Entries Categorized as 'Change on the cheap'
by Mark P. McDonald | February 6, 2012 | Submit a Comment
Every business book you read says that you need to have ‘executive sponsorship’ for any major initiative. Fail to involve the executives and you are likely to fail. That advice has become so prevalent that it is almost worthless. Getting executive sponsorship is not what matters; it’s the quality of the sponsorship that makes all [...]
Category: 2012 Change on the cheap IT Governance Leadership Management Personal Observation Signs of weak management Strategy Tags: 2012 planning, amplify, Leadership, Management, Personal Observation, Signs of weak management
by Mark P. McDonald | April 11, 2011 | 6 Comments
CIOs see the need for change but it’s often difficult to describe the type of change required. Without a clear description of the particular type of change, we too often fall back to defining change at the extremes. At the high end there is enterprise transformation where a firm tries to get itself off a [...]
Category: 2011 Change on the cheap Management Re-imagine IT Strategic planning Strategy Tags: 2011 Planning, Change leadership, Change Management, CIO Leadership, Management, RE-imagine IT
by Mark P. McDonald | April 1, 2011 | 1 Comment
Seth Godin is an author who can take a simple idea that we all intuitively understand and transform it into a fresh call for action. Poke the Box is just such a book and something that is well worth the read. The book is an explanation and celebration of people who get things started — [...]
Category: Book Review CIO Change on the cheap Innovation Management Tags: Book Review, Innovation, Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | March 9, 2011 | 2 Comments
A while back I wrote a few posts about how the “Changing nature of change” and it discussed how traditional change management techniques were evolving in the face of new models and ideas about personal participation and responsibility. Change used to be driven top down with the idea that if I lead enough, communicated enough [...]
Category: Change on the cheap Leadership Tools Tags: Business Leadership, Business Management, Change leadership, Change Management, CIO Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | September 16, 2010 | Submit a Comment
Building business skills in IT is a consistent requirement for CIOs and IT leaders. The term business skills is broad ranging including specifics about your company as well as broader management concepts that shape the executive discussion. The challenge is one of time and money, as you cannot afford to send IT teams to get [...]
Category: Book Review Change on the cheap Leadership Strategy Tags: Business, Business Strategy, Management
by Mark P. McDonald | May 3, 2010 | 1 Comment
Executive sponsorship for technology related initiatives is a persistent need of CIOs and IT leaders. Executive sponsorship is a key ingredient in change management activities. Executive sponsorship is something just about every CIO asks for as part of the IT strategy. The reason I am bringing this up is that CIOs and IT executives ask [...]
Category: Change on the cheap Leadership Tools Tags: Business Leadership, Change leadership, Change Management, CIO Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | November 5, 2009 | 5 Comments
Leading beyond tomorrow requires more than managing change. It requires building people’s ability to change and that is the difference between change management and change leadership. One of the techniques for leading beyond tomorrow I learned from Michael Doyle who unfortunately passed away in 2007 and is the author of Making Meetings Work. Reflective reciprocity [...]
Category: Change on the cheap Leadership Tools Tags: Business Leadership, Change leadership, Leadership, Tool, Tools
by Mark P. McDonald | July 16, 2009 | 3 Comments
“There are no IT projects, only business projects,” is the frequent imperative of many CIOs and IT leaders. However, every IT organization faces the need to implement changes that have little to no business impact. The question is how do you manage such a project. The answer is as cheap and as fast as you [...]
Category: CIO Change on the cheap Tools Tags: Financial Leadership, IT Leadership, IT Project
by Mark P. McDonald | May 19, 2009 | Submit a Comment
As part of a periodic series of blog entries on “change on the cheap,” this entry will discuss one approach to raising IT productive capacity without increasing the budget. In this post we will discuss a ‘recipe’ for raising IT productive capacity by 20% or more with no impact on the IT budget. Raising IT productive [...]
Category: Change on the cheap Leadership Personal Observation Tools Tags: Change, CIO Leadership, IT organization, Productivity
