The CIO and the CMO are two of the most important positions in today’s organizations and should be working extremely closely…but these survey results show that to not be the case at all.

Some highlights from the survey are below with a few choice words added as commentary from me.

More than half (58 percent) of IT executives said they were championing, spearheading or shaping the digital agenda at their company, whereas fewer than one-fifth (19 percent) of the marketers said that the digital agendas at their companies were being shaped by IT executives. Instead, 69 percent of marketers said they were the ones in the driver’s seat.

Wow.

Lots to say here…but I’m only going to say this:  If there’s this much disconnect between the CIO and CMO, organizations are screwed.

Another:

• 30 percent of IT Execs noted that they “lack the time and technical resources to help marketing”
• 39 percent of them said that “marketing bypasses them and works directly with the vendor”
• 31 percent said “marketers hinder progress by taking control and isolating IT from solution selection, strategy or implementation.”

Pretty interesting results from the report. I’ll be digging into them in more detail in the coming days.

One piece of the article that caught my attention…even above and beyond the quotes above was this paragraph towards the end of the article:

From the CIO’s point of view, then, it’s better to be proactive with the marketing organization than reactive. The CMO Council-Accenture survey demonstrates that today’s CMO is unafraid to do an end-run around IT if necessary.

Emphasis mine.

Ok.  I agree…but what bothers me is this –  The takeaway for CIO’s reading this article is that they are supposed to be proactive when it comes to marketing?

Is that something new?  And..is it JUST with the marketing organization?

Really??

Have we become so backwards in the world of IT that we have to be told to be proactive in helping other groups within our own organization?

One last question:

Where’s the CEO in this mess?  Why is there such a disconnect between CIO’s and CMO’s?  Can anyone say ‘leadership problem’?

How do we fix this?    Look for more thoughts on this later this week.

• Shadow IT vs. Shadow Marketing By Scott Brinker on Chief Marketing Technologist

  Quote: IT people work for IT. Marketing people work for marketing. And, as illustrated with the dangers of shadow marketing, marketing technology is now an integral part of marketing’s strategy and execution. The people working on it need to have their focus — and more importantly, their passion — on marketing outcomes. You can’t get there with dotted lines and chargebacks.

• Financial Steroids by Aaron Wall on SEOBook.com

  Quote: Money can be a great lever. And if you have a lot of it certainly it makes sense to use it to your advantage. But the compounding interest on debt is also a lever working against you. It is what forces us to have recessions.

• Do This One Thing and You’ll Rise Above Your Peers by Donald Miller

  Quote: If you want to be a person of influence, or if you want to lead, or for that matter if you want to succeed, start reading. These days, you have less competition than your parents had, or their parents for that matter. If you read as few as fifty books, you’ll be considered a genius. Subscribe to the Economist and read a handful of articles each week and your friends will wonder when you intend to run for congress.

• Looking for An Answer by Moose Peterson

  Quote: I’ve been looking for an answer for over thirty years, ever since I picked up a camera and decided to make it my career. I remember all to clearly leaving a night college class and thinking out loud, “What’s the answer?” And here’s the problem. I don’t know the question. Seriously, I know the answer is out there, the one that will make it all work, make it all right, the one that will solves all the problems and put everything in its right place. But if there is an answer, shouldn’t there be a question?

• How LeBron James shows us it is time for a new job search by Scot Herrick on Cube Rules

  Quote: The critical piece here is to know the work you do best, how you do your work the best, and what environment best matches up to your best. If you do not understand this, you will never get happiness from your corporate experience. If you do understand how you do your best work and consistently analyze how long a job will last, you will be light years ahead of your coworkers. Especially if your coworkers are jumping for joy at the signing of LeBron James and not realizing the signing was the death of their job.

• You Don’t Sell To A Community. You Support A Community by Dan Blank on Publishing, Innovation & the Web

  Quote: Suddenly, every company is “developing” a community online, or engaging an existing community, at least in their marketing plans. But a crowd isn’t a community. A market is not a community.

• Silence is a Leadership Trait by Samuel Bacharach

  Quote: Between the words, between the actions, between the political strategies, leaders must create silence. Silence that allows for ideas to be absorbed. Silence that allows for emotions to settle. Silence that allows for bonding and healing. Silence that allows people to sit unthreatened and unchallenged.

