How can a CIO be Build Strong Partnership with his Organization?
How To Build Partnerships within an Organization? ✓ The Bright Future of CIO & CFO Partnership ✓ IT Strategy ✓ Build strong relationships & partnerships.
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It’s critical to build partnerships across the organization to be an effective CIO. The reasons are obvious. As a CIO, you need to know the organization’s priorities to use your IT resources most effectively. These priorities exist not only at the C-suite level but at all levels across your the organization. If a CIO listens only to his or her executive management, he/she runs the risk of becoming irrelevant to other key players. This can lead to the rise of multiple shadow IT departments and projects. A decentralized IT organization is not a negative thing by default but hidden IT departments operating without a partnership with central IT almost always lead to duplication of effort and conflicting projects.
Hidden IT departments operating without a partnership with central IT almost always lead to duplication of effort and conflicting projects.
How can a CIO avoid falling into the trap of becoming insulated to what’s going on in his Organization?
It’s actually pretty simple. He needs to go out and talk to his stakeholders and, more importantly, listen to them. Yes, it’s that simple. The key phrase here is “go out.” Many CIOs talk about having an “open door” policy. That implies that anyone can come into their cabin and talk to them. I’m suggesting that it’s more important to have a more proactive approach. Take up the initiative to get out of your cabin, set up meetings with your colleagues and meet them where they are. Request meetings with people that you don’t normally see and then go meet them in their space. Offer to make presentations at your colleagues’ staff meetings. Go to lunch with people you don’t usually work with. Get creative about connecting with your stakeholders. But if it’s so easy, why isn’t every CIO doing this? I can think of three barriers.
The Three Prime Barriers
First Prime Barriers: We’re too busy to make time to talk to others. But talking to others will lead to more requests for help. With respect to the first item, just make it a practice to set aside an hour a week to meet with a colleague elsewhere in the organization. It’s not hard to find an hour if we simply reserve it ahead of time. And yes, these meetings will result in more requests for IT assistance, and it’s true that the CIO won’t be able to accommodate those requests. But there are two benefits to simply knowing those needs.
Even if the CIO can’t accommodate the request and the need is met with a shadow IT project, at least the CIO will have visibility into what’s going on. This means that this shadow IT project has more chance of success and it also gives the CIO an opportunity to influence the project to at least be in compliance with the overall IT strategy and direction. Supporting a shadow IT project in this way also builds trust with the partner. Finally, knowing some of these hidden needs allows the CIO to prepare for the future and plan for requests for additional resources based on the needs of the organization.
Comfort can lead to complacency, and in our ever-changing world of technology, being complacent can be your biggest enemy.
Second Prime Barrier: Is to be too comfortable. Building partnerships across the organization with people that we usually don’t work with pushes us outside of our comfort zone. I would argue that it’s important for leaders to step outside their comfort zone with some regularity. Comfort can lead to complacency, and in our ever-changing world of technology, being complacent can be your biggest enemy.
Third Rime Barrier: There could be a physical barrier to building partnerships, particularly in larger organizations. In many larger organizations, IT and other support services are housed in physically separate locations making it more difficult to meet with colleagues who are more directly involved with the “core” of the business. The first way to address this is to make time to visit those locations periodically.
In 2006 I partnered with a $160M IT Group to provide 500,000 of their B2C computer hardware customers with our online computer training software (my first company) which eventually turned into an offer to buy us out and integrate us into the large group as our collaboration proved very profitable.visit me at Sohail Khan
Note that business runs smoothly when people avoid internal mistakes that cost them heavily.
In this article, we will share with you the six huge mistakes that should be avoided while creating a business partnership.
For example, if you’re a technical person, you have the know-how of the technical work but you lack money for establishing an office or the marketing expertise.
Due to the nature of partnership, every detail and obligation whether that is the ‘payment terms‘, ‘duties or responsibilities‘, or your ‘job descriptions‘ need to be clearly defined, documented and agreed upon by both parties.
Since we all are humans and we are prone to errors and forgetfulness.
So, there is a chance one can simply forget the terms and conditions and hence leading to conflict.
Explicitly stating the conditions of the partnership is the most astute thing you can do to secure your business.
Illuminating the rights and obligations in a composed Business Partnership Agreement will better prepare you to resolve clashes in the event that they emerge.
You'd be amazed how minor mistaken assumptions can emit into all-out battles.
Additionally, when you don't have a composed agreement saying something else, your state's laws will control numerous parts of your business.
Having a partnership agreement helps your business in various ways.
It plainly characterizes each accomplice's job and it will structure the relationship that suits the business.
