Today’s workforce is plugged into mobile devices and social media. For CIOs, that could be the best thing yet.

Here come the smartphones. Not to mention the tablets, the Facebook invitations and the Twitter tweets.

And there goes the CIO’s traditional role as controller of IT.

Instead, CIOs must empower end users to connect with enterprise data and applications from anywhere, using nearly any device.

I think this new role is the one CIOs were born to play.  At last, all your familiar goals — aligning IT with the business, enabling the business, creating competitive advantage with IT, etc. — have a real chance of coming to fruition. CIOs need to learn how to not only relinquish some control, but also seize the new opportunities presented by the rise of what we’re calling the Me Enterprise.

That’s also the headline of our lead feature in this, the 14th issue of Smart Enterprise magazine. The article explores how IT leaders at Hay Group, JetBlue Airways and elsewhere are learning to not only cope with the Me Enterprise, but also thrive.

As Ryan McCune, Director of Global Solutions at business technology services provider Avanade, puts it, “This is an area where CIOs can move from simply doing the plumbing to playing a high-value role for the business.”

Among the successes is Kaiser Permanente, a healthcare provider that runs 35 hospitals caring for 8.7 million people. As the Case Study “Taming the Consumerization of IT” shows, Kaiser Permanente CIO Phil Fasano sees the Me Enterprise as a new, bold opportunity.

Leading the Me Enterprise requires new management skills and techniques, as pointed out by George Fischer, Executive VP of  Worldwide Sales & Operations at CA Technologies, in his One True Thing column. CIOs, he says, must transform themselves into a new breed of Chief Information Orchestrators who can manage hybrid, federated environments while still delivering value to the business.

How about you? Are you changing roles in the Me Enterprise? As always, I welcome your feedback.