When David Behen became IT director for Washtenaw County, Mich., the department was little more than an order-taker. And not a very good one. It was kind of like the server who makes you wait, then brings the appetizers with the entrée and pours you a glass of Chateau Latour when you asked for the house red.

“They never brought projects in on time and always overspent,” says Behen. “The IT department had no credibility.”

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Fast forward a few years, and that same IT department is implementing a wireless project that delivers on the county’s promise to improve service to its citizens and bridges the digital divide between far-flung residents. This innovative initiative was born within that same, previously disdained IT department and stands as evidence of the organization’s evolution from a reactive entity to a proactive business partner. Behen, now Washtenaw County’s deputy county administrator and CIO, says he has reinvented his job, transforming it from enabler to “policy-maker and community engager.”

This kind of change is hard. But when it happens, it elevates the status of IT and brings benefits to the business. Here Behen and CIO 100 honorees from DePaul University, Foley & Lardner, and Pitt Ohio Express share the steps they’ve taken to lead IT’s shift from prodigal back-office order-taker to forward-thinking partner in innovation.

I. First, Build a Foundation
When Doug Caddell became CIO of Chicago-based Foley & Lardner eight years ago, leaders within the 2,600-employee law firm didn’t look to IT for much of anything, let alone business innovation. Caddell spent the first few years just fixing what was broken. “We provided a basic, solid infrastructure and built back-office technology that actually worked,” Caddell explains.

Doug Cadell, CIO of Foley & Lardner

Then he looked for a way to help his tech-skeptical lawyers understand what IT could do for the business, adopting the credo “Build it and hope to hell they will come.” So, without any formal buy-in, IT developed new Web-based revenue-enhancing systems it knew could benefit the business. “This was totally against what I learned [about delivering systems] in school,” says Caddell. “But I knew if we didn’t do it, we’d just be running Exchange servers and managing document management systems forever.”

It worked. That suite of Web-based technologies enabled the firm to boost revenue and garnered it a CIO 100 honor last year. Better yet, it began to transform IT’s role. When the firm’s executives created a team to develop new ways to increase business with existing clients by cross-selling legal services—the Client Share initiative—IT was invited to the very first meeting. Lawyers, says Caddell, have always “kept the clients to themselves, even if there were attorneys in other areas—like M&A or bankruptcy—that might have other services the client needed.” It’s the “eat what you kill” mentality, he says. But the Client Share system that came out of that meeting enables lawyers to share clients and this year earned IT another CIO 100 honor.