Press the flesh. Good communication is another critical factor. "I don't call it politics. I call it engagement or communicating," says Bob Weir, vice president of IS of Northeastern University. Weir engages his senior customers continually, which in his case means department heads and the university president. He draws these key players into the IT governance process by asking each to select, from a long list of IT projects, the most important initiatives for the coming year. "We have a process by which we ask everybody what we should do, then we engage them in deciding what to do," Weir says.

He also practises that wide-open communication policy with the university's user community — the students. For example, as more than 23,000 students settled in at the university's Boston campus in the northern autumn of 2003, Northeastern servers were hit with viruses (as was corporate America). When installing a particularly aggressive spam and virus filter, the IT department accidentally lost 3500 e-mail messages bound for students. Once service was fully restored and the affected students notified individually, Weir sent a mass e-mail to the entire university community, telling them what happened and what he was doing about it, and when they would hear from him next.

"Whether it's communication about a problem or prioritization of projects, we go overboard," he says. Weir goes so far as to answer every single e-mail personally. No candidate ever worked a room more thoroughly.

Secure endorsements. Building and maintaining relationships throughout the organization, with allies and opponents alike, is undoubtedly the most important political task facing any CIO. "Being a successful political animal . . . is about being a good facilitator, a good listener and paying attention to what's spoken and what is not spoken," says Barker.

Forming alliances means bringing others into the decision-making process, says Miami-Dade's Zito. "Giving up a certain level of control and authority to share it with somebody else is important, but it's kind of risky," says Zito. "If you're not willing to let go a little bit, though, I'm not sure how much credibility you'll have."

When Barker served as the CIO of The Nature Conservancy, he developed a plan to move from localized, divisional IT solutions toward an organization-wide system that necessitated enterprise standards. This shift required the local offices to give up some control of system specifications and standards. Since Barker didn't have the power to mandate this plan, he instead sought endorsements from early adopters by communicating the benefits of the new system to them and demonstrating its value. "I created champions outside myself," he says. "They realized this was much better for their part of the organization and in their best interests."

Relationship-building can pay huge dividends down the road when sensitive situations arise. It helps defuse sticky political situations if you already have well-established relationships with any or all of the parties and those relationships have been built outside the context of the individual situation.

Watch the weathervane. Political savvy means being prepared for change. "The political winds in an organization can shift and always do," says Barker, "so you need to be actively understanding what are the drivers in the organization, what are the goals of the different players and what are the different relationships."

At the same time, CIOs should keep their strategy clearly in mind, Spatz says. Otherwise, when political changes occur, "you won't know how to make compromises that don't compromise the overall goal", he says.

Because Unicef operates on a biennial budgeting process, Spatz has to identify technology investments, operating costs and required upgrades up to three years in advance — a process he describes as "science fiction". Having to plan so far ahead, when discrepancies are a guarantee, requires that he constantly lobby his business-side colleagues so that they continue to understand the need for technology initiatives.