Your first step in running IT like a business is to stop thinking of IT investments as OPM (other people's money) and treat it as if it were your own.

The challenge of disparate systems, says Bunton, extends past technology and process. Disparate systems have a direct impact on the way employees think about their jobs. "If your legacy systems require users to break down processes into little pieces, you wind up with people who cannot think holistically about their problems," she says.

The most important thing we are doing here is collapsing the silos," says Eash Sundaram, EVP of innovation and CIO of JetBlue. "When we think about a program, we don't think about IT and finance and commercial operations. We think about how the program improves our customer or employee experience.

Digital transformation is more than painting a shiny picture of the future: digital transformation means tying the back end to the front end, which CIOs have done over and over again.

Someone once told me that, when your operations are not good, you should not talk strategy," says Iyer. "Fair enough. But the opposite is also true. If operations are good, then you must talk strategy.

Because IT people can see so much, it is their responsibility to influence investment priorities, not just execute on priorities set by internal business partners.

First, you need to understand the attitude that the current executive committee has toward IT," says Richter. "Do they believe that IT is a back-office function and a necessary evil? If the executive committee does not believe in the strategic importance of IT, and you don't have the credibility to change their perspective, your chances of success are very slim. In that case, you may want to look for other professional opportunities elsewhere.

In my previous book, The CIO Paradox, I called this phenomenon the "accountability vs. ownership" paradox, where CIOs are responsible for the outcomes of technology implementations but do not have the power to change the business process.

But here's the rub: looking across silos for opportunities to improve capabilities is one thing; creating a vision for how to seize those opportunities as another. Communicating that vision effectively is harder still. But the real work, the deepest work, is in the deciding to stick your neck out in the first place.

If you want to have an impact in your company, have a point of view that sometimes challenges the status quo but do the work required to make the point of view an informed one.