LinkedIn Answers: What 3 words best describe the role of CIO?

You can never go wrong by starting off the week with LinkedIn Answers' question of the week. Hopefully, with each passing question that we highlight, you get to stumble upon yet another category that you did not realize existed within Answers' extensive ecosystem.

This week, we focus on a category that's top of mind for most LinkedIn users - Career Management. Yes, we even have an entire category of LinkedIn Answers dedicated to that space. While you could spend hours reading through the numerous well thought out answers, here's a quick overview of a recent question that grabbed my attention.

Michael Friedenberg, CEO and President of CXO Media asks what 3 words best describe the role of CIO?

While Michael found many of the answers satisfactory, he picked the following answer from Andre Mendes, Chief Information Officer at Special Olympics International, who describes some of the qualities of a CIO, as he sees it:

Courageous, innovative, reliable

Courageous because often CIOs will have to be the change agents that their CEOs/COOs want them to be while not benefiting from their support when the legacy machine rears it ugly head.

Innovative, because as technology takes over almost every aspect of our lifes, innovation is a prerequisite to survival and commercial success.

Reliable, because no system regardless of its excellence is worth its salt unless it can be counted on to be available 24/7.

It is an extremely rewarding yet unbelievable ingrate position.

Check out the 16 other answers that Michael identified as "Good Answers" and feel free to ask your professional network a question here.