6 reasons so many IT orgs fail to exceed expectations today

There are myriad reasons why earning top marks matter for CIOs.

Beyond pride in doing better than expected, CIOs who exceed expectations build stronger reputations, which helps them to more easily influence others, gain more trust, and more readily get support to pursue innovation and transformation.

It also helps them land subsequent jobs, as they’ll be known for going above and beyond.

“Meeting expectations is a base requirement; everyone should strive to exceed them. There should be no debate on that,” says Yugal Joshi, a partner at global research and management consulting firm Everest Group. “That uplifts the stature, compensation, and influence of the CIO. It helps with career growth, it typically helps the overall organization perform better, and that often helps IT teams, too, by helping them get more tools and resources and upskilling so they can achieve even more.”

Yet, many IT departments aren’t earning high grades.

Multiple studies show that although they may be performing fine, they’re far from raising the bar.

Most telling could be a 2024 report from IBM. In its Technology Leaders Survey, IBM reports that only 36% of CEOs say IT is effective at providing basic technology services, down from 64% in 2013; 50% of CFOs rate the IT organization as efficient, down from 60% in 2013; and only 47% of surveyed tech leaders say as much, down from 69%.

So if the need to excel is so high, why are so many IT departments falling short?

Here are six reasons why.

1. Vague or nonexistent expectations

Both research and anecdotal evidence show that many organizations fail to establish and articulate clear, concise expectations for their CIOs and their IT departments. “There is often no formal definition of expectations,” Joshi says.

Others make the same observation.

“CIOs at large organizations know what they’ve got to hit. They know what they have to do to exceed expectations. But it’s more common that CIOs at smaller and less mature organizations have unclear objectives,” says Mark Taylor, CEO of the Society for Information Management (SIM).

Figures from the IBM study shed light on this. Its survey revealed that two-thirds of CEOs believe a strong partnership between tech executives and CFOs is critical to organizational success, yet only 35% of CFOs say they engage early in IT planning to set expectations on how technology advances enterprise strategy.

Part of the challenge here is that expectations for CIOs and their teams vary widely from one organization to the next, says Joshua Swartz, senior partner in the digital transformation practice at Kearney, a global strategy and management consulting firm. So there’s no standard expectations that CIOs can use as targets.

Swartz also blames the parties involved for failing to establish specific requirements in a formal process.

“In most cases today, it’s still a handshake discussion,” he says. “There needs to be an explicit dialogue.”

2. The wrong measures of success

Even when organizations set expectations for the IT department, they often set technical expectations that don’t measure the impact technology has on the business. Similarly, they set metrics that don’t have room for CIOs and their staff to exceed.

For example, any IT team being measured on uptime and availability (typically expected to be nearly 100%) can never really exceed expectations because “there’s no way to say it works 105% of the time,” says Shriram Natarajan, director of the business transformation team at tech research and advisory firm ISG.

Quintin McGrath, executive director of the SIM Research Institute, confirms that observation, noting that an upcoming SIM report shows that the top measure of IT performance remains availability and uptime. “And when the expectation is uptime all the time, and that’s the base-level expectation, you’re not going to exceed expectations by meeting that,” he says.

To remedy this, McGrath advises CIOs to work with their boss to set clear expectations; make sure those expectations are ones that truly speak to the business value that IT brings; and use metrics that don’t have ceilings that limit achievement potential.

“The way we measure IT can’t be uptime and availability and cost reduction. It has to be about what the CIO does that actually adds business value and measuring that in a way understood by peers in the C-suite,” McGrath adds.

Natarajan agrees. “Find metrics where there’s no limit,” he says.

3. Shifting expectations

Doing all that work around expectation setting may still not be enough, as CIOs frequently find that the expectations set for them and their teams can shift suddenly.

“Those moving targets happen all the time, especially when it comes to innovation,” says Peter Kreutter, WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management’s CIO Leadership Excellence Program faculty director and a member of the board of trustees for CIO Stiftung.

Kreutter recounts a scenario that’s likely familiar to many: A CEO reads an article about a competitor’s new tact or an emerging tech whose maker is promising transformational results “and is asking the CIO, ‘Why aren’t we doing this?’”

