Kevin Korte is President of Univention North America, making sure you stay in control of your data, your company and your future.
Boardrooms are getting older than ever. Less than 2% of directors in S&P 500 companies are under 45. It’s an imbalance with consequences because today’s boards must decide on critical topics such as managing cybersecurity risks and setting IT strategies. They also have to deal with strategic questions around AI adoption and forecasting workforce needs in an increasingly automated world and technically augmented workplaces.
While it’s also true that the number of board members with a background in tech is inching up across the U.S., long-running trust issues continue to plague most companies. A board’s confidence in their technical leaders on the one hand, and the trust of IT leadership in their boards on the other, haven’t significantly changed as technology—and its potential to affect the bottom line—keeps exerting an ever greater role.
In short, what’s needed are younger, fresher minds. But what does it take for younger CIOs and CISOs to join the board? There are four concrete steps to up their game, I’d argue. After all, who better to oversee the changing technology landscape than the people who, until recently, were leaders in their fields?
Take Stock Of Your Strengths
Many CIOs and CISOs possess strengths that directly translate from their day-to-day work into the boardroom. For example, most large-scale IT projects touch multiple departments, so those leaders have experience working with other departments and across organizations. Generating acceptance for these projects further means they are able to understand the business needs of each department involved and know how to look beyond the mere technological requirements.
In our increasingly digitalized world, IT touches people far beyond the office. From customer service bots trying to support customers without involving human representatives via integrated supply chain management software to automated shareholder messages, IT engages with many of a company’s stakeholders. As a result, IT leaders have to understand the different requirements of various stakeholders and their legal obligations towards each of them.
Talk The Talk
Working on the fault line between technology and management also boosts the communication skills of CIOs and CISOs. Management and IT departments use different languages, and translating between the two can sometimes be a daunting task. Since IT leaders must constantly play the interpreter, they can continuously hone their translation skills to bring everyone along on their innovation or transformation journey.
When moving into the boardroom, these skills become even more critical. Boards have a 30,000-foot view of a company. They deal with long-term strategic visions and less with day-to-day work, making it even more important that your peers understand why they should care about IT. Board members need something of a savvy and experienced technology ambassador who can show them how current developments touch the corporate strategy and can be game changers they might not even have been aware of.
Mind Your Gaps
Yet, with all these strengths come inherent weaknesses. Most IT leaders will have worked with budgets, but they have seldom dove deep into corporate financial statements. Gaining experience reading such statements can significantly improve the prospects of CIOs and CISOs to make it into the boardroom. Thankfully, there are plenty of good executive courses out there to burnish your knowledge of financials (and other topics) that do not require the time commitment and serious investment of a full-blown executive MBA program.
Closely related to financial education is keeping an eye on the top line. Most IT leaders get pressed into cost optimization and have less to do with sales and marketing. Focusing on cross-departmental projects that measurably improve a company’s revenue is one approach to setting yourself apart as a CIO.
Lastly, much of the board education happens in mentor-mentee relationships. Gaining experience mentoring junior leaders and receiving mentorship from seasoned board members can significantly raise one’s profile.
Build A Board-Ready Network
Mentorships play an additional role in attaining a board position: They help expand your personal network and let you tap into the networks of both your mentors and mentees. Many aspiring board members may think that a recruiter will call them one day and offer them a seat at that coveted table, but most potential directorship roles are already right in front of you—hidden in plain sight inside your network.
An alternative way to increase your board readiness is to join a nonprofit board. Many smaller cyber-education nonprofits need seasoned leaders to keep going and expand their reach. Joining such a board is a triple win. It helps your local community, it broadens your perspective and it gives you hands-on insights into how boards work.
If We Don’t Fix Boards, The SEC Might
The latest round of SEC cybersecurity rules was mostly toothless when it comes to changing boards and how they work. That might change if boards don’t increase their IT risk awareness.
For many professionals, there is no reason to wait for the SEC to take action. They can follow the above-mentioned four steps to strengthen their knowledge and experience, build a stronger network and raise their visibility to become confident change agents. What’s more, gaining a board seat can be an incredibly rewarding experience, and most IT leaders bring value beyond mere IT know-how to the table that will benefit any boardroom. It’s time to step up to this challenge.
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