The average age of a CIO is 55, so most have already had some thoughts about retirement and what they want their legacy to be.
What do CIOs value for their lasting career contributions? I’ve had this conversation with many CIOs, and I’ve considered the matter myself. Predictably, the answers are not of a one-size-fits-all variety.
Here is what I’ve learned from other CIOs about what they wanted to feel they achieved:
1. Not much! Many CIOs who are starting to think about the end of their careers never talk about it, that is, unless you coax them. Then, when you do, they don’t always seem to know.
They’ll say that they want to feel that they did a good job running IT when they walk out the door, and that they helped develop new people. They want to feel that they delivered value to their companies, and that they were able to earn a good living and support their families. Most agree that they really enjoyed their jobs and the challenges, but they’ll also tell you that they’re looking forward to taking that long coast-to-coast car trip they’d always planned, and that it’s time for someone else to take the helm.
3. Corporate pride. There are CIOs who not only want to feel pride in their work, but in whom they worked for. They’ll beam with pride and say, “I worked for X company for 25 years as CIO.” This is especially true for CIOs who worked for large enterprises, tech companies, and organizations that have broad and favorable household recognition.
4. Stress. The CIO job is stressful. A CFO colleague of mine once told me, “I’m glad it’s you running IT and not me. Finance is more stable and predictable. I go to work each day and know what’s going to happen. You don’t.”
That’s all so true. For CIOs who no longer relish the challenges of continuous and unpredictable change, it can get tough to manage the stress. Continuous stress can motivate some CIOs to retire early, or to switch careers altogether. In these cases, their legacies as CIOs aren’t so important, but peace of mind is.
5. Feeling that they made a difference. Twenty-five years ago, IT professionals around the globe focused on making a 6-digit numeric date field into an 8-digit field so that systems wouldn’t crash when the new millennium arrived. This was a harrowing but also a purposeful time for IT in general and for CIOs in particular.
The work on Y2K went on around the clock. I remember running to a McDonalds one evening to get a jug of coffee for the staff. There were about half a dozen state IT workers in the restaurant, also getting coffee. They are wearing “Y2K Bites” shirts, and we raised our fists in solidarity before heading back out into the night.
Many CIOs who are retiring or thinking about retirement want to leave with the feeling that their work as CIOs was impactful, purposeful, and that they made a difference.
That difference might have been in navigating the IT ship through a colossal project like the Y2K data fixes. Perhaps it was the innovation and deployment of a new system, the first of its kind anywhere, that their staff created under their leadership. Or, it might have been the individual staffers whom they helped along the way so these individuals could develop their IT skills and support their families.
This need for purpose — to feel that you contributed and made a difference, is what matters to the majority of retired or soon-to-retire CIOs I visit with. And it mattered to me.
So here is the age-old question that I always get asked in these conversations: Would you do it (be a CIO) again?
The answer, of course, is a resounding “YES”.