill at the CIO level. It is as critical as any technical credential.
How careers progress toward the CIO role
There is a traditional path to the CIO, and it mirrors the CFOs. Nobody becomes CFO without first managing the finances of a business unit, then progressively larger ones, demonstrating capability at each stage. The CIO path works the same way.
In large organizations, almost every major business unit has its own technology leader, which is effectively a divisional CIO reporting both to that unit’s head and to the enterprise CIO. I observed this structure at IBM and at Citibank. That dual-reporting role is where many of the best CIO careers are made, where you learn to serve a business function while maintaining technical credibility. If you have CIO ambitions and the chance to take one of these roles, take it.
Does it matter whether you are at a technology company, a bank or a manufacturer? It matters less than most people think. The challenges scale with the size and complexity of the organization, not the industry. The sector shapes the context; the required skills are the same.
Do you need an MBA? Not necessarily, though many effective CIOs have one. What you unquestionably need is a genuine understanding of the business you are serving. A CIO who cannot speak credibly about the pressures facing the head of sales or supply chain will not earn the trust the role demands. Develop business acumen deliberately through education, mentorship and by putting yourself in roles where business outcomes and technology decisions intersect.
One more point is to build your external network. Peer communities and forums like the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium matter more than many rising technology leaders realize. They are where you gain perspective beyond your own organization and build the external credibility that opens doors.
What I would tell my younger self
If I could go back and speak to the researcher I was when I first joined IBM, I would tell him that technology is the entry ticket. Everything else is the job.
The people who make it to the top and stay there are not necessarily the most brilliant technologists. They are the ones who made the shift from being experts to being leaders, who earned trust across the organization and who understood that their job was not to master the technology but to lead the people who do.
That transition is available to anyone willing to make it. But it requires recognizing, early, that the skills that got you here are not the skills that will take you further. The sooner you start building the other ones, the better.
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