Let’s say there’s a privately owned company of about 350 people with a small IT staff. The head of IT reports directly to the president of the company.
Is there a difference between calling the head of IT the CIO vs. the IT Director? Is one more appropriate than the other? Thanks.
I never heard ‘CIO’ before (let me guess - Chief Information Officer)
We had a guy who called himself ‘Technical Director’
I’m told there’s no real protocol in companies, that the people in charge can pretty much call themselves whatever they want, and also call their subordinates whatever they want them to be called.
When you get down to my level, there aint much choice - a Manager is a Manager.
What are the peers of the IT person called? If all of the CEO’s other direct reports are CFO, COO, etc., that argues for callign the person a CIO. If the others who report into the CEO are Directors, that argues for a Director title. VP titles would be another option.
If the IT role is supposed to be an equal to those other functions, it should have the same title. That somewhat depends on the nature of the business. There might be a company where IT was not as central as finance and operations, so would be appropriate to designate IT as “only” a director, and perhaps there would be a few other directors (HR, Communications, Sales).
The CIO is an executive “C” level position, on par with the CFO (Chief Financial Officer), COO (Chief Operating Officer), CLO (Chief Legal Officer) etc all who report directly to the CEO (Chief Executive Officer).
Directors and Vice Presidents are generally senior management level positions. Unless you work at a bank or consulting firm like the one where I worked where EVERY management position is Director or Vice President.
Anyhow, it’s largely a matter of semantics and the title structure of your company. Since you aren’t a public company, and you have a “president” instead of a CEO, I think it’s totally appropriate to call your head of IT the Director of IT. Assuming, of course, it is consistent with the titles for the heads of the other groups like Finance, etc.
Well, the head of Finance who also reports into the president is called the “CFO”. The head of HR who reports to the president is the “Director of HR”.
I guess the thing I was wondering is whether “Chief Information Officer” implies that you are an officer of the company. Perhaps that’s the case with the CFO - I’m not sure…
These titles don’t really mean squat except for corporate politics, image, and ego.
Originally, the CIO position truly related to information, but these days has become a fancy name for “IT Director.” The CIO should really be dealing with ways to manage information, with a focus on business processes, and not really so concerned with technology and implementation, but that is not how it is typically used now.
A Technical Director is usually a staff position rather than line management, someone who coordinates technical efforts across the organization and makes strategic technology decisions. Now this is often called the CTO.
Whether you call him/her an IT Director or a CIO has to do with his/her relationship with the president, his/her seniority and experience, and salary. The president is thinking, “Well, he has a lot of responsibility but not as much experience or maturity as my CFO, so if I call him a CIO it’s going to piss off the CFO, because even though the CIO is really good he is such a big baby, so I am going to call him an IT Director. That also means I can give him smaller raises because his salary is at the top of his grade, instead of in the middle, plus a Director doesn’t get the same bonus structure as a CxO.”
A CxO should be a truly executive position, forward thinking and strategic, whereas an IT Director is probably more operations focused.
But when it comes down it, there are no rules.
BTW the corporate charter says who’s an officer, not the title.
Regard: Office of CTO.
The CTO is appointed by the Mayor. Below the CTO there are Deputy CTO’s who have specific responsibilities such as Infrastructure, Facilities, Security and so on. Below each Deputy CTO are IT Directors who focus on the operation of their specific groups. Example, under the Deputy CTO for Infrastructure are the Directors who oversee Networking, Mainframe, Messaging (e-mail) and Web Operations.
IT executives in other (non-IT) agencies like public works or HR go by the CIO title, and operate in the manner posted above/quoted below:
There was no such thing as a CIO until about 15 years ago or so, or about the time that the internet and other tools made the IT position more valuable. This was because of the growth of the Internet bubble, which temporarily pushed IT salaries and demand for good IT people quite high, and the realization that corportate strategy vis-a-vis internet sales, communications. etc., could be quite important to a company’s bottom line. At this point, either to retain or bring in someone who could help impact a company’s bottom line, this position began to appear, mostly in large corporations.
Whether it should be IT director or CIO at a company of 350 is a bit of a local choice, depending on how important the role is to the success of the company and how much the company likes high-falutin’ titles. CFO is not that different, they used to be called Comptrollers. Some companies might have a CIO and a CTO, and others might have all of the above and roll it into the title “IT guy” or whatever.