Change

Today’s reading “IT Careers:  5 Tips for Charting Your 100 Day Plan“ by Mary Pratt, a Computerworld contributing writer in Waltham, MA, focuses on developing a plan for the next 100 days.  The point being that the more you have a vision of where you want to be in 100 days and a well thought out plan for […]

Today’s reading is “The Success Delusion — Why It Can Be So Hard for Successful Leaders to Change” from the Marshall Goldsmith Library.  Goldsmith’s thesis is straightforward:  The more successful we become, the more positive reinforcement we get, the more difficult it will be for us to make the changes we need to make to continue […]

In my reading not long ago I found a pointer to a short piece by Sean Silverthorne – “The Power of the Humble Checklist“.  As the author points out, and as I will confirm, having a standard checklist for complex, but nevertheless, routine tasks – e.g., the pilot’s pre-flight checklist or the hospital’s safe-surgery checklist – […]

We all remember Ron Heifetz from the first day of the IT Leaders Program.  There we learned about “adaptive leadership,” “giving work back to the workers,” and about “getting up on the balcony.” Today’s reading “The Leader of the Future” reports on a series of 2007 conversations that William Taylor, a founding editor of Fast Company, had […]

Dan and Chip Heath, who wrote “Made to Stick:  Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die,” are two of my favorite authors.  Recently, they wrote a column titled “Make Goals not Resolutions” which appeared in the February 2008 issue of Fast Company. The Heaths note that we often make resolutions;  like New Year’s resolutions, like the […]

Have you ever had a manager who was abrasive on your staff?  You know, the person who causes you headaches, who have aggressive management styles that create interpersonal friction, reduce motivation and trust to rubble, and disrupt work well beyond the group they lead.  In “Taming the Abrasive Manager:  Words from the Boss Whisperer”, Laura Crawshaw, president of […]

As it nears the end of the year, it seems appropriate for the Tuesday Reading to turn to the future.  In “A Roadmap for IT Leadership and the Next Ten Years” <http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EQM0626.pdf> Tim Chester, CIO at Texas A&M at Qatar, argues that the future requires that CIOs and other IT leaders become technology advocates and […]

In “Making Strategy That Sticks“, Susan Cramm points out that all too often when we develop a strategy, we focus on getting the right content rather than getting the right commitment.  She writes:  ”The acid test of strategy is whether it informs and constrains decision making by compelling leaders to align their functional goals and day-to-day […]

 John Baldoni, in “Questions to Make You a Better Leader” argues that asking good questions is a practice that all leaders need to have.  He suggests five: 1.  What about your work motivates you?  If it’s not motivating, what can you do about it?  What changes can you make to increase satisfaction? 2.  What challenges are […]

We all like to be treated with appropriate respect and consideration as we go through the several roles we have each day.  And, we bemoan the fact that in the fast-paced world we find ourselves in even the most basic decencies such as saying “hello” and “goodbye,” or remembering and using the names of people […]

In this piece, Becoming a Change Leader, May 8, 2007 CIO  <http://www.cio.com/article/108351/Becoming_a_Change_Leader>,  Maya Townsend, founder and principal consultant of Partnering Resources, introduces four key factors which she argues are crucial to successful change initiatives: 1.  Active, committed leadership — if you are not committed why should your staff commit? 2.  A clear, compelling business (not technical) […]

Today’s reading the “The ‘Pull Leadership’ Manifesto” by Stever Robbins, founder and president of LeadershipDecisionworks.  This piece from the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Archives caught my eye because of its thesis:  “We need leaders who inspire others to follow, who engender loyalty.”  Robbins calls this “pull” leadership and then goes on to identify twelve key […]

This week we return to Rick Brenner’s Chaco Canyon newsletter for the column “Asking Brilliant Questions“.  Throughout the leaders program we encourage participants to ask questions:  You do that as you are being present, you do it in meetings to draw out information from your colleagues, you do that as you coach.  In this column, […]

David Storm, in the January 2007 issue of InformationWeek calls our attention to “Five Disruptive Technologies to Watch in 2007“.  In the piece, Storm calls our attention to RFID, Web Services, Server Virtulization, Advanced Graphics Processing, and Mobile Security, all technologies that have been available to one extent or another for a number of years.  […]

Who’s Sorry Now? http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16816&ch=infotech Jason Pontin, Editor in Chief of MIT’s Technology Review, reviews Pip Coburn’s “The Change Function:  Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn.” Coburn was managing director of the technology group of UBS Investment Research during the technology run-up of the late 1990s.  While his focus in on customer’s […]

In a pieces spread over three issues beginning in late January NetworkWorld discusses the IT profession in the year 2010      http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2006/0123ed1.html      http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2006/0130ed1.html      http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2006/0213ed1.html   Based upon Gartner report, the articles suggest that “technical aptitude alone will no longer be enough”, IT leaders will need to possess expertise in multiple […]

  I really enjoy reading Rick Brenner who writes the email newsletter  from Chaco Canyon Consulting.  The last two issues of the newsletter  has focused on tactics for tough times:        http://www.ChacoCanyon.com/pointlookout/060201.shtml        http://www.ChacoCanyon.com/pointlookout/060208.shtml   In these two pieces Rick focuses on problem solving:      – What problem as I […]

A West Coast colleague passed this URl along earlier todayhttp://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/22/text.iq/index.html A concrete, perhaps, result about the impact of letting yourself be interrupted throughout the day. And, an interesting comparison with which to end the week. Have a great weekend……….jim

The January 28th edition of CIO carried an insightful column by John Baldoni about motivation in the workplace.  I think tht you will find it interesting. …….jim http://bestnetarticles.blogspot.com/2009/09/donts-dos-of-creating-inspir…

As I was reading the current issue of Fast Company, I ran across a longer column reporting on a conversation with Joe Kraus on what he now knows.  Kraus was a founder of Excite that in 1996 became one of the biggest tech IPOs ever.  At 33 he is not starting Jotspot, a hosted Internet […]