The following article is taken from the September 2002 edition of Smart Business: Strategic Insight from CSC, which is published by CSC Research Services.

By Kate Pritchard, associate editor of Smart Business.

CEOs and CIOs make strange bedfellows - they rarely collaborate, they seldom see eye-to-eye and they seem to speak different languages. Improving this one relationship maybe the most valuable change that a business can make.

IT management must be the toughest job around. Not only do CIOs have to manage complex infrastructures and meet the weighty demands of end users, but they have to do all of this on a severely stripped-down budget. To add insult to injury, CIOs are usually left to "get on with it," without help or support from the rest of the business.

Sounds like a thankless task? You’d be surprised at how often CIOs are excluded from key business meetings or how often they are left in the dark when it comes to making critical decisions. CSC’s recent Critical Issues of Information Systems Management survey, for example, shows that one third of CIOs are not even moderately involved in developing their organization’s strategic business plan, with more than 10 percent claiming that they develop their IT strategy independently of the business strategy. Furthermore, only 51 percent of respondents consider their IT organization to be effective.

Given these results, it is hardly surprising that over half of the respondents admit that in their organizations, senior business managers still regard IT as a necessary business expense, rather than an investment for the future of the business.

The outcome? A limited number of IT opportunities are pursued, and bold ideas for new e-business ventures are usually left on the shelf. So what lies behind this apparent admission of failure by many CIOs?

Problems

Part of the problem boils down to the personal relationship between the CIO and CEO. It’s a marriage of sorts - and it will flounder without a healthy amount of communication. If the CIO and CEO of a company look as if they are heading for divorce, it’s usually due to a gap (or sometimes a chasm) in expectations, objectives and goals.

Frustrations usually start to breed from day one. This is because the status of a CIO tends to exist in ’no-man’s land.’ A CIO is rarely regarded as ’one of us’ by the rest of the business, but neither is he or she treated as an external supplier with an explicit contract.

As Francis Hayden, researcher for CSC Research Services, says in his recent report, CEOs are from Mars, CIOs are from Pluto, "No senior management role is ever fully defined in a formal job description. Key aspects are embedded in the assumptions and prejudices of the CEO, which may never be made explicit and which are therefore very hard to fathom without the opportunity for informal and candid conversation."

Then come the personality clashes. Business and IT people always seem to find it difficult to communicate with each other. Quite simply, the business world requires people to work together on a common set of tasks, while the IT world is concerned with getting systems to work with one another. "Dialogue between a CIO and a CEO will only work if both are talking the same language," explains Hayden in his report. "And it will only be valuable if both are talking at a strategic level."

Bearing this communication gap in mind, it is little wonder that few e-business initiatives get off the ground. Unless the board really understands the different needs of e-business ventures and discusses them openly with the IT department, the risk of mortality remains high. "It is impossible to pull off an aggressive move into e-business in a [major] company if the board doesn’t really ’get’ the Internet," says Rene Carayol, author of the book Corporate Voodoo.

Changing roles and responsibilities

Why do these problems exist? To answer this question, it is worth taking a step back in time. Rewind to the eighties, for example, when the traditional strengths of an IT department included strong technical skills, safety and security, cost reduction and service provision. Back then, the business/IT relationship was transaction-based - the business ’asked’, and IT ’delivered’ a solution.

Since then, technology has come a long way. Connections are faster, systems are more robust and, with the advent of Web services, disparate systems will soon be able to ’talk’ to one another. Indeed, IT has metamorphosed from a centralized ’command and control’ function to an integrating component that pervades not just your organization, but the whole of the economic business structure. As a result, something completely different is needed from an IT department: vision, leadership, talent, and collaboration.

So while IT departments still need to maintain the ’plumbing’ behind the business, they are also under increasing pressure to innovate and add value. And there is no longer room for mistakes. Thanks to the Internet, customer feedback is immediate and consumers can switch their loyalties with the click of a mouse.

CEOs and other senior managers, however, seem to have been left behind in their concept of what IT is for. While most board members tend to understand that e-business is fundamental to the future, they remain uncomfortable with the uncertainty and scale of investment required. So now this innovative, value-adding ’plumber’ has to become a prophet and visionary too.

New breed of CIO

Where would you find this new breed of CIO? According to Carayol, what is needed is a flavorful concoction of personalities - the charm of Sean Connery, the leadership and statesmanship of Nelson Mandela, the diplomatic skill of Kofi Annan, a little bit of Stephen Hawking’s vision and a twist of Jack Welch’s business acumen.

Carayol’s list of ingredients show that while having sufficient knowledge of the technology and its capabilities is a fundamental requisite for success, interpersonal skills are equally essential for a CIO to play an effective role in influencing the business strategy.

An organization whose CIO is unable to communicate the impacts of IT investments to his or her executive peers, is unlikely to realize the business benefits that the technology can offer. "A lot of this is not just about processes and procedures, it’s about culture," says Carayol.

The ’culture’ of a business, however, can be extremely tricky to alter. Corporate behaviors and perceptions are usually deeply ingrained. Resolving the age-old business/IT divide can be an arduous process, but it is likely to be one of the cheapest and most effective ways of improving the overall business.

One simple approach is for the CIO to separate out the operational responsibilities from the strategic objectives. "Most CIOs have experienced how the best strategic insights can be utterly ignored and even mocked because the e-mail system crashes or the network won’t stay up," says Hayden. "It is therefore important to distinguish, and if possible, separate these two kinds of relationship with the business."

Indeed, unless CIOs start to view their primary role as working with the business to exploit IT, rather than simply managing the IT shop, the gulf between the IT function and the business will not be bridged. As David Butler, advisor to CSC Research Services, puts it, "IT should not be thought of as the heart or lungs of your business, but rather it should be the invisible DNA."

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Download the September 2002 edition of Smart Business.