The Highest Complexity Factor: Your Job

It may seem as if the complexity burden has become too great to bear. But CIOs have been there before, says Accenture's Modruson, and not only have they survived, they've thrived: "In the 1980s, everyone stitched together networks from multiple technologies. Things have gotten better as technology complexities have collapsed."

For example, CIOs used to worry about what network technology to choose; now it's all IP-based and no longer something on which CIOs need to focus. Similarly, server technologies have collapsed into a few well-known quantities that CIOs can rely on. "These are standard platforms I don't have to worry about," says Special Olympics' Mendes. "I can target business value instead."

"A decade ago, we moved to new technologies quickly because the old ones weren't so good. But now we can be more measured because what is now the old stuff does work," Modruson says.

What's changed is that the complexity has migrated. As parts of the IT environment became standardized, such as networks, other issues replaced it, such as securing porous enterprise boundaries and managing massive data sets in a world where budgeting for downtime for maintenance and backup is simply not acceptable to the business. And emerging process-management approaches such as service-oriented architecture that promise to reduce the complexity of application integration and development introduce complexities elsewhere, such as in change management and testing, notes TD Banknorth's Petrey.

A more fundamental shift has been away from a focus on infrastructure technologies to technologies that deliver business processes. The IT infrastructure continues to pose its own complexity challenges, but it's now just table stakes -- part of the CIO job -- and why business needs CIOs who are both business- and process-oriented.

CIOs must play at several levels simultaneously, addressing both business and IT needs, keeping the systems running while ensuring that their technology strategy supports business operations, promotes innovation and provides competitive advantage in a changing environment, says Michael Farber, a vice president at consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton. "It's a 3-D chess board," he notes.

At most companies, "the CIO ends up at the tail end of things," stuck with complexities caused by others, says Dave Zink, client executive at consultancy EquaTerra and former CIO of CBS. "But when companies have elevated the CIO to the right level, they are less likely to have complexity."

Assuming they have a CIO who can play a mean game of 3-D chess.