Networking is an important part of professional life – it’s how you build useful relationships, extend your influence, and gain information outside of your line. So how do you do it? I want to ask this question to find out if there is a ‘best’ way of networking, irrespective of personality type. I must admit […]

A leader’s word is their bond. That’s what their followers expect, but when that commitment continually fails, it’s a slippery slope.Has your boss ever agreed to deliver something, and then let you down? Annoying isn’t it? A position of leadership is a privilege and a responsibility, and that responsibility is to create the environment for

Your company’s gateway to the Internet is replacing your Shop Window and your Telephone Switchboard. Outage can be measured in lost dollars and reputation.If you pick up the phone to make a call and don’t here the dial-tone, what do you do? You might swear and bang the receiver repeatedly in disgust. If you go to a retail outlet and

The IT Industry has come along way since its professionals were consigned to the basement floors in the domain of flashing lights and large reel-to-reel tapes. IT is Business. IT is the core of commerce. IT has a seat at the Executive table . So what’s to like about the industry recently emerged from a

The Industrialization of IT and ITIL demands IT Leaders to make processes robust and repeatable, and an essential part of this transformation is ensuring that information is exchanged consistently in the right way using the right forms and templates. But so many IT organizations I meet reinvent the wheel – they make their own forms

I surveyed a number of Technical Professionals on the subject of going around their boss. The results were surprising.Going around your boss is generally frowned upon – it’s ethics are questionable. Ethics and business don’t always go together, even if you think they should. The truth is, an organization is comprised of humans with their

Is your IT Ops team productive and always on top of their game? No? Then maybe it’s their morale that needs a boost. There are some simple, low-cost and very effective things that can be done to improve this, and you’ll see that morale and productivity is boosted: Invest in information boards:Using the traditional dot-matrix

To continue the theme (see Are you a Technical Professional? and Are you a Geek?), you can find out if you’re a IT Leader in the making by asking yourself if you exhibit three or more of the behaviors below: You find yourself thinking with pragmatism and not with perfectionism You wish COBOL.NET was THE language of choice,

For a bit of fun I posted some behaviors exhibited by people who classify themselves as geeks, and invited you to see how you compared. So this time it’s a list of behaviors exhibited by Technical Professionals – techies who take themselves a bit more seriously.If you say Yes to more than 3 of these

If you’re an aspiring CIO or CTO then you have to keep on your game CONSTANTLY . But it isn’t always about being clever. It’s about doing a number of simple things well, and continuously. I post a number of articles about career progression from the shop floor to the board room table, and below

Are you a Geek? If you do three or more of the following, then the answer is Yes!You spend more time automating something than you ever would performing the task manuallyYou buy t-shirts for their comedy valueYou store binaries on your iPodYou have more categories on your iPod than you do tracksYou hack your iPodYou

Do you sometimes get blank stares when discussing IT matters with the business? Or maybe you get push-back on changes you want made, but the push-back is non-specific or seems irrational? Well maybe the reason is because you’ve lost your audience in your use of language. I come across situations very frequently where this is the

Many of you might know about Software as a Service (SaaS). It is a growing industry within IT, and based around (what might be to some) a simple concept. That is, software isn’t owned, but rented; not installed, but accessed; it’s not paid for upfront, but pay-as-you-go. You could liken it to watching TV rather

I’ve been mixing with some of the top Execs (CIOs, CTOs, Heads of IT) over the last few days at the Forrester IT Forum in Lisbon, Portugal, and I’ve had a number of conversations about the top issues they face. Not surprisingly, delivery is still the key concern. What I discovered though is that this

You might think that Web 2.0 was set to totally disrupt and displace the big players in the IT industry. New players have risen in the last 15 years; Google, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Myspace, to name but a few. All these new guy’s propositions are based on amassing large volumes of data on individuals and

Have you noticed that when your organization announces something in the press that you begin to receive an unusual number of calls offering consultation and other services? Your company may have just announced a new product launch, division, lay-offs or a serious accountancy error.It can be a pain in the ass, quite frankly. But remember,

The media continues to report that we’re in the grip of a recession. Whilst this maybe true, I haven’t yet seen a cascade of severance and canceled projects; but that may still come. A little while ago I offered 5 recession beating tips for Technical Professionals which discussed some proactive measures to reduce your personal

No this ain’t some odd sexual reference. (If you thought it was, what does that say about you? And what does it say about me for thinking you might?)Fudging in this context is manipulation which goes against standard, e.g. changing a value of something ‘illegitimately’ to see if you get the result you’re looking for. My

Nobody has the monopoly on good ideas. You may find yourself in a situation where you have a good idea that can revolutionize your organization, if only ‘management’ could see it. You’re bursting at the seams to speak to someone who can sponsor the idea and make it happen. For the bright technical professionals who

Career development isn’t just about doing a great job (although mastering your craft is a solid way to build a career to the greatest of heights), it’s also about building, maintaining and developing your profile inside and external to an organization. You can build your profile as I’ve just mentioned, by doing a great job

I doubt many of us can answer this question Yes or No outright, but the answer maybe lurking there if you consider how frustrated you might be about not achieving your (realistic) desires. Career success, for example, is dependent on other folks supporting you and recognising your achievements. But I’d say in most cases, it’s

Technical professions require precision in language. We can’t express computer program code in slang, as much as we can’t express an insurance illustration without being exact. So in our profession, you’d expect all articulation and use of language to be unambiguous and precise, wouldn’t you? Well research has shown that technical professionals can still lack

A number of emails led me to write this article on communicating ‘Bad News’. This is a common issue in business, particularly in the western world where short-term results are king. Passing on information that is considered to be unwelcome fills a lot of people with angst and dread, so I want to address this

This might resonate with you if you’re a technical professional: how many times have you been asked to do a piece of work (often portrayed as a ‘small’ job) which disrupts planned activities and means one of both slip or are done with compromise? A study in 2002 found that IT departments can be spending

Below is a link to a great article that discusses No Excuse Leadership, which I think you should read. Why? Well I think it discusses an important aspect of leadership (and I stress leadership and not management) – creating a vision that inspires an organization to break down resistance to change and to set behavioral

This is my second installment on this subject as I get reminded of it constantly! Positive energy is such a…. positive thing! Its what urges us to succeed, we should absorb and create as much of it as we can.This time I’m considering the personal aspects of this subject1) Boredom can generate negative energy; avoid

I’ve decided to create a series of posts based on positive energy. In this first article, I’m going to talk about positive and negative sources of energy, and perhaps dispell some myths. So on that note, I’d like to focus first on… 1) Issues and Problems are not necessarily negative sources of energy! When people