CIOs, as business and IT leaders, must know how stakeholders perceive benefits to tell a value story that resonates.
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CIOs: Here’s How to Tell a Good IT Value Story
CIOs: Tell an IT value story that elevates the conversation beyond what IT does
CIOs wanting to communicate IT’s relevance and impact on wider business outcomes must shift the focus of conversations with business partners from what IT does (technical inputs and outputs) to how IT delivers real value to stakeholders’ business priorities.
Ask yourself these three key questions as you craft your value story:
- What do my stakeholders value?
- What must my value story contain?
- How do I effectively communicate value?
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A good IT value story speaks to business goals and benefits
These two key actions help CIOs craft and tell a clear, compelling and concise IT value story: 1) Set and verify business and IT goals, and 2) learn to be a good storyteller.
Set Clear Goals
Tell the IT Value Story
Before selling IT to stakeholders, know whether and how they value IT
To sell the value of IT to fellow C-suite executives and other business stakeholders, CIOs must set comprehensive goals for themselves and the overall IT organization, with a clear line of sight from business performance to information and technology (I&T) contribution (captured in a solid IT strategic plan).
The CIO has two major responsibilities — to ensure successful delivery of I&T capabilities and contribute successfully as a member of business leadership.
The CIO should establish, negotiate and communicate goals for both responsibilities, across four focus areas:
Business performance: Identify the strategic goals and related initiatives of the business and make them the IT organization’s goals, through clear alignment.
Executive teams: Contribute as a business executive, exerting influence as a member of business leadership teams, on business design, strategy development and execution. CIOs should set personal goals to improve their performance (and that of other IT leaders) as effective team members.
I&T: Ensure I&T capabilities fit the strategic needs of the business and are “healthy” — reliable, sustainable, cost-effective and secure. The CIO must act to analyze and assess I&T capabilities and establish goals to expand and/or improve I&T capabilities to support business strategy initiatives.
IT teams: Monitor and assess all IT leaders on their business savvy, focus and efficiency in the delivery of all information and technology capabilities. CIOs must set goals to improve the abilities of their leaders based on business needs and IT contribution challenges.
In all focus areas, CIOs need to establish well-crafted goals that are specific, measurable, actionable, relevant and time-bound, and use them to focus and manage the efforts of the entire IT organization. All goals should be integrated with the business strategic goals.
Know how to craft a good IT value story. Hint: Don’t focus on tech solutions.
CIOs must be able to define and describe IT’s activities in terms of business outcomes: How does IT enable the strategic agenda and help the organization achieve its goals? Put simply, demonstrating IT’s value is about making IT relevant to, and understood by, the wider organization.
An effective demonstration of the value of IT requires CIOs be able to answer three questions:
Question 1: What do my stakeholders value?
CIOs must bear in mind that value doesn’t lie in the technology itself, but what the technology enables the business to do. Value comes from delivering business outcomes, which ultimately impact cost, risk or revenue (or mission value for nonprofit or government organizations).
Question 2: How do I build an IT value story?
To demonstrate value, CIOs must build a coherent narrative around IT spend. Differentiate value stories into two main groups:
“Run value” or how maintaining high performance levels and sustaining the operational business facilitate business performance
“Change value” or how expanding existing capabilities and delivering new ones will deliver the greatest value and enable business growth
Question 3: How can I effectively communicate value?
Many CIOs fail to communicate value, because they select and develop metrics that talk about technology (i.e., number of tickets resolved), rather than business outcomes. To effectively communicate value, CIOs need to explain how resolving those tickets, or maintaining those systems, helped stakeholders achieve their goals and improved business outcomes.
Demonstrate the business value of IT and drive tech priorities
Aaron Fields, CIO at St. Ann's Community, has worked closely with Gartner over the past few years. Find out how this partnership turned his IT department into a high-performing team while evolving IT to be a core business unit.
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