The Practical CIO: A Common Sense Guide for Successful IT Leadership

Chapter 7. Work With the Business

Executive Summary

The business values results. If you cannot deliver results, the business has no need for you. Once you understand what the business needs in terms of results, you can align IT operations to help the business deliver those results. Work with the business, not for the business.

IT's Unique Perspective: Worth More Than All the Software in the World . . .

Manjit Singh began his career at Procter & Gamble (P&G), a company built on the belief that continuous reinvention can be a sustainable competitive advantage. Some might argue that P&G is really a technology company that has become extremely adept at marketing consumer packaged goods. If that is true, then P&G deserves extra praise for visualizing the future of business and taking many of the right steps to position itself for success in a highly volatile global economy.

Like other P&G alumni, Manjit discovered that many of the lessons he learned at P&G can be applied universally. He is currently the CIO at Chiquita Brands International, where the relationships between IT and the company's various functional units have been formalized into what I would describe as a real business process.

Manjit was able to accomplish this because he truly believes that IT functions optimally when it partners with the business as an equal. Because he is relatively young, he does not remember the days when the IT department was considered a mysterious "black box" run by geeks in the basement. As a result, ...