Designing an IT organization to best meet the needs of your business is a never-ending task. Just when you think you have the optimal design, factors such as changes in the business, new technologies, or new ways to work come along and mess up the success. CIO Insight recently published a slideshow of the Nine Ways to Better Organize Your IT Department. Their suggestions, based on IT consultant … [Read more...]
Key Measures of IT: Business Value, not Costs
September 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Dateline: September 27, 2013 Welcome to our Friday WRAP – one thought-provoking idea to think about over the weekend. In a recent interview of Michelle Bailey, vice president of datacenter initiatives and digital infrastructure with the analyst firm 451 Research, CIO Insight shared her views of what IT leaders ought to be focused on these days. Bailey suggested that IT organizations have … [Read more...]
The Board of Directors’ Expectations of IT
September 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment
What does the Board of Directors (BOD) expect from IT? Recently my friend and mentor, Dr. James Cash, published a blog in the HBR blog network, A Board Director's Perspective on What IT Has to Get Right, outlining 4 things: 1. Generating Top-Line Growth-Every discussion on the role of IT and CIOs should start with the question: "What are the potential uses of this technology that will … [Read more...]
Exploit, Don’t Enable
August 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Dateline: August 30, 2013 Welcome to our Friday WRAP – one thought-provoking idea to think about over the weekend. Two of my favorite IT researchers, Dr. Cynthia Beath and Dr. Jeanne Ross from the Center for Information Systems Research at MIT (CISR), recently published a blog on the Harvard Business Review blog network about their recent work. They suggest that company leaders can no longer … [Read more...]
Making Partnerships Work
July 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Dateline: July 26, 2013 Welcome to our Friday WRAP – one thought-provoking idea to think about over the weekend. Partnerships can be a tricky thing. On the one hand, building an ecosystem of partners is necessary in today's environment. One organization cannot provide all the services necessary for a successful business. IT is used to working with partners to deliver the variety of systems, … [Read more...]
When IT Isn’t at the Table
July 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Dateline: July 12, 2013 Welcome to our Friday WRAP – one thought-provoking idea to think about over the weekend. Why is there still a disconnect between what IT does and what the business wants? According to the 2013 Cisco Global IT Impact Survey many IT organizations are not as aligned with their business partners as they expect to be. Cisco's survey asked questions of 1,300 IT decision … [Read more...]
Performance and Sustainability are no Longer At Odds
May 31, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Dateline: May 31, 2013 Welcome to our Friday WRAP – one thought-provoking idea to think about over the weekend. A thought-provoking blog about energy efficiency and IT performance was recently posted on the CIO Insights blog network. Sam Greengard, a professional writer, shared his thoughts on The Next Generation of Green IT, Today, green computing has gone mainstream in the enterprise. … [Read more...]
Management is Not Leadership
May 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Dateline: May 3, 2013 Welcome to our Friday WRAP - one thought-provoking idea to think about over the weekend. John Kotter, a former professor at Harvard Business School, has spent over 40 years studying businesses and those that lead them. In 1990 he wrote a classic article for the Harvard Business Review about the difference in leaders and managers, titled What Leaders Really Do. Recently, he … [Read more...]
