Introduction
For over a decade, the author has been asking CIOs about problems in IT departments, and their answers have not changed. No credibility in the organization, projects overdue and over budget, no operational efficiency, poor resource development, outdated skills and practices, and the like. It seems odd that all technology executives claim the same problems, and leaves things no better than they found them.
His quest for answers has led him instead to more questions, facing paradoxes, and a specific set of contradictions that seem perennial. Those who are successful as technology executives wrestle with these paradoxes, and manage the contradictions of the job. What started as an article for a magazine has sprawled into this book.
He then presents a list of paradoxes, split into the categories of the executive's role, stakeholders, organization and industry. Some of the common issues are being required to mitigate risk as well as to innovate, being held responsible for outcomes without having project ownership, being told to think strategically while being inundated with operation issues. And when an executive points to the fundamental flaw in expectations, he is told to stop whining.
He mentions that the CIO community is a wealth of knowledge and many are generous in sharing it with others, but it so often comes down to commiseration. The same discussions happen everywhere, over and over, and the problems seem unsolvable. He indicates that "this book is not a step-by-step guide to solving the CIO paradox," and there is likely no single model for overcoming all of the challenges technology executives face.
Instead, it is a collection of experiences, lessons learned, and approaches attempted with varying degrees of success - as a method of facilitating information exchange among peers. As a professional journalist, rather than an IT executive, he is something of an outsider to that world, looking in with an objective eye, sharing information he has gathered from some with others who might benefit from it.