Are you giving your CIO a fair shot at fully contributing to the senior management team? IT executives are not viewed as peers by the rest of the team because of a stereotyped view that IT professionals are strong in analytical, detailed, and introverted forms of thinking but weak at strategic thinking and the ability to see the big picture. Two researchers have raised doubts about this characterization and argued that the misperception is harming the career prospects of IT executives, reducing the effectiveness of IT, and therefore harming the organization.

 

Peter DeLisi, director of the Information Technology Leadership Program at Santa Clara University, and Ron Danielson, CIO of Santa Clara University, studied IT professionals to examine how they process information. They used the InQ, a test that relates each response to one of five styles thinking styles: Synthesists, Idealists, Pragmatists, Analysts, and Realists. The researchers found that most IT executives rated high in the idealist and pragmatist types rather than in the expected analyst type. Based on these results, DeLisi and Danielson argue that most IT professionals may be far more capable of big-picture thinking and far less captivated by technical details than the prevailing stereotype suggests.

 

The disconnect between popular perceptions of IT professionals and the results has the unfortunate effect of limiting their opportunities for job assignments with strategic impact on the organization, limiting their opportunities for promotion to the highest levels of the organization, and affecting their relationships with clients and senior executives. Earlier research by the authors and a colleague elicited from CEOs their views on what IT organizations needed to do to be successful. It turns out that the very qualities lauded by CEOs, especially interpersonal and synthesis skills, are those where IT professionals have unexpected strength. Companies that perpetuate the stereotyped view are therefore missing an organizational opportunity for IT professionals and their firms.

 

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