All CIO's All the Time

What is the proper role of a CIO in a law firm (or in a large corporation)?  Too often, the answer is painfully unclear, and it reflects the "can't live with it, can't live without it" attitude many non-geeks have towards technology.  If technology (and thus the CIO) is primarily seen as a necessary (and expensive) evil, one rarely opens one's mind far enough to discern the genuine business value technology can provide.  CIO's who become enablers of this downward-spiral viewpoint often are tempted to justify their departments through "governance" measures:  Lines of code produced, goals met on time, etc.  But the truth is that:

CIOs don't get fired for not having enough governance. They get fired for not getting the job done.

In McKinsey's coinage, the Next Generation CIO is one who can see beyond the essential IT hygiene of providing efficient and effective systems and keeping them running cost-effectively—what they label the "supply" side of IT.  Rather, this visionary CIO embraces a role on the "demand" side of IT as well, working with business-side leaders to help define the future role of IT and to truly integrate the business unit managers' understanding of what they need to accomplish with IT's ability to deliver tailored applications.  How exactly does this happen?

• Business leaders and CIO's must agree on a common language, and that language is financial.  IT investments must be strictly analyzed in terms of their bottom-line impact.
• Shared accountability:  An IT failure is not solely to be laid at the feet of the CIO, nor is an IT success story his trophy to polish.  IT failures come from mis-alignment of the IT capability with what the business needs to get done, and successes conversely come from proper alignment.  Blaming or crediting just one party is irrational (albeit tempting).
• An insistence on innovation:  The job of a CIO is to separate the fads from the opportunities, and to amplify the signal-to-noise ratio coming from new technology advances, so that business leaders can truly understand trends and long-term threats and challenges.

How likely is this to happen? 

I predict it will depend on a fundamental change in the background of CIO's:  If more come from "Renaissance" backgrounds, with exposure to economics, marketing, strategic thinking, and other more-mainstream business skills, rather than rising up from the ranks of the coders, things will change.