The Director's Cut: Are you a driver or a passenger?

Does your IT team drive forward your organisation, taking the lead in strategy, in setting the agenda and in the boardroom? Or are you seen as merely a necessity that everyone has to put up with, carried by the people who do the 'real work'?

It's your choice. Be forever seen as a cost, a 'technology tool' and unwelcome, or be seen as an investment, a 'business enabler' - and be loved by all.

What follows are my top 10 ways to achieve this, in priority order.

1. Your mission is their mission

Save a fortune on yellow post-its and wasted effort. As an IT department, your vision is your company's vision. If the overall corporate goal is to be the number one car rental company, that must be your team's goal as well.

2. Hidden account management (aka man-marking)

Put simply, identify the key decision-makers in your organisation and allocate one of your people to each person. Your person's role is to ensure their allocated decision-maker catches IT doing something right, on a consistent basis. This is the single most powerful method in transforming perception. Please don't just believe me. Go and do it today.

3. No jargon

IT has become riddled with jargon, so much so that attending some meetings with IT people is like taking a crash course in Double-Dutch. It's time to speak with plain business English in all that you do. If you have anyone who can't do this, keep them out of the way, preferably in a locked room. Clear, concise, compelling meanings, all day, every day.

4. Focus on what the technology does, not what it is

Business decision-makers don't care one hoot what the technology is, they want to know what it does. Some people call these killer applications but it goes beyond this. It extends and grows when it comes to the internet. As far as your customers are concerned, by the way, a 'cookie on your desktop' means a baked biscuit ready to eat.

5. Integrate your IT and business strategies

You have the same goal as your organisation (see 1). Now, wrap your strategy around that of the organisational strategy as a whole, and vice versa. All plans will then be mapped onto each other, section by section, showing both how IT will help the organisation achieve each of its goals, in turn, and the specific business benefit that will result from each of your deliveries.

6. Take ownership of your web activities and prove your worth

Become a facilitator for every department involved in your site and with customer interaction. Also, install the latest customer prediction management systems, enabling you to predict what your customers will do next. Watch out though, your marketing director will think you are after his or her job, which is clearly not true, because you will already have it.

7. Introduce project leadership

One of the hottest topics around. Forget traditional - and boring - project management. Put your projects in the hands of inspiring communicators who are action driven and who keep their heads while all around are losing theirs. And learn lessons from projects that go well, not just those that don't.

8. Talk yourselves up (internally)

Celebrate successes, enjoy what you are doing. Change the culture and encourage the individuality of your people within the framework of the team. If you don't think you are outstanding people, delivering outstanding results, no one else will.

9. Location

Are you still behind three armour plated doors that would not look out of place in a jeweller's? Your people have to be physically with other departments in your organisation.

10. Recruit people from outside IT

Become a magnet for the best people in your organisation and ensure a balance between technical and non-technical, between genders and across age ranges. And make IT exciting, because what we do is. I once advertised as follows: "If you want a quiet life, join a monastery, if you want some excitement, join us." We were deluged.

David Taylor is the president of IT directors association Certus and a regular contributor to silicon.com.

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