Book Review: The New CIO Leader

The times they are changing. The direction of change for Chief Information Officers (CIOs) has had different answers from different people. In their December 2004 book, entitled The New CIO Leader: Setting the Agenda and Delivering Results (2005, Harvard Business School Press, 338 Pages, ISBN 1591395771), Marianne Broadbent (Associate Dean of the Melboune Business School) and Ellen S Kitzen (Group Vice-President of the Gartner Group's Executive Programs) argue that the choice is yours. You can choose to be a new CIO Leader or be relegated to Chief Technology Mechanic. The authors do an outstanding job of discussing the seas change, until the book loses some of its luster from what appears to be their interpretation of Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies (CobiT).

The authors start out strong by identifying what the sea change is, as technology is increasingly relied up to support all functions within the enterprise. After a discussion that lays down a foundation of how they view leadership, they break the goals of the new CIO Leader down into two parts: "Demand-Side Leadership" and "Supply-Side Leadership". On the demand side, they cover politics, realities and the need for strong IT governance. They emphasize that the new CIO leader has to be willing to step and be recognized as part of the leadership team. On the supply side, they delve it what it takes to create a high-performance IT team, measure results, and communicating the results. In all, they lay a strong foundation for a framework/paradigm for CIOs to follow.

And that is where the book loses it. They are laying down a foundation that strongly resembles the CobiT Framework. CobiT is about linking technology and business objectives in an integrated fashion, providing a controls framework to ensure success. It is essentially a circular (feedback-driven) cradle to grave process. So I wondered why I was not seeing it mentioned in the book. Eventually I came to it, but only in a very brief discussion of developing security policies. This "silo" misses the mark and may give those unfamiliar with COBIT, the wrong perception of what it is. I was quite surprised given the back ground of the authors. However, this may partially be the fault of inconsistent messages that the IT Governance Institute (ITGI) puts in some of their publications.

Who Should Read This Book

This book should be read by current CIO's looking to shape their future. It should also be read by those who aspire to be a CIO one day/ The discussion is full and thought provoking.

The Business Controls Caddy Scorecard

Birdie on a long par 5 reachable in two.

Amazon Link

The New CIO Leader: Setting the Agenda and Delivering Results

Related Links

A COBIT® Primer (PDF from ITGI)