How do you maintain alignment with your CEO on IT strategy and investment priorities? What's been most effective in building credibility as a strategic partner?

Three essential practices to align IT with the CEO:
1. Communication
Translate technical initiatives into measurable impact: instead of "Zero Trust Architecture," communicate "significant reduction in attack exposure window, ensuring regulatory compliance and protection of critical assets."
2. Connect IT to Strategic Objectives
Map each IT initiative to corporate objectives: security as reputation protection, digital transformation as service expansion, operational efficiency as cost reduction.
3. Shared Governance with Clear Metrics
Structured meetings with transparent decision-making frameworks that balance innovation, security, and compliance. Proactively communicate risks with recommendations.

Visibility! The most effective IT Strategy is one backed by past results - If your CEO and his LTs can see past investments & the impact they had they will more easily accept future investments and strategy components.

Things like steering committees, annual operating plan are the mechanics behind simple human trust.

At first we established a lateral communication between tech and the business down to C-2 and in some cases even below.

The teams are using agile methodology on all level except C-level. From the C- level we receive OKRs aligned on their level and we drill this down from program to story. The same way we are able to transparently show progress and needs upward.
We are even sprinting and quarterly aligning on infrastructure engineering level and our CIO is involved in clear showcases every quarter.

The rest of our executive committee is either directly involved in the planning procedure and showcases (mostly C-2) or is updated on regular base in steercos and stakeholder meetings depending on the program.

With this we have a clear and quarterly aligned roadmap and in case of higher investment request we have dedicated meeting with the respective ExCo member and the CEO plus CFO.

This worked for us until now quite good. 😊

I’ve found that establishing an executive steering committee for IT, which includes key business leaders, can shift the dynamics significantly. When decisions about priorities and budget allocation are made collectively, it’s no longer just IT’s responsibility, everyone has a stake. This approach also means that when there are competing demands, the executive team must resolve them together, which fosters alignment and strengthens IT’s position as a strategic partner.

When it comes to aligning multiple business units on overarching projects, I focus on bringing everyone together to see the bigger picture. For example, I’m driving a series of platform investments that span CRM, field service, and outage management, capabilities that have traditionally been siloed within individual business units. My approach is to present the overall strategy and the trade-offs involved, then facilitate a discussion among the business unit leaders so they can see how their decisions impact one another. It’s about providing the information and context, then stepping back and letting them align among themselves. This process, often under the leadership of the COO, helps harmonize priorities and ensures that IT investments support broader business goals.