Stories by Martha Heller

CIO's Martha Heller talks to Greg Walsh, CFO of IPG Mediabrands, about how big data and second screens are transforming media buying.

In August 2012, SAIC, the $11B national security, engineering, and enterprise IT provider, announced that it would split in two: SAIC would deliver enterprise IT services to the government sector, and a new company, Leidos, would provide services in security, health and engineering.

Martha Heller talks to Charles Shaver, CEO at Axalta Coating Systems, how a business-savvy CIO and global systems help his company meet customer expectations

An insurance executive talks about how IT can help transform healthcare.

Data insights are the key to providing customer value. The first steps are creating a culture of innovation and finding a CIO who is a business strategist.

Jeff Owens, CTO at Delphi, works with IT and engineers to deliver a digital lifestyle to the automobile.

Allstate's CEO says the CIO's office is only 20 feet away, so he can easily get thoughts from "one of the architects of our business innovation."

IT management is changing. Here are some of the types of experience and knowledge that companies will be looking for in their CIOs.

The widespread glee over consumer technology has created your most demanding customers yet. The ease with which business leaders can adopt Cloud services means less clout for your centralized IT structure. And the aging IT workforce means fewer bodies to do the additional work. Masochist that you are, no doubt, you love these new challenges, but you still need tools for dealing with them.

When I interview candidates for positions I've been hired to fill, I typically ask them to whom they currently report. I cannot tell you how often they respond, "That depends, what day of the week is it?" IT professionals are as likely as anyone to invest a tremendous amount of meaning in their titles, their headcount and their reporting lines, and CIOs who reorganize too often (or poorly) are in danger of losing talent. The CIOs below have found ways around that.

For the last several decades, you've dealt with a business community that had trouble seeing the value of IT. Now your partners have a deep appreciation of IT. Your job must be much easier! If it isn't, then you've discovered the same CIO paradox that I have: The business is getting smarter about technology, but your job is getting harder.

Whether we like it or not, CIOs have a new economy, a new age of computing, a new (and highly demanding) set of technology users, and of course, new paradoxes. Technology is harder than ever, but your customers think it's easy. Your budget has been slashed, but the business wants everything faster. IT is the glue of your company's corporate strategy, but too often, you are the last to know that strategy.

Funny thing about the word "and." You would think it would function as a connector, a word that implies the togetherness of two entities, like "stars and stripes" or "franks and beans." Yet the phrase "IT and the business" does not work that way. Rather, it connotes separateness and difference, creating an "us and them" perception that belies the actual embedded condition of IT.

Despite the fact that a CIO's responsibilities are easily as wide and deep as any other executive's, we at CIO magazine are always urging CIOs to do more. Grab product development, take over a P&L, run a non-IT part of the business. Why the CIO role itself seems never to be enough is the subject of a future column. Here, I would like to address whether some sectors--like IT products and services--offer a better pathway to these "extra CIO" areas than others. Do CIOs who work for IT companies have more opportunities for influence and impact than CIOs who work for companies that sell soap? I spoke to three CIOs in the IT industry to find out.

At barely 25 years old, the CIO profession is still young. We can't yet define a standard CIO career path, but we can identify some critical experiences. And working outside one's own country is one of them.