Mark McDonald

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

Entries Categorized as 'CIO'


Customer Experience bridges the gap between revenue growth and cost cutting

by Mark P. McDonald  |  January 6, 2012  |  Submit a Comment

One of the issues facing CIOs in 2012 is the apparent conflict between growing revenue and cutting cost.  While IT may be asked to do both, in reality plans and priorities fall heavily on the cost cutting side limiting IT’s impact and value. Customer Experience brings a different perspective to issues of revenue and cost. [...]

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Category: 2012 CIO Management Strategic planning Strategy Technology     Tags: , , , , , , ,

History is more powerful than your peers

by Mark P. McDonald  |  December 21, 2011  |  2 Comments

Benchmarking is a hot topic among CIOs and IT leaders as they look to evaluate and justify their operations by answering the question — ‘how do we compare with others?” Increasing change creates demand for increasing benchmarking as companies value peer comparisons over their own experience and history.  This bias makes it surprisingly easy for [...]

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Category: 2012 CIO Management     Tags: , , , ,

Hiding reality from your CEO — a sign of weak management

by Mark P. McDonald  |  December 5, 2011  |  Submit a Comment

I was at a large conference recently and I noticed a very helpful ad hoc tool a team had developed.  The tool was a list of people and rooms taped to a wall so people could see where their peers were without having to stand in line and ask a coordinator to direct them.  Now [...]

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Category: CFO CIO Leadership Signs of weak management     Tags: , , ,

Avoid the trap of false precision

by Mark P. McDonald  |  November 30, 2011  |  1 Comment

Precision is the enemy of IT value and a root cause of why it is so hard to measure IT’s.  About the only thing that you can prove with precision is that is not wasting money. Precision requires that specific investments that produce pre-defined and specific results.  You want to produce more widgets, then you [...]

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Category: CFO CIO Management     Tags: , , ,

What I learned from CIOs at Gartner’s first Symposium in India

by Mark P. McDonald  |  November 25, 2011  |  Submit a Comment

This past week marked a milestone as Gartner brought its symposium format to India for the first time.  More than 1,000 Indian IT professionals met in Mumbai to learn, discussion, participate and contribute to each other on issues ranging from cloud computing to the future of IT itself.  Between the presentations, workshops and 1 on [...]

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Category: 2012 CIO Economy Leadership Management Strategic planning     Tags: , , , , ,

Are you doing the dishes? Time to check your IT strategy before it becomes an IT plan.

by Mark P. McDonald  |  November 17, 2011  |  3 Comments

Business relevance and alignment is a persistent issue in IT and a challenge for CIOs.  In this year’s CIO agenda presentations at Gartner Symposium these issues were discussed and measured based on CIO business priorities and plans.    The 2011 CIO survey looked at this issue and we described it in an analogy that IT believes [...]

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Category: 2012 CFO CIO IT Governance Leadership Strategic planning Strategy     Tags: , , , ,

Welcome to Gartner Symposium at Australia’s Gold Coast

by Mark P. McDonald  |  November 14, 2011  |  Submit a Comment

Technology is perhaps the most global of all industries.  OEMs and contract manufacturers in Asia Pacific, work with operating software developed on the West Coast of America, enterprise systems originating in Europe and innovation coming from everywhere. Technology trends are also global as proven practices travel at the speed of the web to companies all [...]

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Category: CIO Leadership Management Re-imagine IT     Tags: , ,

What I have learned from European CIOs in Barcelona

by Mark P. McDonald  |  November 11, 2011  |  1 Comment

Gartner’s first Fall Symposia and ITXpo in Barcelona is complete. I am writing this blog post on my iPad while I am flying to Frankfurt to start the trip to Australia and the Symposium there.  It has been a rather full week with hundreds of presentations, meetings, more than 50 CIO workshops, thought leadership presentations, [...]

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Category: 2012 CIO Economy Innovation Leadership Management Personal Observation Strategic planning     Tags: , , , ,

Re-Imagining IT requires new opinions and ideas – Yours

by Mark P. McDonald  |  October 12, 2011  |  2 Comments

Throughout this year we have been talking about the need to re-imagine IT in the face of changing business priorities, technology innovation and IT performance.   Re-imagination involves finding new answers to new questions and that involves hearing from you. Gartner Executive Programs runs an annual survey of CIOs that seeks to understand CIO priorities, plans [...]

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Category: 2012 CIO Leadership Management Strategic planning budgets     Tags: , , , ,

What is the difference between a good CIO and a great CIO?

by Mark P. McDonald  |  September 22, 2011  |  1 Comment

This is a question that CIOs ask either formally in search of a performance yardstick or informally as they ponder their own career and success. I have written a few posts in the past about this issue and the other day I came across a quote that provides another dimension worth thinking about. “I knew [...]

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Category: CIO Leadership Management     Tags: , ,