• How business hoodwinks itself by Sigurd Rinde on thingamy

  Quote: Your focus slowly shifts from idea, customer understanding, and free-thinking development to efficient production/service delivery, better channel deals, development restricted to “what you know” (i.e. what your production/service can handle) and your customer relationship shifts from “curious partnership” to “pushy marketing” (adding “social” to the CRM does not count).

• The Missing Link in Strategic Planning by Jamie Notter on Get Me Jamie Notter

  Quote: You never stop listening and engaging your system in an ongoing conversation about what is valuable, what works, what matters, and what has meaning. It’s not just monitoring. It’s engaging in ongoing conversations. It’s allowing ideas from the periphery to bubble up. It’s much more precise definition of what works and why.

• Keeping Data Safe From IT Snoops by Mike Schaffner on Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

  Quote: IT has the keys to all the sensitive data in your company. This includes not only payroll and personnel records, but also financial records, trade secrets and intellectual property, data regarding pending acquisitions, product launches or other strategic decisions. A rather scary thought if you don’t trust your IT folks.

• Too Busy to Onboard Your New Executive? I Don’t Get It! by Tim Tolan on Fistful of Talent

  Quote: With the cost of human capital to a company’s bottom line, much more attention needs to be paid in developing a comprehensive, well defined on-boarding plan. Period.

• Bad for the Customer, Good for the Stock Price: Wait, What? by Charles H. Green on Trust Matters

  Quote: There will be the more-than-occasional situation where the right thing to do is simply not the profitable thing to do. That’s when you find out who’s ethical, and who’s simply hustling their own customers.

• Giving away a magician’s secrets by Seth Godin on Seth’s Blog

  Quote: if you’re having trouble persuading people to buy what you sell, perhaps you should sell something else. Failing that, perhaps you could talk about what you sell in a different way.

• Rise of the Marketing Technologist by Scott Brinker on Chief Marketing Technologist

  Quote: Marketing technology isn’t just software you buy — it’s also software you create. Web applications, widgets, Facebook apps, iPhone apps, Android apps, interactive ads, the semantic web, and even the connected features of your products are now part of marketing’s realm.

• Square Pegs, Round Holes, and the Peter Principle by Terry Starbucker on TerryStarbucker.com

  Quote: right hiring decisions go beyond core competencies. The personality profile also has to match.  Because ultimately, that is what you really cannot chang

• Narratives Over Numbers by Fred Wilson on A VC

  Quote: I would encourage all entrepreneurs and everyone who is selling something to someone to focus on narratives over numbers, particularly when you are in the initial meeting. If the person you are pitching bites, there will be an opportunity to go over the numbers later. But you have to get yourself that opportunity and story telling is the best way to get there.

Why IT Shouldn’t Be Involved in Marketing Software Decisions by Matt Sullivan on HubSpot‘s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

Why IT SHOULD Be Involved in Marketing Software Decisions by Jenn Steele on HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

Don’t Just Stand There, Make a Difference by Kevin Eikenberry on Kevin’s Blog

Office politics will eat management strategy for breakfast by Scot Herrick on Cube Rules

It Turns Out That Top-Down Decisions Are What CIOs Need To Make by Dr. Jim Anderson on The Accidental Successful CIO

The Machiavellian Guide to Enterprise 2.0 by Mark Fidelman on CloudAve

Why clear strategy is so important to innovators by Jeffrey Phillips on Innovate on Purpose

Curse of the IT prima donna by Michael Krigsman on Enterprise Irregulars

What Happened to the Talent? by Steve Roesler on All Things Workplace

Organization: the business decisions that drive IT costs by Mark McDonald on The Gartner Blog Network

10 Tips on Building a Better Business by Ted Mininni on Marketing Profs Daily Fix

Time to Take off the Web 2.0 / Social Media Gloves by Valeria Maltoni on Conversation Agent

Seven Elements of Effective Coaching by Steve Roesler on All Things Workplace

Diversify Your Self by Peter Bregman on HarvardBusiness.org

7 Traits of the Modern Leader by John Jantsch on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Corporate Culture, Not Technology, Drives Online Collaboration by Will Kelly on WebWorkerDaily

Is it Selfish to Follow Your Passion? by Kirsty on Nerdy Nomad (hat tip: Bas de Baar)

Road Rules, Not Road Rage by Lisa DiTullio on UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley – The Art of Project Management

