Life for most CIOs is similar to Hobbes description "nasty, brutish and short"'. The more a CIO is focused on resolving the key issues of the firm that are weighing heavily on the CEO's mind - then the higher regard they are likely to be held in by your CEO.

Clearly as a CIO you need to be on top of your own game in terms of reliable service delivery, managing costs and bringing key project investments in on time. However if you are going to survive and prosper - you need to be able to contribute to the wider success of the team.

For example in the Retail sector - you may only be responsible for 2-3% of the overall cost structure of the business - and yet the key systems you support in terms of supply chain, space and range planning can have a dramatic impact on the overall performance of the business.

See http://www.closequarter.co.uk/2007/05/key-reasons-why-cios-get-fired-and-what.html for a more detailed discussion on the top-10 reasons why CIOs get fired and what to do about them.

Regards John.

Is Google your ideal? Or Apple? Or Jon's Pizza?
If you are the CIO, you just can't believe the effort you will have to do to make your company like the first 2.

It takes time and in their case planning from day one(or 2) to follow the direction.
In your average Fortune 500 company there should be parts which can create or accomplish similar tasks, while you are steering the whole boat around.
Open up and listen to the next generation or lower managers or even shop floor workers to see what could be done quickly and probably easily to make good progress. Remember to reward them in many ways, free time to work on the project, pizza, drinks, meetings with you. Many other ways aside from salary go very far.

When we go to a client, we are there to clean up the infrastructure. We allocate enough time and then resources to accomplish the overall task.
What is more inmportant to us is nailing down 1-3 items which we feel would make the most benefits early on in the project and get them completed first.

Basic idea, right? How come everywhere we go we are always told no one ever worked so quickly and well? Or provided documentation.

And so it is when you are CIO. While I was interim CIO a few years ago, I pushed for this as well, and the result helped to double revenue over the year. I got the idea from the person who handled customer service, she had a list of complaints which I turned to action items.

The CEO wants it done as soon as possible and these days you could have something done in hours or days instead of weeks or months.

If you can't make a quick decision, your CEO is likely to decide he can and will find someone quicker to the action. Aim for the top 10% and you will be fine, it is unrealistic for one to expect to be in the 1% when you as a company are way behind. If it was easy to turn your company around, CEOs would do it for everyone, but they can't and neither can you in a short time, but if you make the decision and start simple you will progressively get to where you need to go faster.