When CIOs Knew the Whole Enterprise

There was a time when CIOs could walk into any room and talk EBITDA and Exchange clusters in the same breath. They knew what the company sold, how it made money, and what systems made it work. They weren’t “IT people.” They were enterprise leaders who happened to speak fluent technology.

They were the integrators before the word had a name.

1. The Lost Generalists

In the early 2000s, the CIO role demanded bilingual fluency: business and technology. The best CIOs learned both. They could diagnose a margin problem as easily as a memory leak, interpret a sales forecast, then walk downstairs and refactor a workflow.

These leaders weren’t running “IT.” They were running the connective tissue of the entire company — translating strategy into systems and systems back into strategy.

They were the last true generalists.

2. The Fragmentation Era

Then came specialization, outsourcing, and the cult of digital transformation.

IT split into titles, towers, and fiefdoms:

·      CTOs claimed the dev stack

·      Architects became domain-specific

·      PMOs ballooned into process factories

·      Vendors carved off whole competencies

The enterprise brain fractured. What used to be one leader with full-stack understanding became a constellation of roles — each fluent in their silo, none fluent in the enterprise.

We optimized for expertise and lost the integrator.

3. The Consequences

Many enterprises now run as immaculate dashboards built on top of brittle, improvised plumbing.

·      Data stitched together by accidental integrations

·      Processes no one can describe end-to-end

·      Technology decisions disconnected from margin impact

·      “Automation” masking poor architecture

The result is efficiency theater — clean KPIs hiding operational entropy. Fewer and fewer people can tell you how the business actually works, or why a small systems choice today becomes a financial drag two quarters later.

We have automation without understanding.

4. The Way Back

The future isn’t nostalgia. It’s re-integration.

The next generation of CIOs — and the ones quietly doing the real work right now — will reclaim ownership of the whole system. In many ways, they’ll function less like Chief Information Officers and more like Chief Integration Officers — the leaders who understand how everything fits together and keep it that way.

They’ll take back the whole enterprise landscape:

·      Business model

·      Process flow

·      Data lineage

·      Architecture and infrastructure

·      Team capability and cross-functional alignment

They’ll treat architecture as a living organism, not a set of diagrams. They’ll serve as the stabilizers, translators, and unifiers — the ones who bring coherence back to the enterprise.

This isn’t going backward. It’s restoring what was lost: the ability to see the whole board and move the pieces with intent.

Closing Reflection

When CIOs knew the whole enterprise, they didn’t fight for a seat at the table. They were the table — the place where business, technology, and operations converged.

It’s time to bring that back.