I have been conducting a bit of a survey. I haven’t polled thousands of CIOs or chief executives for answers, nor have I applied any real science or technology to the collection of my data.

What I have done is to talk to colleagues, fellow CIOs and heads of various technology functions; all of whom I count as personal friends and/or people who have opinions that I respect. Thus, completely slanted, subjective and with no analytical merit whatsoever.

Notwithstanding all the above, the fundamental question I have sought to answer was implanted in my brain by a quote by Albert Einstein in a book I was reading. He said: “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value”. This triggered a train of thought for me on how I could remove my ego from the equation of IT and business alignment and demonstrate value in our services, infrastructure and most of all our potential to add to the bottom line.

I have churned, extrapolated and crunched the 17 conversations I’ve had and the distillate that remains spans six core points:

1. Get the right people into the right jobs. Now more than ever before, talent will drive and deliver value. Motivate and reward them. Recognise they are the future and empower them.
2. Go to your customer. Don’t wait for them to come to you. Take them ideas and introduce them to your top talent.
3. Understand your customer and your customer’s customer. What does success look like for them? Can you measure and deliver in ways they understand and can absorb. What irritates and frustrates them about your service and delivery.
4. Look for new services and technologies and divert whatever effort and funding you can squeeze from the husk of your current budget and programmes of work into staying ahead of the game and in preparation for the eventual upturn.
5. Know yourself and know your infrastructure. Recognise the good and the bad and make sure you have the basics absolutely right. The delivery of the core services is what you will ultimately be judged upon and nobody is going to care how clever, innovative and futuristic you or your team are if the basics keep failing.
6. Go Guerrilla. Become less formal, more focused and operate “behind the lines”. What can you do better, for less cost and more quickly?

Job done, raging success and all that. Pukka!