by Mark P. McDonald | February 25, 2013 | Submit a Comment
Strategy connects with structure and structure influences strategy. The relationship between the two drives organizations to re-align, re-distribute and re-organize, all except for IT. According to the 2013 Gartner CIO Survey, only 30% of CIOs believe that changing business priorities and strategies requires changing the IT organization. In other words, 70% of CIOs believe that [...]
Category: 2013 IT Governance Small IT Strategy Tags: IT Leadership, IT organization, IT strategy
by Mark P. McDonald | October 29, 2012 | 6 Comments
A recent set of studies published by McKinsey Quarterly provides further evidence that the bigger they are the harder they fall. Given that the McKinsey Quarterly’s audience is predominantly business executives rather than IT professionals, it’s important that CIOs are aware of the findings and have a reasonable response. Large projects not only fail more [...]
Category: 2013 Amplifying the Enterprise Distortion IT Governance Small IT Tags: 2013 Planning, Change leadership, IT Leadership, Small IT, symposium, transformation
by Mark P. McDonald | October 21, 2012 | 3 Comments
It’s October. It’s Orlando. It must be time for Gartner Symposium. This year’s event represents a pivotal time for CIOs and IT particularly as the world makes the transition between a focus on IT and a broader focus on Technology. The Nexus of forces (Cloud, Mobile, Social and Information) is a focus of the event, [...]
Category: 2013 Amplifying the Enterprise CIO Customer Experience Digitalization Lean Thinking Management Small IT Strategic planning Technology Tags: 2013 Planning, CIO, CIO Leadership, CIO strategy, IT and Business, Strategy, Strategy and Planning, symposium, Technology Leadership, Value of IT
by Mark P. McDonald | July 13, 2012 | 5 Comments
Please enjoy this prior post on the nature of the IT organization. IT trends and transformations over the past decade have been driven by a common theme: reducing cost. CIO-led initiatives for outsourcing, consolidation, shared services, applying lean manufacturing principles, have all revolved around the need to take costs out of IT. All of this [...]
Category: IT Governance Small IT Tags: IT organization
by Mark P. McDonald | October 17, 2011 | Submit a Comment
The importance of information and technology is increasing, but that does not mean that the role of IT is increasing. Many CIOs look to get to the proverbial ‘next level’ and escape the ‘box’ that defines IT as ‘enabling, as a cost center, as a service, as something apart from the business’. It is time [...]
Category: 2011 2012 Leadership Management Re-imagine IT Small IT Strategic planning Strategy Tags: 2012 planning, Business Leadership, IT and Business, Strategy, Strategy and Planning, symposium, Technology Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | October 7, 2011 | 1 Comment
The IT organization structure is more than boxes in an organization chart. The IT organization and the decisions it contains have a significant influence on IT performance, capability and process. How you are organized also represents the way you think about IT. Leaders are thinking about their organizations in new ways, replacing monolithic IT structures [...]
Category: IT Governance Leadership Lean Thinking Management Re-imagine IT Small IT Tags: CIO Leadership, IT organization, Lean Thinking, Small IT
by Mark P. McDonald | September 21, 2011 | 2 Comments
This post is the companion to others that describe what ‘Thinking small’ about IT means. This post concentrates on a different way of thinking about how IT builds relationships within the enterprise, customers, suppliers etc. It describes how leaders are evolving the ideas behind building relationships from ones based on specialist skills or restrictive processes [...]
Category: Leadership Management Small IT Tags: IT Leadership, Small IT, Technology Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | September 16, 2011 | 4 Comments
This post is the companion and conclusion to the issue of Thinking Small about IT cost and value. In that post we discussed how thinking about IT as BIG, complex and important creates an environment where the only way to control IT is to control its costs. Thinking small about IT opens the door to [...]
Category: 2012 Management Small IT Tags: IT management, Small IT, Strategy and Planning, Value of IT
by Mark P. McDonald | September 14, 2011 | 2 Comments
Leading CIOs have been re-imaging IT in the face of changing business priorities, technology innovation and resource realities. This is leading some to adopt a new way of thinking about IT — thinking small. Thinking small touches just about every aspect of IT from its foundational assumptions, to how it operates, to how you judge [...]
Category: 2012 IT Governance Lean Thinking Small IT Strategy Tags: CFO, IT budgets, Small IT, Strategy and Planning, Value of IT
by Mark P. McDonald | September 12, 2011 | 5 Comments
IT trends and transformations over the past decade have been driven by a common theme: reducing cost. CIO-led initiatives for outsourcing, consolidation, shared services, applying lean manufacturing principles, have all revolved around the need to take costs out of IT. All of this cost cutting must have worked to one degree or another as IT [...]
Category: 2012 CIO IT Governance Leadership Lean Thinking Management Re-imagine IT Small IT Strategic planning Strategy Tags: 2012 planning, CIO Leadership, CIO strategy, IT Leadership, IT management, Small IT
