The secret ingredient for aspiring CIOs

People like Barbara Cooper don't get to the CIO office on the basis of their technical skills. As people rise up through the IT ranks from staff to manager to executive, it's clearly the political skills that matter. The problem is that many good technical people are stuck in the shallow end of the gene pool when it comes to what Cooper, chief information officer at Toyota Operations for North America, calls "the nuances of communications and timing." Others simply don't get the mentoring they need to succeed.

Cooper and I spoke recently for a profile of one successful IT executive she mentored: 2011 Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leader Douglas Beebe.

Political navigating skills can be learned. It takes years of experience - and a good mentor along the way - for rising IT stars to gain entry into the C-suite. But, she says, "You have to have something in your gene pool to begin with."

"Over the years I've had really smart, technically brilliant members of my staff who lack that social or emotional IQ that can bridge to the business side or navigate politics well," Cooper says. That is not to say that such an animal doesn't exist: She has spent years mentoring rising stars in IT, including Beebe.

In fact, Cooper says, "If you have people with the business acumen and really good technology savvy, that's more often found in people who have come from the IT side than from the business side." Nonetheless, the politics tends to be a sticking point for aspiring CIOs as they approach IT's corner office.

Is politics a skill or a knack? Probably a little of both. "For people who don't have [the political IQ] at all, you can shovel it in and they'll just walk into walls," Cooper says. Others, she adds, have a political "sensing mechanism," the basic DNA which needs to be sharpened and developed by working closely with a seasoned executive who's been around the block a few times.

Unfortunately, in many organizations those skills are never really developed in people who have the potential. And lectures and seminars on corporate politics and how to behave won't do the job. Mentoring aspiring IT executives through actual situations is the only way that works. For the mentor, it's a time commitment, Cooper says, but it's one that pays off.