In the midst of both, CIOs are seeking clarity.  CIOs are usually part super-hero just to handle the normal job.  By personality, they tend to be comfortable with much on their plates.  Yet, the pressures of this environment are overloading that plate a bit too much.  These factors stress the situation in three ways:  The CIOs ability to manage, the ability of IT to effectively engage with the business (at all lifecycle stages) and the ability of business to engage around both operational and technology needs. 

Now notice this situation, these are classic risk factors for overloading a decision process and producing less than great outcomes.  A quick survey of companies shows how important this is with firms heavily questioning their decisions.  This overload also damages perceptions.  For example a survey in the US of CFOs by an accounting firm revealed that on average the CFOs viewed their prospects as better than the economy overall.  Assuming a random sample, this isn't possible.  Of course CFOs aren't as superhuman as CIOs, but CIOs still must worry about kryptonite.  This all nicely sets the stage for what we hear from CIOs.

We are pretty good at project management because of what we do in serving our customers every day.   We're also good in IT project management.  However, we have a track record of poor IT investment decisions.  In looking back, sometimes the problem was scope, sometimes requirements, sometimes change in the environment, sometimes a wrong bet on technology directions.  In many cases, the business lines and functional areas didn't come to the table with the right information when we needed it.   We just keep tripping up.  We can't afford this.  What do we do?

Our clients are generally good, often very good, at many things IT.  Yet, just like a sports team, it is VERY difficult to be good at everything at once.   Especially in today's environment, poor decisions have potentially fatal consequences. The fixes generally lie outside IT, in properly engaging the right areas of the business (often with other functional areas or product lines, not just with IT).  In these situations, we apply our reviews of company and industry-specific factors, our standardized health checks and our knowledge of the best of the best practices, to get more systematic about good decision making.  With these reviews we can target reasons for less than optimal engagement and correct.   At this point, many CIOs will say "I already know the problem, the business leaders just don't have people and time to engage.  I know they are in a tough spot."   In these cases, we can also work through ways to a) help the business leaders get more immediate benefit out of engaging and b) simplify the process for engaging.  This increase in benefit and decrease in effort can quickly provide new value.

IT does very well on post implementation reviews for delivering on what was requested.  However, as a business, we are still not moving quickly enough to fix the business problems.  Another problem is that we try to save money and churn, by having smooth (also long) implementation cycles. Yet, this is also hurting us in time to market and missing changing requirements.  We need help figuring out the right balance.

This is a frequent concern from CIOs. Often CIOs also get the blame for the gaps in business line engagement in decisions and implementation.  While good project managers can catch many problems, other issues are beyond the scope of the project manager (and IT).  These rest with trade-offs made by the entire executive team in assessing timing and specific requirements due to competitors, partners and customers. This is about getting executives to make technology-aware assessment of the parties with whom they do  business and then internalizing (sharing with other functional leaders in a way that drives actions). For example, sales people are very good at looking for signs of a customer's price sensitivity.  But, that same sellers' antenna may not be tuned to hearing and acting on competitive or customer changes in technology.  While much of this is due to initial decision making, it also is tied to accountability and the overall program management cycle.  If the outcome is a surprise, there was something wrong with the oversight in the middle.  

In this tough economy, I've been asked to cut IT several times.  At first, I was the one concerned about the damage this would cause.  Recently I had a business line leader come to me and ask "what is the risk to my revenue from your making this IT cut?"

This question is also related to the question, "When do I begin building again? And, when I do, what do I do?"  The answer to these questions comes in two parts.  First, the competitive & market analysis that has the potential to drive better IT decisions.   Second, the processes for creating that analysis (just in the business alone, not to mention IT) and then getting that analysis into an enterprise-wide decision making process for IT.  An enterprise can fall down for one or both reasons.  In the language of best practices, this is called "enterprise governance of IT."  In seeking to implement those practices, organizations often find opportunities to improve overall business governance.  For this reason, ValueBridge Advisors teaches the workshop, "How IT Governance Completes Business Governance."

We tried to improve our governance, but just ran into much organizational frustration.  The feeling was it slowed us down too much.

That happens in some implementations.  Sometimes more time is needed, sometimes not.  A health check of governance evaluates how well the process is:  transparent, informed, agile and accountable.  Once this evaluation is completed, you can implement course corrections to not only get the right balance, but also to improve the perception by your peers and CEO that you have the right balance.

I've read several books on CIO leadership.  They seem like good advice. I'm just not sure what will actually help me and where I should start.

Your insight is correct.  Selecting a personal leadership or broader governance style, depends on a variety of factors.  Some of these include your own personality, personalities of other leaders around you, organization design, current organizational maturity, business pressure, business strategy and priorities.  Taking these together helps select a style that leads to greater business benefit.

Other questions include "How do I:

• Cut cost in a more risk-aware way so I don’t kill capability?
• Invest in the right capabilities to restructure and compete better as we recover?
• Guide my executive team to better use technology to seize more opportunity?
• Improve my enterprise decision-making to be more transparent, informed, accountable and agile?
• Get my business and technology leaders to talk the same language?
• Know if I am getting enough value from technology?
• Use technology to reduce risk to my operations?

• Use technology to help us in M&A?
• Make my organization more adaptable to change?
• More closely bridge business needs and technology capabilities?