The State of the CIO 2008: The CIO's Time to Shine

Link: The State of the CIO 2008: The CIO's Time to Shine.

Stop Talking About Alignment

We can't imagine a CIO who doesn't know that technology must support the business's processes and goals. If you don't understand that, nothing in this survey will help you. In our 2008 "State of the CIO" survey, 82 percent of respondents said that aligning IT and business was their number-one activity. Of course it was. Does a therapist listen? Does a general command?

It's clear, however, that CIOs who worry about alignment conceive of themselves, their function and their department as a thing apart. Whether that's a problem of their own making or a dysfunction generated by their executive peers and their enterprise's culture, these CIOs have already lost. As Roger Parks, VP of information technology and CIO at J.R. Simplot, a $4.2 billion agribusiness, puts it, "If other senior executives don't see you as one of them, you usually can't change their minds. You have to realize that."

"The IT discipline still has some maturing to do," says Rick Roy, senior vice president of customer operations at CUNA Mutual Group. Before he took over Customer operations, Roy was CIO at the financial services company from 2003 to 2005 when it had $15.2 billion in assets. "I don't talk about aligning customer service operations with the business," says Roy. "The CFO doesn't talk about financial alignment with the business. So why say 'align IT and the business?'

"Language informs approach."