There's an endless debate in IT circles about who a Chief Information Officer should report to. The default answer is that it mustbe the CEO, otherwise the CIO is consigned to a life in a purely operational role, rather than allowing IT to flex its strategic muscles and change the organization for the better.

To that I say balderdash.

Like any executive position, effectiveness is usually more driven by the quality of the leader than lines on an org chart. I've met CIOs who report to the CFO (an IT "death sentence" as the pundits would have you believe) who served as a dynamic duo of sorts, combining technology initiatives with deep financial rigor, that usually met the enthusiastic approval of the CEO. In many cases, neither CIO nor CFO expressed any interest in changing this relationship. I have also encountered "direct report" CIOs who were little more than IT managers "keeping the lights on" and doing little to influence corporate strategy.

Many in IT also forget that this is a two-way street. After years of serving as little more than a utility, IT may need to demonstrate its strategy chops before the CEO sees a need to have the CIO report directly to him or her. I have often jokingly lamented that life should be more like business diagrams, where a couple clicks of a mouse and moving a few arrows resolves a testy business problem, or changes years of ingrained practice. We all know that this is obviously not the case, and assuming moving a line on an org chart will make IT more effective is a pipe dream without the right leader.

When I was living in Italy, I came down with a 24 hour cold. I tend to get these when I run outside on one of those mornings where you can't seem to dress appropriately. If you dress such that you'll be comfortable several minutes into the run, you will likely be freezing during the first mile or so. Invariably I will feel fine after the run, and then begin sneezing manically after an hour or so.

My sneezing started at the office, and several of the women sitting nearby asked if they could get me something. I asked for some sort of cold medicine in pill format, what I generally take in the US where we seem to have a pill for everything. They were thoroughly confused, and asked why I would take a pill for something that was clearly in my sinuses and had nothing to do with the digestive tract.

I was about to chalk this up to another incident of things being a bit "different" in Italy, but upon further thought, it did make a fair bit of sense. Some form of inhaled medicine would clearly attack the source of the problem, eliminating the digestive tract and bloodstream as middlemen. Perhaps the Italians were onto something after all, and attacking the source of a problem certainly seemed like the medically sound approach, not to mention the metaphorically one as well.