The CIO Elite Survey: Models For Success

That is what makes this issue, Wall Street & Technology's annual cover story ranking the industry's elite chief information officers, different from its predecessors-our featured CIOs have a more direct impact on the success of their firms than ever before. Also new, we have decided to offer a more personal profile to go with the names that Gomez Advisors, an Internet quality measurement firm, has selected as the industry's best. In baseball, it is said the pitcher's delivery has everything to do with his offering's success or failure so, we thought, it might also be reasoned that a CIO's effectiveness lies not in dissecting their actual decisions but rather the experience, methodology, and work ethic from which those decisions sprung.

John Robb, president and chief operating officer with Gomez, who analyzed the questionnaires completed by industry CIOs, says he used a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques to arrive at our top five. Trends, he says, did appear----commonalities among the winners which give some idea of what it takes to excel at one of Wall Street's most demanding jobs. According to Robb, top attributes among the elite included: a prophetic sense of which new technologies to invest in, a tight correlation between tech investment and profitability, a low churn rate among employees (admittedly, a top priority for all), and the leeway to make decisions autonomously.

"It's truly an indicator of what the stature of the CIO is within the organization," says Robb, "if the CIO is actually making decisions or conferring with the top decision maker, which is the CEO, they have better stature and have obviously gained the trust of their organizations, they may be on the road to becoming a CEO at some point."

In his CIO-elite questionnaire, American Century Chief Technology Officer Bob Sauvageau writes that he sees a clear shift in the CIO's role. "The CIO is moving into the boardroom. Many CIOs are tomorrow's CEOs," he writes. "Technology in many cases leads the business because I can think of virtually no major business initiative in which technology does not play a central role."

At the end of this evolutionary segment may lie a position whose duties are neither technology nor business focused rather engaged in the art of combining the two. Therein will constitute the financial-institution leader of the future---a CEO/CIO hybrid combining Wharton and MIT degrees to lead tomorrow's firms through T+1 and through the next revolution.

The best of today's CIOs understand this business climate, which is transforming their function from executioner of mandated business initiatives into proactive shaper of directives, very well. They understand the onus is also on them to paint CEOs a picture of tomorrow's IT landscape, allowing business leaders to gain a competitive edge by outlining projects whose technology hasn't quite ripened.

Jon Beyman, CIO and managing director with Lehman Brothers writes that an effective CIO is "one who delivers productivity to his firm's businesses, which translates into a better bottom line. To do this requires lining up technology with the business, driving the vision where appropriate and executing very well."

In today's economic climate, the idea of maintaining a better bottom line is more important than ever before. Preparation for T+1 also sees CIOs engaged in the largely thankless task of implementing multi-million dollar straight-through processing trading environments, thankless because a return on that heavy investment is years down the road at best.

Managing director with J.P. Morgan James Mazarakis writes that the biggest challenges facing today's CIOs revolve around such projects which require, "Creating utilities for applications that do not bring value to the business. We all spend a great deal of money developing systems such as trade booking systems, confirmation engines, etc."

The people recognized in the following pages were selected by Gomez based on their vision, the ability to recognize and correctly evaluate new technologies; execution, the ability to apply technology in a way that achieves business objectives; organization, the ability to attract and retain highly talented individuals and peer review, recommendations from peers.

In many of the completed surveys, admiration for other CIOs was attributed to "the way he managed his time" or "the fact that she was able to focus and prioritize so well"---these are personal, time management issues and the reason why we are, in these pages, offering career path, work/personal-life management and mentor stories as information which will not only interest but allow you to glean some advice for how to manage your own demanding career.

But don't worry, we still have asked some technology-specific questions such as top three IT projects and number-one challenge to satisfy the few who have already found the illusive balance which allows one to reach the top of their field while still taking ample time for family and friends. ---