As I watched the November 2008 election results pour in, the reality that my 37-year career in Missouri state government would be ending began to sink in. More troubling to me, however, was the realization that I'd no longer be state CIO, a job I had been blessed to have for the past four years. In just two short months, I'd have to turn in my "white knight" hat, uniform and badge to the next person appointed to be a defender of citizen information, advocate for enterprise architecture and an efficiency driver.

Over the four years of former Gov. Matt Blunt's administration, much was accomplished, yet much remains to be done. My team and I pulled off total consolidation of 1,200 IT staff, and budgets and equipment from 14 siloed Cabinet agencies. We migrated 30,000 end-users into a single Active Directory forest and enterprise e-mail system, architected the state's first enterprise disaster recovery site for open systems, and successfully negotiated a next-generation network delivery contract. My avatar, which can fly and leap tall buildings in a single bound, was welcoming visitors to Missouri's pioneering recruiting site in online virtual world Second Life.

After four years, I grew to become a mile wide and a foot deep in myriad technology topics, from rural bandwidth to social networking. It's this diverse set of responsibilities and roles that makes the public-sector CIO position a rewarding and daunting opportunity.

The standing joke among my peers is that CIO stands for "Career Is Over" ... hmm. This impending change in my identity has compelled me to offer some just-in-time mentoring for encouragement. I'll also provide some free advice to new or aspiring CIOs and managers who find themselves lacking the resources or support to truly be a change agent.

The Enterprise Five

Public-sector CIO jobs aren't maintenance positions -- they are leadership roles. Your success in that capacity will depend on numerous factors, not the least of which is ensuring key positions are filled by employees who are willing to get into the boat and start rowing toward the strategic plan objectives. The first key position I filled was a deputy CIO, whose skill set included facilitation, leading a strategic planning process, business process improvement, and proficiency in presentation software and public speaking. Together we used our combined skills to set a direction, make a compelling case for consolidation, and communicate up and down the organizational structure.

Every enterprise should have five things. The first is a vision that dictates and articulates what the outcomes for success will be. In Missouri, that vision was provided by Blunt, who ran for office partially on a promise to deliver efficiencies and smaller government through IT consolidation.

The second factor is having an organizational structure that reflects and enables the customer's business processes. I inherited a structure that was in conflict with business processes, one that was based on individual personalities and "turf." This problem demanded immediate attention if we were going to move forward. Obviously there was some resistance to organizational change, and my state's selective service merit system required my attention to coax its guardians into using it to help me rather than be a barrier. Understanding your environment and how it works is crucial. The third factor is a team-based strategic plan. Now that I had in place a skilled facilitator, a new organizational structure designed to reduce or eliminate barriers, and the right people in the key positions, we -- the mid- and upper-level managers -- were ready to plan how to conduct the nuts and bolts of consolidation. The resultant to-do list was predictably long, which leads to the fourth key factor: prioritization. Experience told me to start with manageable and meaningful initiatives, then