The CIO's real job: Understanding the 'why' behind IT

The modern CIO lives at the intersection of urgency and strategy, and Graeme Thompson -- CIO at Informatica -- exemplifies that tension.

On paper, Thompson's workday runs from about 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., a schedule he maintains through careful planning and thoughtful delegation. However, that rhythm holds only if no major cyber incidents erupt -- and in a role where security threats, sudden requests and last-minute 'can you look at this now?' moments are constant, predictability is never guaranteed.

In many organizations, the CIO holds full responsibility for internal technology and security. However, they shouldn't be the most technical person on the team, Thompson said. In fact, he expects his own team to know more about technology than he does. The CIO's highest value, according to Thompson, is understanding the business by anticipating strategic needs, aligning with other executives and ensuring IT is always working on the right problems.

In this candid Q&A, Thompson shares what his role looks like on a day-to-day basis.

Editor's note: The following transcript was edited for length and clarity.

What kind of challenges do you face daily?

Graeme Thompson: What's unique about the CIO role is that our department -- IT -- serves every other department in the company. That's different from sales, which serves customers and itself. In IT, anybody in the company can have a random notion and expect you to take it seriously and jump on it.

Someone from marketing might say 'Oh, I just came back from a conference and I saw this new thing. Can you short-circuit all the approval processes and deploy it for me?' There is something in your inbox every morning that's going to make you roll your eyes.

There's also a risk of a security incident every day. If the CIO is responsible for the CISO function, as I am here at Informatica, you start the day by looking at the news, social media and for any indication that there's been a breach somewhere in your supply chain. You can start a day with all the intentions of doing 10 things, and it all gets torn apart because there's a security incident somewhere.

The incident may not even impact your business. Take the CrowdStrike incident, for example. I was stuck at Heathrow airport trying to get home from vacation when it happened. It didn't affect Informatica, because we didn't use that part of their product. However, our customers immediately reached out to ensure they were okay. Things like that can throw your whole week off because you must drop everything and respond.

How do you balance strategic planning with these unexpected issues that come up?

Thompson: Delegation is your friend, and it's the first option. People often reach out to me directly because they want me to be aware of the issue -- or of an 'opportunity,' as they see it, even when it's one of those ideas that makes my eyes roll.

You also need to be plugged into other business leaders and know what their strategy is, because what IT should be working on is what they need from us to meet their objectives.

For example, in our company, fiscal year 2025 was about growing our pipeline creation by more than 20% with a modest budget increase. As soon as the CMO gets that objective, I know there's a technology ask coming. Instead of waiting, I engage straight away. Same thing on the sales or product side. There may be security certifications required to sell in a certain country. Therefore, we have to be plugged into these business leaders. If we wait for their request to come, it might be too late to get the tech for that year. My job is to notice that these things are happening and then turn them into an action.

How do you go about collaborating with other business leaders?

Thompson: Peer-to-peer relationships work differently based on the personality and characteristics of the individual. So, you must get to know the human, and then you can get to the business bit.

At our company, the executive team meets every Monday at 9 a.m. So, that connects us weekly. Every company is on a quarterly clock, so there's a different pace in month one versus month two versus month three. That weekly meeting ensures that we're all in the same rhythm for what we're focused on.

Our CEO has also encouraged us to have monthly check-ins with each other. That helps if there is something that doesn't make it on the executive meeting agenda. We're also lucky to have all our executives based in one location. It hasn't always been like that since I've been at Informatica.

As a CIO, how do you align with the company's quarterly clock?

Thompson: Month one in each quarter is about ensuring that the pipe is clean and that we've got enough resources to execute on the plan. The end of month one and into month two is about getting the deals that are going to close into a state where they can close. Month three is all about closure, and the executives need to be in line with that monthly and weekly cadence as we go through the quarter of the year.

As we start to reach the halfway point of the year, we're thinking about refreshing the three-year plan. For instance, we ask, 'What does the next fiscal year plan look like?'  We have an annual board offsite for a couple of days, where we establish the line of scrimmage on what the financial plan is going to be for the next year. We consider things like what the sales growth and revenue growth are going to be and what our operational expenditure has to look like to meet our stakeholders' objectives.

