CIO Survival Guide: The Roles and Responsibilities of the Chief Information Officer

I have a single quibble with this outstanding book, and that is the title, "CIO Survival Guide", implies a reactive approach, while the book is totally focused on a proactive approach that will assure the success of any CIO who follows Schubert's excellent advice.From the first pages, where the new CIO is given ten key questions to ask the CEO to establish his of her role with clarity, to the steps to build a functioning IT organization that is aligned to business imperatives, this book is on target every step of the way.In a nutshell, Schubert leads you through relationship building, how to lead as well as manage, prioritization and resource management, and strategy formulation and decision making. These are critical success factors for any CxO position, but are too often lacking in CIOs. By following the advice on gaining a focus and unifying business and technology competencies you'll establish yourself as a valued member of the CxO team. More importantly, the advice provided in Chapter 4, Connecting IT to Value Creation, is not only the true key to success, but is the key to proving the value of IT to business - this is the one area where most CIOs and their IT organizations fall short, yet Schubert manages to distill all you need to know in a single chapter.This is the best book I've read on the roles and responsibilities of a CIO. Too many books on this subject are more about small-to-medium businesses and focus too much on managing technology instead of managing to shareholder value and business operation support. I strongly recommend this book as a primary reference, and also recommend "CIO Wisdom: Best Practices from Silicon Valley" (ISBN 0131411152), which is a collection of articles by successful CIOs that nicely augment this book.