FROM CIO TO CNO

In an unscientific survey, the author asked members of his network a simple question: "Who would you appoint to spearhead the CNO function in your company?" In many cases, the answer was surprising: "Our CIO". Why would these otherwise level-headed people choose a technical mind to manage their organization's relationship network? Read on.

Back to basics

From its inception, the Chief Information Officer function has always been in a state of change.

CIOs came into being in the mid-Nineties when companies first realized that the corporate explosion of information needed to be managed at the executive level. At first, the job spec called for people with deep managerial, strategic and people skills. But few top execs knew much about tech at the time, so they hired CIOs with predominantly technical know-how, including degrees in computer science, software engineering and information systems.

Over time, these tech skills have become less vital, bringing the function of the CIO back to its original purpose. Today, it is often more important for a CIO to demonstrate leadership capabilities, business acumen and strategic perspective rather than just possess computer skills. In fact, it is now quite common for CIOs to be appointed from the business side of an organization.

Common thread

The blend of technical and business skills can make the role CIO role difficult to categorize. Ask any CIO what he or she does and you'll get a different answer. It seems that no two people who occupy the position have the same qualifications, and every CIO's job has its own description. They do have a common thread, however: to make sure that knowledge flows smoothly throughout the organization. This is major difference from the CIO mandate of a just a few years ago. Today, information is the simple stuff; knowledge is the new goal. As evidence of this shift, some CIO roles have already been renamed "Chief Knowledge Officer".

So how do information and knowledge differ? Information, as we all know, is present in myriad electronic and paper-based systems, and is also passed verbally from one person to another. Knowledge, on the other hand, is information of which a person or organization is aware. It is gained by experience, learning and perception, and through association and reasoning. Unlike information, which is subject to absolutes, knowledge is based on the truth as perceived by the knowledge-holder. In other works, knowledge is a whole lot harder to grab onto than information. It is by far the greatest challenge confronting CIOs.

Reinvention

Just like CIOs transformed from tech gurus into savvy strategic managers, they must now re-invent themselves into knowledge experts. In this higher-order realm, the "network" is made up of people who transfer knowledge to one another, the "computer" is the human brain that processes that knowledge and the "applications" are the filters that people apply to interpret it.

In the knowledge economy, these three info-tech metaphors¾network, computer and application¾depend on people, not just on technology. And all three are impacted by relationship networking. Relationships determine how knowledge is transferred and processed, and which personal filters are applied. 

In the face of this, as a CIO moves further into knowledge management, he or she will need to remain on top of the communications, collaboration, consensus-building, teamwork and every other aspect of the organization's relationship network. In essence, the CIO will take on the duties of a CNO.

No dinosaurs

Will every CIO become a CNO? Of course not. Some will have no interest in the non-technical aspects of knowledge management, while others, try as they may, will find it hard to acquire the soft skills required to manage a dynamic relationship network (although the coaches at CNO Partners will argue that practically anyone can acquire these skills, "difficult people" excepted). Over time, some employers may eliminate the CIO position entirely, while others will prefer to leave it as is. Plus it's still early in the game: a new breed of knowledge managers may rise up to take over the job, sidelining many CIOs.

But CIOs need not become dinosaurs. Knowledge management is a wide open space and CIO's are ideally positioned to move into it. Some are already on the high road to the knowledge economy, adopting change management and chaos theory, for example. If this trend continues¾whether they acquire the title or not¾CIOs are likely to take their place among the CNOs of the future.