Beyond Execution

Today, IT reliability and uptime are merely the ante for CIOs to get into the game. To succeed, you need much more. Our exclusive survey identifies four skill sets that can give you that winning edge.


Mon, January 01, 2007

CIO

No one likes to be stereotyped. Yet here we are, in our sixth annual "State of the CIO" report, trying to box you into narrowly defined CIO archetypes. And we know what you're thinking: "I don't fit into any of these categories. I have to do a little of this, a little of that, and a lot of everything else to do my job right."

We agree. What we're trying to do by extracting these four varieties of the CIO species—Business Leader, Innovation Agent, Operational Expert and Turnaround Artist—from the data our survey collected from you is to identify and define all those demands on your time and to illuminate all the myriad roles you may be called on to play over the course of your career, in order to help you see where you fit in (and where you could fit in) along a broad swath of possibilities. This is an attempt to reconcile the personal skills you bring to the job—your leadership and project management skills, for example—with the different ways your company may see IT fitting into its long- and short-term goals. For instance, you may be called on to play all these roles at once in a company that views IT as providing a strategic and competitive advantage. Or you may be a younger CIO, working to acquire the skills you'll need to grow along with an equally young company that's just beginning to discover the advantages that IT can bring. Or, unhappily, you may be a frustrated visionary working for a company that doesn't see IT as anything more than a fungible tool that needs, above all, to be cheap.

You may disagree with the categories our research has helped us devise, or you may believe there are others that we've left out. We'd love to hear about them all.

Despite all our efforts to slice and dice you, we found that one aspect of the job cuts across all boundaries and is a prerequisite for success for every CIO: a reliable IT utility. You can have the emotional intelligence of a Business Leader CIO or the project management skills of an Operational CIO, but if the basic IT utility that lets business people do their jobs isn't running up to expectations—and if its unit cost doesn't go down continually—you will soon find yourself unemployed. Guaranteed.

And we're not talking about network uptime. "The business doesn't care about 99.9 percent uptime unless you're talking about the uptime of a business process or an end-to-end capability," says Peter Weill, director of the Center for Information Systems Research and senior research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Continue Reading

What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Don't have an account yet?
Whether your data center is large or small, it faces a similar set of roadblocks to efficiency, uptime, and ROI. This white paper reveals the six most common and intractable problems facing the data center and explains how to rectify them while improving efficiency and uptime.
Innovations are changing the role procurement plays within the enterprise. SAP's Chris Salis, Global Vice President of Procurement Solutions, and Emily Rakowski, Senior Director and Head of Procurement Solutions Marketing discuss how SAP Procurement Solutions are the strategic differentiators of innovation.
In August 2011, Benny Kirsh was named VP and CIO at Infoblox, an industry-leading developer of network infrastructure automation and control solutions. With more than 25 years of experience, Kirsh is responsible for driving strategic advancements via the company's IT infrastructure and applications.
In this Quest white paper, gain a deeper understanding of all the dangers involved with privileged account ("super user") management. Learn to mitigate risks by enabling granular access control and accountability for admin or super user accounts. Read it today.
As more and more CIOs are beginning to see significant benefits from letting employees choose the device they use to get their jobs done, the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend is spreading. According to the Computerworld Consumerization of IT Study, about half of the 604 respondents said their organizations allow employees to do work using their own devices either away from the office or at work. Whether these devices are smart phones, tablets, or laptops that are used in the office or while working remotely, companies that embrace this trend are finding their employees are more productive and experience greater job satisfaction. What's more, enterprises can significantly reduce up front costs and allow for flexible work hours by letting employees use their device of choice anytime, from anywhere.
In this paper, we analyze the delivery of live and on-demand mobile video content. It focuses on specific ways in which organizations can follow best practices to ensure the experience of video communication is maximized for viewers, while keeping corporate networks running smoothly.
Date/Time: June 5, 2012, 11:00 a.m., EDT, 4:00 p.m. BST / 3:00 p.m. UTC

Please join us for this webcast, as Dr. Barry Devlin, Founder and Principal, 9sight Consulting, describes what operational analytics can do for your business and reviews an architectural approach that will enable you to make it a reality.
Have you been thinking about what it would take to start using virtualization? Or do you know the basics and want to find out more? No problem. This webcast is designed for anyone with little to no knowledge of virtualization technology. Attend this webcast to learn:

-A basic overview of the business value of the technology and some key capabilities that make virtualization so valuable to IT and the businesses you serve.
-The basics for creating virtual machines and the key choices that can be made along the route to deployment.
View this on demand webcast to learn if moving business communications to the cloud is right for your business. Featured industry experts DMG Consulting LLC president, Donna Fluss, Frost & Sullivan principal analyst, Michael DeSalles, and Interactive Intelligence senior vice president, Joe Staples discuss this topic and help you answer your pressing questions at the conclusion of this web event.
In this webcast, Vantage Point Performance's Michelle Vazzana will reveal how to coach your reps to better performing pipelines.
In this webcast produced by the Sales Management Association (SMA), Forrester's Scott Santucci will explore the new sales paradigm and discuss how businesses must transform their selling models into dynamic, communications-intensive systems, empowering individual sellers to define, create and deliver value to customers.
SAP Sales OnDemand is intuitive, leveraging social collaboration capabilities you already know how to use. It enables fast, effective team collaboration and account management to help you sell more effectively. Watch the video to see how!
Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all Newsletters | Privacy Policy
Sponsored Links

High performance. Delivered. Click to see Accenture's client successes

Connect with IT leaders redefining mobility at the Enterprise Mobile Hub

Choose New and manage one device instead of 170

Choose New for 8x the firewall and NAT performance

Check out a smart way of mobilizing your business with enterprise-ready Samsung Mobile.

Redefine your data center with HP servers.

Enhance your business with Windstream IT Solutions. Speak to someone local.

BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion. Different mobile devices. One platform.

CYBERMARYLAND | Learn Why Maryland is the Epicenter for Cybersecurity

Get Ethernet speeds from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps - Comcast Business Class

Cognizant. Leading in Business, Application & Technology Services

Collaboration: driving better business outcomes

Gain cutting-edge insights at MIT in 2-5 day executive programs.

Click to see how Accenture has delivered high performance to clients

Elevate storage agility and efficiency with HP 3PAR storage.

Choose New and slash the number of devices you manage

Customized information views & Twitter events at New Fulcrum Point

Splunk translates machine data into "aha" moments for IT and the business.

ManageEngine Desktop Central - Automate and Audit Your Desktop Management! Learn More...

Cloud Readiness Starts with Intel® Technology

Visit the Virtually There Learning Page to learn how to use virtualization to your competitive advantage.

Free: Hunter Muller's "The Transformational CIO."

Join us for an upcoming Microsoft 365 live online demo event.

Discover your easiest path to unified communications

Virtualizing Your Infrastructure Just Got Easier

Connect with global CIOs now at Enterprise CIO Forum

Resource Center