"Leadership is crucial as large organizations need to go through more change iterations more often; the only road to success lies in constant driving success. That isn't done by IT knowledge and understanding, it is done through studying behavioural psychology and human behaviour - a skill set today's Internet and new generation of CIOs are almost void of."

"The resolution to this is going to have to be that today's leaders - not only CIOs - need to dig deep and take on the challenge of coaching, mentoring and helping the next generation of potential CIOs up the curve, setting up the next generation in ways we were never helped. That is the trait of a good leader," Hjaltman says.

"My thoughts are: Change is the only constant; anyone, and the CIO in particular to survive, need to live, breath and exude change. Through leadership you shall be able to surf the change wave and be the master of the wave."

The new crop of CIOs may be more technically adept than their predecessors, agrees Tom Voccola, CEO at Los Angeles-based CEO2, but both they and younger CEOs also seem less adept at the psychology of technology as well. Current business best practices continue to focus on the elimination of human interaction through deployment of technology. "In my view, we may have already reached the point of diminishing return," Voccola says. "Technology can only go as far as people - that is, employees and customers - are willing to engage with it.

"At least one international bank I know of recognizes that the next big breakthrough in productivity and corporate performance rests with the very people involved on the CIO's teams and their customers. Innovation can only come from people, not technology.

"In my view, there is both a desire and an opportunity to move from a heavy dependence on one-way 'enterprise visibility' systems based on fear and serving the 'risk management' side of the business, towards more balanced 'enterprise transparency' systems that encourage greater employee understanding and engagement in organizational strategy. In other words, in a full duplex system, more people at more levels within the company would be tied in to what's really going on and be able to respond to rather than simply react to market dynamics," Voccola says.

Of course the CEO being IT-literate is no different from the CEO being finance-literate. Finance has been a critical part of any business forever, but we still see many examples of CEOs who are not up to par in finance, Eric Trevore says.

In the same respect, Trevore, who is the IS manager with Los Angeles-based Circa Information Technologies, expects the CIO to live on and become more valuable to some organizations and less valuable to others, depending on the vision and strategy. Organizations who believe that IT is a mission-critical function will demand top-notch CIOs who make mission-critical decisions daily. Those organizations that do not will simple outsource the maintenance functions of IT and not worry about how IT can add value.

"This is going on today," Trevore says. "The only thing that an IT-literate CEO will bring is a much better understanding of how IT adds that mission-critical value to their organization. The IT-literate CEO may not know how to merge complex systems after an M&A or get a company technically ready for an IPO, but they will absolutely know that they must hire a CIO who can do these things."

Opportunity Rather Than Threat

Rather than as a threat to the CIO or IT organization, having a tech savvy CEO should be seen as the opportunity to have an advocate in the boardroom, says Joseph Rourke, director of development InfoEd International. "Any CIO who is threatened by the pushback that may come from an IT-literate CEO should be questioning the initiatives they are bringing to their CEO," he says.

And Michael Ackerman, president and CEO of Commsworld, agrees this is one change most CIOs should welcome.

After Gartner some time ago began chiding CIOs for spending insufficient time educating their peers in the C-suite, many CIOs were forced to go back to reporting to CFOs instead of CEOs, resulting in a diminution of the power and influence of the IT community within organizations. That's a trend Ackerman expects to reverse as a new generation of IT-literate and savvy CEOs emerge eager to be part of the decision-making process and have direct input into how their IT dollars are spent. Since most companies now play in the global marketplace and IT capabilities are becoming critical to organizations' business strategy, this will enhance an existing trend.

"As a result IT organizations need to become more then pure play technologist," Ackerman says. "Gone are the days when a CIO can say: This is the best technology solution for the organization.

"The IT organization of the future at the management tier is going to need to explain their justification in terms of IT direction and impact on business capabilities. So the CIO might say something like this instead: This is the best solution as it meets the business capabilities required and of the available options is the cleanest/easiest/insert adjective here technological solution available."

This in some ways ties into the Gartner concept of IT becoming business technology (BT) and the CIO becoming an IT generalist, Ackerman says. IT will evolve over the coming years as the C-suite is filled with those that not only understand IT but could not survive in their day-to-day lives without it, and as a result demand more from the IT organization within their own companies.

"Organizations that are looking to get ahead of the curve need to assess the individuals in the C-suite and determine what their level of IT savvy is," Ackerman says. "If it is found that their executives are in fact savvy IT users, then it would be in their best interest to start working with them and explaining things in a manner that is relevant to their audience instead of trying to wow them with techno-speak. Moreover, CIOs will need to actively listen to what their peers are telling them instead of dismissing the CFO's comments as nothing more than those of a bean counter trying to save a penny. After all, you never know when you will find out that the CFO is a closet geek with a sophisticated network in her home who never mentions it in the office for fear it will diminish them in the eyes of their peers."