Those of us IT executives who spend weeks and months on the road wear our frequent-flier statements like Purple Hearts. One friend of mine has logged 90,000 miles, and another claims to be in what she calls the "six-digit club." I, however, have them both beat. With more than 150,000 miles under my belt this year, you name the city, and, chances are, I know the airport. It’s my job as vice president and CIO for Siemens Corp. to spend almost as much time in the air, shuttling between engagements, as I do on the ground. On any given week, I’m off to Munich, Germany, or Mexico or Toronto or Atlanta, meeting with CIOs and CEOs and CFOs to make sure everyone’s on the same IT page. I fly in the name of global alignment.

Siemens, my employer, is a 150-year-old company operating in six major industries: energy, health care, information and communications, transportation, industry and automation, and lighting. The company has offices in 190 countries, employs more than 460,000 people and was slated to pull in more than $70 billion this year. We are, in the truest sense, a global organization, divided into four geographic regions: Europe, Asia, the Americas and Germany, where we’re headquartered. This coming year, for the first time in company history, the Americas will surpass Germany in revenue, earning more than $25 billion on its own. It will soon become the largest component of this international giant. n I’m the corporate CIO for the Americas and responsible for coordinating the efforts of 26 top-level IT executives from Canada to Argentina. At an organization where most subsidiaries operate in the same industry, such a task might be simpler. But at Siemens, where one operating company makes locomotives, another builds power plants, a third produces ultrasound machines, and a fourth makes automotive components, it can be quite a chore. At quarterly meetings, the first thing out of everyone’s mouth is, "We’re different," and by and large, that comment is right on track. A diverse product portfolio breeds different business priorities, and each of these CIOs has his own ideas on how to use IT. How do you reconcile these divergent opinions? How do you align all facets of the business to work toward a common goal? These are the questions I ask myself every day.

Alignment by Index Card

When Siemens hired me in the summer of 1999, I knew that my success hinged on establishing positive relationships with a vast number of people. The challenge was to establish working relationships with more than 75 CEOs, CFOs and CIOs, not to mention a number of key corporate executives. One of my key tenets for achieving alignment is that you must concern yourself with how your actions will be interpreted by others. Do they understand my intent? How will they perceive this decision? I vowed never to commit to anything before thoroughly examining these questions.