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…
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…
Much has been said and written about the gap between IT and business and the need for IT to understand business requirements. However, many IT executives try to bridge that gap by aligning IT’s capabilities with the direct, yet sometimes conflicting, requirements from various business functions across the organization. This is a narrow view of…
When I was asked to participate in this series of articles on the alignment of IT within the larger business structure of an organization, my goal was to drive home the overarching impact that cross-functional alignment can have on organizational success. Much like the law of physics which states that inertia is accelerated when forces…
I heard a story about a CIO who got such great personal service at a Ritz Carlton hotel that he ended up sending his entire IT staff to Ritz Carlton hotel staff customer service training. That is taking the concept of IT being a service organization to a new level! On the other end of…
While mid-tier CIOs face dramatically more resource constraints than their large-enterprise counterparts, the issues and demands they face in delivering and managing IT services are surprisingly similar. This has shown to be true based on years of quantitative data analysis, focal interviews, IT consulting engagements and just common sense. If anything, global pressures on smaller…
Having served in many roles over the past 20 years in the IT industry I have noticed “collaboration” is a term increasingly gaining momentum. Where other efforts fail, collaboration can help CIOs build real alignment and achieve success with the business. This alignment requires a concentrated focus on the part of the CIO. It is…
The technical speech is one of the most common types of speeches. It often focuses on a singular issue and provides new insight, information, or solutions to that issue. Although it is the main driver of the technical speech, focusing solely on content is not sufficient to keep the audience engaged. This article presents five…
IT organizations have come a long way from the days when they declared victory because of an SLA around frame relay throughput. Or have they? While many SLAs, OLAs, and other contractual agreements have indeed become more application-oriented and are moving from raw availability to performance and even more complex user experience criteria, meaningfully assigning…
Attention members of the C-suite: your CIO is having an identity crisis … and it’s your fault. That’s what you’d hear if you could be a bug on the wall at a CIO convention: “What do they want me to do? Oil the machines? Contribute to strategy? Take charge of business processes? Save money? Please…