A CIO's Journey to Proactive IT

Al Kuebler was CIO for AT&T Universal Card, Los Angeles County, Alcatel and McGraw-Hill and director of process engineering at Citicorp. His "Journey to Proactive IT" on IT World Canada begins: "You've probably heard... that in order to best serve the business in the way it needs, the IT function must have a 'client relationship management culture,' not a technology culture. You might even accept the idea that IT's very existence may depend on it moving from being an isolated technology management function to being a powerful and respected ally to the business. Nonetheless, a good many of you at this moment could be thinking, 'Right. That all sounds good in theory, but it has zero application to my shop here in the real world.' ..."

His journey to achieve this goal and reach a stage of "continuous improvement"  is worth a quick read.