What To Do When The CIO Works For The CFO

The good folks over at Gartner and the Financial Executives Research Foundation have just completed another one of those big studies. What they found is that in companies that have less than $50M in revenue, 47% of their CIOs report to the company’s CFO. In firms that have $1B or more in revenue, 46% of … Read more

CIO vs. CFO: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

I’ve got some bad news for you. CIOs are unhappy. It turns out that a lot of CIOs are now reporting into the company’s CFO instead of its CEO. This means that the CFO is in charge and the CIO feels that he or she is not. Things can’t go on this way. What can … Read more

Successful CIOs Know What The CFO Really Wants

In the classic Hollywood movie “All The President’s Men”, the heroes who are trying to unravel the web of corruption are told that they will be able to put the pieces together if they “… follow the money…”. It turns out that even though today’s CIOs are not trying to solve a crime, if they … Read more

CIOs Need To Know Who Is Implementing The Company’s Digital Strategy

As a CIO it can be all too easy to feel overwhelmed by the decisions that you have to make: mobile devices, clouds, security, arrrgh! The CIOs that I’m working with are looking for clear directions on what they should be spending their time on. My advice to them is that they need to pick … Read more

What Questions About The Business Should A CIO Be Asking?

As a CIO it can be all too easy to feel overwhelmed by the decisions that you have to make: mobile devices, clouds, security, arrrgh! The CIOs that I’m working with are looking for clear directions on what they should be spending their time on. My advice to them is that they need to pick … Read more

CIO Case Study: How Much Are We Spending On Travel?

For CIOs, it’s all too easy for us to get caught up in, what else, the world of IT. We like to focus on things like servers, virtualization, networking, and making decisions about IP4 vs. IP6. It turns out that the rest of the company really doesn’t care about any of these things. They care … Read more

How Guilty Are CIOs (and IT) In The Global Financial Crisis?

Global financial crises are no fun. Those of us in IT find ourselves just like everyone else standing around and scratching our heads trying to figure out just what happened. It turns out that IT may have been a big part of the problem – we are part of the reason that the crisis happened … Read more

CIO vs. CFO: Who’s Going To Win This Battle?

When you become CIO you are going to discover one of the realities of IT life: you are not in complete control of the IT department. Rather, you are in charge of determining how to spend the money that the company allocates to IT. It turns out that how and how much money gets allocated … Read more

Why CIOs Who Know How To Slow Down Do Better

As CIO one of your most important jobs is to get as much out of your IT department as is humanly possible. You’d think that that best way to do this would be to always be pushing harder and harder. However, researchers who have been studying this very problem have come up with a different … Read more

IT Savvy: What Does It Mean And Do You Have It?

Every modern company should have an IT department. Every company should have a smoothly running IT department that adds value to everything the company does. I’m betting that most companies have about 50% of what they need – they’ve got an IT department. What’s missing is a way to transform that IT department in to … Read more