Partnering With the CIO: The Future of IT Sales Seen Through the Eyes of Key Decision Makers

A Strategic Mind-Set

Today’s CIOs aren’t paid to make tactical decisions. Instead, CIOs are paid to make decisions that will benefit their companies over the long term. Recognizing this, some companies are giving their CIOs new titles, such as senior vice president of business transformation or vice president of strategic development.

Make no mistake: Modern CIOs are strategists, and that means they need to be treated differently from how they were treated in the past when they were tacticians.

In his historical plays about King Henry IV, Shakespeare describes a situation that’s relevant to our point. The king’s son, Prince Hal, is a nasty juvenile delinquent. Hal’s drinking buddy is Falstaff, an overweight knight who prefers carousing over fighting. Hal and Falstaff are best friends and partners in crime—until Hal’s dad dies and Hal becomes king. As King Henry V, Hal is responsible for the safety of England. He becomes a different man—and cuts off his friendship with Falstaff. It’s a sad moment on the stage, but it speaks to an inescapable truth. When someone’s responsibilities are elevated, they change.

How much do they change? When someone moves from a management role into a leadership role, the change can be enormous. In “CIO to CEO,” a white paper published by Korn/Ferry International, authors Mark Polansky and Simon Wiggins draw fascinating conclusions from an in-depth study based on data gathered from more than a half-million top executives (nearly 1,500 of whom were senior ...