WHAT ARE THE TOP QUALIFICATIONS FOR BEING A COI?

This morning I did a quick google search to find out the top 10 challenges that CIOs are facing. InformationWeek had a nice list. The fourth item on the list caught my attention: Tomorrow’s CIO: The Qualifications. According to a survey of CIOs from May 2008, the top qualifications, in order are:

  • Leadership
  • Ability to execute/meet deadlines
  • Collaboration/communication
  • Vision
  • Innovation
  • Team building
  • Consensus building
  • Technical breadth and depth

What struck survey author, John Soat and others who commented about this survey was how low on the list technical skill landed!

This looks to me like a list of qualifications for any C-Level executive in this day and age. Technical knowledge ought to at least make the list for any executive today. Being able to clearly define the strategic priority for applying technology, rally a consensus across diverse functional interests, foster teamwork and collaboration to get stuff done and create an environment in which teams learn from failures and produce innovation out of setbacks; all these add up to qualifications for the executive of today!

What would you add to this list?