CIO “Brand” Consistency: Hurting Innovation with Financial Criteria and Poor Internal Marketing
Continuing from yesterday’s post , another great point made in David Brumby’s Computerworld article “Risks Pay Off in Brand Building ” relates to how we evaluate projects. Clearly, he makes the point that financial criteria can hurt innovation; a better approach is to evaluate how a project contributes to strategies:
“Some of the most innovative ideas I have seen would never get off the page if they were decided solely on financial criteria like payback period. For example, we initiated a centralized program services office to manage how we did projects across the company. We knew we would need to demonstrate to the business that the disciplines of project management would enable the business to achieve better commercial results . But if we had to use normal business case metrics to justify it, it might never have gotten off the ground.”
Finally, Brumby makes a point of the need for IT to “market” it’s potential projects. This aligns with my thinking that people doing projects and running PMOs must develop “selling” skills, especially when it comes to getting traction for ideas and innovations:
“One way to get your message across is to use every available resource on your team to help. I achieve this by creating very simple ‘elevator scripts’ that every IS staff member who may get an opportunity to market an idea can pass along. These are messages that people can readily identify with an idea. You need one or two paragraphs that you want not only the CEO to remember, but that even the desktop support engineer will internalize and be able to bring up when he interacts with a business partner. Consistency and simplicity in message will do the trick.”
I would rather see all of these suggestions (develop commercial instincts, challenge financial-only criteria, market internally) implemented in a PMO-like organization that deals with ALL (IT and non-IT) projects. But many times you have to improve based on what you have, and the IT organization can be a great place to start.
What are you doing to increase your ability to market and sell within your organization? Do you challenge financial criteria as the only way to evaluate projects?
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Tags: best practice, brand, branding, CIO, CIO role, commercial instincts, compelling marketing offer, IT, marketing, PMO, project-management, projects, strategyRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Best of the Best Practices, Leadership
2 opinions for CIO “Brand” Consistency: Hurting Innovation with Financial Criteria and Poor Internal Marketing
ActiveEngine Sensei
Feb 12, 2008 at 8:06 am
I think the elevator script is a good idea, especially as it serves as a reminder as to why you are working so hard to obtain a goal.
I have a post that echoes this approach:
http://activeengine.wordpress.com/2008/01/26/5-concepts-in-4-paragraphs-with-3-reasons-2-use-1-activeengine-method/
ActiveEngine Sensei
Feb 12, 2008 at 8:13 am
Oops, hit Enter too early. I agree that the PMO must drive the marketing and selling, as they are more than like to be the group who has implemented a strategy map and can convey how well an effort goes to support core initiatives.
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