Zappos CEO Hsieh: How to build a company culture that delivers happiness by Kim-Mai Cutler on VentureBeat

Hire for Trustingness, Train for Trustworthiness from Trust Matters blog by Charles H. Green

How do you create a culture that is not afraid to fail (or be more receptive to social media?) from Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media by Beth Kanter

The Cable News-ification of IT News and Analysis from CIOpedia by Scott Booher

The Dichotomy Between Social Networks and Education from PR 2.0 by Brian Solis

Crowdsourced or Elite Unit Innovation? from I’m Not Actually a Geek by Hutch Carpenter

Innovation success or culture – which comes first? from Innovate on Purpose by Jeffrey Phillips

Non-linearity of technology adoption from cdixon.org by Chris Dixon

Keep Or Save? from The Effective CIO by Chuck Musciano

Social Media as the CIO’s Trojan Horse from CIO Dashboard by Chris Curran

9 Ways Marketing Weasels Will Try to Manipulate You from Coding Horror by Jeff Atwood

Saying “no” to corporate fossilization from The BrandBuilder Blog by Olivier Blanchard

It’s Less About Theory and More About Thinking from Get Me Jamie Notter by Jamie

What to do once your firm’s social media policy is written from FreshNetworks Blog by Matt Rhodes

Re-designing Your Business Culture from Logic+Emotion by David Armano

Simple rules to balance structure and flexibility from Don Sull’s Blog by Don Sull

Spectacular Failures from The Guild CIO by Stephen Gillett

Wrong customer, or, the perils of dog food marketing from Groundswell by Josh Bernoff

The Future of Content Management from assertTrue( ) by Kas Thomas

7 Marks of a Great Project Management Office from Making Project Management Better by Alec Satin

Using Social Media to Deepen Customer Relations from Marketing Profs Daily Fix by Paul Dunay

Business, Blogging, and Broken Windows from The Art of Nonconformity by Chris Guillebeau

Why Do We Ignore “Best Practices”? from HarvardBusiness.org by Susan Cramm

Enterprise 2.0 Needs To Stop Being So Naive from CloudAve by Paul Michaud

What Jay Leno Can Teach the Fortune 500 About Innovation from Endless Innovation by Dominic Basulto

The Future of Reading: The Problem is NOT the Books! from Angela Maiers Educational Services by Angela Maiers

Corporate Social Media, from Macro to Micro from Conversation Agent by Valeria Maltoni

Enterprise 2.0 is a Crock: Discuss from Andrew McAfee’s Blog by Andrew McAfee

Staying A Specializing Generalist from Musings of a Software Development Manager by Ed Gibbs

Is Personality a Strategy? from Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch

Avoiding The IT Death Spiral from Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms by Mike Schaffner

The Conversation Economy from Tyner Blain by Scott Sehlhorst

Why Large Companies Rarely Strike Gold Twice: A Finally Friday CCrit from No Secret by Steve Levy

Hacking the Magical Number Seven With Storytelling from GigaOM by Mike Speiser

The Role of the CTO: Four Models for Success by Bob Gourley on CTOvision.com

A Tendency to Blame and an Inability to Confront by Charles H. Green on Trust Matters blog

Enterprise 2.0 Does Not Necessarily Mean Power To The People by G. Oliver Young on Strategic Heading

Communications Nimbleness – Kaleidescope Management by Lisa Haneberg on Management Craft

Authenticity: You Has It by Chris Guillebeau on The Art of Nonconformity

What if no one tells you that you’re wrong? by Christopher S. Penn on Christopher S. Penn’s Awaken Your Superhero

Shared Systems View: Bootstrapping Adaptive Capacity In Your Project by Bas de Baar on Project Shrink

IT, the CIO, and the business need for “roof projects” by Peter Kretzman on CTO/CIO perspectives

Fish Where the Fish Are by Tim Walker on Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

Cowardly Lion: Being Chief Means Facing Your Fears by Arun Manansingh on A CIO’s Voice

Surprise – Disrespecting Competitors Doesn’t Work! by Danny Brown

Four Tips for Building Accountability by Rosabeth Moss Kanter on HarvardBusiness.org

Blame the Road – Not the Person by John Hunter on Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog

5 Strategies that Won’t Fix Your Dysfunctional Team by Cheri Baker on The Enlightened Manager

Measurement, competition and the right person for the job by Mark Riffey on Business is Personal

The Bridge Between “Evolve” or “Die” by Amber Naslund on Altitude Branding

When Enterprise 2.0 Intranet Strategies Collide by Mark Fidelman on CloudAve

What’s So Scary About Marketing Strategy? by John Jantsch on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

The Cloudy Future of Corporate IT by Andrew McAfee

What is participation in a Web 2.0 world? by Matthew Hodgson on The AppGap

It’s fitting that my 400th post is my first The New CIO article. I’ve been ruminating on writing a weekly post/article but hadn’t really sat down to plan it out. I think I’ve got a good plan now and am going to jump in and see where it leads.

