The proper care and watering of your CIO

So, you have this CIO and you want to make better use of him or her. IBM released a study today of 170 CIOs that takes a look at the CIO role and how companies could better utilize them.

First off, according to the IBM CIO Leadership Forum Survey, 84% of CIOs believe that technology is significantly or profoundly transforming their industries, but only 16% feel their companies are taking full advantage of IT's potential. IBM said that the state of business and technology points to the need for change in how technology is integrated into the core business. Research also indicates the relationships required between the CIO and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), to ensure that the IT organization continues to drive business innovation and growth.
According to IBM, CIOs see themselves in the middle of a radically reshaping business landscape and believe their unique end-to-end view of business will let them use technology as a source of competitive advantage. Yet, IBM says, many companies still have the CIO siloed as a support function rather than engaged as a business leader and strategic partner for process and culture change. So what to do? IBM says the keys are as follows:

* Measurement: Reward CIOs for contributing to growth, innovation and people. The IBM CIO Leadership Forum Survey found that to move beyond C-suite misperceptions, CIOs are now establishing milestones that measure success in terms of the benefits that are delivered to their organizations. A majority of CIOs believe they should be measured on business initiatives other than IT; 80% cite business transformation as a primary metric while 79% indicate innovation and growth. These outrank IT operations, which came in at 62%.

* Strategy: Engage CIOs early on in the strategy process. Technology is often a good indicator and source for what's possible for a business. Forty-three percent of CIOs believe their primary role is participating in creating the strategy for their organization, compared to 26%, who said implementing the strategy was the key role. Nearly all of the CIOs surveyed believe that their role is changing.

* Organization: Help CIOs undertake process transformation and give them a mandate to create organizational readiness for IT. CEOs need to promote partnership with the line of business, overcome resistance to change, and drive technology innovation. Some 75% of the CIOs polled recommend building stronger relationships with business leaders to elevate their role in the organization and 73% believe that contributing to a major growth or innovation initiative will help.

* Talent: Provide CIOs opportunities to develop broad skills and leadership competencies. Of the CIOs polled, 40% indicated that they had additional business responsibilities beyond IT and 69% indicated an interest taking on primary responsibility for business process re-engineering or transformation, which is a strong indication of where the profession is heading.