As the imperative for business and IT to effectively merge under the same banner becomes ever more pressing, so does the need for business and IT to speak the same language.

While some chief information officers (CIOs) believe the business has to work harder to understand IT, the vast majority recognise that most of the work has to come from the technology side.

CIOs ideally want business communications skills to pervade the IT organisation, but existing cultures sometimes mean the development of broader skills is not feasible in the short-term.

As a consequence, 73 per cent of CIO Connect’s members use relationship managers ­- skilled communicators who can understand what the business needs and explain how IT can help users.

But CIOs remain clear this is not the answer longer term. Many recognise that relationship managers are an unnecessary layer between business and development, and more-enlightened organisations should be moving to a tighter interaction in order to keep pace with user needs.

Such sentiments were also highlighted by a CIO Connect poll at the end of 2007 on the need for a communications chief to manage the entirety of the IT function’s external communications.

The approach was rejected by 61 per cent of respondents, and there is a strong belief that communicating IT to the business is the responsibility of every IT professional. CIO Connect members were almost unanimous on the need for IT departments to have business communications skills.

CIOs should also devote time to integration. While communications expertise can be used to enhance messages, creating a separate role for communications places another layer between IT and the business.

One key challenge is putting in place the right measurements to ensure the systems and services CIOs manage are delivering what the business wants.

A majority of organisations clearly think they have some way to go, with
53 per cent of CIOs believing there is a discrepancy between how technology leaders and their organisations measure success.

There is a huge difference, however, between CIO responses and their senior team members, many of whom are aspiring IT leaders.

The vast majority (85 per cent) of senior team respondents believe there is a discrepancy between how CIOs and their organisations measure success.

This is a clear indication that the next generation of IT leaders believe they will have to approach performance measurement in a different way.

Other CIO Connect polls have also suggested that current metrics are often ineffective or inappropriate.

Almost three-quarters (73 per cent) of members do not believe they have the best key performance indicators (KPIs) in place.

And when it comes to IT metrics, CIO Connect members feel value-management frameworks should be used to educate stakeholders, rather than for cost-justification.

An increasing number of CIOs also think the marketing of IT needs to become slicker and more creative.

As an example, working with an external marketing consultancy to produce video and picture story boards that explain the business impact of technology deployments has already proven successful in at least one organisation undergoing major transformation.

Nick Kirkland is chief executive of technology leadership network CIO Connect

Business transformation is still high on the agenda for many chief information officers (CIOs), as they seek to rebuild their IT organisations along service-oriented lines, adapt to new technologies and deliver business agility.

It can be difficult, particularly when many experts believe the main keys to successful transformation are culture and processes, which the CIO is generally unable to change without the support of senior business management.

A concern I often hear from CIO Connect members is that IT people are in command of the technology but not all the other facets of a successful business.

As a result, the skills to effect full transformation are wider than the IT director’s remit. And in a recent CIO Connect poll on leadership, only 27 per cent of members thought their organisations had the culture and processes in place to encourage an agile business relationship.

But, are CIOs up to the job of leading business transformation? A majority (60 per cent) think they are.

CIOs in many large organisations have dealt with a massively altered technology landscape in the past 10 years and in my experience have better change management skills than many business leaders.

Unfortunately, the demands on a leader of change are high and most employees working for CIOs feel differently. The same poll showed 74 per cent of CIOs’ team members agreeing that most technology leaders lack the skills needed to transform the business.

Facets such as communication, distributed management, relationship management, creativity, financial know-how, innovation and agility in managing change are crucial to the role of a leader who wants to transform any business.

CIOs will need to take a fuller account of the impact of planned changes from different perspectives.

IT leaders need to understand the impact of change on others. To instil effective changes in behaviour calls for a range of skills.

CIOs must actively fortify their leadership skills ­ either through a training programme or simply by recruiting or seconding people into the IT leadership team with supplementary skill sets.

Softer, more social capabilities are called for, rather than the analytic and project management competencies for which IT is best known.

At CIO Connect, we believe there are several critical success factors for change projects and these help illustrate the types of skills needed by IT leaders if they are to drive change programmes:

* Manage perceptions and expectations ­ people do not necessarily share the same beliefs in a project
* Project leadership and accountability are vital
* Pay attention to team building and inter-team communication
* Fight organisational politics
* Spend more time on requirements and ensure that projects have effective business sponsorship

IT leaders can place themselves at the heart of the organisation by driving through change management programmes, but only if they recognise the need to develop their teams, and their own people-management skills.

CIOs will remain at the centre of change and those who have invested in their leadership skills will be heading cultural change projects.

Nick Kirkland is chief executive of IT leader network CIO Connect.

The past 12 months have seen a host of leading firms take on the challenge of environmentalism.

Businesses such as E.On, Britannia and BBC Worldwide are among the companies that have carried out year-long workplace programmes that help staff measure and improve their firm’s green credentials, in terms of waste, energy, water and transport.

The initiatives are likely to tap into the broader corporate social responsibility agenda of an organisation.
In some cases, the projects are seen as helping to drive important standards, including ISO 14001 or BS 8555 Environmental Management Systems accreditation.

In other cases, the plans help drive sustainability charters and the relationships being developed with
organisations such as the Carbon Trust.

The approaches are invariably driven by the wider organisation, and typically the board, finance, human resources and compliance functions set overall policy.

But a consequence of the top-down approach is that few IT departments have their own specific green computing policy.

Just 28 per cent of technology leaders have a formal policy to ensure that IT systems become more environmentally friendly, according to a recent CIO Connect poll.

However, the research also found that a third of chief information officers (CIOs) are sufficiently concerned about green IT that they are starting to explore the use of energy and heat efficient servers in the datacentre.

Although organisations recognise the reputational value of being seen to be environmentally friendly, it is cost savings that should be adopted as a true driver for green IT activity.

The size of the corporate energy bill and the amount of power that can be saved with IT-led initiatives are measurable benefits.

IT-led policies covering recycling, on-demand resource use, duplex print management, thin client adoption, auto power-off of standby PCs, replacing CRT monitors with TFT screens, and server virtualisation are likely to lead to quantifiable energy savings.

So far these activities have been implemented without too much trouble, largely because their effect on users is moderate. However, planned activities such as the greening of the corporate datacentre will force the organisation to understand that some financial investment must be made to deliver longer-term, environmentally-friendly benefits.

HSBC is one company prepared to invest in a green future, having publicly stated its intention to
become the world’s first carbon-neutral bank.

One of the main ways the group is working to reduce its carbon footprint is through the use of technology to reduce unnecessary travel.

But HSBC is also looking at new ways of constructing datacentres in Mexico, Hong Kong, the UK and the US that will be much leaner, energy-efficient power houses for its global business.

Following on from such trailblazing activity, 2008 will be the year that every CIO makes green computing best practice a matter of course.

Nick Kirkland is managing director of CIO Connect, a leading forum for chief information officers and chief executives.