Does the CIO Need to be a Visionary to be Successful?

At the risk of sounding like I’m playing word games, I would argue that a CIO should be innovative more than visionary. The CEO’s role is to set the “vision” of the company: which products it will offer, in which markets, to which customers. The other C-level positions are there to execute on that vision. A CIO could be completely bereft of vision, but I would argue could be extraordinarily successful if he or she can find innovative ways to effectively implement the CEO’s vision.

On the contrary, you could have an extremely visionary CIO, who can see IT trends ten years in advance, but if they lack the innovation and execution abilities to determine how to implement them to most successfully bring the CEO’s vision to fruition, then they will not be successful.