Treading carefully between extremes

Sometimes you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. CIOs take a lot of flack for either being seemingly unresponsive or unnecessarily creating roadblocks that stall business development. Take these criticisms in stride--it's difficult to be all things to all people. Successful CIOs tread carefully between the two extremes, doing what it takes to be viewed as the champion of all IT-related business decisions while being a wise arbiter of the finite IT budget pool. A smart CIO understands that it's not his or her role to say yes or no to any specific request for funds, but to create processes for helping the business hold itself accountable for informed investment decisions. CIOs can advocate, but not authorize, new financial commitments. CIOs must provide leadership to finance and the executive management team to effectively implement, operate and manage this improved quality framework for IT request decision-making.

Read more about taking the middle road:
- read the article at ITNews.com