Entries Categorized as 'Uncategorized'
by Mark P. McDonald | March 12, 2013 | 6 Comments
Everyone is talking about the need for a chief digital officer (CDO). The CDO role has come into fashion as a demonstrable sign that your organization is serious about digital technology. The topic of what is the chief digital officer their role and responsibilities is full of energy and attention. It is rare to create [...]
Category: Digital Edge Digitalization Hunting and Harvesting in a Digital World Leadership Management Strategy Uncategorized Tags: Chief Digital Officer, Digital Edge, Digitalization, digitization, Leadership, Strategy
by Mark P. McDonald | September 1, 2011 | 1 Comment
It summer time and so I thought I would share a thought that has been kicking around in the back of my head as I have been traveling around the world. This is outside the norm for the blog, but consider it a little summer reading. I would really appreciate your thoughts on this. Thanks [...]
Category: Economy Personal Observation Technology Uncategorized Tags: Economy, Leadership, Management, personal musing
by Mark P. McDonald | August 5, 2011 | Submit a Comment
An accretive leader is one that allows individual changes to build up, one on top of the other, with little consideration of the cumulative effect of change on the firms. Not every leader is an accretive leader but every organization faces the challenge of managing accretive change. Management systems have implicit incentives for accretive change [...]
Category: Economy Innovation IT Governance Leadership Lean Thinking Management Technology Uncategorized Tags: Business Leadership, Business Strategy, CIO strategy, Leadership, Strategy and Planning
by Mark P. McDonald | July 17, 2011 | 6 Comments
Yeah right! This mantra has been something we all have heard and may have said in response to the gap between business and IT. The statement is used as a way for IT to define its way out of being a support function and into being a mission critical function. The problem is that just [...]
Category: IT Governance Leadership Management Uncategorized Tags: IT and Business, IT Leadership, IT management, Strategy and Planning
by Mark P. McDonald | June 27, 2011 | 5 Comments
Modern business relies on the creation and processing of knowledge. Peter Drucker and others recognized the role of the knowledge worker as being a central challenge of the second half of the 20th century. Enabling, enhancing and extending the reach and power of knowledge and knowledge workers has been the foundation of the information technology [...]
Category: Leadership Management Strategic planning Uncategorized Tags: IT organization, Knowledge worker, mid-office, RE-imagine IT
by Mark P. McDonald | June 6, 2011 | 2 Comments
What is IT’s value? How do you measure it? Both are questions that constantly challenge CIOs and their C level peers. IT value can be difficult to measure, particularly when IT costs are direct and financial while IT value is indirect and operational. This has led people to apply indirect value metrics based on issues [...]
Category: Uncategorized Tags: IT budgets, RE-imagine IT, Value of IT
by Mark P. McDonald | May 23, 2011 | Submit a Comment
Competitive instability happens when one player in a market releases a series of capabilities that constantly change the terms of competition. In geo-politics, Ronald Reagan creates competitive instability via US defense policy in relationship to the Soviet Union. Creating competitive instability involves creating a stream of discontinuities that exploit near term market opportunities and then [...]
Category: Leadership Management marketing Re-imagine IT Strategic planning Strategy Uncategorized Tags: Business Strategy, competition, Economic Recovery, Marketing
by Mark P. McDonald | March 11, 2011 | 2 Comments
There is a difference between playing for food and playing for fun. I mentioned that analogy in an earlier series of blog posts as one of the reasons between the observed disconnect between the IT organization and the business. The idea here is that the business plays for ‘food’ as they are likely to lose [...]
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Mark P. McDonald | February 25, 2011 | 3 Comments
Wednesday’s post discussed the difference between people playing for food or playing for fun. The analogy applies to the difference between pro-athletes who play for food and college athletes and others who play more for fun. The idea expressed in that post was that food and fun are part of the IT/Business context. The question [...]
Category: IT Governance Leadership Personal Observation Strategy Uncategorized Tags: Business and IT, Business Management, IT and Business, Leadership, personal musing
by Mark P. McDonald | October 25, 2010 | 2 Comments
The CIO Edge provides a unique view on leadership. — the leaders. Too often books on leadership either describe leader behaviors in abstract and academic terms or in self-serving prose colored by the author’s admiration for the leader. The CIO edge is different in that it let’s the leaders speak in their own words and [...]
Category: Book Review Uncategorized Tags: CIO, Leadership
