CIOs: Forget IT-business alignment; it's all about fusion

, CIO at TNS North America in New York, has a similar outlook on working with business units. "I think we really need to challenge the way things have always been done and ask why they're being done that way, and is there a more efficient way," he said. That approach has worked well for Micali from a professional standpoint: last month, he was put in charge of all operations at the U.S. subsidiary of market-research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres PLC.

Integrating management of IT and business activities made sense for TNS, according to Micali. "We need people that are comfortable with a level of change, with taking risks and with being nimble on their feet -- and those are traits of IT people," he said. In addition, he noted that IT managers are "very process-driven," making them logical candidates to lead business process transformation efforts.

Conference attendees said that CIOs and other IT executives often also have a unique horizontal view of how their organizations operate, and how changes in one unit could affect other departments. Managers of business units may know the most about their own fiefdoms, "but they never see what [another unit] over there is doing," said Richard Gius, CIO at Atmos Energy Corp. in Dallas.

in Dublin, Ohio, recently set up a corporate organization, giving its CIO responsibility for some aspects of finance and HR in addition to IT, said Dave Hammond, vice president of enterprise IT at the maker of health care software and medical instruments and supplies.

The deeper business involvement extends beyond the CIO level, Hammond added. He said that an IT project managers currently is running an entire office-building construction project, not just the technology infrastructure piece of it. And Hammond himself plans to shift into a product development job at Cardinal Health. "I think we in IT have a lot to offer on the product innovation side," he said. "We can come in and say what can work technically."