A recurrent (and painful, at least to judge from readers' emails) issue in complex law firms, as in other far-flung businesses, is a chronic disconnect between what management thinks IT should provide and IT's ability or willingness to do so.  From management's perspective, the CIO and his organization are being obtuse and speaking some indecipherable language.  From the CIO's perspective, senior management is playing a passive-aggressive game:  To quote one I spoke to recently, "Lawyers don't like what you give them but they won't tell you what they want."

If you read CIO Magazine as I do, this goes by the name of "business process alignment," or simply "alignment."  Are the systems, capabilities, hardware platforms and software tools IT is providing to the organization "aligned" (or not) with the organization's "business processes"—what the firm actually needs to get done to perform its function and stay in business?  For us, that means things like keeping track of court calendars and creating and filing motion papers and briefs on time, dealing with discovery ("litigation support"), putting together deal documents efficiently and effectively using templates from past transactions, tracking time and converting it ultimately into bills and collections, etc. 

The phenomenon of the CEO and the CIO talking past each other is so common it virtually has its own literature in management-land, but trust McKinsey to help you think through it by providing a clarifying terminology and framework.  Specifically, they distinguish between what the CIO must "supply" and how he can in turn shape the organization's "demand" for IT services.

"Supply" is the basic stuff:  Keeping the trains running on time, the email- and web-servers up and updated, the wordprocessing flowing, the time recorded, etc.  Not sexy but clearly indispensable.  The biggest mistake a CIO can make here is thinking once he's done this he's done his job.

"Demand" is where it gets interesting.  McKinsey uses the term to encompass the CIO's efforts and ability to help the organization innovate through technology.  Unfortunately, problems immediately arise when business unit leaders (think practice group managers in a law firm) doubt the CIO really understands what they do or that he can think strategically about it.  Then there's the always-hot-button of cost.  If an IT initiative comes with a meaningful price tag, the inherently skeptical will doubt its payoff.  And let's not forget turf:  Just how far is the CIO going to be permitted to "intrude" into the business leader's domain?

Nevertheless, one can identify three conditions obtaining where firms are able to capture greater value from IT investments:

• Key business executives as well as the CIO have a clear financial understanding if IT costs and investments, and discuss it in a common, business-focused language.
• Business-side executives are accountable for IT and take responsibility for generating value from IT investments.
• Both business and IT managers consciously study how new IT investments can improve productivity and competitiveness--in other words, they seek innovations that will change the business.

Can CIO's make the transition from just "keeping everything up and running" to forming true strategic and thought-leadership partnerships with the firm's leadership?  Hard as it can be, the payoff can be tremendous.  IT can move from being perceived as a perilous sinkhole of costs to assuming a role as a key enabler of innovation.  Not all CIO's can maneuver the transition, to be sure, and not all management-side lawyers will embrace the mind-shift either.  But your firm deserves no less.