Next in Tech | Ep. 279: IT Executive Qualifications

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[00:00:00] Eric Hanselman: Welcome to Next in Tech, an S&P Global podcast where the world of emerging tech lives. I'm your host, Eric Hanselman, chief analyst for industry research at S&P Global. And today, we're digging into the topic of qualifications for IT executives. With me to discuss it is Steve Clark, a co-founder and director at Freeman Clark.

[00:00:22] Eric Hanselman: Steve, welcome to the podcast.

[00:00:24] Steve Clarke: Hi Eric. Lovely to be here with you.

[00:00:26] Eric Hanselman: Well, great to have you here. And before we get too far down the road, can you give us a little background on Freeman Clark?

[00:00:32] Steve Clarke: Yeah, sure. Graham, my business partner and I, we started Freeman Clarke back in 2012. Both of us had been senior IT leaders and had got fed up with being in the full-time gig, and we were trying to find something else to do, and we bumped into each other and Freeman Clarke was born.

[00:00:47] Steve Clarke: And over the years, we've become the biggest, fractional CIO, CTO business in the UK. And recently we've developed our Tech Leaders Connect offering, which is growing the community of CIOs and CTOs. We started with events, but now we're developing the offering for that community, and the standard which we've created is part of that.

[00:01:08] Eric Hanselman: Ah. Well, you know, this rose out of a discussion that we're having in our 451 Alliance community and talking about especially with the ever-increasing pace of technology advancement, keeping up with the technology side of everything that's going on, AI, agentic, and the rest.

[00:01:26] Eric Hanselman: We were already in an escalation of skills and capabilities, so the idea of fractional IT leadership, it's to be able from organizations who couldn't invest in, full-time, CIO, uh, you know, CISO. We see this across so many different disciplines, has been something that's been growing rapidly.

[00:01:46] Eric Hanselman: But the thing that interested me and sparked some of this discussion was the idea that when we think about mastering technology, we've got all sorts of technical certifications for IT practitioners. I'm a CISSP in the security side. You've got, take your pick of vendor-led certifications.

[00:02:07] Eric Hanselman: You've got all sorts of industry standards. You've got as many different certification paths as you can potentially imagine when you start thinking about everything that's out there. But when you get to IT leadership, now you're moving into a realm in which certainly, you know, some level of the, the technical capability is important, but we're in a world in which now you've got to be good at both the, the corporate and the business side, as well as the technology side, and get to a point at which you can bring those together.

[00:02:43] Eric Hanselman: And, if we talk about the kind of collisions that exist on technology, culture, enterprise operations, AI has certainly just made this situation all the worse.

[00:02:56] Eric Hanselman: What do you see as some of the challenges? One of the issues with fractional environments is, of course, helping your customers understand what the capabilities are of those folks who are going to handle a lot of these challenges. Have you seen that path, and what do you see as some of the concerns and some of the opportunities?

[00:03:15] Steve Clarke: Yeah, it’s an interesting point, isn't it? Because as an engineer, you're encouraged to take these qualifications because it shows you're capable at your job. You’re going to be able to do a good job at what you do. And yet when you come into the IT leadership space, there's a complete dearth of opportunities.

[00:03:33] Steve Clarke: In the UK, the British Computer Society has the chartered IT professional standard, but you can get that as an engineer and keep going with it. It doesn't actually show that you're a competent leader. And I did some technical qualifications as well. I became a Microsoft certified professional and that kind of stuff.

[00:03:50] Steve Clarke: And, Novell more or less started the whole trend, didn't they, with CCNE and all that kind of stuff. But what's interesting at the leadership stage is that most leaders have a LinkedIn profile and a CV and they use that to demonstrate that they're a competent CIO or CTO.

[00:04:11] Steve Clarke: But what that actually shows is just tenure and experience. As an example, I've met CIOs who've held the title for a long time and yet never truly operated at enterprise level or worked with the board on shaping corporate strategy. And I've met CTOs who've built brilliant engineering teams but have never influenced capital allocation or the product roadmap, for instance.

