Analyst 207’s recent article, “The Myth of the Perfect CISO: A Multitalented Master of All”, does a great job of dismantling the unrealistic notion that one person can be an expert in every discipline now expected of cybersecurity and IT leaders. Public relations, legal response, risk modeling, technical architecture, regulatory navigation, vendor negotiation – and oh, by the way, also stop ransomware with one hand while rewriting your IAM policies with the other.
But I want to build on that idea from a broader leadership and culture perspective, because this isn’t just about recalibrating expectations for CISOs. It’s about how we structure our organizations and who we elevate into all technical leadership roles.
We don’t need unicorns. We need grounded leaders.
I remain a firm believer that a CISO – or any technical executive, for that matter – should have come up through the ranks. They need enough hands-on experience to understand the stack they’re responsible for, and to make informed decisions when money, business risk, and engineering realities collide.
That doesn’t mean they need to be the best coder in the room or run the forensics lab themselves. But they do need to know when they’re being sold a buzzword. They need to understand the “why” behind a firewall rule—or the implications of a failed control in a CI/CD pipeline.
This is not a call for an administrative-only leader. Quite the opposite.
What we too often see is the pendulum swinging toward “executive presence” at the expense of technical legitimacy. And while board-level communication is important, if a CISO – or any IT leader – can’t meaningfully engage with architects, engineers, or even auditors on the inner workings of their domain, the blind spots multiply – and so do the risks.
But here’s the kicker: Even the best leader is only as effective as the team they build.
That’s where Analyst 207’s point about the myth of the “multitalented master of all” really hits home. The goal isn’t to find someone who knows everything. It’s to empower someone who knows how to build a team that does.
We need IT and security teams that are:
- Technically diverse, so threat modeling and planning aren’t limited by a single perspective.
- Operationally trusted, so decisions don’t get bottlenecked in bureaucratic cross-team dependencies.
- Culturally supported, so people feel safe enough to escalate early, challenge assumptions, and learn from failure.
That kind of team doesn’t happen by accident.
It’s cultivated by a CxO who doesn’t just manage – they lead. They listen. They question. They mentor. And they hire people who are both smarter and differently skilled than themselves.
If your organization expects one person to be everything – from technical visionary to regulatory mouthpiece to therapist-in-chief – it’s setting them up to fail. Worse, it’s ignoring the systemic change that needs to happen underneath: building resilient, multidisciplinary teams that can outpace the threats and demands we face today.
So yes, let’s kill the myth of the perfect CISO.
But let’s not lower the bar in the process.
Let’s raise it – by valuing real experience, collaborative leadership, and a culture that multiplies capability, not just credentials.
