CIOs have multiple plates to balance. They have to work with business units, assist with customers' needs and consistently find ways to incorporate the most up-to-date technologies into their companies, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"When CIOs engage in all these activities, what they're essentially doing is removing friction from the business," said Steve Rosenbush, editor of WSJ's CIO Journal, according to the report. "In that case, the perfect CIO is enabling the perfectly friction-less business."
Mr. Rosenbush's comment was made during a panel at last week's MIT Sloan CIO Conference. The other panelists agreed, citing collaboration and connections as key to a CIO's success.
"The CIOs that can actually facilitate consensus, common purpose and mission are the ones that are really set to achieve great things," said Craig Stephenson, managing director of the North American CIO practice at Korn/Ferry International, at the conference.
Not only should CIOs help employees work to reach a consensus, but they should enable their team members to reach their objectives. "Ideas can come from anywhere in the organization. But the key is for someone like myself to really understand what it is that we're trying to achieve and make sure I'm putting the infrastructure, the teams and the skills in place to ensure that we're able to achieve those goals," said Jeanne Lieb, CIO and senior vice president for information services at FM Global, according to the report.