CIO Mag's Kim Nash (a former Baseline standout) has a great analysis of the state of the CIO role here.

Yes, we all know that IT leaders need to be more business savvy than tech savvy, but a few findings from CIO's survey drive the point home (registration required to view the data).

For one, only one in 10 CIO respondents say running the IT operation is as important as it's been in the past three years. Meeting or topping expectations on the business front jumped to 30 percent from 18 percent since last year. And focusing on external customers doubled--9 percent cited it for 2009, while 18 percent named it as a top concern for this year.

Granted, we've been talking about these issues for a while. Our 2009 CIO Role study found similar themes, as have other big surveys from the past year (like this one, and this one).

Through all of this, I've had some intriguing conversations with CIOs and experts about just how capable IT leaders are of making this long-overdue shift from techie to business strategist. Plenty have done it and done it well, but too many others seem mired in the bits and bytes of the jobs that got them to the executive table (as Google CIO Ben Fried explains).

There's plenty of data out there saying that CIOs need to be more business savvy; my question to you all is, what tactics can IT leaders employ right away to help them sharpen their business acumen?