Sidebar: The CIO's Bird's-Eye View

By Mitch Betts

April 5, 2004 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - The CIO can bring a lot of skills, viewpoints and insights to the executive leadership team, according to a recent Gartner report.
The CIO
• Is exposed to a very wide range of issues outside the IT area, such as human resources policy, financial investment planning and change management. The issues also include relationships with external groups like customers, suppliers and, often, shareholders.
• Must be master of a broad array of leadership styles, because they're all needed to successfully steer a strategically important IT function. These range from focusing on firm cost control to enabling creativity in the enterprise.
• Must have a wider perspective. For a corporate CIO, this covers the entire enterprise. For a business-unit CIO, it covers all the activities of that business unit. In both cases, the CIO has the vitally important opportunity to identify synergies between organizational units.
• Has a window into the drivers of the new economy. Since most of these are IT-related, the CIO should have an excellent grip on this area.

Source: Gartner Inc., Stamford, Conn., January 2004

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