These ought to be no-brainers but sadly aren't in too many cases. I agree with everyone of these save one and only partially with that item. The one I take a bit of an issue with is the reporting line.

If you signed up to report to the CFO, then no whining. That said, where you report foretells the kind of goals and objectives you are likely to have to adopt. Not 100% accurate but certainly a leading indicator. There are certainly CFO's who are very good at focusing not just on the cost side of the equation and who don't see IT as simply a cost to be squeezed. So I start from the position that given a choice, I want to report to either the COO or CEO. The focus will tend to be more balanced with plenty of opportunity to impact top line growth because you are expected to get involved there. There's going to be less resistance. Becoming strategic, having a "seat at the table" is doable regardless of where you report if you add value. It's that simple but it's much more work depending on where you start.

The other key in this list is: make the trains run on-time, all the time. There's no way you'll get to talk about strategic investments, growing revenue, etc if the current portfolio of systems and infrastructure aren't reliable.

This is good and straight forward.

One thing we as outsourcing firm(for us our clients become a CEO and we are CIO) always do is keep our client posted with realistic time line rather then overpromise.

This step has always kept our credibility and given customer more confidence with us.

I guess for CEO same way if CIO gives a right time line(one of main point i guess) then it would make things more easier...helps to gauge the cost and taking decision if you are aware what is most likely to happen..and lets not forget CEO are their to take decisions just like customers!

Abhishek
Elegant MicroWeb

http://www.elegantmicroweb.com

Every CEO I have worked with expected their lines-of-business managers to be thoroughly up to speed with IT issues impacting their businesses. They wanted IT issues included in strategic business planning sessions, monthly business reviews, financial reports and even at water cooler chats. Good CIO's enable their business managers to deliver the IT message to the CEO. Information Technology ends up with far more "Air Time" if it is the business managers delivering the message. It becomes the ultimate compliment to the CIO and the IT organization if the CEO perceives that more time is being spent with the businesses than ceaselessly trying to get face time to preach the value of IT in the organization. CEO's expect to see it and taste it, rather than to hear it.

Current day CEO's are more driven towards Globlization ; Virtualization concepts. I think too large these CEO are compelled to expect the Out of Box Fixes, solutions by CIO (and his team) to give quick start to newer business initiatives.

Information Technologies of today expected to deliver larger than life services in the current business models.

Most CEO's expect few basics from every CIO are

1. Business focussed - Develop and Demonstarte Planning competencies; Planning is the one common area between CEO & CIO. Keep eyes; ears close to business plans and develop IT plan in alignment with business plans

2. Governance - Consistency ; Reliability; Self Mgmt

3. Colloboration; Content Mgmt ( Single Reprository) ; SImple work flows; Un-inttrupted Information flow

4. Value For Money - CIO are expected to measure the IT budgets as business investment; thus need to come up with Smart Balancheet on spending and value creation to organization.

5. Business Language - This is another area that CEO are eyeing to see rapid development of Cross Functional team within IT domain to be able to speak, interpret business Signals and customize the IT solutions as Business Solution than IT fix.

What CEOs really want is to abdicate responsibility for IT to the CIO. The role of IT is too important to be delegated out of the boardroom. In my view there are two important initial steps. Firstly find a boardroom-ready CIO and then make her primary task to ensure that her boardroom colleagues understand their IT-related responsibilities.

I get into this in a big way in my new book - The IT Value Stack - A boardroom guide to IT leadership. More details can be found at my blog - The IT Value Stack.