Maximizing Your Business Impact as a CIO

Maximizing Your Business Impact as a CIO

The key for every CIO in an IT organization, to maximize their business impact, is to understand that your key tool is technology. But, that’s not your real result or offering. Because really, let’s talk about whether your clients really want to know about your technology, really want to hear what you’re going to do for them, they want to make sure they’re getting the best, biggest, fastest, most valuable results that they need. And let’s begin to understand that most of the time, when your clients are making requests of you, they haven’t really thought through what their key business priorities and strategic initiatives really are. All too often, I would see 90% of the people I talk to, when they make a request for a specific outcome, it’s nowhere near what’s most important to them. Your ability to maximize your business impact, your value, and your results comes from you helping your clients get clear about what’s most important. Your biggest business impact comes from when your mission and your clarity about your value proposition is delivering, facilitating, clarifying what’s most important to your clients and then helping them get clear that what they really need will be delivered by you. They don’t need to know about your process. They don’t even need to understand technology, because what they want is for you to enable what they need most. And again, I want to reiterate, most of the time they don’t know what they need most. And it’s your job to get clear on that highest value outcome, so you’re not just taking orders for things that don’t matter. You’re too busy. You’ve got too much value and impact to contribute to do anything other than help your clients achieve what’s most important. That’s how you become a maximizer of your business impact. That’s how your team begins to understand how they can really make a difference in the success of your organization.