Enjoy your holidays with family and friends, but do take a short break to read these two excellent and highly relevant articles from the current McKinsey Quarterly. They may offer some inspiration for the new year.

The first is an interview with Shelley Leibowitz, former CIO at giant financial firms JP Morgan and Greenwich Capital [now part of Royal Bank of Scotland], who is now CIO at the World Bank.

She offers a thoughtful perspective about IT transformation, IT value, public versus private-sector responsibilities, and what she calls Information Management Technology—delivering IT throughout the organization.

There’s also a video capturing her thoughts about leading a truly global organization and getting in turn with the bank’s passion and mission.

The second provocative article, Reshaping IT Management for Turbulent Times, puts forth a new management model for IT that combines “factory-style productivity to keep costs down with a more nimble, innovation-focused approach to adapt to rapid change.” The approach is more than “relabeling functions,” the article contends. It challenges CIOs to adopt new leadership, governance and organizational changes to offer more effective IT services going forward.