More Than Survival Mode
But about half of the 25 business technology executives in the room said they have no choice but to find ways to help create future products and services, regardless of how bleak the current economic climate is. "In financial services, the technology is the business, and the business is the technology," one attendee said. Others said the current difficult environment is creating an opportunity for IT departments to work even more closely than before with LOB teams to squeeze out inefficiencies, to refine processes, and to close the deadly gap that all too often exists between IT organizations and the rapidly evolving needs and demands of customers.

The pressure to let these imperatives overwhelm all other possibilities is enormous these days. Here's how Sunoco CIO Peter Whatnell described it in a recent discussion: "The mindset many CIOs are bringing to the table these days is, what can we do right now to bring benefit very quickly, whether that's saving money or saving time?

"In large part, that's because projects leading to savings are easier to quantify -- conversely, if you say we'll grow market share by 2%, you're held hostage to enormous external factors such as the economy or market factors out of your control," said Whatnell, who gets to speak with many of his CIO peers as president of the Society for Information Management.

And then Whatnell said something that jolted me: "I never hear anyone talking about growth strategies these days." Clearly, Whatnell carries enormous credibility and authority and his counsel should be considered very carefully.

But I still think it's not enough -- it's just too risky to cut off all connection to the future. And since discussions of risk management are all the rage these days -- with good reason -- consider these three scenarios:

So right now is the time to ask the question: What's the proper balance between lockdown and forward-looking innovation? How can you deftly manage the relentless pressures of today's cash-management priority with an externally focused attentiveness to the marketplace from which future revenue will come?

Even more important, right now is an excellent time to pull together a plan for innovation during cost cutting -- you and your team already have made all the big cuts and diminishing returns are setting in. Share that plan with your C-level colleagues and with the LOB heads who depend on you and your team for indispensable expertise and partnership in creating your company's next wave of products and services. Communicate these important imperatives energetically to your team and be very visible in setting the tone for how you can both maintain great discipline on costs and continue to play huge roles in transforming your company's products, services, processes, and value to customers.

And as part of that strategic plan, you can surely lean hard on your IT vendor partners, many of whom have been recrafting their messages to align with the cost-cutting imperatives of today. These new programs from vendors are very real -- we heard them from a dozen tech companies in various markets during a tour of the Bay Area last week. Push those ideas out to your colleagues and use them to show that you can leverage that support to handle cost cutting plus innovation.

Because, while expense control is an unmistakable part of your responsibilities, your primary objective as CIO is to help drive greater business value and customer value, and no amount of blunt-force cost cutting will deliver on both of those goals. Cost cutting is not enough.