Build a great team. As the manager of an indispensable organization within a larger business, one of your primary responsibilities is attracting nurturing, promoting, motivating and preserving talent. This responsibility to find and manage talent extends well beyond the traditional boundaries of the company to include vendors, consultants, business partners and all the various outsourcers that IT depends upon. A deep pool of talent is a great asset and the best hedge against the uncertainties of a bad economy.
Proactively establish goals for IT. Don't wait for someone to tell you what to do or you'll always be trailing the pack. In a downturn, it's actually easier to set realistic goals and accomplish them than it is during periods of growth. Since all areas of the business are in cost-cutting mode, now is the perfect time to simplify your IT landscape by eliminating legacy systems and redundant components. Remember, IT owns the systems, so there's no excuse for not acting swiftly when the opportunity arises to ditch a costly and inefficient legacy system and replace or revamp it with a more cost-effective alternative.
Hold all of your vendors accountable. Make certain they are delivering on their promises to you. Remember, they're part of your team. If they're not delivering, dump them or renegotiate the price. In today's economy, you can get two projects done for the price of one.
Extract maximum value from existing IT investments. OK, maybe you inherited a bunch of clunky mismatched systems from your predecessor. Go back to the vendors (or their parent companies) and get them to show you how to get the most value from the systems they installed. If they're smart, they'll see your request as an opportunity to build deeper relationships with your team, and they'll jump at the chance to help.
Make sure that everyone knows that you are responsible and accountable. It might seem counterintuitive, but now's the perfect time for you to step up and take on more responsibility. Don't be afraid to define your role broadly, and don't hesitate to be accountable. Let's face it: You're going to get blamed anyway if something goes wrong, so there's no point in trying to duck. You own IT, so act like a leader and show your pride. Demonstrating ownership and accountability makes it less likely that someone else will try to usurp your legitimate role as the company's technology czar. The last thing you need in today's environment is some self-appointed "expert" from a business unit telling you how to run IT, or recommending which systems to purchase from which vendors. I have a simple rule for establishing boundaries: If it looks like IT, feels like IT and smells like IT, then it's IT-and the CIO is responsible for it.
Build and manage relationships up, down and sideways across the enterprise and beyond its traditional boundaries. Remember that IT is a team effort, and you need cooperation from an extremely wide range of participants, in and out of the organization, to get the most value from your IT systems. Usability and user acceptance will always be critical issues, so don't forget to include the user base in your considerations.
Join the CIO New Zealand group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.