CIOs Are People Who Need People

Opportunities for relationship building occur every moment of a CIO's workday. Whether it's attending meetings, dropping by a peer's office or spending a few days at an offsite, a CIO is constantly in the process of forging ties.

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SIDEBAR: Relationship Template

Michael Whitmer, CIO of Hudson North America, created a document when he came to the company that listed key stakeholders, their roles and specific questions to ask each. For example:

Who are the key people in your organization with whom I should develop a relationship?
What improvement can IT make to support your organization better?
Who in IT currently provides you with excellent service?
Are there any projects IT can support in order for your organization to run more effectively?

Whitmer formulated a plan and now holds regular follow-up discussions to build solid relationships.

Companywide CIO Blog

Whitmer is turning his Web-based IT team newsletter into a CIO blog. The newsletter, published monthly, highlights both professional and personal information to build and maintain strong relationships among team members. The blog will contain similar topics but Whitmer will be able to update it more frequently and show a different side of himself. He also plans to highlight individual team members' successes. "Anytime you can communicate with the business or your own teammates on a more personal level, it builds and strengthens relationships," says Whitmer.

SIDEBAR: Peer Counsel

Q: How do you deal with a situation in which a relationship isn't working out?

A: One difficult relationship that I had to work through was with a business stakeholder on a particular project. The problem was a severe clash in personalities, specifically in terms of how we each approached our work and our individual expectations. Despite my best efforts, it proved impossible to find common ground. However, I still needed to work with this person to make the project a success.

It would have taken too much time to get a strong, working relationship going, so my solution was to leverage another colleague who already had a solid relationship with the stakeholder. I brought this colleague into our project update meetings and channelled communication about what needed to get done through this mutual contact. My counterpart was amenable to handling our relationship in this capacity and we reached our ultimate goal: a successful project that furthered the business strategy. - Jeanine Wasielewski, CIO, Coors Brewing