Tread lightly as you approach this unwieldy intersection between technology, HR and legal. If you go too far in trying to dictate what employees can and cannot do with their own equipment, you run the risk of ending up right back where you started before you stopped pushing back on the infiltration of personal devices into the enterprise. Workers revert to circumventing your systems and creating security breaches. Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, your department winds up saddled with the daunting task of micro-managing thousands of gadgets, which defeats the benefit of embracing BYOD.

A few questions to ponder: what do you do if an employee loses their own netbook –and all of the trade secrets your company has with it? Can you force an employee to install a remote data management program (which will wipe any information off of their netbook) – and are they allowed to say no?

IT exists to provide technology services to advance business goals. If your business creates kiosks, vending machines, vehicles, or other types of consumer hardware, my money is on IT contributing massively to cutting costs and increasing speed of deployment.

Maybe that means IT organizations becoming aware of open source designs and assisting product engineering and manufacturing with integration into real-time business systems. Maybe it means working with a subcontractor. Open source hardware won’t be good for everything, but it will be fantastic for certain things.

As hardware platforms become more closed and CIOs need to spend more and more money creating ad-hoc additions to get different hardware to communicate, the idea of open source will become more and more appealing. But Feldman is quick to point out: only forward thinking CIOs are going to make it work well.

If I had to address this topic using math, I’d say that CIO = CBO + CDO + CTO, where CBO stands for Chief Brokering Officer and CDO for Chief Data Officer. This may actually mean a split of the function. The Chief Brokering Officer would be responsible for the services governance and its sourcing from the right provider. I use the term broker in line with the “cloud broker” concept used by NIST. The CBO is responsible for establishing a converged cloud approach as we discussed earlier and manage the lifecycle of the services requested by the business. The CDO on the other hand is responsible for information management, from social media analytics to business intelligence.

The role of the CIO and IT is fundamentally changing. Rather than just providing a service or maintaining a resource, IT is becoming strategic (and the CIO a strategic planner).

Teamwork can be exciting and can lead to some of the most rewarding experiences of an individual’s working career. It can also be frustrating, difficult, and challenging, however. Any change to the way that a company operates internally can also be a potential risk to its reputation in the marketplace. Aligning your staff into a more team-focused environment may mean better collaboration and communication behind the scenes, but the shift in roles could also expose your employees to negative perception. Competitors’ ears seem to perk up just enough to catch wind of organizational changes and opportunities to poke holes in a company’s reputation. Most difficulties can actually be predicted and with the use of proper tools, can be tackled and overcome.

Palmiotto goes on to write that, both on the field and behind a desk, the creation and maintenance of successful teams comes down to effective management, strong leadership and clear communication.  The article concludes by covering three crucial topics, management, accountability, and communication, as well as their relevance to implanting a successful work team.

All too often when projects are proposed, stakeholders are looking through rose-colored glasses. Although I think it’s important (maybe even vital in today’s economy) to look for projects that will provide potential value to the organization, ignoring the associated risks is very dangerous. If a project is presented for consideration and no risks are identified, that project sponsor should be introduced to a rather large river in Egypt.

Another helpful tip is “don’t let risk paralyze you”, particularly useful considering how often projects never get off the ground (or are even begun) because people are scared of the risks involved. Kiisel states this is the way to stifle creativity in the organization and limit innovation.

For example, Coby says a lot of the good things he has achieved since joining John Lewis began before he arrived. As ever, IT is in flux – and the speed of the digital transformation means great CIOs must lead their team through choppy waters.

“Everyone’s technology environment is going to continue to become more complicated,” says Coby. “The people supporting IT have to deal with very complex systems. And the ongoing digital transformation means the CIO sits at the very top of a very large iceberg. The role of the CIO is to enable the transformation.”

Another big of sage wisdom: don’t put innovation before day to day operations. As Coby explains, the heavier demand of on-demand technology and plug and play systems requires that even the most simple operations work correctly.

It’s very important that you select the appropriate service or application that should go to the cloud. Certain applications may not be well suited for the cloud, and there are certain ones that are better suited for the cloud. … I think a very definitive, thorough cloud assessment needs to be done, understanding which applications or systems you’re considering to move to the cloud, understanding the security of your data, and how important that is to your organization. That’s pretty important.

Another suggestion Tomlinson gives is to “kick the tires” when dealing with cloud – don’t just launch into an all-out effort. Instead, utilize the cloud for smaller pilot projects and programs, then build based on outcomes from that pilot.