3 Letters That Show A CIO How To Add Value: BPM

If you’ve spent any time being in a leadership role on a firm, you know that there is one annual task that nobody likes to do – budgeting. It’s a pain in the butt, you’re pretty much just guessing, and the final results never seem to have anything to do with reality. Hey, if everyone … Read more

CIOs Need To Use Lessons Learned During The Dot-Com Crash To Do Well Now

When you become a CIO, you will have the chance to be leading the IT department when the next global recession hits. I don’t care if you’ve got a list of Cisco technical certifications as long as your arm after your title and the fanciest MBA degree available, there’s no training for how to deal … Read more

Don’t Think That There’s Business Value In IT? Try The IT-CMF…

As though running an IT department wasn’t enough, now CIOs are being asked to become more valuable to the business – to start thinking about the company’s bottom line. What part of running a company’s cost center are they missing? It sure seems as though the pressure on CIOs to deliver more business value isn’t … Read more

What Can A CIO Do To Prevent Fraud?

When you become CIO, it turns out that you’re going to have a lot more on your mind than just how to use the latest and greatest technology to help the company run faster. You’ve got a problem that starts with “F” and rhymes with “Baud” and that stands for Fraud… Bad Times Make Fraud … Read more

CIOs Need To Get Involved In Some Risky Business

What You Don’t Know About Risk Might Hurt You Does anyone besides me remember the movie “Risky Business” from the ‘80s? You know, it’s the one that launched Tom Cruise’s career – he plays a kid who takes some big chances, has an adventure, and then ends up with the girl in the end. Well, … Read more

What Does A CIO Need To Do When The Company Gets Sued?

Lawyers Cost A Lot Of Money When you become the CIO, you’re probably hoping that you’ll be spending your time setting the strategic direction for your company’s technology future, striking deals with vendors, and generally moving the company forward. However, perhaps you’ve forgotten about the lawyers. Specifically the lawyers who work for the people who … Read more

A New Way To Spell IT / Business Alignment: XBRL

The Opportunity I believe that one of the reasons that it is so hard for a CIO to get the IT department to align with the rest of the business is that finding the correct opportunities where alignment is possible can be a big challenge. Well I’ve got some good news for you: it looks … Read more

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

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