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Another edition of "Ask Jim"Q: We just got a new president. He believes that we're (IS) an unjustified expense. This is frustrating since we have a history of providing state-of-the-art solutions for the company's business needs, both current and future. A. You stated that you provide state-of-the-art solutions for business needs... Are you focusing on the business needs, or the currency of the technology? It's been my experience that CEO's want to solve their business problems, and that usually means quarterly earnings-per-share numbers. Unless they're in love with technology (which is rare), they don't care if it's state-of-the-art or not. You're not helping things if you lead with the technology. My suggestion would be not to focus on how spiffy your systems are. This might look good on the resume or might sound great at the local users group or DPMA meeting. But if you are talking about how cool your projects are, or how cutting edge the company is, or how proud you are of your new systems, you'll turn off this CEO, as well as most senior executives. If you focus on your contribution to the profitability of the company, and most importantly, earnings-per-share, then you're probably going to get the CEO's positive attention. Obviously a lot of IT projects, as well as many company initiatives, don't contribute to EPS in a direct, measurable way. But you can - no you MUST - point to specific, hard benefits. If you can't define the real world justification of the knowledge management system that you just installed, or you can't show how email will measurably improve the productivity of the employees, how can you be sure it's worth doing? Because everyone else is? Because there is supposed to be some vague, theoretical improvement in productivity? And this is why you're spending $250 per seat to roll out the latest icon to the desktop? Define the benefits the system will have. Determine ALL of the costs of that system. Compare the two. Is the cost worth the benefit? Does the benefit sufficiently improve the bottom line? Can you guarantee that benefit? These are questions that must be asked and answered by YOU. And you must come through with the results. Then any intelligent CEO can't help but appreciate your work. BUT, if you don't produce tangible and worthwhile results, don't expect gratitude, much less the "employee of the year" award. I've made this statement before, in a lot of different contexts, but it bears repeating again. If your systems and projects aren't contributing to the bottom line of the organization, in some measurable or provable way, then why are you doing it?
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