Bad Behavior: Why CIOs Don’t Get Along With The Rest Of The Business

Forget the whole alignment thing, is it possible that a CIO’s behavior is the root of the problem that the IT side of the house and the business side of the house have never been able to get along? Could it be that this is the secret as to why there has always been such … Read more

Is It Time To Say Goodbye To The CIO?

So you want to be a CIO someday. Great. However, there may be a bit of a problem with your goal — the position of CIO may be going away. In fact, in about 10 years or so (is that when you are planning on seizing the reigns of IT control?) the position may look … Read more

Five Words That Scare A CIO: I’ll See You In Court!

When you become CIO, you’ll probably have all of the technical skills that you need to stay on top of today’s cutting edge IT issues such as storage, bandwidth, cloud computing, etc. In fact, I’d guess that you’ve gotten the message and you will have developed your management talents so that you will be well … Read more

6 Reasons That IT / Business Alignment May Be Impossible To Do

A quick quiz for you: what has been the #1 task on every CIO’s to-do list for the better part of the past 20 years? If you guessed “aligning IT with the rest of the business” then you are correct. This has been an IT goal for the past 20 years? What’s up with that? … Read more

Let’s Virtualize Everything! (Including Your Databases?)

The next time that you are at one of those cocktail parties that they throw for up-and-coming IT staffers who will someday become the CIO (you go to those don’t you?), do me a favor and listen very closely. I suspect that you’ll overhear a number of pretentious CIO-wannabes throwing around the phrase “virtualization”. Don’t … Read more

Will Video Kill The CIO?

The world of IT is changing fast and CIOs can easily get surprised when their world is turned upside down. When you become CIO, you are going to have a entirely new set of issues to deal with because of the arrival of one technology that we don’t often associate with IT: video. Here Comes … Read more

How To Accurately Predict The Future Of IT Networks

When you become CIO, almost instantly everything that you know will quickly start to become out-of-date. Just to make things even worse, as the CIO one of your jobs is going to be to accurately predict the future. Just how are you going to go about doing this? It turns out that when you need … Read more

What The Big Boys Can Teach A CIO

What makes you think that when you become the CIO that you’ll be able to run things better than the current CIO is doing? Do you posses some magical management ring or have a bag of IT / business alignment powder that you can sprinkle on your staff that will transform today’s issues into tomorrow’s … Read more

Two-Faced CIOs: Dr. Jekyll, Meet Mr. Hyde

Just imagine the day that you become CIO: you’ll be able to shed all of those past associations and friendships that have gotten you to this exalted position and finally you’ll be able to focus on what really matters: forging strong links with your company’s senior management. Well, sure, if you don’t really need to … Read more