Strong influence across the company and leadership ranks takes years to build. It can vanish in the blink of an eye.
Gaining a respected seat at the C-level table is a goal all CIOs seek. Yet many IT leaders inadvertently sabotage that goal — and potentially their leadership careers — by adopting behaviors that diminish their influence and expertise.
Are you doing all you can to become a respected and effective C-level executive? Here’s a look at eight ways CIOs damage their influence without knowing it.
1. Misplaced and disconnected goals
The fastest way a CIO can lose influence is to be viewed as the “keeper of systems” rather than a driver of business outcomes, says Francisco Gaffney, CEO at Trinity SES, which develops insurance and risk management services and devices. “When conversations focus on platforms, modules, or vendors, without connecting them to growth, risk, or resilience, peers begin to view the leader as merely a provider rather than a strategic leader.”
Gaffney adds: “You can tell your influence is slipping when you’re invited late to decisions, when budgets are questioned more sharply than those of other functions, or major projects are scoped without your input. These are signals that colleagues no longer expect you to help shape the direction, only to execute it.”
The cost isn’t just personal, it’s also organizational, Gaffney observes. “Disconnected technology decisions lengthen decision loops, create silos, and leave risk and compliance issues to be discovered after the fact,” he explains. “In today’s environment, where the ability to act in real-time is a competitive advantage, that lag can be costly.”
2. Poor leadership
The CIO should always be at the front end of business decisions, advises Ian Campbell, CEO of industry analysis firm Nucleus Research. “When the CIO is widely viewed in a supportive or tactical role, the entire organization loses the strategic advantage well-deployed technology can provide,” he states. “If the CIO spends more time responding to rather than driving business direction, they’re moving into a supporting role.”
Campbell also warns against placing innovation ahead of business goals. “When a CIO becomes enamored by a promising technology, such as AI, for its capabilities rather than its potential to drive business outcomes, the CIO can easily lose the confidence of the C-level team,” he says.
3. Chronic negativity
Many CIOs act like the company lawyer — their first response to virtually every new idea is “no, it’s not possible,” says executive consulting advisor Sam Correll.
Yet as technology grows increasingly accessible, business leaders are becoming increasingly wise about emerging technologies and their capabilities. In many cases, they’re already shopping for specific solutions to meet their needs.
“When they receive a blanket ‘no’ from the CIO, they know it’s not true and start looking for ways to work around the CIO,” Correll notes. “They’ll then often go to other executives and pitch the solution.” The CIO is then regarded as a barrier rather than a collaborator and loses influence and power among fellow C-suite leaders.
4. Breaking trust
The fastest way a CIO can undermine enterprise influence is by breaking trust during crisis situations, says leadership consultant Bill Berman. “CIOs who deflect responsibility, or throw their teams under the bus, can lose credibility permanently,” he warns.
The danger signs are typically subtle yet telling. “Senior leaders start excluding the CIO from succession planning discussions and strategic initiatives outside of technology,” Berman says. “Also, when a CIO loses enterprise influence, they can no longer protect their technology investments or their people during budget cuts.”
Trust restoration, Berman says, can be gradually achieved by routinely demonstrating that you’ll shield others when things go wrong while giving credit when they go right.
5. Losing opportunities and responsibilities
Many CIOs stand idly by as they see their domains gradually carved away, observes Sushant Tripathi, vice president and North America lead for digital and technology transformation at Tata Consultancy Services. “For instance, when enterprises realized that they needed someone focused specifically on product innovation and emerging technologies, they created a parallel CTO role and CIOs got stuck managing the IT infrastructure and applications”
Meanwhile, with big data’s growing importance, chief data officers began owning the data strategy and analytics portfolio. Additionally, many enterprises now have a chief digital officer, an individual focused on customer-facing digital experiences and new business models.
“Most recently, we’re seeing chief AI officers emerge as organizations recognize that AI strategy requires dedicated leadership,” Tripathi says. “All of these recently created roles are positioned as growth engines, while the CIO role starts getting relegated to managing the enterprise’s internal IT.”
Unless the CIO can provide unified leadership across all technology roles, they risk eventually ending up being an inward-facing leader, focused on internal IT while everyone else drives growth and innovation, Tripathi warns.
6. Failing to translate initiatives into business value
Misalignment transforms the CIO from a strategic partner into a cost-center manager, relegating their role to operational maintenance rather than innovation, says Nic Adams, co-founder and CEO of 0rcus, a cyberthreat security firm. “This behavior is compounded by a lack of fluent communication with the C-suite and board, which then prevents the CIO from articulating technology’s role in driving growth, competitive advantage, and shareholder value.”
Being excluded from high-level strategic discussions, as well as a decline in funding for long-term IT projects in favor of ad-hoc departmental requests, are signs that C-level partners are losing confidence in the CIO, Adams says. Other signals are a lack of buy-in from business unit leaders on technology initiatives, as well as an increase in shadow IT activity with departments creating their own technology solutions.
“These symptoms collectively indicate a fractured relationship with executive peers and a loss of trust in the IT organization’s ability to deliver value,” he says.
A CIO can restore influence by proactively aligning the IT roadmap with the organization’s core business objectives and by quantifying the financial impact of every technology investment. “This requires embedding IT staff within business units to better understand their needs and to serve as a strategic partner, not just a service provider,” Adams says. “Rebuilding influence also requires shifting from a reactive, operational focus to a proactive, value-creation mindset, all while transparently communicating progress and return on investment to key stakeholders.”
7. Viewing leadership as a service
A leading way for a CIO to undermine their influence is to become service-oriented, says Chuck Reynolds, managing director at global strategy consulting firm L.E.K. Consulting. “If a CIO’s IT strategy is following an ITSM model, focusing on designing, delivering, managing, and improving IT services, they’ve already lost,” he states. “They’re going to undermine their influence by not being a strategic partner.”
Among the traps are focusing on metrics such as IT ticket resolutions and app uptime or applications deployed on time. “All of that will put the CIO into a box where they’re a service and cost center only, versus being a strategic enabler driving organizational growth,” Reynolds says.
8. Working in isolation
CIOs lose influence when technology strategy is developed in isolation from other IT functions or broader business priorities, says Dan Auerbach, a C-suite executive coach. “Without integration, decision-making slows, progress fragments, and the value of technology investments is never fully realized.”
A CIO who doesn’t understand the company’s value chain, competitive landscape, and customer journey is flying blind, Auerbach warns. “Without commercial fluency, it’s impossible to link technology investment to the levers that actually move the business.”
“Position yourself as a commercial strategist first, a technologist second,” Auerbach recommends. “Build strong C-suite relationships, deepen your market understanding and tie every technology discussion directly to revenue, efficiency, risk, or customer value.”
