Strategies and Trends for Information Technology Leaders
By Samuel Greengard Once upon a time, we were told a wonderful tale about technology simplifying work. It makes sense because a word processor is far more efficient than a typewriter and a Website is much simpler and faster than managing millions of pieces of paper. However, the reality is that today’s technology simply creates…
By Samuel Greengard Over the last decade, every aspect of business and IT has become more demanding. Here are seven of the most common ways CIOs fall short in handling career development for managers and others: Overwork everyone.Today’s always-on 24x7x365 workplace heapsenormous demandson IT departments. In addition, keeping up with a blitz of projects and…
Vision: The art of seeing things invisible, as Jonathan Swift once wrote. Visionary executives, we submit, are those who not only see possibilities in plain sight, but who also possess a unique mixture of skills, abilities and leadership that can make the impossible happen. They are individuals who can marshal the resources and people around…
You can be doing a fantastic job, but if some of your key stakeholders either don’t know about it, or have an incorrect perspective about your work, it can be a huge block to your credibility and your success. It is the role of any executive to both do their job and build personal credibility…
Question: are you a propeller-head? It’s an honest question, but before answering know that your boss and the company’s board do not want to have sit-down sessions with a propeller-head who intends to review the minute details of a proposed new data center. What they want to know is how much money this data center…
The latest benchmarking data estimates that you spend over 70% of your time and resources keeping current operations running, i.e., keeping the lights on. Gartner estimates this at over 80%. Whatever the number, those of you I have talked with agree. It’s a big number. One of the biggest credibility issues CIO’s face is that…
Today many organizations are considering whether to keep IT functions internal or outsource them to a third party. There a number of factors that need to be considered when choosing a service provider. (Or, if you already have one, you can still evaluate their role in your organization using these guidelines.) First and foremost this…
I have loved every one of my years in the IT business, which, to give you an idea of how long that’s been, was called EDP, or electronic data processing, when I started in 1966. But lately I have come to realize that I had a career, not a profession. By definition, a profession implies…
PALO ALTO, CALIF. — Basex chief analyst Jonathan Spira wants to make one thing clear to people who think it’s more effective to juggle multiple tasks at once: “There’s no such thing as multitasking,” Spira said. “We’re switching between tasks, but we [human beings] are not capable of multitasking.” The comments came during a recent…
For many CIOs telling their line-of-business (LOB) counterparts that a particular project isn’t a good idea is hard to do. The LOB manager, VP, president, etc. have project “X” in mind and feel it is exactly what they need to make situation “Y” better, go away, produce, etc. The problem isn’t that the LOB manager…