The research of careers and professions that mostly involves innovation brought me here. Would the innovator who also decides on adding other ideas from other contributors and organizing/managing the product be called a CIO or a CTO?
CIOs oversee infrastructure. CTOs oversee the building of new products. Everyone in any competent leadership position regardless of type will bring in contributions and ideas from others. That's just generally good management and not specific to a domain.
In our company I am CTO - but I also wear the CIO hat (we are a small company). What is best practice? Should I have both titles or is it fine with just the CTO title?
It would be very rare, unless you are a software company, for the CTO duties to be larger than the CIO ones. But there is no best practice. Knowing that you "wear both hats" and understanding that they are discrete job roles is the most important piece. Commonly, though, if you were doing a CIO role, you'd not leave it out of your title unless, perhaps, you were the CEO and it is assumed you cover whatever is missing under you. If you were a CTO combined with CFO, you'd list both like CTO / CFO. No different here. For my own company, I an COO / CIO. COO is the bulk of my duties so that is what I list. For mine it is more clear because it's like a 90/10 split. Also we are an IT consulting firm. so the work of COO vs CIO is the same IT work just whether it is overseeing solutions for clients, or internal. So if CTO is the primary role, then I'd say use CTO / CIO when being explicit is best. And just using whatever is primary when being casual. Some people also use CI/TO but that's so hard to read.
In a proper organization neither would ever report to each other. They are different departments, one is not a subset of the other. They do totally different things with different objectives. Under normal circumstances a CIO would know nothing about what a CTO or their engineering department does; and likewise a CTO would know nothing of what a CIO and their infrastructure department does. C level would normally all report to the CEO. The only roles that are generally seen as broader than a single department or more "senior" in some organizations are COO or CFO, and even then it is a strange organizational design to have a CIO reporting to the CFO unless everyone reports to the CFO. In the real world, companies fail to do a good job MOST of the time (and the average company fails, so keep that in mind) so you'll find all kinds of unhealthy, bizarre, or totally insane management structures because the average company doesn't even know what a CIO or CTO does (hence why I needed to make this video.). So don't be surprised when you see really bad things like CIOs reporting to a CTO happening, but run away from companies like that - it requires the CIO, the CTO and the CEO to all have no clue what they are doing and a board / owner hiring that CEO and not knowing what THEY are doing. So many levels of failure necessary for something like that to happen, yet it happens every day. When thinking about this kind of thing, don't think so much about the job title but the department. CIO oversees IT, CTO oversees Engineering, CFO oversees Finance, CMO oversees marketing, and so forth. Which DEPARTMENT should be subservient to which other department? Obviously... none should. All departments should report equally to the "company". The only department in any company that is "special" is operations (the department actually performs the function of the business). What operations is varies from company to company, but the department is conceptually the same. Should marketing report to IT? Should IT report to finance? None of those things make sense, they are all different functions and no department would have any clue how to oversee the people in a different department nor should people be "senior" based on their department. By that logic, your senior geniuses in IT that could save you a billion dollars might report to junior marketing guys struggling to have someone design a logo for the company Christmas party banners.
@@samit8178 Thanks for the complete answer. I was a bit confused since I’ve seen several org charts with CTOs reporting to CIOs and other strange stuff. So you cleared that up for me. Thank you! I have subscribed to your channel.
@@charlesnicholson7539 glad to help. Yeah, in the real world org charts get pretty... weird. Mostly because upper management is truly lost and has no idea what any of the roles, departments, or titles mean and they just start throwing them around willy nilly to fill in the org chart with "something" that looks good. You wouldn't believe how many people in the C suite often have zero business sense, experience, or basic knowledge of what they are supposed to be managing.
This is amazing. I don't remember if my collegue teachers handled this topic as good as this man. Very thanx bro.
Thanks so much for your kind words.
Most clear and concise description on UA-cam. Thank you.
You are so welcome!
Great video man! I'm shocked there aren't more views. Exactly what I was looking for.
