Background for a CIO

Recently we had a discussion in one of my classes that focused on a young business manager (named Claire) who was offered a high-level executive position of managing a company's entire R & D efforts.  Claire did not have an engineering background, so was at best only qualified to serve as a director for the efforts, and at worst was completely over her head.  The assignment was to determine whether or not Claire should take the position.  There was little discussion over whether or not she could do her job adequately, instead discussion focused on what Claire needed to do in order to be successful.

Since most companies (and most MBA students) would have conniptions at the thought of CFOs with little to no knowledge of finance or COOs with little to no knowledge of operations, why do we find it acceptable to have CIOs with little to no knowledge of information technology?

I think at least part of it has to do with the fact that people in technology seem to value knowledge of technology over everything else.  There are plenty of technologists, at least in the software development realm, who spend a lot of time and energy studying patterns, practices, languages, etc.  Yet being an effective technologist goes beyond his or her skill in writing software, configuring servers, setting up networks, etc.  Technologists must also work at communicating technical needs with non-technical people and focus on solving problems with technology, rather than choosing technologies that solve problems.

This is not a small change to make.  If technologists were to truly make this shift, conversations about technology (such as user group meetings) would start with business contexts, job interviews would focus on problem-solving skills more than specific technology implementations, and technologists would spend as much free time learning about finance and operations management as they do new technologies.  Moving in this direction would almost certainly help align IT and business objectives.

If we were to make this shift, companies would still need pure technologists, since technology changes so quickly we will need people who can keep up with these changes.  However, we need to do a better job developing the business skills of our technology professionals.  One way to do this would be to encourage more business training (like the MBA) for IT professionals, and make such training required for many management positions.  What else can IT professionals do to encourage business-context thinking in our day-to-day work?