Optimize contributing Web editor Howard Baldwin chatted about the survey results with CD Hobbs, a senior VP at Meta Group who focuses on the business value of IT and ways in which CIOs can build more adaptive organizations.

Q: Did the 58% figure surprise you?

A: Yes, because it means you have a high proportion of responding CIOs who said they have a nontraditional job. Think of it, 42% are doing something beyond their traditional scope—for example, they're responsible for another information-intensive business, such as facilities or human resources (HR). Eighty percent of the cases said they're responsible for business transactions. They have the power to change the business by process management or process efficiency.

Q: What were some of the other findings of the survey?

A: More than 40% of responding CIOs said their job scope included other business functions, from facilities to HR, and 29% specifically indicated their job scope included responsibility for leading or supporting business transformation. What that tells me is that CIOs have had to make serious changes in their ability to relate to the business.

We started conducting the survey specifically because I wanted to see if the perception of IT's value had changed through the downturn. I had seen a lot of instances in which the IT organization, because of changes in the networking infrastructure, was being drawn deeper into nontraditional activities, such as performance measurement, global communications, and process changes. With the ubiquitous networks that companies developed by 2001, you could communicate with every employee globally, and you suddenly had a tremendous management tool that had never been fully developed before.

Q: What's the CIO's role in this?

A: The IT organization has an end-to-end view of the company that no other single division has. They see processes that cross-functional silos. They see everything that's processed and all the applications embedded in the technology. They know how much of the process relies on ERP, and how much relies on secondary applications with specific functions, and they know what parts of that process run in bootleg apps on some engineer's computer. When CIOs realize this, they say, "Aha, I've got more capability for business transformation than I knew I had."

Q: What does this mean going forward?

A: Companies are beginning to realize that the next major wave of cost efficiency won't come from making the silos making efficient, but from making the processes that cut across the silos more efficient. Take the go-to-market concept for software developers. No one silo supports the entire process, because you have developers, documentation, customer and client interfaces, marketing, and sales training. You need someone to look across all the processes. One of our analysts, Dale Kutnick, calls these "technology-infused processes." They're the wave of the future.

Q: So what should CIOs do?

A: The context of the CIO is being raised a notch. They need to be better partners with their business peers, because those peers will call on them more often to improve business models. CIOs also need to train their own people better. With baby-boomer retirements, they'll be restocking their departments, and their employees need to understand these processes. They'll need process-design experts and business-integration analysts, all of whom must be conversant in businesses processes.

CIOs themselves will require new skills. They'll have to be better at teamwork and interpersonal relations, and they'll have to enhance their ability to lead a cross-functional team of peers. Do they have a seat at the executive table? Being invited to the annual executive offsite meeting doesn't count. We're seeing more and more CIOs engaged at a deeper level, and frankly, CIOs today are better able to make the leap into understanding the business. We've got a better stable of leaders who are capable of dealing with business and technology.