"I did the bits and bytes," Jensen said at Gartner's outsourcing conference here last week. He wrote assembly code, programmed in other languages and managed technical units at Peoria, Ill.-based Caterpillar. Then, in his mid-40s, Jensen decided he wanted to take advantage of other opportunities available at the company and earned an MBA.

For those interested in following a similar career path, Jensen's top piece of advice is to learn some business skills. "That's absolutely most important," the 34-year IT veteran said. "Beyond that, it's communication skills [and] interpersonal skills."

Mack Murrell, senior director of enterprise IT operations and services at The Dow Chemical Co., also moved from a technical background to a high-level management post. Murrell, who is part of a three-person IT leadership team at Dow, was trained as an electrical engineer. But, he said, "I didn't want to be a senior electrical engineer at a chemical company."

He was moved into IT management more than a decade ago after he suggested a more standardized approach for some of Dow's IT operations. Like Jensen, he also got an MBA degree along the way.

Midland, Mich.-based Dow has outsourced most of its IT operations to IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Accenture Ltd., but it still has a 600-worker IT staff. Employees who are being groomed for IT leadership positions need to understand the company's business requirements and have "a strong sense of vision" as well as the ability to "blossom where [they] are planted," Murrell said. "We direct their path so they get specific experiences."