Technical Savvy To develop pattern recognition skills, you have to remain technically competent. For the past few decades, companies have reversed their thinking about the type of CIO they want to hire. Recruiters have gone from looking for strong technical skills with limited business acumen to seeking strong business skills with limited technical acumen.

The trade-off that's assumed in these trends is problematic and unnecessary. In both business and technology, there are long-range patterns that must be recognized, assimilated and articulated. But at the same time, significant details must be understood and managed.

For example, when considering utility computing, it is just as important to know that it's an evolving technology as it is to understand the business need for surge capacity. This demand is being created by customers and employees doing more self-service and suppliers being integrated into networks and processes. These multiple players create capacity peaks and unpredictability. The changes in demand make it mandatory that you are "always on" and have backup capacity.

Being technically savvy doesn't mean that you have to be the best technician in your organization. For most CIOs, that would be impossible, in fact. What you need is an understanding of the basics - to know what's real and what's marketing, what's hard and what's easy, and what's here now and what's not. You also have to know enough to know who (on your staff or in the marketplace) knows the topics versus who knows the words and slogans.

Street Smarts The final competency required for IT leaders to get the lay of the land is street smarts - that is, understanding how things really work, not just how they look on an org chart. This isn't politics - that implies manipulation. Street smarts is pattern recognition about people and organizations. You have to understand how decisions get made: who the influencers, the experts and the "blockers" are; and who will tell you what you want to hear versus what you need to know.

Make no mistake: You can have the widest aperture vision with great business and technical insights, but if you fail to understand the organization as a whole, you will never sell or implement your agenda. Consider, for example, how you interact with the procurement office. It is charged with getting low-cost, leveraged buying. That mandate can be a great ally or a formidable enemy to your agenda. For example, you might be focused on the total cost of ownership (TCO) of IT assets, which implies a program of simplification and quality management. The procurement office will naturally focus on the per-unit cost of a purchasing transaction. Your ability to educate procurement about TCO is critical to your overall success. Having the group work with you rather than against you is what I mean by street smart. You can rely on the formal power of your position from time to time, but it's much more effective to use your influencing skills.

If you can develop all three of these competencies, you're on your way toward setting the corporate IT agenda. Execution will then become key. My next columns will address the high-level IT leadership skills of building a great team and having an impact.

Charlie Feld is the former CIO for Frito-Lay, Delta Air Lines and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. He is CEO of the Feld Group, a CIO consultancy, which was acquired by EDS in January. He can be reached at charlie.feld@feldgroup.com