Strategies and Trends for Information Technology Leaders
America has led the world in technology innovation for almost two centuries. While Europe kick-started the industrial revolution, America took it into high gear: Mississippi steamboats, giant steam shovels, the telephone, the assembly line, the light bulb, typewriter, sewing machine and so more came out of the USA. That trend continued in the 20th Century…
I’m sure that the “finger pointing” blame-game approach for determining responsibility dates back well into prehistoric times. Battles between Harry B. Barbarian and Charlie Q. Savage were likely fought because neither would accept blame for a poorly tied rope or poisoned arrows that did not kill the prey quickly enough. It is not hard envisioning…
Quite by coincidence as I’m writing this (I came up with the title last night), a remnant Tsunami that devastated Japan is just now hitting Hawaii — with apparently far less devastating effects. But, in fact, this column was inspired by something far more trivial (yet, somehow, related — at least that’s how it feels):…
What should you do when the CEO keeps demanding things from IT and there are no more resources to do it? What should you do when demands pile up so high that you and your team are constantly over-worked and the work just keeps coming? I always talk about how you need to rise above…
At a time when the cost of doing business has taken a harder hit than almost any other time in recent history, one of the greatest challenges faced by most — if not all — CEOs is the ability to remain focused and true to the vision of an organization while surviving financial stress long…
In business as in life, bad ideas are ubiquitous. In life, we often get a chance to grow up, be forgiven, and learn from our mistakes, but bad ideas in business can be devastating and unrecoverable. So, when they begin to take root and start damaging morale, blocking innovation, and destroying value, you must recognize…
Businesses go through several stages of evolutionary development and in each one they demand different things in order to survive and to prosper. In an organization’s early entrepreneurial beginnings, the focus lies in getting customers and generating enough revenue to stay alive. Centralized systems for managing workflow, delegated leadership, and formal business planning lay far…
The growing focus on the future, from developing shared vision to budgeting for growth and strategic planning, are all signs that an organization is going through a significant change. What follows is are guidelines how IT can use this knowledge to transform from a functional cost center to a key strategic player with a seat…
This is the fifth and, I promise, last column on cloud (at least for a while). In this column, I’m going to pretend that you’re already dealing with some cloud initiatives — whether you had anything to do with them or not — and trying to take some control over chaos . As some of…
There has been a lot of discussion in many forums about the role of the modern CIO. To me it’s fairly simple and it’s in the title: Information. The CIO’s role is about information. Information to make strategic business decisions; Information to make tactical business decisions; Information about the state of the business; Information about…