Steven Spielberg‘s movie Lincoln and Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s book from 2005 entitled Team of Rivals are both respectful appreciations of a quiet man who did extraordinary things. What are some of the lessons we can extract from a closer look at our 16th president? According to Bloomberg Businessweek, there are five behaviors of President Lincoln...Read More
Used to be that everyone thought the CIO was prey for the CFO. But times have fortunately changed, with more collegial and valuable relationships being established between the two roles. In “So, You’re the Boss of the CIO. Now What?” of March 1st in CFO.com, the author cites results of a LinkedIn survey that asked...Read More
Jonathan Alter, a well-known author, recently wrote an article in August for Business Week entitled “A Checklist for Change.” While Mr. Alter most often writes about politics, what could be more appropriate than his writing about management? Politics and management are inextricably linked. Committees are inescapable in both arenas. The premise of the article —...Read More
One of the most significant problems technologists and business managers face is building teams that work. My wife was at a meeting last week at which Marshall Goldsmith spoke. She came home with a bundle of material, and I want to share with you his direct and appealing method for “Team Building Without Time Wasting,”...Read More
Change Management Matters We know from many studies that unless a change management program accompanies a major technology implementation, the success rate of the project drops precipitously. The ROI implications of the failure are significant, damaging further the relationship between IT and business managers. According to “Developing Better Change Leaders” by McKinsey, ‘few companies can...Read More
Hunter Muller of HMG Strategy runs a really appealing series of CIO network conferences. In his update from a recent summit, he features Saad Ayub, SVP and CIO of Scholastic Corporation, the world’s largest distributor and publisher of children’s books and a leader in educational technology and children’s media. As a panelist, Mr. Ayub talked...Read More
John Eggert of IdeaLeadership out of Houston, Texas, conducted a survey, whose purpose was to ‘better understand the challenges to communication and collaboration among professionals from technology-related disciplines and those outside of these disciplines.’ John was kind enough to allow me to share his findings, which are in an article entitled “Non-Technologists’ Perceptions of Technology...Read More
Last week’s Wall Street Journal had an article that was spot on to my focus as a coach and was introduced with a brilliant headline: “IT is From Venus, Non-IT is From Mars.” Wish I had thought of that! Never before have I found such rich evidence to prove the point that business and IT...Read More
An issue of CIO Dashboard begins with five IT assessment questions which a new CIO should investigate. Of the five, two related to the relationship between business and IT. These were: First, do business and IT leaders regularly interact? Second, can business sponsors for the top 5 projects describe a project’s business case in one...Read More
The Oxford dictionary defines ‘character’ as “the collective qualities or characteristics, especially mental and moral, that distinguish a person or thing; a moral strength; reputation, especially a good reputation.” I think we’d all agree that character matters significantly in our personal lives as well as in our professional lives. Indeed, a goal, and perhaps a...Read More