My car pulls to the left.
I could just get a new car. Solves that issue for the time being.
Or, I can get an alignment.
The first option is extreme. It seems like less work, but the upfront cost and the eventual expenses make it the least likely option..
The second will require some investment but, in the end, returns the performance I’m looking for.
CIOs face a similar option. When something isn’t right between IT and the business, one option is drastic change; find a new job or design an exhaustive overhaul of IT (or the business)!
Or, it might be time for an alignment.
When it comes to our cars, the goal of an alignment is to re-optimize the angles of the wheels to each other and to the road.
I like the image: re-optimize the angles.
This is what CIOs do, and this is what increases your impact: executive alignment, re-optimizing the angles between IT and the business.
The Angles
There are two general areas of alignment CIOs optimize, and six components within the two.
- The Reason The Company Serves
Companies exist around three drivers:
Meaning: The value the company is bringing to the world. I work with a large insurance company. They exist to protect our well-being by insuring us against calamities and consequences that disrupt our lives, and to provide a better insurance experience.
We are grateful. Many of us have filed claims, relieved to recover our loss. We also have had either positive or negative experiences in working with insurance companies to receive those claims.
Purpose and Profit: Companies have a North Star toward which objectives and results should be driven. The purpose is what we want to accomplish for others and for ourselves (profit in all its forms). For the insurance company I work with, the purpose is to improve the lives and business of their agents. Everything they do is driven towards agent success while benefitting the company and the stakeholders.
Value Contribution: Collaboration for the benefit of the marketplace and the best interest of the company and her stakeholders.
In the insurance company, every department answers the question, “How do we best promote agent profitability?"
Your role as a CIO is to detect when the wheels of expectations are pulling away, when the steering of activity is off-center, or when the operational functions are shaky. The first checkpoint are these three:
Is IT or the business losing sight of the meaning of our work?
Has IT or the business tried to accomplish too much or too little for those depending on her?
Does IT and the business understand the fit IT has within the business and the value being created there?
- The Results The Company Seeks
As a CIO, you ensure that the best technologies serve business needs, that IT is providing competitive advantage in the marketplace, and that operations are efficient to meet and sustain the key results needed.
Any misalignment in the angles of platforms, competition, and operations is a call to correction.
Part of your role in misalignment is to detect it before anyone else does. The overlooked cost and setbacks of tech debt; the awareness of other company’s use of technology; unnecessary redundancies, incomplete project intakes, poor project management; you know these things ahead of others, and you know they are going to pull IT and the business away from the center.
Too often CIOs talk about aligning with the business without defining what comprises alignment. They are driven by frustration, and alignment is merely an alleviation of grievance.
Alignment is more. There are reasons behind it. There are results from it.