Enable
The “Enable” curriculum will help you create a positive future and implement supporting mechanisms to foster IT-business alignment.
IT’s positive future is described in Valuedance’s® Enabling IT model. Enabling IT promotes business accountability and self-sufficiency, positions IT to ensure that IT is done well, and defines decision rights that serve as the foundation to IT-business alignment.
To improve alignment, CIOs must work the “hard” and the “soft”. The hard realities dictate that IT’s business partners will always want more for less, without delay. Smart CIOs figure out how to balance supply and demand in a way that works for both the business and IT. Smart CIOs establish strategy and governance practices that force the business to say “no” to themselves and design technologies and organizations that “flex” as business volume and project demands ebb and flow.
The “soft” side of alignment recognizes that good relationships are necessary to implementing and making IT-business alignment practices work. It’s through relationships that IT leaders apply the tenets of marketing (“Tell them what you are going to do, tell them that you are doing it, and tell them that you got it done”) and communicate performance in a way that isn’t viewed as self serving but in a way that serves others.
Enable Articles
| Date | Article | Curriculum |
|---|---|---|
| 8/24/07 |
Decisions by Design Learn how to engineer good decision making and reduce the wasted effort and increased animosity that results from confusing decision rights and poorly managed decision processes. |
Enable |
| 6/21/07 |
How to Make Nice Tips for winning back estranged colleagues |
Enable |
| 5/30/07 |
How to Learn from Your Leadership Mistakes This article identifies the three key lessons necessary to help convert mistakes into opportunities to improve relationships, credibility, and organizational performance. |
Enable |
| 5/15/07 |
True Colors Character is essential to leading others and contributing productively over the long-term. In fact, research concludes that it's impossible to be an effective leader without strong character. |
Enable |
| 8/1/06 |
Soft Skills Will Help You and Your Team Get Deserved Credit "You know your team is delivering quality, but the organization is not seeing it. Why? Because you’re not delivering on your relationships." |
Enable |
| 6/1/06 |
Help Employees Cope With Tough Times "CIOs need to help their staffers understand that if they can hold on during the tough times, the payoff is just around the corner." |
Enable |
| 2/1/06 |
How to Successfully Market IT "When it comes to selling your organization on IT, it's the people and the product, not the print." |
Enable |
| 12/1/05 |
How to Do More with the IT You've Got "IT's capacity for growth and change lies within its architecture." |
Enable |
| 11/1/05 |
Your To-Do List for Managing Demand "As your business clamors for more and more IT, you need a strategy for determining value." |
Enable |
| 10/1/05 |
The Business Of I.T. Is Business "Six keys to lasting alignment with your business partners." |
Enable |
| 4/1/05 |
Show Them How "Even perfect execution won't lead to perfect IT. You must encourage business users to develop some IT smarts of their own." |
Enable |
| 3/1/05 |
Share Power To Gain Control "Why CIOs should cede the what of IT to business executives and focus instead on the how." |
Enable |
| 2/1/05 |
Improving Customer Facing Processes Key to Competitive Edge "Outsourcing and packaged solutions have hollowed out IT. Yet CIOs still have the opportunity to create competitive advantage—by differentiating customer-facing processes." |
Enable |
| 11/1/04 |
Balancing Scorecards with Reality "How to make Balanced Scorecards work for your organization." |
Enable |
| 9/1/03 |
How to Win Allies and Influence Your Peers "Professional relationships can advance—or sink—your career." |
Enable |
| 11/1/02 |
Don't Think That IT Knows Best "You can never be smarter than your customer." |
Enable |
| 6/15/02 |
Why CIOs Should 'Parent' Their Enterprise's Various Business Partners "It's important to say yes—in the right way." |
Enable |

