The latest IBM CEO study presents a look at how CEOs guide their businesses in today’s global market. The fifth edition of this study summarized results from more than 1,700 CEOs from 64 countries and 18 industries, and found that the top organizational attributes to draw out the best from their teams were:

                                 Ethics and values (65%)
                                 Collaborative environment (63%)
                                 Purpose and mission (58 %)     

CEOs felt that there are two critical leadership traits to lead their enterprises effectively:

• Inspirational leadership – engage, motivate and guide employees with values and shared purpose rather than tight control;
• Leadership teaming across the C-Suite – enhance collaboration and build coalition internally and externally.

Boards and executive management need to provide the leadership, organizational structures and processes that ensure effective collaboration.

Ownership of IT Governance is often attributed to an individual, who in many cases is the Chief Information Officer, or the Chief Financial Officer. There are situations where companies have a committee that assumes responsibility of IT Governance. Although there is no one right answer to the question of who should be responsible, managers and executives from both IT and business departments should contribute to the IT Governance strategy.

Like most other governance activities, IT Governance should extensively engage both board and executive management in a collaborative manner. Due to complexity, IT governance must rely heavily on other departments in the enterprise to provide the information needed in the decision-making and evaluation processes. These departments need to apply the same IT Governance principles of setting direction, while providing and evaluating performance. Best practices in IT Governance need to be applied throughout the enterprise and especially between IT and business units.

To enable this:

• Board members should take an active role in IT Governance;
• CEOs should provide organizational structures to create bridges between IT and the business;
• CIOs must become business-oriented;
• All executives should become involved in IT guidance.

The owner of IT governance should have a strategic view of the entire company. No matter who takes ownership, the collaboration with senior executives across the enterprise is critical for effective IT Governance.