At the Gartner Symposium / ITxpo this week, Gartner identified seven major CEO concerns and suggests that CIO find ways to address them. These concerns portray a continued lack of confidence, and anxiety over the economic climate. The seven concerns are:

1. Fading Confidence: this lack of confidence may drive many CEOs to pull back from investment and expansion bets in 2011. This could lead to limited increases in both budget and resource levels for the CIO.
2. Maintaining Internal Cash Generation: CEOs must maintain surplus cash while investing in growth. IT initiatives focused on cash flow acceleration will get plenty of attention.
3. Investing in New Cost Efficiencies: CEOs will look to develop systemic efficiencies by re-engineering rather than simple cutting. Gartner suggests that CIOs should target at least one major business process to be revolutionized or obliterated in 2011 or 2012.
4. Applying Innovation for Growth: although Gartner believes that most businesses have continued with research and development (R&D) efforts, initial launches were held back awaiting better market conditions. Gartner believes CEOs will need to accelerate the monetization of new innovation as the outlook stabilizes.
5. Engaging the Politicized Economy: according to Gartner, many business leaders are concerned that the regulatory and tax changes governments make will harm the markets of business leaders. The example given is that leading CEOs are concerned about complex taxes levied to recoup bailouts and stimulus packages and the impact these taxes have on market demand.
6. Long-Term Sustainability: Gartner points to long term concerns like human scale of developing economies like China, volatility of commodity prices for oil, precious metals and other resources, and others. They state that reducing the power consumed in IT operations remains important, but the more important and strategic issue is how IT can help the business to operate more sustainably
7. Legacy and Succession: Gartner makes an interesting observation that the pressure of the recent recession and reduction in CEO pay made the role less enjoyable. They expect to see a rise in CEO turnover over the next 18 months as boards set out on new, post-recession, strategy directions.

The notion that CEOs must be more technology savvy and CIOs need to be more business savvy came through loud and clear in this piece. You can read the full article titled Gartner Identifies Seven Major CEO Concerns CIOs Should Address.