[00:04:36] Steve Clarke: Or CIOs that have survived multiple restructures and yet they've never shaped one themselves. And with the fractional space, our guys walk into a client on day one, and they have to be on top of their game straight away. And it felt that having somebody walk in the front door with something that says, "I'm a certified CIO or a certified CTO," helped them with that ability to get up to speed because the CEO is looking at them going, "Well, I have a view that you're competent because you're a certified CIO or CTO."

[00:05:11] Steve Clarke: The time it takes to prove that you are a capable IT leader is much shorter if you have the certified CIO or certified CTO moniker. And I think we should have well-established IT leadership pathways that enable people to move from being an IT team leader through to the CIO level.

[00:05:33] Steve Clarke: And unfortunately, over the years, as I discovered, it was more or less luck, last person in the room or dead men's shoes that enabled you to move up the ladder. But whereas with the standard that we've put together, it provides the beginnings of a proper career path that says, "No, I can do this job. I'm able to demonstrate that I have the capability, the knowledge to do this job."

[00:05:58] Eric Hanselman: And it seems as technology historically has been reasonably discreet from the enterprise, you could really keep the technology discussions relatively isolated from the business operations piece because they were integrating office automation kind of capabilities.

[00:06:19] Eric Hanselman: But a lot of the odds and ends of the technology specifics wound up being reasonably separate. And with AI... and actually I'll make the point that maybe security was the leading edge of this, in that you always had this world of you had physical security, you had, the technical security side, cybersecurity side of things.

[00:06:41] Eric Hanselman: And then as that started to become a bigger impediment or a bigger risk, actually, more importantly, in business operations, there became greater board visibility. Now that we've shifted to AI, it seems like this has now taken what started out as a fundamentally technology-focused capability that now is front and center in the entire operations of the business, and it seems like that's really accelerated this need.

[00:07:08] Eric Hanselman: I'm curious if you've seen that impact and what your take is on really that shift to now technology pervading the organization and the need for the organization's requirements to really pervade technology decision-making.

[00:07:23] Steve Clarke: Yeah, it's a really interesting thought process this, because since the website, AI is only the second time that CEOs have wanted to shout about a technology to their state shareholders, their customers, and other people outside the business. They see it as a competitive advantage.

[00:07:43] Steve Clarke: Whether they know what they're going to do with it or not is completely separate, but it's one of the first times that they have engaged with a technology and gone, "That can give me... I believe that can give me, specific, competitive advantage in my field." And you mentioned technology being an operational function and often referred to as the plumbing and things like that.

[00:08:06] Steve Clarke: And the CIO, CTO has often been seen as a deliverer, so business strategy gets set at the top level and given to the CIO or CTO to deliver. Whereas, over the last few years, we've seen a step change in how CIOs and CTOs are being engaged with across the business. I still think a lot of CIOs and CTOs are missing a trick here of engaging with these technologies and walking into the CEO's office and engaging with them about it.

[00:08:36] Steve Clarke: They can be quite worried about doing that. But it has given us a route into that strategic engagement, being a proper member of the ExCo and being able to demonstrate that technology can underpin the speed of growth and maintaining a lead over competitors. And the trouble with this is CIOs and CTOs at board level are often seen as the Johnny-come-lately or the person with the shiny toys, the technocrat, rather than being a fully-fledged business and commercially aware person who can contribute as much at the strategic board as they can, making sure that the Wi-Fi works.

[00:09:16] Steve Clarke: And this is the challenge really for CIOs and CTOs. They've got to get out of that delivery mode, and into the ExCo. And all the other ExCo representatives, the CFO, CMO, CHRO, they all have certifications. They all have underpinning authority from qualifications. The CIO, CTO position is the only one that does not at the moment until we've developed the standard.

[00:09:42] Steve Clarke: And the really scary bit for me on that is that without that, a CV or a LinkedIn profile can be created by ChatGPT, and you could get a couple of mates to be your references, and you could get a role as a CIO. And for something that is becoming so critical that it's rising up the CEO's agenda For that level, lack of veracity around the role is quite concerning.

[00:10:11] Steve Clarke: And an incompetent CIO definitely impacts a business's growth unlike it did five years ago.

