It’s that time of the year when many of us are thinking about finding appropriate holiday gifts for loved ones. The other day it struck me that there are similarities between the gift giving process and the profession of Information Technology (IT). Here are my thoughts about the philosophy of gift-giving as it relates to [...]
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Strategy
A friend of mine struggled with bad weather and worse traffic to make his way across town, arriving just in time for a scheduled lunch meeting. Unfortunately, he had misunderstood his calendar, and he was at the wrong restaurant. When he told me about it the next day, it struck me how his predicament is [...]
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What do capability, motivation, and expectations have in common? All three are essential for a successful service organization, whether that organization is in Information Technology or in any other field. Capability Let’s use a help desk as an example. For such a service organization, capability includes the basic skills necessary to be able to answer [...]
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Do you want? A more satisfied boss … Less stress … More successful projects … Infrastructure savings … Enhanced leadership … Low risk solutions … This two-page article gives you some proven approaches for reaching these goals, along with some comments about how you can achieve them. It’s a check list for the kinds of [...]
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I remember the first time I was in a management role, more than 25 years ago at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). I was a bit anxious because I had been put in charge of people who had been my peers. Then I surprised my new direct reports by asking them questions no one in management [...]
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Like many of you, I travel a lot. Some of the travel requires me to wear business suits, and I’ve had to learn how to pack a suit coat so that it’s wearable when I unpack it. Years ago I learned the secret, but it recently occurred to me that the secret of packing a [...]
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There is an article in the May, 2003 issue of Harvard Business Review with the disturbing title “IT Doesn’t Matter.” Yet despite its inflammatory title, the article is highly supportive of today’s information technology, comparing it to the likes of electricity, transportation and telecommunication in its importance to business, and declaring it “the backbone of [...]
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In last month’s newsletter, I said that Information Technology (IT) is about people and change, and that software and hardware are just a means to an end. However, some of you are operating under the impression that the IT organization itself is just a means to an end. To use an analogy, some of you [...]
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How can you focus your use of information technology for increased business benefit? Initial implementations of information technology in business almost always focus on cost reduction; it’s been that way ever since computers were first invented. But cost reduction is only one of seven different ways that IT can improve your business, and if you’re [...]
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What is this thing called “acquisition due diligence”, and how does due diligence for information technology differ from any other kind of acquisition due diligence? These questions will be answered in this white paper which describes the three IT surprises that you want to avoid. Did you know that most people doing IT due diligence [...]
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