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- IT filled with teams “preserving knowledge” is doing it wrong
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- “If an experiment is sweet, you go ahead and do it” doesn’t belong in business
- If the IT you have didn’t exist, what would you put in its place?
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Category Archives: Management & Leadership
Principles as Attractors and Safety Mechanisms
Governing IT to generate innovation and value means having the business unlock resources for these purposes. Safe-to-fail experiments — the hallmark of probing for opportunity — are a type of “project”, therefore, that will be run. They will tend to … Continue reading
Governance models for the real world
Different types of order require different approaches to leadership, and thus different approaches to governance. First, let’s get situated. If you’re not familiar with the Cognitive Edge Cynefin Framework, this post is going to lean on it heavily. Dave Snowden, … Continue reading
Getting past the impulse to order everything
There’s a constant temptation in management more generally, and IT specifically, to presume that everything not only can be ordered, but that it ought to be. Perhaps, for IT people, it comes from the origins of the work. The original … Continue reading
Signs of an Organisation in Trouble
What are some of the warning signs that an organisation may be headed into trouble? Start with how people spend their time. We’ve known since at least the 1950s, with the work done by William Oncken and Peter Drucker, that … Continue reading
Posted in Management & Leadership
Tagged deferred projects, time traps, unavailable managers, waste
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Let your yes be yes, and your no be no
I have spent thirty-eight years in the enterprise work-a-day world. From this long experience, in multiple countries, multiple industries, and in roles from entry-level computer operator to Chief Executive Officer, I have one core observation to take away. Most managers … Continue reading
Who do you serve?
Information Technology groups frustrate the rest of the people in the organisation because they’re not seen as serving their needs. That is a trite statement: the battle between users and technologists is an old one. Still, what could you be … Continue reading
Evaluating performance for results
Most managers I know hate to do performance evaluations. (I’m one of them, by the way.) In the typical enterprise, evaluations have become a way to find reasons to hold pay down. The amount available for increases is limited, as … Continue reading
Think beyond your box
You are a manager. Therefore, you have staff. You need to constantly keep updating how you see the world to reflect the way your staff see it — for that will differ. In other words, you must think beyond your … Continue reading
What do CEOs want from IT?
Very senior leaders of organizations are seldom very good at giving IT the direction IT wants. Expecting that to change is to play a fool’s game. It has nothing to do with the “technological awareness” of CEOs, COOs and the … Continue reading
