3. Make it easy to be a missionary. While business education is the CIO's job, the right communication tools will help other frontline IT leaders deliver the same message, thereby broadening its reach. Marriott has developed a snazzy seven-minute PowerPoint presentation called "Technology Now" that highlights the company's IT direction and the ways it provides value to the business.

Created on a $US15,000 budget, the PowerPoint has a voice-over and plays by itself. It began its life when executive VP and CIO Carl Wilson presented it to Marriott's board of directors in November 2005; subsequently, senior IT leaders have shown it to their business partners, and IT leaders in the field have offered it to owners and franchisees.

Marriott's information resources communications department has a formal plan and a tracking document to ensure the presentation is shown at all levels of the company. Marriott has also translated the presentation into Spanish, Chinese and German. "This is a tool for people to use to create a broader communication opportunity with their peers," Davidson says. "People can then tailor the message afterward to the particular group they're talking to."

SIDEBAR: Develop IT Ambassadors

CompuCredit CIO Guido Sacchi has developed an internal IT recognition program around a simple theme: "Be known". He urges IT staff to "be known" by the business for the personal contribution they make to the company. Sacchi's goal was to get his staff out of their cubicles, into the field and close to their internal customers, so the IT staff would be seen as personally responsible for delivering IT value. "I want everybody in IT to be an ambassador for IT," Sacchi says.

Sacchi also uses the Be Known program to help boost the morale of IT staff. He has printed Be Known note cards that his senior managers use to recognize staff for demonstrating value, adding handwritten notes to reinforce the message. For example: "John, thank you for demonstrating leadership in that meeting; I thought you carried the day."

SIDEBAR: How to Reach Out to Technology-Shy Users

At global non-profit Save the Children, one of the biggest challenges facing CTO Edward Granger-Happ is getting people on the front lines to use the new technologies his IT department provides. To illustrate that challenge, Granger-Happ notes that "e-mail was just adopted as the primary means of communication within the last five years".

Granger-Happ takes every opportunity to educate the field staff about the benefits of technology. At a recent training session, for example, he created a scavenger hunt on the corporate intranet both to familiarize the field officers with online content and to get them accustomed to accessing it. Granger-Happ also highlights technologies that have crystal-clear benefit for the staff, such as Voice over IP. While it's true that VoIP saves money, the biggest benefit from a user perspective is that a staff member can reach anyone in the organization, around the globe, simply by dialling a four-digit extension. Granger hopes that "when people adopt one technology, they'll adopt more technologies. If they see value in IT in their daily job, they're going to want to use more."