CIOs should make it clear that a seat for the CIO on the executive committee is essential to the successful implementation of any IT strategy. Eighty-three percent of CIOs identified as best practitioners said serving on the executive committee was critical to their effectiveness, according to the 2003 "State of the CIO" survey. "When you're not actively involved, there's a lot of information you don't have access to that affects IT," says Cashman CIO Glassen. "You end up with departments going out on their own and finding their own solutions."

At Cashman, the sales department decided it needed CRM software, negotiated a deal by itself, and Glassen knew nothing about it until the department came to him and said, "Oh, by the way, we need this many laptops, this customization, this many days of training," Glassen recalls. As a result, his staff of seven was completely overloaded. Scheduled maintenance work and upgrades had to be put on hold, and six months later, his staff is only now getting back on track.

The irony is that many companies are weakening the CIO position at precisely the time when the skillful and strategic management of IT resources matters most. As many technology experts argue, it is technology management that confers competitive advantage, not technology itself. Hire someone who's not up to that task, and you jeopardize your marketplace advantage.

"A good IT shop and a CIO can be part of a company's competitive advantage if they're closely tied to the business and help it improve processes faster than their competitors. In fact, most competitive advantages have an IT component today," says Fields of Hon.

"You need a CIO because you have to have someone to translate between IT and the business," Glassen says. "If they view IT as a commodity, we'll have everyone buying their own thing like we did 10 years ago, and we'll end up with systems that don't talk to each other. A CIO is necessary to bring coordination and focus."