The evolving role of the CDIO
Today, technology is playing a pivotal role in transforming organizations. The shift of the CIO (Chief Information Officer) from being a technology expert to being a business strategist has arguably been more dramatic than any other C-level role transition ever seen. Organizations of all types, invariable of their size, have been migrating to cloud computing, Software-as-a-Service and ERP upgradation. But this is not enough. Today Technology is changing every aspect of organization’s value creation processes and there is a much more powerful wave of change anticipated due to smart products, robotics, industry specific business platforms and AI driven decision making. Post Covid, the CIO role has transitioned into a Chief Digital and Information Role (CDIO) role, and we get to hear this new term more often than ever before.
So, what is triggering the need to hire a CDIO and how it is augmenting the overall organization’s growth perspective? It is like a tale of two missions, IT modernization to business transformation.
Since the last decade, the CIOs have evolved to become CDIOs; have moved beyond being custodians of technology, to today being prominent thought leaders and inspiring communicators. Increasingly CDIOs are becoming the change champions of an organization. They are constantly scanning the outside environment, bringing in technology advancements and perspectives, and using those to evolve the organization’s products and services; helping it to identify new revenue streams while implementing required changes to transition the journey into the future.
Critical competencies of the CDIO
CDIOs are today responsible for building an “digital first” organization that is future ready, is cost efficient, driven by proactive & real time decision making, excellence in processes, and superior customer experience.
Critical Competencies of a CDIO
There are certain competencies that a CDIO role requires. Based on our experience of finding the ideal CDIO’s for our clients, these are the foremost among them:
- Ability to find the perfect balance between business ambitions and tech abilities
- Mindset to build and empower a team that can act as change management agents
- An appreciation and acknowledgement of the importance of security issues and dovetail cybersecurity measures into all initiatives
- Sense of curiosity to learn and experiment with new things
- Capacity to build and execute on a transformational digital roadmap
Over and above these, a CDIO needs to have the tenacity to push through the ideas for transformation across the organization, especially the executive leadership. The ability to influence the senior leadership is not an important competency that a CDIO must possess, it is THE most important capability.
Background to this Study
As Executive Search Partners, we have observed that the need to hire leaders who can drive digital transformation for an organization has become one of the most critical hiring needs across companies and across sectors.
WalkWater has partnered with a variety of companies right from large conglomerates, PE / VC driven growth firms, promoter driven companies and International MNCs and has successfully closed multiple CDIO searches.
Given our wide experience of closing CDIO assignments across sectors, we have studied the key hiring trends that are driving CDIO hiring across industries. This exhaustive study covers 310 CIO / CDIO candidates across more than 272 companies.
Some of our key findings are summarized in this report.
Research Methodology
Inferences: Out of the overall sample of 272 companies studied, 91 companies have hired / created a CDIO role.
Going deeper, while 40% of Indian companies studied have a CDIO and only 25% of MNCs have a CDIO. This could imply that Indian companies have moved faster in embracing and institutionalizing the digital transformation journey.
Inferences: Across sectors, 40% of Industrial companies, 36% of Pharma companies, 35% of Consumer Companies have a CDIO. The clear laggards are the BFSI (26%) and Technology (17%) companies.
Inferences: Women leadership makes up just 17% of the CDIO talent pool. Amongst CIO’s the gender diversity percentage is slightly higher at 22%. Overall gender diversity continues to be a challenge in this critical role.
Inferences: Industry prefers younger CDIOs with their median age being 48 years and 58% of the CDIOs are at 48 years and below. As a comparison, the median age of CIOs is 50 years and 61% of CIOs are at 50 years and below.
Inferences: 4 out of 5 CDIOs are Engineers. Given the continued advancements of Technology, industry prefers to hire engineers in this critical role as they are perceived to understand technology better.
Inferences: 3 out of 5 CDIOs have a full time Masters degree. Full time MBA is the most popular Masters degree (67%), followed by Masters in Technology and MCA (33%) .
(Engineer + MBA) is the most popular education mix with 32% of CDIOs having this mix.
Close to 50% of CDIOs have studied in Premier Institutes.
Clearly, Industry prefers strong understanding of technology and business as ideal qualifications for CDIOs. This is not surprising as CDIOs are expected to shape business strategy.
Inferences: 37% of CDIO’s have prior experience in Business / Management consulting.
This is a marked shift from CIOs – with only 14% of CIOs coming with prior experience from a Business / Management Consulting background.
Given the strategic business partnering expectation from CDIO’s, Industry has realized that it is better to hire CDIO’s who bring with them prior business / management consulting experience.
Inferences: Global Experience matters for CDIOs – more than 50% of CDIOs have global experience having worked outside India at some point of their careers.
Inferences: 64% of the CDIOs have moved jobs in the last 3 years – signifying very high demand for CDIOs
We expect this situation will continue for the next few years as CDIO hiring continues to be on an uptick.
50% of the CDIO movement in the last 3 years has happened to companies in the Industrial sector and 25% to companies in the Consumer sector. These two sectors have taken the lead on embracing the journey of digital transformation.
About Lead Authors
Rahul Shah | Co-Founder & Director
WalkWater Talent Advisors Private Limited
Shalini Jain
Partner | Consumer Practice
About Research Team
Sherin Saja
Associate | Pharma & Lifesciences