Enabler and Conductor

At this level of the transformation, the CIO role is beginning to mature, Meehan said, focusing on information over technology, collaborating and innovating, and promoting shared purpose as part of the strategic value. This often occurs in larger enterprises and non-traditional environment, such as startups, he said. That might mean CIOs taking on a little more risk, being more entrepreneurial or acting more as a visionary for the company.

At this level, the CIO is focusing on information technology as a tool for personal productivity in the value chain. With this, workforce effectiveness becomes a key metric for measuring CIO and IT success, meaning delivering the right information to the right place when the employees need it for decision making.

However, Meehan said that this phase is to learn from, but not execute from.

"This is not your future," Meehan said. The Explorer and Pioneer is.

Explorer and Pioneer

The Explorer and Pioneer is an entrepreneurial visionary that takes risks, uses technology to build information flow, leads the IT organization for value chain innovation and becomes essential to the company's strategic team, Meehan said.

Despite bringing more business value, it isn't the time to ask for a huge budget hike. Instead, Meehan recommended creating leadership within the IT organization, innovation across the value chain and further establish the CIO role. That will bring the business into IT by choice, he said, and build a common language and link.

"It's not about you having to actually come up with money. It's actually creating an environment at the edge of IT where business people actually want to play in your sandbox, where the sandbox straddles IT and the business, and you've got the shiny new toys. You've got a business architecture plan, you've got a business process map, you've got a strategy that's business-oriented around business intelligence. These are very great concrete things that you can do to drive your future around the Explorer and Pioneer," Meehan said.