Strategies and Trends for Information Technology Leaders
Business leaders often use agility to describe their business plans and strategic initiatives, but it’s often little more than just a vision. Agility is something that requires planning and a full incorporation in business and management processes. It is philosophy and action. And most of all it requires courage and commitment. But what does “agility”…
The CompTIA IT Industry Business Confidence Index experienced its largest jump ever in December 2009, reflecting renewed optimism and strengthening balance sheets among IT companies. The December rating jumped 6.3 points to 56.6, marking the first time net positive opinions exceeded net negative opinions. The December results come on the heels of a relatively stagnant…
The recession caused plenty of disruption in the overall U.S. workforce and the IT ranks were not an exception. According to a new survey by the Corporate Executive Board, the percentage of IT employees making “high discretionary effort” plummeted in the first half of 2009 to 4.6%, part of a longer-term downward spiral affecting the…
The financial crisis has done a thorough job of weeding out companies that were extended beyond their means. Those who believed they were immune quickly learned that this economic tsunami was more than they could overcome. We who remain look in the mirror and wonder if we are next. This economy makes times gone by…
Despite the historical tendency for businesses to slow spending and weigh investment decisions more carefully during a recession, a study by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the business information arm of The Economist Group, publisher of The Economist, found that business decision-making is actually accelerating due to the recession. In today’s challenging business environment, the report…
In order to stay competitive, companies in Europe and US will continue to shed IT and other back office jobs, according to a new study of 4,000 billion-dollar firms by the Hackett Group. Over the next five years, corporate IT will shift an additional 583,000 jobs to lower-cost nations. This is on top of IT…
Every two or three months I run short surveys with leaders around the world; the project is called the Leadership Pulse. Over the month of July I examined business drivers in this survey. This is a topic I have studied in some depth since 1996 when I first began examining what leaders think drives performance…
As companies look to dig their way out of the recession, it takes a certain type of leader to keep innovation going. The most successful executives also have a clear understanding of what the oft-used term means. “Innovation is a lot more than whiz-bang new products,” said John Kao, chairman of Kao and Company, a…
They do not want to see your IT plan. Trust us, they don’t. Up in the C-suite, the CFO, CEO, and the board chairman are way too busy ducking pot shots from the Obama White House; conjuring up creative explanations of down quarters to pacify shareholders; and reading economic tea leaves in hopes that there…
We have all been deluged with suggestions on how to survive during the current economic slump. From admonishments to “weather the storm”, which, in the extreme, advocates hiding behind an equipment rack whenever the CFO was about and selling the conference table to save a few bucks and hoping to come out the other side…