Gear Up Your Contribution

To sustain their contribution, the CIO and IS organization must move beyond isolated initiatives and become consistent contributors to growth. This starts with adopting and instilling what we call an "IT venture capitalist" mind-set: someone that always asks for, and backs, value.

A typical venture capitalist generates high growth for their scarce resources and money through three behaviours. First, they define their investment strategy clearly, such as investing in a single industry rather than several, investing in one geography instead of all over the map, or targeting companies at a certain stage of maturity as opposed to start-ups or mature businesses. Second, VCs learn as much as possible about an opportunity to enable them to make well-informed investment decisions. Finally, once the deal is done, VCs provide disciplined guidance and support for their chosen investments, nurturing them all the way to exit - when the value is realized.

For CIOs seeking to maximize growth using their scarce resources - IS staff, IT budget and credibility - there are three analogous behaviours:

• Clarifying enterprise growth levers and where IT should contribute.

• Building deep business knowledge and behavioural capabilities, and contributing proactively to business project definition and prioritization.

• Going beyond project management to encouraging benefits realization practices and engaging beyond implementation throughout the benefits lifecycle.

Part of the CIO role in contributing to enterprise growth is doing it, and part is being seen and recognized as doing it. The CIO needs to take active steps to identify and communicate IS's contribution to enterprise growth. This means capturing and communicating:

• The enterprise's strategy for growth.

• How IS has helped grow the top line to date.

• IT capabilities and opportunities for the future.

Andrew Rowsell-Jones is vice president and research director for Gartner's CIO Executive Programs