Mr Pragmatist, meet Mr Idealist

When David Taylor - head of IT directors' association Certus and silicon.com regular - asked us to discover what will be occupying senior IT professionals' thoughts over the coming 12 months we knew what he was after - the big picture, the grand designs and the bold statements.

That's the trouble with writing the story before you've got it. The story always changes.

While a number of Taylor's peers obliged with references to "ecommerce", "ebusiness" and "using IT to drive the business forward", as many again gave more prosaic responses - completing current projects, eking more money out of an unsympathetic financial controller, and filling that seat recently vacated by the C++ programmer.

Our straw poll is reflected in a decidedly more scientific study released today. According to research house Xephon, 80 per cent of senior IT professionals worldwide said the skills crisis is their biggest concern, followed by lack of budget and the inability to re-skill existing employees.

So who's got it right? The pragmatist working out how best to implement projects with the right budget and the right staff? Or the idealist providing the vision to put the IT department at the heart of business?

The answer is obvious - both and neither.

Any decent company needs the implementers but at this stage the visionary is an absolute must. Ebusiness is up for grabs. If the operations director, marketing director or chief executive gets there first, IT may shout 'thief!' but the cry will have a hollow ring to it.

Some senior IT professionals will be content simply to implement the business designs of others. But that would be a shame just when information technology has been recognised as 'the enabler for business'. If anyone knows how it works and what it can do for business it's the IT director.

To pass that up in the pursuit of an extra 5K on the monthly budget and a 19-year old programmer would be a mistake.

And to illustrate the confused state of some IT professionals consider the following from Xephon's report. Just over half of respondents said increased influence on strategic decisions was a positive change in the life of the IT pro. Just under half said increasing demands from the business was one of their biggest headaches. A contradiction, surely?

While you work that one out, the rest of the company is moving in on your patch.