The Premier Blog For Learning How To Become A Successful CIO
Over at Toyota, they have a habit of doing things differently than everyone else. This might be one of the reasons that Toyota is such a successful company. Their IT department, just like the rest of the company, looks like it on the brink of failure even as the company does better and better in … Read more
You would think that building cars and running an IT department wouldn’t have a lot in common and in fact were two completely different activities. However, there are more similarities than are obvious on a first glance. Toyota currently makes some the best products available, they do it at the lowest costs, and they have … Read more
It is a sad fact of the IT world that everything requires money. No matter how cool the new technology would be to have, no matter how critical the update or change may be, you are not going to be getting or doing anything about it unless you have the funds to spend. In the … Read more
Quick question: does your IT department have a business continuity plan? If you don’t or, even worse, if you’re not sure then basically you are going to eventually lose your job. How many of us work in a building that at least once a year has a fire drill? We all look around, stand up … Read more
The financial melt-down of 2008 had at its core one simple mistake that a whole bunch of companies made at the same time: they did a lousy job of risk management. They made investments in things that were very risky without realizing just how risky they really were. IT departments face the same challenges: at … Read more
First off, this post has nothing to do with politics. It really does not matter how you feel about the war in Iraq – this post will still contain valuable information for you. I’ve just gotten done reading the book The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and The Endgame In Iraq by Bing West. It’s a … Read more
Wicked IT problems can frustrate even the best of us – by their very nature, wicked IT problems have no solution (that’s why we call them “wicked” and not just “hard”). As we talked about last time, although you may not have the tools to solve these types of problems, you do have the tools … Read more
So we’ve chatted about Wicked IT Strategy problems – these are the ones that you really can’t solve. Given that, you’ve got a couple of different things that you can do. The easiest is to throw your arms up in the air, say “this can’t be solved”, and then work very hard at getting promoted … Read more
Some problems just can’t be solved. As an IT guy with an engineering background, I find this hard to believe – it goes against my grain. I mean, back in school I encountered lots of problems that at first blush appeared to be impossible to solve. However, once I had gotten a little deeper into … Read more
A business stall can hit a company / IT department at any time. There can be many reasons for what causes a stall including having a premium product or abandoning a good market segment too early as a company goes looking for greener grass. If that was all that could happen to a company, that … Read more