Taylor says many CIOs just went through something like that, noting that AI drastically changed expectations on IT over the past two years. As a result, even IT teams that were overachievers found themselves way back on the starting line — typically without the recognition they deserved.

“For almost everyone, the goalpost keeps moving, so the goalpost has become difficult to define,” Taylor adds.

In fact, expectations may get bumped up because the CIO and the IT team are doing so well.

“It’s like, you hit the goal, now let’s look further down the line, let’s see what more you can do to further the organization,” Taylor says.

A fact that makes setting clear expectations and good metrics so important, to avoid constantly shifting targets.

4. Legacy tech and other infrastructure challenges

IT departments seeking to excel can be stymied by legacy tech and other infrastructure challenges that no amount of ambition can overcome.

The 2024 MarginPLUS study from professional services firm Deloitte concluded as much, naming legacy tech as a major reason for companies falling short of their cost-reduction targets and listing it as an obstacle for future achievements.

“Fundamental challenges, such as legacy technology infrastructure and rigid operating cost structures, were at the core of failure rates,” the report reads. “These frequently limited the effectiveness of margin improvement initiatives and their impact on the bottom line. Unfortunately, this may only get worse, with uncertainty as a constant and the push for gen AI and data across enterprises.”

Some 50% of the 300-plus business leaders surveyed for the report named “challenges with technology infrastructure” as the chief internal barrier to cost control.

Taylor says many ambitious IT departments are hindered by outdated, siloed, or otherwise problematic tech stacks. He cites the case of one CIO who spent the past two years moving her organization from on-premises servers and systems to the cloud, a move that helped put her IT team and the organization itself closer to competitors — but not ahead.

Still, it was only with that move, Taylor explains, that the IT department can start to try to blow past expectations and really excel at being a business enabler.

5. Not enough resources

Research is showing that the average IT budget for 2025 is up over 2024 levels, and overall tech spending is on the upswing.

Despite those increases, many CIOs don’t have the resources required to go above and beyond baseline projects and services, Swartz says.

“For most CIOs, their IT organizations have been starved of resources. And they keep being asked to do more with less,” he says.

It’s a scenario that typically, at best, produces middling output and, at worst, results in underwhelming results.

As Swartz says: “If you’re underspending compared to others, then it should not be a surprise the organization is behind and that IT suffers.”

Moreover, he says in such scenarios CIOs usually must commit a high percentage of their limited resources to keep-the-lights-on costs, leaving little to spend on innovation and transformation that can really dazzle their colleagues and deliver big wins for their business.

There’s no easy fix for that, but having the CIO reporting to the CEO, not the CFO, can get IT more focused on driving business objectives and land it the money required to deliver, Swartz says.

CIOs can exceed expectations even if they’re not able to change reporting structure, he adds, by “finding ways to make ‘less’ [resources] work more effectively” and putting any savings to those tech-driven business projects that will deliver the most benefits.

“I would call that an exceed,” Swartz says.

6. Misplaced accountability

Confusion about accountability — that is, who is really accountable for what results — is another obstacle for CIOs and IT teams as they aim high, according to Swartz.

“The question of what keeps CIOs from exceeding expectations assumes that everyone knows what the CIO is accountable for, and I have seen, in fact, that the answer to that question varies,” he says.

Too often, CIOs are held accountable for failures not of their making. CIOs in organizations where business teams turn problems over to IT to fix, where there’s no joint ownership, often won’t have the authority needed to effectively find solutions and drive change. At the same time, the IT department is often still held accountable for the delivery when it inevitably falls short.

Worse still, Swartz says, is when the business gets credit in the cases where the project succeeds or exceeds expectations — even if IT drove the positive results.

Joshi sees similar issues. “CIOs aren’t appreciated for what they do, and many aren’t recognized until something goes wrong,” he says.

Joshi says the solution involves better alignment between IT and business teams on objectives and priorities, more collaboration, and better change management practices.

“The challenge lies on both sides: the way business behaves and runs, and the way the technology organization runs,” Joshi adds.

Swartz recommends the use of agile development principles, DevOps teams, and a product mindset — all of which, when properly implemented, require business-IT partnerships and joint accountability.

He and others say those steps go a long way in helping IT successfully work on tech-driven business initiatives that stand out and get IT the credit it deserves for doing so.