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02.19.07
CIOs Don't Feel The Love
 By Dan Morrill
When it comes to expectations, CIO's and IT Managers are not feeling the "love" from their managers.
"Nearly six-in-ten CEOs say they are satisfied or very satisfied with the performance of their companies' IT, yet most admit they don't expect their CIOs to be proactive about process improvement, business innovation, or effectively managing IT assets, according to the survey, which polled 71 CEOs at firms with more than $100 million in revenue.
"CEOs are satisfied with IT because they don't expect much," says Laurie Orlov, Forrester analyst who authored the report. "CEOs expect less and CIO take less risks," she says. "There's a gap between CEOs and CIOs -- there needs to be a boost in expectations and IT needs to be more proactive to raise these expectations," she says. In fact, most CIOs themselves admit that they play it safe, according to a recent InformationWeek Research study.
The survey of 150 CIOs and tech VPs found that 75% describe their company's IT cultures as moderate or conservative in their IT strategies and investments. Source: InformationWeek
CIO's and other decision makers within the company need to have a good idea of what is happening not just in their company, but how IT and Information Technology is the major asset in a company staying competitive. If the CEO of the company has low expectations of IT and/or the Information Technology department, then internal support of the IT department is going to be absent or minimal. From there the standard litany is decreased management support, decreased budget, decreased ability to be an agent for good change and so on.
IT Departments, CIO's, IT Managers, and others can not afford to be marginalized to the back burner of the company because so much of what the company does is based on the products and services that the IT department brings to the company.
The reason that this is unbelievable to me is that if the CEO who has the responsibility to the company and shareholders does not have faith in the CIO, then what is the CIO doing there in the first place? The ouster of a CEO for non performance is nothing new, why should CIO's have some other lower standard. They are after all in the tier A CXO realm, and are expected to be innovative, progressive and forward thinking.
Yet according to the information week article, its not a problem to have an ineffective CIO when companies run on IT, knowledge, and the leadership/innovation that the CIO brings to the table.
Comments
About
the Author:
Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both
civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management.
Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through
his blog, Managing
Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the
ITtoolbox blogging community.
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