Alsbridge Reveals, What Makes a High Performance CIO and Are You One

Online, December 5, 2012 (Newswire.com) - Award winning benchmarking, sourcing and transformation advisory firm, Alsbridge, Inc., today released a new report --What Makes a High Performance CIO?-Are you one?, revealing various traditional and non-traditional methods of measuring the performance of a CIO and critical leadership skills and behaviors that assist in identifying a high performance CIO.

As noted in in this latest report by Alsbridge, organizations use a combination of traditional and non-traditional measurements to evaluate their investments in Information Technology (IT), the performance of IT organizations and by extension their Chief Information Officers.

Traditional Measurements
Many organizations still rely on Present Value, Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return calculations to make decisions on the quality of IT investments and judgments about the relative financial performance of the CIO, as compared to other 'C' level executives in the business. Increasingly however, organizations are finding that there are limitations to evaluating IT performance using traditional ROI metrics.

Beyond Traditional Measurements
Consequently, organizations are turning to non-traditional methods to assess IT performance including business modeling; IT portfolio management; total cost of ownership; even, leadership skills, characteristics, and behaviors that individuals bring to the business.

Additional Yardsticks to Consider
A study of CIO effectiveness conducted by the Corporate Executive Board in 2011, found that only 25% of the CIOs studied were rated as "high-performers".

Understanding more about the leadership characteristics that lead to improved individual and organizational performance provides insight into the priorities of high performing CIOs; how they work with colleagues; the degree of control they are comfortable giving up; whether they are prone to managing "horizontal" or "vertical" relationships; how well they communicate; whether they inspire others; and, the degree to which they are capable of building future generations of IT leaders for the organization.

CIO Performance in Context
Critical leadership skills and behaviors are key determinants of CIO performance and provide useful context for understanding what differentiates high performers from other IT leaders.

Technology Innovation vs. Adoption
Finally, research suggests that high performance CIOs view the IT function differently; use metrics that are tied to the core business to quantify IT benefits; tend to be early adopters of technology; apply IT in more collaborative and creative ways; monitor, report on and realize greater benefits from their outsourcing partnerships; and overall, deliver more value to the business than other CIOs in less effective IT organizations do.

Outsourcing and High Performers
Research into high performing organizations indicates high performers approach outsourcing differently and get more value out of it as an alternative IT service delivery model than less effective organizations do.

This whitepaper addresses the central question "What makes a high performance CIO?" but the remaining question is...Are You One?

For further details, download the complete whitepaper What Makes a High Performance CIO?-Are you one?