In an ideal world, the only thing the CIO should have to say at that presentation is: "I think they've made a terrific business case for scaling the system, and I'm confident we can implement exactly what they've proposed in a time frame and a budget that's doable. They've done a superb job defining what they need to make this work. We look forward to making it work with them and for them."

In an ideal world, the CIO would then sit down and shut up - albeit with a smile, a wink and a nod.

In other words, IT shouldn't be a change or transformation leader; it should be a change or transformation enabler. What's the essential difference? For the purpose of this column, leaders are those individuals most responsible and accountable for setting the right objectives and ensuring the right results. Enablers, by contrast, are those individuals most responsible and accountable for providing leaders with the tools, techniques and technologies for achieving those objectives and results. Enablers make effective leadership practical and probable.

Bluntly put, CIOs shouldn't be leading CRM or supply chain precisely because, in the first and final analysis, they are not ultimately accountable for determining and assessing the metrics of success. What effective CIOs should do is push people in the organization to figure out what IT should best be enabling.

In an ideal world, the CIO's most valuable influence would be enabling leaders in other parts of the organization to achieve their enterprise potential in partnership with IT. More than a few operating executives have complained to me about CIOs who insist that this new upgrade or that new app is going to make their lives easier. They feel like they're being sold. Are they right? Or are they cynical?

What these operating executives suspect is that IT is pushing these initiatives to make its own business life easier. Bidding for buy-in inherently distorts the perception of IT as a partner. Even worse, having the CIO positioned as a "leader" often creates a sense of rivalry with the other C-level executives. Sometimes rivalry creates a healthy sense of competition. Frequently, however, operating executives feel that "visionary" CIOs view their colleagues as operational extensions for their digital ambitions.

The best way to confront this issue is to rebrand the CIO as a process enabler rather than a business leader. CIOs can do this by helping seed scalable initiatives throughout the enterprise that can be harvested as future partnership opportunities. Explicitly restructuring the IT budget and deployment process around the notion of CIO as junior partner rather than primus inter pares (first among equals) would also help.

The greatest virtue of annihilating buy-in as a business driver is that it requires executive leadership to take greater responsibility for shaping digital initiative implementations. The CIO succeeds not because he's good at persuading colleagues about the value of IT but because he's good at getting colleagues to persuade each other to explore IT's potential.

Michael Schrage is codirector of the MIT Media Lab's eMarkets Initiative. He can be reached at schrage@media.mit.edu