- As a CIO, you are currently operating in a stable and trusted IT environment, but you would like to advance your role to strategic business partner.
- CIOs are often overlooked as a strategic partner by their peers, and therefore face the challenge of proving they deserve a seat at the table.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- To become a strategic business partner, you must think and act as a business person that works in IT, rather than an IT person that works for the business.
- Career advancement is not a solo effort. Building relationships with your executive business stakeholders will be critical to becoming a respected business partner.
Impact and Result
- Create a personal development plan and stakeholder management strategy to accelerate your career and become a strategic business partner. For a CIO to be considered a strategic business partner, he or she must be able to:
- Act as a business person that works in IT, rather than an IT person that works for the business. This involves meeting executive stakeholder expectations, facilitating innovation, and managing stakeholder relationships.
- Align IT with the customer. This involves providing business stakeholders with information to support stronger decision making, keeping up with disruptive technologies, and constantly adapting to the ever-changing end-customer needs.
- Manage talent and change. This involves performing strategic workforce planning, and being actively engaged in identifying opportunities to introduce change in your organization, suggesting ways to improve, and then acting on them.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Yolo County
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
20
Central University of Technology
Guided Implementation
10/10
$2,292
110
AgeCare
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
N/A
Regional Transportation District
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
Workshop: Become a Strategic CIO
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Assess Competencies & Stakeholder Relationships
The Purpose
- Gather and review information from business stakeholders.
- Assess strategic CIO competencies and business stakeholder relationships.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Gathered information to create a personal development plan and stakeholder management strategy.
- Analyzed the information from diagnostics and determined the appropriate next steps.
- Identified and prioritized strategic CIO competency gaps.
- Evaluated the power, impact, and support of key business stakeholders.
Activities
Outputs
Conduct CIO Business Vision diagnostic
- CIO Business Vision results
Conduct CXO-CIO Alignment program
- CXO-CIO Alignment Program results
Assess CIO competencies
- CIO competency gaps
Assess business stakeholder relationships
- Executive Stakeholder Power Map
Module 2: Take Control of Your Personal Development
The Purpose
- Create a personal development plan and stakeholder management strategy.
- Track your personal development and establish checkpoints to revise initiatives.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Identified personal development and stakeholder engagement initiatives to bridge high priority competency gaps.
- Identified key performance indicators and benchmarks/targets to track competency development.
Activities
Outputs
Create a personal development plan
- Personal Development Plan
Create a stakeholder management strategy
- Stakeholder Management Strategy
Establish key performance indicators and benchmarks/targets
- Strategic CIO Competency Scorecard