Are You a CIO Leader?
The premise of The New CIO Leader isn't really new -- that to truly lead in today's business world, top IT executives must step out of their tech comfort zone, learn what drives the business and offer an IT vision that advances the company's goals and competitive advantage. Yet this book by Gartner executives Marianne Broadbent, a Gartner fellow and associate dean at Melbourne Business School, and Ellen S. Kitzis, a Gartner group vice president, does a fine job of breaking those mandates down into digestible chunks that help you become the leader they describe.

Whether it's managing a difficult CFO, getting business execs to articulate their strategy or assessing the areas where you need to improve, you'll find helpful checklists, exercises and a way to look at the many components of a CIO leader's true mandate. (Harvard Business School Press, 317 pages, $35)

This was first published in March 2005