[00:10:19] Eric Hanselman: And to your point, this is something where CFOs typically have got strong levels of certification. You've got experience pathways that, that really are pretty well defined, and CIOs and CTOs have typically risen up through that technical rank. And in many cases, as you were pointing out, simply, may not even have the vocabulary, let alone the depth and knowledge.

[00:10:44] Eric Hanselman: So, in terms of identifying what's needed, how do you test and what kinds of things do you dig into to really identify that knowledge and qualification? Seems like with technology certifications, it was pretty straightforward. There's a whole body of knowledge you work with, and there you are.

[00:11:03] Eric Hanselman: This is a much more comprehensive and complex assessment it seems in terms of really identifying that.

[00:11:11] Steve Clarke: Uh, it, it is. And it's taken us a few years to get to the point where we're going, "Okay, this works." And we've been through a few iterations, but in the end it came down to three areas of capability. And this is about capability. I'm not really that bothered about tenure and experience because they don't demonstrate a person's capability.

[00:11:31] Steve Clarke: As I said earlier, you can be in a job for 10 years and not actually have done anything in that time. So, we divide it into three domains of mastery. One is you, yourself and I. You know, what you are, your strengths, your weaknesses. Now, we don't assess that. That's not a pass and fail. But what we do is give them an online assessment, based on the StrengthsFinder and the StrengthsFinder book, which is a brilliant way of understanding your strengths.

[00:11:59] Steve Clarke: And it helps the people just go, “Okay, I could do with some help on that side," or whatever. People should be constantly improving themselves, and I think a lot of people sit on their laurels as far as their own capability goes. The second one, the second domain of mastery is the business and commercial. Do I understand about strategy, finance?

[00:12:18] Steve Clarke: Do I understand about product and marketing and sales? Do I understand about macroeconomics and what VCPE houses do and all that kind of stuff? It’s about being a business person and having a solid understanding of working in a business and being at the ExCo level.

[00:12:34] Steve Clarke: The third part, and both the second and third parts are assessed, the third part is about being an IT leader. So, what capabilities do you need to be a competent IT leader? So, this, as examples, some of the modules in the IT leadership space are things like service delivery, DevOps, enterprise architecture, customer engagement, governance.

[00:12:56] Steve Clarke: These are all things where you need to have the capability to be able to engage with it and work with it. And what we did was we developed a definition of all of these, a definition of what good looked like. And out of that we were able to say, if you're skilled at service delivery, for example, this is what it looks like.

[00:13:14] Steve Clarke: If you're unskilled, this is what it looks like. And if you're over skilled, this is what it looks like. And we then, with the help of our outsource partner who is our assessment partner, we developed those into learning outcomes, which then in turn influenced the questions we created.

[00:13:32] Steve Clarke: So, there's a link through from what good looks like in each module through to the questions themselves. And this was an integral part, something I learnt from our assessment partner of how to create something that had these links from top to bottom. But it made it so that when somebody exits from that and they've passed it, they go, "Okay, I'm now confident of my skills. I'm confident that I have the capability to be a CIO. I knew I was a CIO, but now I've got something that has demonstrated to me." Because a lot of CIOs suffer from imposter syndrome, "I've got something that illustrates to me that I can talk and walk the walk at that level."

[00:14:12] Eric Hanselman: Well, and actually just to take a quick step back, we've now been talking in bits and pieces about the standard, which is the actual exam process. Can you actually give us a little background into the specifics about what it's built? And I want to dig into the idea of overcoming that imposter syndrome, which I think in many of those who've risen up through the technical ranks, there is that challenge.

[00:14:35] Eric Hanselman: But first off, just can you give us some details about the standard, how it operates, what the really the nuts and bolts are of the process itself?

[00:14:42] Steve Clarke: Absolutely. So, I've got a great cohort of CIOs and CTOs who've helped me do this within Freeman Clark. And one or two of the things they said was, one, it needs to be meaningful, and it needs to be not a self-aggrandization thing. So, we need to have it in a separate place, and it needs to have external assessment, because if it's assessed by Freeman Clark, then it's just self-serving.

[00:15:03] Steve Clarke: There's no point. So, we took those things on board, and we did an assessment of other examination processes that our guys were going through. As an example, the AI course provided by the Saïd Business School, and the CISO qualification provided by EC Council.

