I just noticed something today that squares nicely with yesterday’s post:  The Society for Information Management’s (SIM) 2009 report citing CIO’s top concerns.  The top two?  Business productivity and cost reduction. 

Closely following, and also a nice match to yesterday’s concerns here, is IT and business alignment.

Economic concerns are a factor, but frankly, proper alignments yielding productivity, efficiency and cost reductions are never out of fashion.  People who can yield those things are valued commodities – build a resume that has empirical, measurable, things that show your contribution to productivity and efficiency.

As you advance your IT career, whether on a CIO track, CTO track, or remaining within a targeted discipline such as project management, applications development, and so on – remember that you are serving business.  Even in a “tech” company, you are immersed in a business, and the name of the game is to make money.  Even if you work in a non/not-for-profit endeavor, you still have to generate revenue, and you still must strive to drive costs down.

When you factor in other Top 10 concerns, such as IT cost reduction, IT reliability and efficiency, revenue generating IT innovations (how ‘bout that one?), IT strategic planning, and business process re-engineering – you really begin to understand how IT personnel can make their star.

Don’t miss the forest for the trees:  Leverage IT for maximum value and indispensability to business.

Those as qualified can participate in the 2010 SIM survey at SimNet.org.

July 7^th:  On this day in 1968, the rock group “The Yardbirds” disband.