Sometimes you have to trust your gut. There are even situations when following your instincts is the best approach. Rarely, however, is strategic decision making by an executive one of those times. In an interview in the current McKinsey Quarterly, two great scholars whose studies usually represent opposing views, agree that leaders' decisions based on intuition are usually not the wisest. Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 for his work in prospect theory, which deals with the counterintuitive choices make under uncertainty. Gary Klein, a senior scientist at MacroCognition, studies intuition as a powerful factor in good decision making in high-pressure situations. Yet they agree that when in comes to executives in organizational decision making, intuition is overvalued.

Here are some surprising (and not in a good way) things I learned from the current issue of the Cutter IT Journal, in the article "The Right Way to Recruit CIOs" by Robert Gariano, an executive-search veteran and founder of search firm Robert Gariano Associates:

In every piece I write here I try to incorporate the theme of thinking about the business outside IT. A huge part of being more connected to and recognized by the rest of the organization is the words IT managers use. The best CIOs are bilingual. They speak both technology and business, flawlessly, with no accent.

These days when we talk about effective leadership it's fashionable to emphasize themes of happiness. How often do we hear that happy employees are more productive, or that harmonious teams perform better. These ideas aren't wrong, but without clarification they risk oversimplification. "Happy" doesn't mean cheerful and content, and high-performing teams are "harmonious" in only the broadest sense of the word.

There is something ironic about CIOs' long and continuing struggle for greater recognition and respect as a member of the C team. After all, executives today are at the mercy of information: utterly dependent on data to run their companies, yet inundated by more of it than they can productively manage without technology. IT chiefs, then, should be the ones holding all the cards.

When I began my conversation with Jim Anderson, founder of Blue Elephant Consulting who has worked with CIOs for over 20 years, I had just a single question: What is the deal with CIOs?