[00:15:21] Steve Clarke: And the exams at the end of that were mostly multiple choice. And for me, that was a bit of a revelation because our CIOs and CTOs were crediting these as great courses, and they ended up in an assessment of multiple choice. So, we ended up going down that route of the CIOs/CTO standard being, a multiple choice -- mostly a multiple choice examination.

[00:15:42] Steve Clarke: And we divided it into foundation and practitioner, which are familiar terms to people who've done Prince Two or ITIL, TO, you know, those sorts of things. And the foundation to pass that, there's five exams, one on business commercial and four on IT leadership, that cover quite a wide range of modules.

[00:15:59] Steve Clarke: And that takes about five to six hours to be assessed on, over a period of about four weeks. We do one exam a week and the foundation, if you pass foundation, that is a demonstration that you're a competent CIO capable of being on the ExCo. The practitioner takes the assessment on a stage further and also involves an interview and a scenario to do.

[00:16:23] Steve Clarke: It's an interview with a peer, and the scenario is just basically a description of a company in a mess, and you get the opportunity to describe how you would use technology to turn that company around. And that's assessed separately as well. And that-- those two things we're very familiar doing because every single person who comes into Freeman Clark goes through that process of the interview process and the scenario process.

[00:16:46] Steve Clarke: That's a well-trodden path for us, and one that we are using to its benefit. And the practitioner side, using the word itself, it's showing that you are a practicing CIO, that you've been through the muck and bullets. You understand what it's like to be actually a CIO, in that position.

[00:17:04] Steve Clarke: And so, the idea is that it provides people with that, demonstration of their capability. And I've had some people say to me, "Yeah, but what do I need to revise? How do I make sure I'm going to pass this?” And I'm going, "Actually, the 10, 20 years you've been a CIO or CTO are enough."

[00:17:24] Steve Clarke: And people were still struggling with that. So, we've written a book to go alongside, a reference book to go alongside it, that they can take and read prior to getting involved and actually doing the exam process. But I do believe that it is at a level where somebody with a decent amount of senior IT leadership experience will be able to pass without necessarily doing any revision.

[00:17:47] Steve Clarke: We've defined what good looks like, and we're putting an assessment out there. Our data so far shows that people tend to get, the pass mark's 70%, they get between, for exams, they get between 71% and 95%. So, you know, it varies, but people are passing it without needing to do a huge bucket of reading or preparation for these exams.

[00:18:08] Steve Clarke: The practitioner exams, there are seven exams, three on business and commercial, and four on IT leadership as well.

[00:18:17] Eric Hanselman: Well, it sounds like this, especially for those who've been through the trenches, it winds up being something that is a validation because this is with an expectation that in fact, you have done the work and that if you have survived that level, that presumably you, may have that level of skills.

[00:18:36] Eric Hanselman: But I can imagine that given the normal test, the expectation of what that test process is, there's that expectation that, of course there has to be studies, there has to be the body of knowledge that you have to be able to absorb. There is the specific... I know for the CISSP there, there is a particular way of looking at the world, that gets incorporated in that.

[00:18:58] Eric Hanselman: But it sounds like you've managed to really look at what is a broader set of perspectives, especially given the breadth of the assessment, which really mirrors what's necessary for a CIO is exactly that level of breadth and the understanding. I could imagine longer term, that those first cohorts of test takers are probably those that have been in roles in which they had that experience.

[00:19:26] Eric Hanselman: But longer term, this is something where you grow into that capability and there are pathways to be able to get to that, those levels of knowledge and understanding.

[00:19:36] Steve Clarke: Absolutely. The idea in the long run is to provide the capability for somebody who's even considering an IT team leader role all the way through, so that there's a definition of what is actually needed and what good looks like, and then they can take themselves on that path. Because I think often, your first role as a leader is because you were the last person to get out the room when the finger was pointed.

[00:20:02] Eric Hanselman: Couldn't back up fast enough!

[00:20:03] Steve Clarke: Exactly. Everybody took a step backwards and you were left going, "How does this work again?" but it's a leap of faith, to become a leader often, and then, you're left to your own devices. Certainly, in the mid-market in the UK, there's a chronic lack of investment in leadership and management training.

