See Also: How to Get—and Keep—Top IT Talent

There are almost no concomitant forces driving up the supply of CIOs. One executive search respondent told us that some new CIO candidates are emerging from the middle ranks of the IT consulting firms. However, others pointed out that the slowing of investment in IT following the dot-com bust and impending baby boomer retirements were threatening even the existing supply. Because CIOs need more than functional IT skills, few of them just pop off the top of the IS career ladder, and certainly they do not pop off in sufficient numbers. As one of our respondents argued, some aspects of being a good enterprise CIO are almost antithetical to being a good manager at the top of an IT functional career ladder. Among our respondents as a whole, there was strong agreement that there is a shortfall in the supply of good CIOs—one said there were less than half as many CIOs as needed.

One reason that firms look outside their walls for their next CIO is that their internal candidates are not sufficiently developed and therefore not ready to step into the shoes of the former CIO. If the former CIO's vision is going to transcend the CIO's tenure in the organization, he or she must be able to hand the ball off to a well-prepared successor, one who can move the IT strategy down the field. But chances are that individual will need some grooming first.