The McCue Interview: Vodafone CIO and CTO Paul Wybrow

Indeed, what would seem to be the making of Wybrow is what he has picked up in his 17 years at the company, sometimes in non-technology rolls. His time pre-Vodafone and pre-mobile communications - running a production line for Mars and then an unhappy three months at GEC - don't come across as an influence.

His early years saw him specialise in programme management, eventually for the significant introduction of digital technology in the form of GSM. He claims to be the person who negotiated the first international roaming agreement, with Finland's state telco, and around this time he handled infrastructure relationships (until 1994).

He then became an ops director for Vodafone International. These were the Wild West days for mobile, a land grab that saw the early players bid for licences and set up networks in countries around the world. He talks of creating a business and then "doing yourself out of a job" - that was the treadmill back then and one he looks back on with fondness.

At the times of the record-breaking AirTouch and Mannesmann acquisitions, Wybrow worked in governance and notably he now claims Vodafone's expertise in M&A is among the best in the world - a position many a CIO's office would wish for.

He was next handed the job of EVP for optical technology and general operations at Proximus, where Vodafone is a stakeholder, running the entire back office of that company.

Eventually the call came from the UK, from the then Vodafone UK CEO Bill Morrow. "He asked me to come back," says Wybrow, revealing that his family - who he later refers to with a smile as a constant "source of recalibration" - had been in agreement on doing no more than a five-year stint abroad.

Now that he's back and in the top tech office at one of the UK's largest companies, his attention goes beyond network infrastructure and getting the most out of IT. He sits on the board known as the UK Executive Team and is passionate about not being seen as the 'tech guy'.

"I can't just be the CIO," he says. "I sit there with a board hat on and am seen by my colleagues as doing that. At board level it's about leadership, people management, having the right strategy and focus and being able to deliver. And those core attributes are right across whoever you are in the management team."

Some CIOs are now talking about moving to the COO role as a stepping stone or getting experience running other departments, the reverse having become a bit of a trend in recent times with the appointment of CIOs who wouldn't even know what a server looks like. Wybrow is no less ambitious.

"The challenge is to have enough breadth but personally if a CIO doesn't understand his marketplace then he shouldn't be the CIO," he says.

And how far can he go? "I have a strong ambition to become a CEO of a company... It will be about asking the business at some point to take a risk with me, to do a horizontal move into one of the more business functions - that's the sort of vision that I have."

That said, in the here and now he is not obsessed with blinkered campaigns to get IT people onto boards. He believes IT people will get there if they're doing their jobs properly. It has to be earned, not a given.

Right now, he's just as focused on putting together great teams - but one of his major concerns for staffing is that there is "not enough focus in what I call the technical press on non-technical things that you need from your technical people".

The people he confides in are, in order, other IT bosses within Vodafone, peers more broadly both in his industry and others, suppliers and consultants. He is a fan of the new UK CEO, Tim Miles, not least because he came up from IT roots.

But unprompted he cites former CEO Sir Christopher Gent, the person more associated with the growth of the company than anyone else still, as "very inspirational".

He says: "It was a case of however difficult the problem, however difficult things get, you've got to keep a sense of humour. You've got to be able to put things into perspective and translate that to your people. Then they will work together as a team to do what they need to do."

And you sense that togetherness with a team is something central to his management philosophy - as his unspectacular office back at HQ attests.

"You have to get involved," says Wybrow. "You can't run a business as a president."

Blending CTO and CIO roles, developing teams while looking to one day become a CEO, a career spent around the world but a love of his corner of England - the picture is of a straight-talking executive who wants to understand his organisation's problems and opportunities - not just whether W-CDMA will cut it in 3G or the IT budget can be trimmed by another 0.01 per cent next year.