[00:20:18] Steve Clarke: And that in itself, I think, is one of the biggest reasons why we have a productivity problem in the UK. But that's a different conversation entirely.

[00:20:27] Eric Hanselman: And I think that's a global concern also, because again, technical staffs are typically short-staffed. So, the idea that you pull out a competent technical leader you know to go do some level of executive training kinds of things, and usually they're in the midst of fighting fires and why... Holy cow, we can't spare this person for weeks, months, you know whatever it might take.

[00:20:50] Eric Hanselman: That's been something where I know there are various odds and ends of paths that people have undertaken on their own time, but it does seem to be an institutional challenge of ensuring that we do grow people into that what is complex transition of moving from a very technology project task-focused kind of environment, you know a technology first kind of assessment to really understanding that bigger picture of how the business operates and what are the business side capabilities that have to become, they have to become aware of in order to be effective leaders within the organization who happen to be tied to technology.

[00:21:32] Steve Clarke: Completely agree. I mean, there is a fundamental difference between an engineer and being a leader, because as an engineer, you're performance managed on output, on your deliverables. I have delivered X. Whereas with leadership, you're performance managed on your influence and the change you've brought about and how well performing your team are, not necessarily on specific output.

[00:21:53] Steve Clarke: I really struggled with this initially because I was somebody who went, "Well, the way I'm going to get up the greasy pole is to demonstrate that I do everything. I do all my projects on time." And I saw other people getting up the greasy pole faster than me. I'm going, "How are they doing that?"

[00:22:08] Steve Clarke: And that they had clicked that it's more to it than just delivery, that there is the political side of things. There is the engagement with other people, and it's not just expecting your results to speak for themselves, and that's a big difference.

[00:22:22] Eric Hanselman: And when you start talking about governance, risk management, there's so many different pathways to risk management. My favorite, one of the early DevOps treatises, The Phoenix Project, that revelation, the scales fall from one of the protagonist's eyes, as they happen to realize that, oh, there actually are risk management paths that are not fully technology-based.

[00:22:46] Eric Hanselman: And in fact, yes, there are technical controls that you can put in place, but that there also are business controls that can help manage that and the idea that all solutions are not necessarily a technology solution. And, hey, if you've lived in a world in which technology has been the answer, getting beyond that.

[00:23:08] Eric Hanselman: That's new and different and takes learning to be able to get to that place. And, some get that experience as a trial by fire, some, hopefully get a chance to grow into those roles. But it seems like this is a great pathway to identify that, that this is a, a level of transformation in terms of what this role requires.

[00:23:29] Steve Clarke: Yes, I think so.

[00:23:31] Steve Clarke: We've talked so much about transforming our own businesses and our technology.

[00:23:40] Eric Hanselman: Well, these are great insights, Steve. I appreciate, all the background in this. As I said, I'll point our listeners to the 451 Alliance and some of the community discussions that are going there, and also to the information on the standard itself. And hopefully this expands conversations about what really is necessary, and especially as I was pointing out at the outset, as we march ever upward in terms of the rate and pace of technology change, this is becoming ever more important.

[00:24:09] Eric Hanselman: I appreciate all your insights in getting this message out there.

[00:24:13] Steve Clarke: It's my pleasure. And, if any of your listeners want to have a chat with me about this, I'm more than happy to do that. This is a step change in professionalism within the industry, you know, it's important to me that we do professionalize the IT leadership space because it'll make a huge difference to business in general.

[00:24:31] Eric Hanselman: Well, and as we've seen, at a time in which it is all that much more critical. But I don't know. Many thanks. We are at time for this episode. Thanks to our audience for staying with us, and thanks to our production team, including Sophie Carr, Feranmi Adeoshun, Dylan Schieble, and the marketing events teams.

[00:24:48] Eric Hanselman: If you liked this episode, please subscribe or like us. Please keep in mind that statements made by persons who are not S&P Global employees represent their own views and are not necessarily the views of S&P Global. I hope you'll join us for our next episode, because there is always something next in tech.