Question: After three years in my current CIO position, I still find myself out of the loop when it comes to strategic business decisions. What can I do about this?

Our advice: If your input and opinions aren't being sought at a strategic level, chances are you're not spending enough time with senior business executives. Make a systematic effort to get out of your office and begin to engage the business through informal exchange, at scheduled meetings, and over lunch.

There are five key areas to building and maintaining a strong relationship with the business:

1. Assessment
2. Vision development
3. Planning
4. Execution
5. Measurement

The companies leading the way out of the recent recession take a disciplined approach to each of these areas.

1. Assessment
The first step in repositioning yourself and your organization is to demonstrate the value you have to add, not just as a manager and a techie, but as a strategic partner. Begin by taking inventory and assessing the circumstances that have led to your devalued position. Create a list of strengths and improvement areas. Conduct a high-level analysis by business unit and assess the value delivered by your department--the technologies, processes, and relationships already in place.

Next, assess your company's utilization of technology--especially where you are in your technology's life cycle--and take a close look at the competition and the current level of executive support you do have.

Remember, you'll be viewed as valuable when your plan and leadership are seen as supporting and promoting the CEO's and CFO's vision for the company.

One important initiative would be to assist or drive the process of defining and documenting the business-technology vision. World-class organizations leverage technology, focus on core strengths, outsource non-value-add areas, and expect their IT leaders to demonstrate leadership skills, initiating and building strong relationships with the business.

2. Vision And Alignment
Engage the business and co-develop a technology-enabled business vision. Be warned: This can take months, be painful, and require strong leadership and change management across the organization, including business process, behaviors, and beliefs. Technology can and will be a competitive differentiator, if applied smartly. Your job is to be part superman, part change agent, and part spiritual leader.

Companies that really "get it" set up a technology executive council to prioritize and report on initiatives and projects. This council provides you and your colleagues with greater visibility and a forum to discuss the business and technology linkage, alignment, and other ongoing issues. Then cascade this same model down to the business-unit level and throughout the organization. Success will vary. Don't be discouraged by incremental progress and some setbacks.

We recommend that IT executives create a vision that applies to three levels: the external market, across the enterprise, and within the IT organization.

To co-develop your vision, help your partners focus on the market and on the competitive landscape. Ask where your company can move beyond the competition through a new technology, or through utilizing an existing application. Present various scenarios of how the business might use a new technology to its advantage. Once a vision is agreed on, plan how it will be rolled out.

Challenge your own department to initiate an internal vision and planning process to support the business and build a stronger IT organization. This process can cascade to the individual level, where each employee develops a vision and plan to support the business and assess his or her own performance, complete with developmental objectives.

3. Planning
Planning well will help you and your line managers be prepared when engaging the business. Often the business doesn't take IT seriously as a "valued partner" for many reasons (both correct and incorrect). At every meeting, ask yourself, "What are my client's needs, and what is keeping him up at night?" Your goal is to become a trusted business adviser. This can happen only after you've demonstrated your competence as a business partner and have delivered consistently over time.

4. Execution
Execution is where your co-developed vision is worked through. During it, value is created and relationships tested. Project time lines and budgets can only be met if a continuous feedback and review process is in place--and this is dependent on continuing rapport and ongoing communications.

Urge your people to create a relationship-development plan, with specific objectives that focus on building open and direct channels of communication with the business. IT people at all levels tend to sell short the importance of this process, and it's one of the main reasons projects fail.

5. Measurement
Measuring and reporting your success are the final pillars of your plan, for this is how you make known your department's value. Measurements need to be both technical and in business terms, so your peers understand your achievements and they're appreciated. Just as you cascaded the vision and planning process downward, now you want data to flow up from the project to the business level and eventually into a form that you can take to the technology executive council. If you don't have the benefit of this forum, it's still imperative that you publish your successes so they're known by the organization, the businesses, and the powers-that-be. How you do this is up to you. Yet such creative workarounds shouldn't be limited to the development of your information architecture.

Drive Business Value And Advance Your Career
To recap: Get out of your office and engage the business in both a formal and informal way. Institute an assessment process; solicit buy-in, sponsorship, and support across the organization; co-develop objectives; execute your strategy and communicate your successes. Don't wait to be invited to contribute to your company's strategic thinking. Just do it, and the organization will come to you.

--Hunter Muller