In today's fast-paced Information Technology (IT) field, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are being asked to do more than ever. No longer is it enough to just make sure that the company's various servers and email systems are up and operating correctly, now CIOs have to play a role in setting the company's overall strategic direction.

It's all too easy for a CIO to get caught up in theday-to-day activities being of a modern IT executive and forget to do the most important job of all – manage their career. Recent studies have shown that the average tenure of a CIO is only four years!

If you want your career at your current company to be longer than that, then you need to start to take an active role in managing your career. It's not all about the technology (although that is important), rathermanaging your career is about managing relationships.

In order for a CIO to be successful, he or she needs to find the time to build the relationships both inside and outside of the company that are going to be needed in order allow their career to continue to progress.

One very important point that is all too easy to overlook is the fact that the skills that may have landed you the CIO job are not the skills that will be need to keep you in this job. What you're going to have to do is to develop an entirely new set of skills that allow the rest of the company to see just how valuable you are to the success of the firm.

The purpose of this book is to provide you with real-world examples of what a CIO has to do in order to successfully manage his or her career. There is no one answer to this question. Rather it requires a different way of thinking. You actually need to take the time to fully understand what the other people in the company want you to accomplish and then you're going to need to find ways show everyone just how valuable you are.

It is my hope that after having read this book you will be aware of the additional job that you've taken on as CIO – managing your career. Do this correctly and your CIO career will last a long time!

Good luck!