Submitted by Terri Griffith on Sun, 07/28/2013 - 22:30

Join me tomorrow (July 30, 2013) for a free Harvard Business Review Webinar. We will talk about the role of the modern Chief Information Officer and how organizations can make the most of unique CIO skills. This is building off last week's post in the Harvard Business Review blog:

Are We Asking Too Much of Our CIOs? (some excerpts)

It is all well and good — and true — to say that the role and mandate of the CIO are expanding. Smart commentators here and elsewhere have described why and how that is happening. But too many organizations are stretching their Chief Information Officers (CIO) too thin. CIOs are being tasked with managing internal business systems, cloud-based services, big data innovation, data security, and the 24x7 needs of global customers who access company data on personal devices. Effective leadership and management across these areas is possible, but not without without providing CIOs with the proper support structures and instituting necessary organizational alignment.

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The bottom line is that before we can ask our CIOs to do more for business, we need to evaluate how the organization can provide the support necessary for all four of the CIO personas to function. The right model for your own company may be to employ a single broad-based CIO who can deliver on all four persons; a technical CIO who works in collaboration with other IT executives with business backgrounds; or tighter integration across the C-suite, perhaps through formally aligning the goals of the CMO/COO and CIO.

The office and activities of the CIO need to be in tune with the needs of the organization. This is more than a shuffling of responsibilities. Work towards a meaningful redesign that will carry you through the decade.

Read the full HBR post