CIOs: Here’s What Your CEO Doesn’t Want To Hear From You

Advice for CIOs on strengthening their bond with their CEOs, courtesy of some CEOs.

(MES Fall 2025, left to right: Adam Dennison, VP, Midsize Enterprise Services, The Channel Company; Rudy Garza, president and CEO, CPS Energy; Robert Puente, president and CEO, San Antonio Water System; and Ron Thalacker, CEO, Cascade Environmental)

With technology now foundational to achieving business objectives, CIOs and other IT executives have reached a level of prominence on the corporate ladder.

CIOs often navigate the path from leading IT operations to becoming a full-fledged C-suite leader. Part of that journey should be developing a closer relationship with the organization’s CEO and having a full grasp on the company’s goals.

It’s not always an easy journey to make, however. Three CEOs offered their experience and advice on how they work with their own CIOs and what makes for a successful relationship (and what doesn’t).

MES’ Midsize Enterprise Summit Fall 2025 in San Antonio, Texas, featured a keynote session, “A View from the Top - What CEOs Expect from IT in Business Strategy and Growth,” with three midmarket CEOs: Rudy Garza, president and CEO, CPS Energy; Robert Puente, president and CEO, San Antonio Water System; and Ron Thalacker, CEO, Cascade Environmental. The session was moderated by Adam Dennison, VP, Midsize Enterprise Services, The Channel Company, parent company of MES Computing.

Here’s a round-up of what they said:

Approaching CEOs With Budget Requests

Dennison asked the CEOs how a CIO should best approach them to ask for budget for a new solution, especially during times that the company’s budget may already be set.

For starters, come up with a couple of solutions and be flexible.

“We live on numbers, month to month ... things change during the year, and stuff comes up, but [our CIO] always brings a couple solutions,” said Thalacker, who began his career at Cascade – a $280 million environmental drilling and remediation company – in 1985 as a driller’s helper.

“Make your case like everybody else has to during the budget process,” said Garza, CEO of CPS Energy, the largest municipally owned electric and gas utility in the country.

Also, Puente, the CEO of San Antonio Water System, said he doesn’t want to hear anything to do with “keeping up with the Joneses” when it comes to budget requests.

“They’re doing it, so we should do it also,” a CIO may say about a competitor, but that is not a compelling argument for more funds, Puente said. Instead, think about what is most beneficial to the organization.

“[We] want to be innovative,” Puente said. “But where are you in that innovation line of what we need to do? It’s much easier for me to support our IT Department when they have an innovation that ... the field people, the operations people, can use and need,” he added.

What Makes A Successful CIO, According To CEOs

As to what makes for a successful CIO, the CEOs were all in agreement that the best CIOs they have worked with were ones who know the business.

“[Our CIO] is very successful because he knows about chlorination in our system. He knows about our, what we call, the H2O center where we have the desalination process ... he knows about the production facilities and how they communicate back with headquarters, so get to know your business. Get to know how it actually functions, not just in the IT world, but how your company functions,” Garza said.

Garza also praised his CIO for understanding his organization’s strategy.

“[Our CIO] does a really good job of that. We’ve got, really, the equivalent of Windows 2000, that is really holding us back as an organization right now ... [a] transformation that we were going to have to go undergo. It took us two rate increases to get the dollars that we needed to prepare for it, and it’s taken us, I don’t know, three years of planning to get ready to actually do the implementation, which we’re getting closer to,” he said.

Garza said that his CIO has been an integral part of the business’ transformation process.

“The thing I love about [our CIO] is I can give him critical feedback. I mean, because right now, we’re having to hold our existing systems together with tie wraps and duct tape and glue. He does a really good job of getting my feedback, getting feedback from his peers ... he’s accountable, he’s visionary, and that’s exactly what we need out of our CIO,” Garza said.

Communication is key, the CEOs said. They want to know when things go sideways.

“I rely on my CIO heavily if he’s having issues to call me and let me know,” Thalacker said.

Above all, the CEOs said that CIOs and IT leaders should know how much they as CEOs need them.

“I’m not an IT guy,” Thalacker said. “I give [my CIO] lots of challenges ... I lean on him for everything ... he comes with a plan, but he always has two or three backups in case we don’t like that or can’t afford it or whatever. So, you know, from my perspective, I need him to handle everything and explain it to me in very simple terms.”