I recently stumbled across an article on TechRepublic titled “The seven habits of wildly unsuccessful CIOs” written by Karen Ann Kidd in 2003. The article is an interested read and provides seven things a CIO or CTO can do to ensure they are unsuccessful.

These seven habits are:

1. Acquire technology simply because it’s new
2. Exhibit a knee-jerk reaction against open source
3. Create solutions in search of a problem
4. Eagerly reach beyond competency level
5. Act as CMOs—Chief Marketing Officers
6. Fail to understand relationship between technology and business
7. Don’t communicate well with nontechs

I think most would agree these are valid habits that would make any CIO or CTO unsuccessful.

But…aren’t these the same things we’re talking about today?

Take a few minutes to look around the web and literature relating to the role of the CIO. You’ll find a lot of discussion about how CIO’s need to be more business focused and communicate better with the business.  You’ll also find many conversations about these bad habits.

Seven years after the article by Karen Ann Kidd, We still see many CIO’s with some of these habits (and some with all of them).

So…if we all know that these habits should be addressed (and changed), then why are they still an issue?  Why do CIO’s, CTO’s and IT organizations still have problems with communicating IT’s value to the organization and aligning IT with the business?

I don’t have the answer.  Do you?