Has the CIO title run its course?

As CBTO, Sule is responsible for 24 focused development teams that work closely with each of the company’s business units, as well as teams that run Power’s data centers and customer support.  

“I actually was excited that ‘business’ was in the title,’’ Sule says, adding that he hadn’t heard of the CBTO title until he joined Power in January. His onboarding was also extensive — Sule says he was amazed that the company had him spend 14 weeks shadowing every department before starting to work as the business tech leader.

Some of his responsibilities align with those of a CIO, he notes. However, “In this role, I feel like I have a lot more input into the business side of Power Home Remodeling. There’s also a lot of responsibility within our group to set direction in terms of the type of investments we’re making in technology, so there are a lot of parallels, certainly, but it’s also different in terms of how I’ve operated in the past,” he says.

From the outside looking in

Even when Wenhold started full-time at Power in 2012, he knew he wanted to shake up titles. He was also never a CIO there in the sense of “chief information officer” but as chief innovation officer.

“It’s time for the rest of organizations to recognize there is not a single CIO role anymore but layers of CIOs,’’ he says. The chief of technology needs to be a digital leader “and that’s why the name [CBTO] is so important.”

While acknowledging that every company is different, Wenhold says if he were on the outside looking in at a senior executive meeting, “the person sitting there with the CBTO title isn’t talking about keeping the lights on, and the internet connection up, and what technologies we’re using. They’re talking about how is the business absorbing the latest deployment into production.”

The person responsible for keeping the lights on should be a director, he adds, and “I don’t see that role at the table.”

Although technology’s role has been widely elevated in most companies across all industries, Wenhold believes it will take some time for other organizations to understand what the CBTO role can and should be. “I still believe we have a lot of work to do in the [IT] industry. The CIO name is more important to your peers than to the person holding the title,’’ he maintains.

Sule agrees, saying that the CBTO title is effective because it helps to “blur the lines” between technology and business and instills a sense that everyone in Sule’s department is there to serve the business.

“Everything we build, create, all the technology we run in our data centers and the infrastructure, it all services the business,’’ Sule says. “It’s a nice reminder to have the title.”

He sees a shift happening and thinks more companies “want their technology leader to have a business or product mindset in how they approach their investments, which a lot of the time, are the largest investments a company will make.”

The more that tech investments help differentiate a company and align with what the company is trying to achieve, the more successful the company will be — and the person in the CBTO role, Sule says.

In the meantime, Wenhold is intent on blazing a new path forward. “Everyone is stuck in the past with our name,’’ he says. “We’ve disrupted and changed so much about how we use technology that we have to evolve the way we think about people’s roles, and that should include the titles they hold.”