Information Week gives us this article: Step Up – or Step Back.  Before the Marketers in the audience click Back, I think you should read this article. 

Lead Data: From the annual meeting last month of the Society for Information Management, the percentage of CIOs and other top IT executives reporting directly to CEOs had fallen dramatically from the year-earlier survey, SIM revealed.

The premise is basically this: the “Command and Control” CIO is on the way out; these are the folks that are dropping in rank and no longer reporting to the CEO.  At the same time, we find CIO’s that are business oriented and advocates for process improvement are moving up and more of them are reporting to the CEO.

Makes sense to me.

There seems to be a lot parallels between what is going on with CIO’s and CMO’s; both are looking for a seat at the strategic table.  And both need to become more business-oriented to do it.  I think “business oriented” here is probably just a code word for “more accountable for what you contribute”.  In the case of CMO’s, this includes reaching out into the operational side of the business and finding out how operations affects the success of Marketing.

To go a step further, wanna-be CIO’s and CMO’s not afraid of an accountable orientation would do themselves a huge favor by reaching out to each other; otherwise both or either may be “absorbed into the Network“. 

This pattern playing out over in CIO-land has some lessons for those (mostly analytical) Marketers who aspire to the CMO seat.  If you do aspire to be CMO, read about the CIO’s who do report to the CEO and the business attitude that got them there – the same attitude you need.

Here’s that article link again: Step Up – or Step Back