In this podcast, Susan Cramm, author of, The Eight Things We Hate About IT, talks about how CIOs can improve their relationships with business partners to achieve a higher quality of business value. She also attacks some of the political issues that CIOs face on the job.
Regardless of the company's size, CIOs have the on-going challenge of creating business value or business impact of IT. Executive management needs to realize that CIOs and their IT team can’t deliver business impact on their own. According to Susan Cramm, a former CIO and founder of Valuedance, an IT leadership coaching firm, says that CIOs don’t own the four P’s needed to realize business impact -- people, processes, products, and profit and loss. Business partners manage these four things. Cramm, the author of the book, The Eight Things We Hate About IT (Harvard Business School Press, says that CIOs and their senior leadership team need to partner with their business counterparts in order to deliver value to the organization.
"If you have a good strong leader and a relationship across the business for delivery of IT services, then you have a chance to move up the value chain and set up an investment governance process. Such a governance process will ensure that you have a full cycle of investment management in place. You just aren’t looking at things like a business plan, but managing those targeted business impacts through the duration of the program and subsequent projects. Moreover, you are holding business leaders and IT accountable for the realization of that value."
In this podcast, Cramm, who writes and blogs for Harvard Business Review, talks about how CIOs can improve their relationships with business partners to achieve a higher quality of business value. She also attacks some of the political issues that CIOs face on the job.
Bio
Susan Cramm is the founder and president of Valuedance, an IT leadership coaching firm. She has worked with executives from a number of Fortune Global 200 clients, including Toyota, Sony, and Time Warner. She is the author of the book, The Eight Things We Hate About IT (Harvard Business School Press.) Cramm also blogs and writes articles for Harvard Business Review. Since 2000, she has authored the monthly executive coach column for CIO magazine.
Cramm is the former CFO and executive vice president at Chevy's Mexican Restaurants. Before Chevy’s, she worked with the Taco Bell Corporation and held the positions of CIO and vice president of the IT group and senior director for financial and strategic planning.
She received an MBA from Northwestern University, specializing in finance, marketing, and quantitative methods, and her BA in computer science and management from the University of California at San Diego.
Resources
Harvard Business Review Blog – Susan Cramm
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/cramm/
CIO Magazine – Link to columns by Susa Cramm
http://www.cio.com.au/author/512535383/susan_h_cramm/articles
Insider's Guide to Executive Coaching by Susan H. Cramm
http://www.coachingsourcing.info/2009/02/insiders-guide-to-executive-coaching-by.html
8 Things We Hate About IT: How to Move Beyond the Frustations to Form a New Partnership with IT, book by Susan Cramm
Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis
