With this approach to tenure, new-generation CIOs might also be expected to have a different approach to risk than do their baby boomer peers. If you're not worried about losing your job then you might be prepared to stick your neck out a bit further.

Only a few from these generations endured the Y2K era - at least from a management view - and the accompanying need to invest millions of dollars for negligible visible benefit, nor have they spent the 90s trying to justify IT investments in terms of productivity boosts or profit hikes. They are not as battle scarred as some older CIOs.

However, each CIO generation is facing a greater level of regulatory control, which does have implications for their ability to take risks or make courageous decisions about new information systems, according to Mackay. Mackay told CIO magazine that two factors affect CIOs' ability to take courageous decisions - one was environmental and one generational.

"We are living in a regulation-happy environment. As people have become more destabilised by the rate of social, economic and ecological change, they grow more anxious and more insecure," Mackay says. "So they become more insular and more inward-focused, and also become more concerned about the quality of their own lives.

"But an inevitable manifestation is that they look for ways to get things back under control and as a result feel that one way of getting things under control is to have more regulations. Encouraged by the corporate collapses people say: 'Let's have more rules.' Business people feel that their freedoms are being curtailed because they follow rules not make judgments. They don't stick their necks out and they don't do anything reckless."

That more controlled environment applies to all generations of CIOs, Mackay says. And CIOs wrestling with compliance issues associated with CLERP 9, ASX and ASIC regulations, the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Privacy Act, to name a few, would know too well their need to conform and comply.

However, Mackay believes that the environmental constraints would have a greater effect on the baby boomer generation, which he believes would be happier than their younger peers to settle for a role as an overseer of compliant infrastructure. Generation X, he believes, is more confident about the future, they are more optimistic and less stressed than the baby boomers. "Courage will return with them," Mackay says.

Tim Jennings, research director of the UK-based Butler Group, presented a series of CIO master classes in Australia in March and agrees that the greatest challenges facing all generations of CIOs today are the need to comply with regulatory guidelines and align IT with the business strategy. He identifies three sub-groups of CIOs. First is the technology caretaker, with oversight of networks and hardware, who clears up messes and takes the blame where things go wrong. Second is the corporate guardian of information. Third is the enabler of value in the enterprise.

Jennings says that 10 years ago most CIOs fell into the first bracket, being "technologists, where now many are very smart business people". He believes the arrival of more generation X workers, both in CIO roles and throughout the enterprise, means that "IT and information is seen as a more mainstream element of business execution". At the same time the information systems that enterprises install will be used by an employee and consumer base that itself increasingly hails from generation X or Y, and is technologically savvy. They will demand ease of access, flexibility and security.

Older and Wiser

Talent2, a recruitment business formed by baby boomer duo Andrew Banks and Geoff Morgan, stated earlier this year that in recruiting staff it will be "blind to everything but competence", and the fiftysomething founders have committed to placing older talented workers without age prejudices. They do acknowledge, however, generational differences between the baby boomers and the Xers and Yers, and say part of that is to do with the rise of technology itself.

"There is no doubt that younger people don't think of technology as we do. Technology for them is like breathing, you can't appeal to people without enabling platforms, and some of the business models are going to be different," Banks says. Business models that CIOs will need to support.

"I think X and Y will be many things that the baby boomers will never be," says Morgan. "They have more choice, they have more comfort, they are more confident."

Only time will tell whether that will make them better CIOs.

Disclosure: The author is a baby boomer - but only just.

We would love to hear your response to some of the issues raised in this article. CIO magazine will be observing the effect of the generational baton change over the next few months, starting next month with a look at how CIOs should handle the expectations of younger employees. Please send your comments to beverley_head@idg.com.au.