Want to be a CIO? Don't be an order taker. Be a value creator.

David Spark, reporting at CIO Boot Camp at Interop in Las Vegas.

Speaking to a room full of aspiring chief information officers (CIOs), Bruce Barnes, CIO Emeritus, Nationwide Financial Services, opened the second day of CIO Boot Camp with his presentation, "Assessing IT Strategies."

Barnes began his presentation asking the audience, "How many people know what your business and IT strategy is?" For those aspiring CIOs that did know what their strategy was, Barnes asked if the other people in their organization could articulate that same strategy.

Chances are the answer is no. Very few organizations have perfectly aligned strategies across all employees. That's because your strategy is often poorly defined and communicated.

Just defining what a strategy is causes confusion. Many people think it's what you intend to achieve. It's not your outcome and it's not your management framework. A strategy is a fundamental plan of action designed to help get you to a particular destination or to a targeted competitive advantage.

When you have a strategy, you're asking the question, "How do I get there?" A strategy is a guiding road map to get you to your outcome.

The problem is the dated ways of thinking about strategies is far too limiting. Most people think of their strategy as a platitude. They simplify it by saying they have a segmentation, differentiation, or cost leadership strategy. You have to go beyond.

Don't fight the existing strategy

Value comes from the market that's yet to be defined. It has not yet begun to exist.

You must innovate. Successful companies can be rule makers and rule breakers. Both companies are growing, but the rule breakers have the high profit. While cost may be high for rule breakers, it doesn't have to be. You can actually provide value and low cost. They don't need to be opposing.

A strategy is key. You have to map it out. That map must have an element of innovation. It's an absolute requirement in today's environment. You can't just be an order taker. A cab driver takes orders. You tell him where you want to go and he takes you there. Alternatively, think of the CIO role as that of a travel planner that needs to discuss where the IT department and business wants to go.

You can't cost cut your way to greatness. Go beyond doing the same things faster and cheaper.

What should an IT strategy do?

Articulate the current situation. Where is your industry, your company, and the competition? What opportunities are you seeing?

Based on answers to those questions, where do you want to go? Start with the outcome and work backwards. Create your conceptual plan of attack. You'll be asking yourself, here's all the stuff that we need to change given a beginning state of existing structures and communications.

What's standing in IT's way of achieving value?

To get an answer to this question, you need to ask yourself a series of questions, said Barnes. Ask yourself:

• What is value to you?
• How do you measure it?
• What grade would you give your business in understanding how IT works?
• What's the most innovative thing IT has done for your organization?

In IT, you have to constantly be thinking, "How do I help the business make money?" You must think like a business person. This is something we've been hearing over and over again for the past four years. It's odd that this discussion is still fairly new.

Barnes suggests getting that business synergy requires CIOs to ask themselves, "How do I help evolve IT while helping the business make money?"

Keys to IT delivering value to the organization

Success requires having credibility and a standard planning process. Spend time with the business. Don't hunker down in IT. Keep a constant level of communication with senior management. And lastly, don't fear internal audits. They can actually be your friend.

Don't see yourself as an order taker. You're a value creator.

For more, check out all of Riverbed's Interop '09 Las Vegas coverage.