Relationship of CIO and Business Unit How

Relationship of CIO and Business Unit

How does the relationship and alignment between the CIO and business unit executives impact the success of the IT and the company?

Writer Mark Lutchen (www.optimizemag.com) stresses in a December, 2004 article that the "single most important driver of CIO success is the diversity of skills that he or she brings to the job." And those five diverse skills -- which include the ability to interact and cooperate fully with the business executives -- are "critical" to the success of the company, and to the company's IT competencies and functionalities. The five are: "leadership and management"; "business"; "technology"; "organization and culture"; and "fiscal management."

These skills, Lutchen emphasizes, are based on "the value that companies now expect -- and will continue to expect -- from the executive responsible for IT performance." The relationship between the CIO and business unit, if not steady and hands-on, can stifle a company's ability to grow and expand through the IT that should be working for the company.

And if indeed, the CIO cannot deliver the above-mentioned skills, those very responsibilities and expectations "will be transferred to other offices across the executive suite, such as the chief technology officer" -- and, it's also possible those duties the CIO was supposed to carry out (but didn't) will be transferred "to the business-unit leaders," who, Lutchen writes, "increasingly argue that they, themselves, are better positioned to meet their own technology needs." So, a failure of cooperation between the CIO and business executives can easily become a power struggle, sapping the company of energy.