Quickly: IT/BT executives should ensure that their goals align with the CEO’s.

Forrester’s IT Forum was in Las Vegas last week. Great time, with over 1,500 clients and sponsors on-site. Highlights for me were John Chambers of Cisco jumping off the stage into the audience to sell his vision and an amazingly elegant dinner for over 1,000 at the very cool Tao Club in the Venetian.

I kicked off the proceedings with a ten minute talk entitled “CEO Success Imperatives.” Whenever I meet with a CEO I ask a simple question: “What do you, as the CEO, have to do to be successful?” Here are the seven themes that emerged from my CEO research:

1) Getting, keeping, building the best people. “I hire 15 people every hour. I want the best.”
2) Engendering collaboration. “If HP could only harness the knowledge of HP.”
3) Reaching global markets
4) Increasing profit. “HP makes $12 million per hour but spends $11 million per hour. I want to change that proportion.”
5) Building a positive culture. “I want a company culture that is viewed positively from the inside and from the outside.”
6) Customers, customers, customers
7) Driving innovation. “I want to figure out how to break linearity.”

Here’s my simple (some might call it simple-minded) advice: If you’re a CIO, or applications development professional, or enterprise architect, ensure that your success imperatives support the CEO’s. If you’re living in the old IT world, they probably do not — they are most likely oriented to technology (faster transaction times, lower storage costs). But if you’ve moved into the new world of BT (business technology), you are most likely halfway there.