Stories by Maryfran Johnson

Whenever I talk to CIOs these days, I test their reactions to what I call the "mega-trend trio" of mobility, cloud computing and social media.

No one will ever accuse CIO Nick Smither of wasting a good crisis.

Debates about how CIOs can earn a "seat at the table" have been going on for so long now that the phrase itself has become a tiresome cliche.

The notion of customer centricity is a real sizzler with CIOs these days. Whatever the industry, the focus on the end consumers of your goods and services seems to be sharper than ever before. We see it in our CIO research results, with big year-over-year jumps in the customer-focus questions. We hear about it at our events, where CIOs trade stories about customer initiatives that elevate IT's reputation or accelerate business results.

There is a wary sense of deja vu among CIOs when the talk turns to cloud. Having bought a boatload of half-baked products over the years, experienced technology leaders are not easily impressed by the Next Big Thing.

Whenever CIOs start talking about how to attract a new generation of young people to IT, the conversation tends to run in predictable circles.

What used to be the sweetest deal on the planet for ERP vendors has left a bitter aftertaste in the mouths of many CIOs. With maintenance and support costs running upwards of 20 percent annually, these legacy systems are costly, complicated and customized to the max.

Let's take the glamorous title of "Global CIO" and break it down into some of the job realities. What do multinational CIOs have to do that their domestic counterparts don't?

My Irish grandmother was fond of quoting a line from a Robert Burns' poem about having "the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as ithers see us." For years I thought she was talking about some leprechaun showing up with a magical mirror (blame that one on Lucky Charms commercials). But one day I finally got it. That combination of self-awareness and understanding how you're actually coming across to others is quite a powerful communication tool.

When CIO chose the first 12 members of the CIO Hall of Fame in 1997, the editors wondered how the still-nascent role of the chief information officer might look in the future. Would CIOs become more technically skilled, more business savvy or more influential across their entire organizations?

Your gestures, expressions and body language all speak volumes. But are you really listening?

The shimmering oasis called "unified communications" has been on IT horizons for so long, it's almost surreal to think we might actually arrive there one day.

As a card-carrying extrovert, there's almost nothing I like better than being on stage, making sure a room full of people are being entertained and engaged. Years of piano recitals banished my stage fright (talking on stage is ten times easier than performing up there) and the rest fell naturally into place with preparation and practice.

As team sports go, technology innovation may be the trickiest game of all to play. Nobody knows exactly how to keep score. The rules change with every twist of the economy. And the end-goal-creating something new and valuable-never sits still for long.

The CIO walked on stage with every apparent confidence, relaxed and ready to tell his story. His opener was a droll little anecdote about fending off starving vendors. The audience was smiling back at him, BlackBerrys tucked away, fully engaged. Then the speaker picked up the clicker, lashed himself to the mast of an absolutely stupefying, bullet-point-riddled PowerPoint deck and sank like a stone. Sixty seconds into his slides, the BlackBerrys revved back up and the audience was gone, baby, gone.