Seven Things CIOs Need to Know

By Samuel Greengard

Today's rapidly evolving business and IT environment often turns conventional wisdom upside down. Here are seven things that CIOs often overlook:

How IT systems work in the real world. Too many CIOs never step out of their office and actually use their IT systems the way customers and partners do--placing orders, requesting information and submitting service tickets. Seriously, unless you know how these IT systems work you cannot design them for real-world use.

What's really important. With a dizzying array of choices related to IT, it's important to understand at an organic level what your organization does well and what technologies can unlock innovation and produce results. This requires some heavy-duty analysis—probably with the outside perspective of a good consultant.

You're no longer the sole driver for IT. Once upon a time, CIOs made decisions and the organization adopted the IT systems to match its needs. Today, BYOD and the resulting consumerization of IT has put the customer, departments and even employees in the driver's seat in terms of technology adoption. Internal app stores are a perfect example. Swim with the current instead of fighting it.

Social media is your new analytics. What started out as a frilly consumer toy has emerged as a hardcore business tool. Savvy organizations are harnessing social media data for everything from behavioral analysis and trend spotting to survey insights that weren't possible in the past.

A lot of people out there are smarter than you are. Your staff may not possess as much overall experience and knowledge as you, but many workers--particularly younger employees--are an extremely valuable resource when it comes to understanding how to connect the dots for mobility, social media, crowdsourcing and Web 2.0.

Past performance is no indicator of future results. It's no news flash that technology and business processes are changing rapidly. A state-of-the-art system from a couple of years ago may be hopelessly out of date today. It's critical to jettison industrial age thinking and embrace an agile IT model that focuses on innovation.

Minimizing mobile will minimize your odds for success. It's perplexing that many major companies lack functional mobile apps or fail to optimize their presence for mobile environments. This just in: We have entered the post-PC world and demand for mobile services will only grow. If you spend too much time pondering strategy and security, you will likely find yourself chewing on digital dust.