Despite the crucial role that IT plays in the modern enterprise and its potential benefits when used strategically, many Boards of Directors resist interacting with their CIOs. The reasoning for this is because board members often lack a fundamental understanding of IT, and sometimes even mistrust IT people and their leader, the CIO. At worst, the board’s doubt in the CIO’s ability to articulate and deliver business value—combined with the fear of having to listen to techno-drivel—is enough to keep even the chief technologist at bay. At best, the CFO (who speaks the board’s language) becomes the intermediary for all things IT.

To make matters worse, CIOs often do not mesh well with their CXO team peers either, plunging below the “peer” status in the CXO team and earning the reputation of a “lower-case c” executive officer. Unsurprisingly, the result is an ineffective and often estranged IT function, whose best hope is to merely align itself with the business, rather than becoming an integral part of it.

No more “us” versus “them”

In an ideal situation, CXO-CIO relationships would exist on one team of C-level executive peers, all of whom would be focused on business value. The CIO’s strategic objectives and the language used within the IT organization would be the language of common strategic objectives, with no more references to “us” versus “them.” Quick wins and larger successes would earn the respect of CXO peers, including the CEO.

When the CIO is a well-respected member of the C-level executive team, a powerful message is sent to the board: IT, just like any other crucial part of the organization, can and does deliver real business value. The CIO’s equal standing among their peers can alleviate the board’s concerns and reduces—if not eliminate—the board’s mistrust in IT and its leader. Should a board-level issue require the CIO’s expertise, the board will be much more likely to call upon the chief technologist, instead of deferring to the CFO. Additionally, as the enterprise’s governance body, the board will be more inclined to learn more about IT’s contributions to the execution of organizational strategy.

However, the problem is that in most enterprises, the CIO is unlikely to have a seat at the board, yet the board treats IT as a board-level, strategy-affecting business function.

The transformation journey

The CIO holds the key that leads to full convergence of business IT. Notice that there is no hyphen between “business” and “IT,” because it is one entity: “business IT.” The CIO also happens to be the catalyst that sparks and sustains this transformational energy in order to inspire the necessary steps for change, not only from within the soon-to-be-converged business IT function, but the business as well. But how should the CIO approach this transformation? Let’s consider a relational strategy.

As mentioned earlier, the CXO team provides an ideal way of gaining a seat at the table, but only if the CXO-CIO relationship improves. The following four phases illustrate the possible transformation of their relationship. At first, is it the CIO versus the CXOs? Then, is the CIO the well-meaning but estranged technologist? A marginally more positive phase of the relationship is when CXOs value the CIO’s contributions and take the IT leader seriously, yet still regard the chief technologist as an outsider rather than an equal peer. As time goes on, however, the most positive phase of the CXO-CIO relationship begins when the CIO has become a full-fledged member of the CXO team, both in terms of substance and relationship. These four scenarios can combine to form a development journey, as illustrated in the figure below:

Six concrete steps

The business relationship manager has to be involved in company strategy, earn the right to meet external partners, and help construct and maintain the IT investment roadmap. The ideal business relationship manager should be able to connect the dots and foresee events and circumstances that are otherwise unforeseeable, set aside today’s baggage and be willing to ask the “what if” questions about the future, and be committed to developing strong relationship and collaboration skills.

In order to legitimize the BRM role, get HR plugged in early, benchmark the job description, add it to the family of job descriptions, and finally, liken the role to that of the CIO so that C-level executives take it seriously. While ideally you would like to have a BRM for each of the business functions in your enterprise, begin with a BRM who works with just one of the functions. (Sales is a good choice, as long as it is led by someone who is progressive). Once you’ve sold the BRM concept to one specific business function and the BRM has started to show tangible results, other business functions will start showing interest.