CIO Steven Agnoli is a full innovation partner at global law firm K&L Gates. What it takes to be in that position—which helped earn his company a 2007 CIO 100 award—requires a balance of practicality, creativity and a hefty dose of soft skills.

1. Lay a strong IT foundation. You need to get the basics right before you can start thinking about innovation, says Agnoli. To that end, strong operations and well-running infrastructure have to be a given. “It’s very difficult to move forward without that strong foundation,” he says. If you aren’t keeping the lights on and the trains running on time, you won’t even have the time to devote to innovation.

2. Create an IT team that inspires confidence and trust. An IT team with strong communication skills lays the foundation for businesspeople to believe in the team’s capabilities. Your team—from the help desk on up to the CIO—should be responsive to your users. If there’s a problem, users should be told when the problem will be worked on and fixed. Having users who are frustrated by computer problems that prevent them from doing their work, combined with lack of attention by the IT department, does not instill the confidence an IT team needs to go beyond the basics.

3. Stay in sync with the business. Make sure what you do is in line with what the business wants to accomplish. Some companies are very forward-looking and progressive, some are more cautious, says Agnoli. Either way, your IT strategy should be focused on enabling the achievement of business goals. You need to move forward in step with the business. “If they keep looking backward and we’re still in the same spot, there’s a problem,” says Agnoli. That said, an IT group that is too forward-thinking can be just as much of a mismatch as one that's too backward.

4. Speak the language of the business. “We don’t talk about tech per se,” since tech jargon can alienate those outside of IT, says Agnoli. The key is to talk with the business about the technology in terms of the problem it is solving or the progress it is enabling, rather than tech features. To get anywhere, people have to understand what you’re saying, he says. “We have a no-acronym rule, [for example], it’s too easy in IT to hide behind the tech mumbo jumbo.”