Unlike poker, selecting the right people for your team is no game. It does resemble poker, however, in that the stakes are very high. Choose the wrong person, and it can cost you real money. It can also adversely affect the way you’re perceived as a leader.

I was talking to executive recruiter Eric Sigurdson, who heads Russell Reynolds’s information officers practice. In the pursuit of being a key business partner to the CEO, some CIOs distance themselves too much from IT, he says. “They need to learn how to manage and mentor a team.” Hiring the right team is implicit here.