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Users and experts we interviewed cited these as top reasons that IT managers end up in the doghouse with top management. Avoid these and you'll have a lead on business credibility.

We hate it when IT managers and staffers:

• Don't go out of their way to understand the business side of their companies.

• Don't communicate clearly.

• Talk 'geek speak' at management meetings, thus guaranteeing that they will always be viewed as outsiders.

• Justify projects based on cost savings associated with replacing a system but fail to decommission the old system.

• Get too friendly--or not friendly enough--with end users.

• Take sides in political wars.

• Advocate the sexiest technology over the best solution to a business problem.

• Ignore the rudiments of accounting, purchasing, accounts receivable and accounts payable.

• Call 'them' the Bean Counters. Only in BOFH-land can you get away with not playing by 'their' rules.

• Tell users that a technology will be nirvana, only to be confronted by the grim technical reality--and the lousy job of having to readjust user expectations.