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Chapter 6
employees starting and current employees leaving or getting promoted to a new position),
and it gives all approved users easy access to data.

ANOTHER LOOK

Executive Succession Planning for the CIO Position
176 As with any executive search, finding the right CIO (chief information officer) can be
very challenging since often the requirements for an individual company’s CIO are
somewhat subjective. The average CIO lasts three to five years at a company, and about
two-thirds of the time a replacement is found outside the organization. At E. & J. Gallo
Winery, the current CIO, Kent Kushar, has made it a point to work with the Human
Resources Department to find himself a successor. He found one possible candidate in
the Sales and Marketing Department, a vice president named Kevin Barnes. Barnes
understood Gallo’s strategy of linking technology with a customer-oriented approach.
Barnes was sent on a CIO training course, so to speak. The course, run by Harvard
Professor Jim Cash, is a six-month training course with workshops, teleconferences, and
personal advisers. The cost of the course is $35,000, but those who complete it generally
find themselves ready to step into a CIO job.
Experienced CIOs have put together a list of key ideas for creating a good
succession plan, as explained in the magazine, CIO:

• Perform needs assessments—Focus on the skills and the type of
information technology leadership that the company will require in the
future. HCM software can help a company standardize the assessment of
potential candidates for leadership positions. Also, find out who is going to
retire over the next several years.
• Determine how far down the ladder the plan will go—Ideally, successions
plans should also be developed for middle management, so if someone
leaves the company, the transition to promotion is smooth. Again, HCM
software can be used to track the skill set of each employee to identify
those who are ready to move up.
• Evaluate skills, performance, and goals for growth—Performance
evaluations of employees can accomplish this task. At Marriott
International, an employee’s performance evaluation is compared to a set
of company “key dimensions.” This helps Marriott to not only do
succession planning, but also to ensure their employees are utilized to their
full potential.
• Identify potential—This task is usually performed by senior management, such
as the CIO. While potential can be difficult to assess, international shipping
company, UPS, has a standardized way of assessing employees in four areas of
leadership—business, people, results, and self. This balanced evaluation is
shared with all groups across the organization and is used when evaluating
people for senior-level management positions.
• Put potential leaders to the test—Give employees opportunities to show
their potential and develop new strengths. UPS rotates upper-level IT
(continued)

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