Good-bye, 2001.We couldn’t be happier to see you go. Company earnings slid, budgets followed, and most organizations were suddenly faced with having to do more with less. CIOs were forced to lay off some of the very employees they had tried so hard to recruit just months earlier. And then, on Sept. 11, America’s post-Cold War sense of security and stability collapsed along with the World Trade Center towers.

Some things will never be the same. But in the spirit of new beginnings, we offer our readers a manual for surviving?no, make that flourishing?as a CIO in 2002. In this special How-To issue, we hope to provide guidelines for almost every aspect of a CIO’s life, from office politics ("How to Play Your CFO Like a Fiddle," Page 50) to information security, CRM, e-business and outsourcing ("How to Adapt Your Offshore Strategy to an Insecure World," Page 88). Not to mention how to deal with vendors, Wall Street, Microsoft and demanding CEOs.

Some of these stories are written by your peers, a few are tongue-in-cheek, many are dead serious, but all aim to provide down-to-earth advice for CIOs negotiating this new and hopefully improved year. So sit down, take off your jacket (see Page 99 for how to avoid wrinkling it), and enjoy the ride.