Question: How do I establish my
credibility with the CEO, chief operating officer, and CFO?
Our advice:
Building credibility with senior executives can be quite challenging for
technical managers, especially in companies where IT is considered a
back-office support function rather than an equal partner with other business
organizations. IT professionals and executives differ in their goals and
interests, the challenges they face, the languages they speak, and the way they
view the world. Building credibility with senior executives isn't a matter of
meeting them halfway in discussions; it comes from devising solutions that
address the pressures they face, explaining those solutions in their terms,
accepting responsibility for gaining business results from those solutions, and
delivering those results.
The World Of A Senior Executive
IT is only a small part of the purview of C-level executives. They have
responsibility for short-term and long-term performance for all company
operations, providing vision and leadership, meeting financial performance
targets, and satisfying investors, employees, and other stakeholders. Given the
breadth of these responsibilities, it's no wonder that your CEO has neither the
time, nor the interest, nor the need to know technical details. Spend a day
with a CEO of any significantly sized firm and you'll be amazed at the variety
and importance of the issues he or she must consider and make decisions on in a
very short period of time. A successful C-level executive must be excellent at:
identifying which topics are truly important, quickly discerning relevant
issues, knowing where to get necessary information, being decisive, and
communicating decisions in a way the company can execute them. C-level
executives need trusted, credible advisers to help them make informed
decisions.
Becoming A Trusted Adviser
Building credibility is a long-term process, but the following suggestions will
help you get started.
Read your company's annual report, 10-K and other documents, and listen to
quarterly financial calls, to understand the specific goals and pressures faced
by your executive management team.
Concentrate on issues that directly concern C-level executives, such as
increasing revenue, gaining market share, reducing liabilities, enhancing
business productivity, and improving customer satisfaction.
Speak in business terms, focusing on the business results of an IT issue or
opportunity. For example, rather than proposing a project to provide wireless
technology for field service reps, propose a process change that will increase
the accuracy of billing, collect payments more quickly, and reduce back-office
accounting costs resulting in a net annual benefit of at least $1 million.
Learn to weed out unnecessary technical details and translate the remaining
terms for quick assimilation by nontechnical individuals. Remember, your CEO
must be able to get the concept in only a few sentences.
Make concrete performance commitments. The CEO and chief operating officer are
held accountable for revenue even though they don't personally make every sale.
Commit to deliver a project on time, but, more important, commit to make it
successful in business terms. Follow our example: after the wireless technology
is rolled-out, work hand-in-hand with the field service and accounting
departments to ensure that expected results are achieved or exceeded.
Deliver! Nothing builds credibility as well as someone who delivers as
promised.
Drive Business Value
Building a solid relationship with your company's C-level executives as a
trusted, credible adviser is good for your company, the IT organization and, of
course, your career. If you can accurately and easily communicate tough
technical issues in their terms and deliver on your recommendations, you'll
stand out from your peers.
-- Ian Hayes
What does a CIO have to
do to establish a leadership-development program for the IT organization?
How do I develop a information-technology plan when the company itself
doesn't have a strategic plan?
What are the most
productive tasks an IT leader can focus on?
After three years of downsizing and cost cutting, how do I motivate my
management team and build a high-performance organization?
As the economy turns
around, what IT skills will be most in demand this year?
How should we manage change in our IT infrastructure to minimize risk?
Several weeks ago, you wrote
about when a project-management office makes business sense. What is the
appropriate design for a PMO?
The economy seems to be picking
up. Looking ahead, how do I retain good IT people in the face of an improving
IT market while my budget remains under pressure?
What IT skills will be most in
demand this year?
How do I objectively
evaluate the readiness of my organization to support emerging business
requirements?
What cultural and people factors
are important to consider when building IT capabilities to support
manufacturing factory and retail operations in China?
How could the Project
Management Institute help us effectively manage real-life IT projects to ensure
success?
How do we make our
communications proactive, rather than only getting to them when there's a
crisis?
What are the critical
success factors to achieve and maintain strategic alignment?
How can we develop an enterprise architecture across disparate business units?
How can I develop a
long-term information-technology plan when my company doesn't have a strategic
plan?
What attributes and
features should we consider when selecting IT asset-management software?
As an overworked IT manager,
what can I do to reduce my workload while maintaining high availability and
good security?
We're under management pressure to
outsource application development and to cut staff, but I'd rather get more
value from our existing staff, who know our business. How can I broaden their
skills?
As business picks up, what should I do to rebuild my organization, tactical
plan, and internal-management processes?
We have a strong team that
I'd like to make stronger. How do I instill more leadership qualities and
skills into my team?
What organizational structure would be most effective for
information-security governance?
How can we achieve effective
process ownership within our IT organization?
What organizational,
people, and process issues should we consider when setting up a telecommuting
program?
We've cut staff so much
in the last four years that I'm wondering if I can afford (from a work
perspective) to take vacation this summer. What can I do to reduce the chance
of something unraveling catastrophically while I'm away?
A few weeks ago, writing
about creating a vision statement, you said "seek expert facilitation to reach
a vision supported by all." Where can we get this expertise?
We know that we could
save money by consolidating servers currently scattered across business units.
How should we address the political issues around getting the business units to
give up their servers?
What level of IT spending is appropriate for a midsize to large financial
organization?
How should we assess our
IT organizational structure and processes?
How can we retain good IT people
in the face of an improving IT job market?
How should we determine the
appropriate network-support staffing level for a 10,000-node network?
What strategies are most
successful in a "political" organization?
How can one reduce
behaviors that are wasteful of IT resources?
How can we raise the IT knowledge of non-IT employees?
I'd like to establish a
management mentoring program within my organization. How should I start?
How should we deal with
the cultural and skill-set changes needed when moving from mainframe-based
applications to client/server and Web-based applications?
We're considering setting up
our own IT-abuse investigations group. What issues should we consider in making
this decision?
How should we assess and set priorities for our IT project portfolio?
What features should we
consider when selecting portfolio-management dashboard software?
How do we minimize the
negative impact of project cancellations on IT staff morale?
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?
Many large companies have a
project management office responsible for portfolio and program management.
When does a PMO make business sense?
After the extended economic downturn, we need to create a new vision for the
organization. How do we do that?
What technical and
security issues should we consider when setting up a telecommuting program?
How do we change IT from
reactive to proactive in a change-resistant corporate culture?
How can the CIO shift
the IT organization's mindset from service delivery to value creation?
What criteria should be included in the due-diligence assessment of IT at an
acquisition candidate?
How do I establish my
credibility with the CEO, chief operating officer, and CFO?
How do I motivate my
technical staff to cooperate with staff from our offshore outsourcing vendor?
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