Creating new roles, redefining existing ones and identifying skills gaps. CIOs explain how they keep ahead of the curve.

CSC has shared insights into the deployment of its social networking platform, with CIO Ben Patey saying C3 is still engaging some 55,000 employees a year after its deployment.

They were once ubiquitous in the workplace, as much a symbol of executive status as the gold standard in enterprise mobile communications. Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry devices held all the corporate aces and with unrivalled high-end security features, their appeal to and grip on the enterprise sector seemed impregnable.

It’s the bête noire of C-level managers the world over — too often, it’s easy to be pulled into the morass of day-to-day issues at the expense of strategy. If the role is predominantly operational, fair enough, but being forced into operations when you were hired to be strategic (or vice versa) is frustrating for everybody involved. So how do CIOs balance operations and strategy? Aligning the departmental business plan with the organisation’s strategic plan is an obvious starting point. Beyond that, however, CIOs have developed their own methods of staying strategic.

It could be any meeting room, anywhere, with one major difference: The room, within Sheraton on the Park hotel in Sydney, is a gateway to the world. At the push of a button, we are chatting to colleagues in Toronto, Canada, speaking to each other as if we were seated across the table. We see the nuances of facial expressions, hand gestures and presentations, full-size, clear and uninterrupted.