How to talk to the board

Dear Bob …

Our CIO has to report to the board. He has asked us to put together some information that gives them a snapshot without boring them to tears. The main points should emphasize the impact to customers and end users.

We are working on categorizing the projects under some main points with a short description that relates how the project/task supports the main point. We are also putting together some statistics since this has not been done in a long time: number of users, PCs, Servers, printers, amount of disk space, VPN connections, phone systems, telephones, applications, etc.

We’ve categorized our expenditures into:

* Compliance

* New Functionality

* Improved Employee Experience

* Infrastructure enhancements

There was quite a bit of this last, which consumed a considerable amount of time and money. To give you a few examples, we replaced a lot of old PCs, upgraded our WAN and LAN infrastructure, migrated to Active Directory, and upgraded Exchange.

Many of these changes were fairly transparent to the end-users because we did a good job of minimizing disruptions.  They also do not have the appearance of end-user or customer benefits because they were back-end changes.

I was wondering if you knew of some website(s) that may have some business benefit translations already done.

– Need some phrases

Dear Phrase-seeker …

Sorry – I don’t know of anything along those lines. It sounds like you’re on the right track so far. A few thoughts that might help:

* Compliance and new capabilities – these are where I’d recommend directing as much of the board’s attention as possible. Compliance is obvious – fail and you’re out of business, or at least have large penalties in store. New capabilities drive either revenue enhancement, cost reduction, or risk mitigation – subjects boards have an easy time with. Add enough description to the big ones that the board gets a picture of what’s changing and how (“With the new software we can close business in half the time, meaning less time for buyer’s remorse.”)

* Active Directory – present this in the context of identity management, not in terms of back-end infrastructure. That lets you cast it in the context of improving both security and end-user effectiveness. The impact on security is obvious; the impact on end-user effectiveness is better administration, meaning employees have proper access and privileges promptly and accurately.

* Improve employee experience – I don’t know about your board; most would have a problem with this as a business rationale. I’d go heavier on the “improve employee effectiveness” angle and use the improved employee experience as a fringe benefit.

* Back-end improvements – lump these together under the category of “technical infrastructure management” or some such label that sounds daunting enough to prevent serious questions, cost-justify them as the IT version of preventive maintenance, and list them using as much technobabble as possible without laying it on so thick that it sounds like baloney. ITIL phrases like “availability management,” “performance management” and “capacity management” come to mind, as does the phrase “prevention of obsolescence.”

Most of the advice about presenting to boards of directors tells you to talk to them in business terms. It’s mostly good advice, except for the stuff you do because good engineering demands it. You’re sometimes better off just saying so, making it clear this is very technical subject matter – it really is rocket science – and it can’t be explained any other way. So long as you have a good story to tell about the rest of it, the board is likely to accept your assertion that the technical stuff is necessary if you’re going to deliver the rest.

– Bob

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