The CIO must be an active participant in all those discussions because they need to be aware of things like changes in pricing models. Nobody's going to remember to tell us how that will impact your quote-to-cash process and revenue recognition process. That's the last thing on their mind. They're thinking about how to communicate it to the sales team and how to make it sound like it's in the customer's best interest. It's going to be months before someone thinks about talking to the IT guy about how they have to change the quote-to-cash process.

What time does your workday typically start and end?

Thompson: I've learned painfully through experience that you need a start time for each day, because it's not the same for each day. There'll be days when we have a 7 a.m. meeting. On that day, I might decide to work from home, so I get an extra hour.

Typically, our meetings start at 8 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. Three or four days out of five, my start time is 8 a.m., and my finish time is 6 p.m. However, that's because I plan it intentionally. There'll be a few days each month where we do calls for India, which we try to do at night to be respectful of their time.

However, if there's no security emergency going on, you can usually manage your day if you're intentional about it and you're lucky enough to have a great assistant who knows what your preferences are and doesn't schedule 15 back-to-back meetings in a day -- that helps a lot. However, you must pay attention to it. If you let yourself get dragged around by everyone else's priorities, all you'll have time for between workdays is sleep.

How do you handle stress or stay focused when you're in high-pressure situations?

Thompson: That's something I've been working on. My team tells me I would be a horrible poker player. When I'm mad, they can see it immediately. I have to work hard to not let whatever just happened -- or what's happening in a different theater -- affect the moment I'm in now. It's not my natural superpower.

I also try to make time for outside activities and spend quality time with my family. I fly fish a lot, and fly fishing is one of these activities that completely detaches your brain from what's going on. You're so focused on what the river is doing and what the fish are doing that there's no space for anything else. People would describe it as a meditative state where you're totally in the moment.

What skills -- whether technical or interpersonal -- do you use daily?

Thompson: Storytelling and communication. I need to be able to tell a story in a way that makes the audience willing to hear and accept something. Too often, CIOs and product people show up and talk about the technology. Technology is just a means to an end, and it's not very interesting to many people. Instead, you need to talk about the outcome -- the thing you're trying to achieve. Everything else is just a method to achieve it.

Simon Sinek's 'Start with Why?' idea is really powerful. Everyone should read that book and then read it again. And then when they've got something going on, they should read it again, because it forces you to focus on why IT is doing whatever they're doing -- which is the only important bit.

What advice would you give to aspiring CIOs about managing both technology and leadership demands?

Thompson: Try not to make it 50/50. Instead, get great people who can manage the technology. One of the greatest crimes in IT is flawlessly delivering the wrong project.

One of the greatest crimes in IT is flawlessly delivering the wrong project.

IT often does this. We put all our resources behind a project and execute it -- only to find out it was the wrong thing to do. The CIO's job is to understand the 'why.' Nobody else is going to do that.

For example, a company might be transitioning from license and maintenance to cloud and subscription models. So, what should they focus on? They should focus on all the cloud and subscription-driven processes, not the old processes -- even if when they started, the cloud business was 100 million, and the rest of the business was 1.8 billion. They still had to focus on the 100 million. That's so hard, but you must offer that context.

If you're going to do that, then you're not going to have time to be the technology leader. Frankly, your team should know more about the technology than you do. You need to ask the right questions, make sure that they're picking the right suppliers and make sure that they've thought around the next two corners. Hold them accountable for this.

Are there any unconventional paths to becoming CIO?

Thompson: Mine wasn't conventional. I spent the first 15 years of my career in supply chain. I was the business guy who couldn't get IT to do what he needed them to do. Then, one day, the CFO said, 'Well, if you're so unhappy with IT and you think you could do better, why don't you run IT and see if you can bridge the gap from the other side.' That's unconventional, but not unprecedented. It wasn't a linear path through IT.

I studied economics and marketing at university, not computer science. The CIO role is no longer about managing the infrastructure and the operations. It's about using technology to meet business outcomes, because technology has been completely democratized. If my mother-in-law can use ChatGPT, our marketing people don't need me to tell them what technology is available to manage campaigns. They know that.

So, the IT leader's job and other jobs within that group, like the chief data officer or the CISO, is to make sure that they're looking at what the business needs to achieve and how they can use the available tools and technology to achieve those goals. The job is more about business strategy than running the technology.

Tim Murphy is site editor for Informa TechTarget's IT Strategy group.