The New CIO

What do I mean by The New CIO?  The role of Chief Information Officer today is much different than it was just a few years ago and the role in the coming years will change even more.

No longer is the CIO just the main technologist for the organization.  The CIO is a leader who has a strong technology background but also understands the worlds of marketing, finance, social media, sales and everything else an organization does.

The New CIO must be as comfortable talking about building the brand as they are talking bits and bytes.  The New CIO must be able to help craft strategy as well as tactical plans for implementing that strategy.

Strengths of The New CIO

The idea that The New CIO needs to be business savvy isn’t a new one.  People have been screaming about this for years.  The CIO and IT group must get closer to the business. The New CIO must be much more than just a technology person who’s business ‘savvy’ though.  She must be able to sit down and discuss marketing strategy with the marketing group, sales strategy with the sales group and then keep on top of all things technology withing the organization.

The New CIO must understand the new world of technology. Forget the old days of closed systems.  Tomorrow’s systems and platforms will be open and transparent.  The New CIO will need to understand Social Media and its implications to the Enterprise. Enterprise 2.0, 3.0 and beyond will be the future of IT shops and the CIO must be in front of this.

Tomorrow’s organizations need a strong leader in the CIO role to help integrate technology and processes from many different vendors to do many different things.  Gone are the days when a CIO can choose to be fully ‘.NET shop’ or ‘java shop’ and close their mind to all other systems/platforms.

To provide the requisite service to tomorrow’s organization, The New CIO has to be a strong leader, great communicator, excellent thinker and strategist. Above all else, tomorrow’s CIO must understand that their role is to help the organization execute on their strategy. It can no longer be about implementing and managing the ‘cool’ technology..the role of IT is about helping the organization grow.

Who is The New CIO?

The New CIO will come from the people who have successfully integrated technology and business in their career. I think we’ll see people moving into the CIO role who’ve worked in many different areas of the organization but who strong IT backgrounds.   That person with the very broad background will be The New CIO.

What’s Next in this series?

As mentioned, this is first article in a weekly series of articles that I’ll be releasing every Thursday.    Check back next week when I talk about Social Media, The Enterprise and the role of the CIO.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Role of the CTO & CIO in Cloud Computing (elasticvapor.com)
• Yes, It’s Time for a Chief Social Media Officer (markevanstech.com)
• CIO.com tries to explain Twitter to your Boss’s Boss’s Boss (newcommbiz.com)

It’s Simple, Fix the Problem by Valeria Maltoni on Conversation Agent

Become a More Creative Leader — Think Small by Stew Friedman on HarvardBusiness.org

Systems Thinking: A Technique To Find Project Problems by Bas de Baar on Project Shrink

Service Outages — It’s All About the Response by Scott Blitstein on WebWorkerDaily

Reminder: Know what you’re measuring by Jason on Signal vs. Noise

Hitting The Social Media Sweet Spot by John Jantsch on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Creating Community Through Relevant Local Information by Christine Whittemore on Marketing Profs Daily Fix

Conformity Makes Community Comfortable by Micah Baldwin on Learn to Duck

“Technology over Tyranny” managing in a flat world by Mark McDonald on Gartner’s Blog Network

The 10 Questions Every Change Agent Must Answer by Bill Taylor on HarvardBusiness.org

The Future of Customer Service by Frank Eliason on Time to be Frank

Web 2.0 and IT: A Finally Friday CCrit by Steve on No Secret

Are You Keeping It Simple? by Danny Brown

Enterprise IT is not a Science Experiment by Glen B. Alleman on Herding Cats

The Benefits of a Classical Education by Tim O’Reilly on O’Reilly Radar

The New, the Big, and the Now by Julien Smith on in over your head