Newman says CIOs who want to maintain real influence with their CEO should focus on enhancing their credibility, particularly around issues that matter more to customers than they do to the IT people. "Too often IT people want to do things that are really good for them rather than actually saying everything we do should matter to our customers.

"Before we do anything here we try and do a stakeholder analysis. We ask: Who are the key people? Who are the key influencers? What are their hot buttons? And we sell it that way. Sometimes my techos get frustrated with this approach, and it's a challenge. But I say: 'Guys, you can put the greatest invention in the world in however if people don't know what it does for them it's got no value'."

Keith Ayers, president of Integro Learning Company, an Australian-based consulting company that helps organizations create cultures designed to achieve business results, says in his experience, the CIOs who believe they are not being regarded highly enough to be included in decision making, or who fear they are being bypassed, tend to be those who see their job as being to stop some things from happening, and to control others. When CIOs believe their job is to stop the executives from making decisions without involving them, they are creating the dynamic for CEOs to seek to bypass them, he says.

Ayers sees trust as vital to the CIOs ability to influence the executive.

"If you want to influence people you have got to have their trust," Ayers says. "I think if the CIOs are being left out of decision making, then they need to look at the credibility they have with the decision makers. And if they are lacking credibility with the decision makers, rather than trying to get around them or fight them they've got to figure out what they need to do to build trust with these people."

Building trust cannot be achieved simply by being trustworthy. For trust to develop it requires congruence, openness, acceptance and reliability, Ayers says. A CIO who wants to be trusted has to be seen as being direct and honest in communication. They have to be open in terms of being receptive to other people's ideas and opinions and being willing to disclose their own opinions and feelings. "That can mean there are times when a CIO has to say: 'I may not be happy that I'm being left out of the decision making process, but I've got to be accepting about it. I've got to respect the person that I'm dealing with and treat them with respect and think I could earn respect in return. I do that by building trust. I've got to be reliable. I've got to meet my commitments and do what I say I am going to do but I've also got to do a good job'," Ayers says.

Once trust is established, it becomes much easier to lay down guidelines designed to establish the CIO's authority.

CSC Australia CIO Emily Richmond-Jones says she has consciously laboured to instil in CSC executives the idea that anyone who tries to talk to them about ideas in the IT space should be referred to her.

"I did this a couple of years ago and yes, it was because there were people trying to do things without engaging myself or my staff and then it would fall over some place along the line. It would either fall over in trying to put it into proper production support or just in trying to get the resources to do the work. So I was really able to nip a lot of stuff in the bud that way."

Rather than make formal approaches, Richmond-Jones chose to visit divisional vice presidents personally to explain her determination to help them. She explained the corporate policies and promised to support the VPs as they "go through the hoops" with corporate to get what they want done so they wouldn't head down paths that would be neither sustainable nor supportable.