Tips to Help You Build that Internal Network

Tips to Help You Build that Internal Network

The CIO Survival Guide, written by a former CTO at Dell Inc., digs into issues critical to success. Among several lists, it offers these tips for creating an internal network:

  • Cultivate a broad network to exchange ideas and rally collaborative support.
  • Stay in touch with people at all levels of your organization -- vertically and horizontally.
  • Continuously investigate what managers and higher-level management need from you and the IT organization.
  • Respect and openly acknowledge the individuals on your team.
  • Adapt your interpersonal style to align with the strengths and shortcomings of other's styles.
  • Act to preserve relationships, even under difficult stress or heated emotional circumstances.
  • Promote collaboration and remove obstacles to teamwork across the organization.
Author Karl D. Schubert calls the world of an IT executive a jungle, to which his book seeks to provide some navigation. It does.

Excerpted with permission of the publisher, John Wiley & Sons Inc., from The CIO Survival Guide: The Roles and Responsibilities of the Chief Information Officer by Karl Schubert. Copyright© 2004 by John Wiley & Sons Inc.

This was first published in April 2005