A couple of weeks back I wrote about the most disliked behaviors in IT departments, and one that 80% of IT leaders felt strongly about was the rise of the Merit-Whore. A Merit-Whore is someone who persistently and unfairly takes credit for the work of a team or a subordinate. Why does this happen?In most […]
It’s Leaders Who Create Merit-Whores Read More »
I recently wrote about the 11 Behaviors most disliked by IT Leaders, and #9 in that list was: Email-itis – in other words, staff using emails rather than interacting with each other in person. The added hatred was the use of blind copy and the overuse of copy to a wide audience
Leaders Must Exorcise The Curse of Email Read More »
It wasn’t long ago that I advised you to feel confident in moving jobs, if you’re a master at your subject . I thought it would be interesting to think about more than moving IT jobs, but getting a better IT job. How could you do that? I’m going to caveat this by saying the
How To Find a Much Better IT Job, Even in Recession Read More »
Good leaders know what they value and what their values are, and they recognize the importance of ethical behavior. The great leaders consistently and recognizably exhibit their values and ethics in their leadership style and actions. But what about the values that your organization declares it honors in corporate brochures, office posters and standard desktop
Do You Know If You Live Your Organization’s Values? Read More »
This is my first article aimed at IT Sales. Selling technology is not easy, particularly in this Web2.0-fuelled, open-source aware, web-enabled environment. There is always a competitive product, and sometimes the competition might be available for free. Sales calls are a wonderful bevy of pleasantries and good intentions. Sales, though, are not won or lost
How to Avoid Wasting Time When Selling Technology Read More »
Successfully sharing your vision for technology in your business is a constant challenge. If there was a silver bullet to this, it would be worth more than its weight in gold (nice metaphor, eh?) The IT vision isn’t something owned only by the CIO, it is a product of many people in the organization. Once
How to Successfully Share Your Vision for IT Read More »
The average tenure of an IT professional in an organization is still around two years on average, but there are exceptions where workers stay around what seems forever. Why?I know of several dedicated, experienced IT professionals in the US, UK and South Africa that are in a ‘trap’ – i.e. they feel stuck in a
Why IT People Don’t Move Jobs Read More »
The majority of freelancers in IT have their head in the sand, as far as their personal performance goes.IT leaders from across several industries have commented to me that freelancers tend to move from appointments without seeking feedback on their performance. It’s estimated that over 60% of freelancers do not receive regular feedback on their
Freelancers Tend to Have Their Head In The Sand (and Nine Free Course places available!) Read More »
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) isn’t a new concept, but its emergence in organizations is demanding transformational leadership to be applied at all levels.I’m assuming you already know about SOA, but I want to recap one important point. The nature of SOA is that it demands server-based technology functions, such as an accounting suite, to become the
SOA Demands Different Leaders Read More »
The Industrialization of IT is one of my current favorite topics as I think we are at a turning point of the whole industry. But one of the biggest implications of this change is that it will reshape the workforce towards blue-collar working.Industrialization of the IT department and the services it provides is a good
Industrialization of IT Will Create a Blue-Collar Sub-Class of IT Workers Read More »
