The Next Leap in Productivity: What Top Managers Really Need to Know about Information Technology

1.3. Meeting in the Middle

Much has been written about the need for IT to develop a deeper understanding of business. For the past decade, CIOs have been urged, coaxed, counseled, and exhorted to act more like CEOs, chief financial officers (CFOs), chief operating officers (COOs), and other C-level executives.

I'm not going to argue about the wisdom of that advice. But I'm going to suggest that it's only half the story. The other half, the piece that is usually missing from conversations about innovation, competitiveness, and the opening of new markets is this: it is time for business to learn more about IT.

Specifically, it is time for CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and other C-level executives to start acting more like CIOs.

Why now? Why should top management expend the energy required to learn more about IT, a large amorphous aggregation of multiple technologies that is constantly moving, changing shape, and evolving into who knows what?

BusinessWeek Research Services recently polled 353 C-level executives spread across multiple sectors of the economy such as financial services, health care, pharmaceuticals, transportation, retail, and manufacturing. One goal of the survey was determining which factors drive C-level decisions about IT. Nearly half of the executives surveyed were CEOs and precisely one-third were CIOs.

Here is how executives ranked their top five crucial business goals for 2008:

1. Sales and revenue growth

2. Reaching new customers

3. Improving customer service and retention

4. Increasing ...