Exit interview: Sainsbury’s retired IT director Phil Jordan reflects on his career in IT

Sainsbury’s Group CIO Phil Jordan has announced that he will retire in March 2023 after a 35-year technology career spanning national, regional and group CIO roles in telecommunications, financial services, industrial gas and retail.

He recalls his career highlights, leadership lessons while working abroad, and how CIOs can become future CEOs—as long as they navigate economic uncertainty first.

“Old enough and young enough” to retire

With decades of experience in executive and non-executive roles, having also served as Group CIO at Telefonica (where he also led the global technology business as CEO and Chairman), CIO UK and Europe at O2 and CIO at Vodafone, Jordan believes the time was right for him to step down and is now leading the recruitment process to replace him.

“I’m 55 in January and I just feel like I want to go away and do something else,” he said CIO.com. “I spent five years at Sainsbury’s, so what’s the option? I could go elsewhere, but I’m not sure I have the energy to do it again at a big company. I just thought it was a good time. I feel like I’m old enough and young enough to do it.â€

However, Jordan will not sit idly by. As well as spending more time on the golf course, he will continue in his role as chairman of D9 PLC, the investment trust listed on the London Stock Exchange last year, and will retain non-executive commitments. Retirement, he says, offers a chance to restore work-life balance.

“When you’re in intense roles for years, it becomes a lifestyle choice,” he says. “And I guess I’ve come to the point in my life where I’m ready for a slightly different lifestyle choice.”

CIO career achievements and leadership lessons

Jordan says, on reflection, that he was particularly proud of being able to change organizations at different times, building high-performing teams around him and adapting to new cultures while working abroad.

“I am one of the few [CIOs] that has gone to multiple geographies, multiple industries, and I’ve really enjoyed that as a personal challenge,” he says. “Living in a different culture, in a different language, in a different country and industry and applying my leadership, but with all those variables of change, I really enjoyed it.”

As for his most notable career accomplishments, Jordan highlights the projects that required “major business change” because they were the most difficult to execute. “So much technology is delivered into businesses and not fully utilized because people and work practices are difficult to change,” he says.

Specifically, he cites the implementation of CRM at Vodafone, the introduction of new markets into the telco stack at Telefonica and the digital investment at Sainsbury’s during the COVID-19 pandemic as his most rewarding achievements.

That’s not to say there haven’t been challenges, particularly, Jordan suggests, the ongoing talent shortage and cost-of-living crisis, and he cites conflict between the global and UK teams as one of the reasons for his departure from Vodafone.

Another emerges when he works abroad, which prompts him to reflect on his skills, the strengths of the team around him and how he communicates with other regions. While working in Madrid, he recalls realizing that his emails were being tailored for a market where appearing too optimistic could make the sender look incompetent.

“There are 20 countries in Telefonica,” he says. “I would communicate from the center and people around me would remind me that these messages are interpreted very differently in different places around the world. So I sharpened my business influencing skills when I was abroad. When you are a non-native speaker in a business, you have to listen and watch very carefully how decisions are made and how you influence them.’€

Clearing the way for CIOs to become CEOs

Despite his impending retirement, Jordan believes it’s still a great time to be a technology leader, arguing that CIOs are now well-positioned to advance to the hot seat of CEO.

Over the course of his career, he says IT has progressed from a “necessary evil” to a technology that has become a commodity and, more recently, a business differentiator. However, Jordan acknowledges that the cost-of-living crisis combined with continued geopolitical instability could push IT leaders back into firefighting mode in the near future.

“I think CIOs in the next three years are going to have that huge challenge that has come up a few times,” he says. “Businesses want to continue to accelerate their digital capabilities, but the cost of technology will constantly be seen as an overhead.”

Still, he believes CIOs are well-positioned to lead change in the future.

“Part of the role of the CIO—and this will be something for future CIOs or new CEOs—is to be the person who demystifies,” he says. “The person who can give real examples that helps your peers understand it in a way that’s easy for them, but doesn’t embarrass them in any way.”

However, CIOs will only do this if they adapt their own skill sets. “I would put more emphasis on business acumen, commercial understanding, data analysis and understanding how the business will be changed by technology than the skill set when I started, which was for supplier management, project management and technical delivery,” he says . “I really think from an executive perspective, we’re going to see more CEOs coming from technology because technology is so important to business.”