Glad that it helped :)
Thanks :) great explanation!
very nicely explained!
Glad it was helpful!
Well if that wasn't straight to the point I don't know what is thanks for that
The research of careers and professions that mostly involves innovation brought me here. Would the innovator who also decides on adding other ideas from other contributors and organizing/managing the product be called a CIO or a CTO?
CIOs oversee infrastructure. CTOs oversee the building of new products. Everyone in any competent leadership position regardless of type will bring in contributions and ideas from others. That's just generally good management and not specific to a domain.
In our company I am CTO - but I also wear the CIO hat (we are a small company). What is best practice? Should I have both titles or is it fine with just the CTO title?
It would be very rare, unless you are a software company, for the CTO duties to be larger than the CIO ones. But there is no best practice. Knowing that you "wear both hats" and understanding that they are discrete job roles is the most important piece. Commonly, though, if you were doing a CIO role, you'd not leave it out of your title unless, perhaps, you were the CEO and it is assumed you cover whatever is missing under you.
If you were a CTO combined with CFO, you'd list both like CTO / CFO. No different here. For my own company, I an COO / CIO. COO is the bulk of my duties so that is what I list. For mine it is more clear because it's like a 90/10 split. Also we are an IT consulting firm. so the work of COO vs CIO is the same IT work just whether it is overseeing solutions for clients, or internal.
So if CTO is the primary role, then I'd say use CTO / CIO when being explicit is best. And just using whatever is primary when being casual. Some people also use CI/TO but that's so hard to read.
Question: does the CIO usually report to the CTO? Or the other way around? Thanks and great video btw
In a proper organization neither would ever report to each other. They are different departments, one is not a subset of the other. They do totally different things with different objectives. Under normal circumstances a CIO would know nothing about what a CTO or their engineering department does; and likewise a CTO would know nothing of what a CIO and their infrastructure department does. C level would normally all report to the CEO. The only roles that are generally seen as broader than a single department or more "senior" in some organizations are COO or CFO, and even then it is a strange organizational design to have a CIO reporting to the CFO unless everyone reports to the CFO.
In the real world, companies fail to do a good job MOST of the time (and the average company fails, so keep that in mind) so you'll find all kinds of unhealthy, bizarre, or totally insane management structures because the average company doesn't even know what a CIO or CTO does (hence why I needed to make this video.). So don't be surprised when you see really bad things like CIOs reporting to a CTO happening, but run away from companies like that - it requires the CIO, the CTO and the CEO to all have no clue what they are doing and a board / owner hiring that CEO and not knowing what THEY are doing. So many levels of failure necessary for something like that to happen, yet it happens every day.
When thinking about this kind of thing, don't think so much about the job title but the department. CIO oversees IT, CTO oversees Engineering, CFO oversees Finance, CMO oversees marketing, and so forth. Which DEPARTMENT should be subservient to which other department? Obviously... none should. All departments should report equally to the "company". The only department in any company that is "special" is operations (the department actually performs the function of the business). What operations is varies from company to company, but the department is conceptually the same.
Should marketing report to IT? Should IT report to finance? None of those things make sense, they are all different functions and no department would have any clue how to oversee the people in a different department nor should people be "senior" based on their department. By that logic, your senior geniuses in IT that could save you a billion dollars might report to junior marketing guys struggling to have someone design a logo for the company Christmas party banners.
@@samit8178 Thanks for the complete answer. I was a bit confused since I’ve seen several org charts with CTOs reporting to CIOs and other strange stuff. So you cleared that up for me. Thank you! I have subscribed to your channel.
@@charlesnicholson7539 glad to help. Yeah, in the real world org charts get pretty... weird. Mostly because upper management is truly lost and has no idea what any of the roles, departments, or titles mean and they just start throwing them around willy nilly to fill in the org chart with "something" that looks good. You wouldn't believe how many people in the C suite often have zero business sense, experience, or basic knowledge of what they are supposed to be managing.