Spade Work

The ability to turn down a request begins long before that request is made. IT managers agree that to be respected when conflict arises, you must first earn the trust of fellow executives. "Before you can say no, you need a relationship of mutual trust," says Florin Docea, a project manager at and insurance company and a past president of the Society for Information Management.

This trust rests on three pillars:

* Sound cost-tracking processes. If your company lacks metrics for IT costs, you'll face an uphill battle in explaining to business execs why the risk-reward ratio of their pet project makes it a no-go. "If there's no way for IT to charge back for a project, business managers are not going to experience the consequences" of their requests, says Gartner analyst and US Computerworld columnist Barbara Gomolski. "You need an environment where people are really going to be paying for what they're using."

* Strong relationships with fellow executives. Fred Held, former CIO at Mattel Toys, says that when he took that job, "a top executive told me, 'If you're not spending 70 to 80 percent of your time with line executives, you're not doing your job.'

"That prevents line executives from saying they can't do their jobs because IT doesn't support them, " Held adds.

* A history of enabling strong projects. Your "no" means more if you have a track record of saying yes whenever possible. This is especially important for project managers and others who lack veto power, says Carolynn Benson, a senior consultant at Ouellette & Associates.

"As a project manager, you don't have direct influence," she says. "So you must build influence by being a strong supporter of business goals."