by Mark P. McDonald | February 28, 2011 | 1 Comment
People talk about culture all the time, its importance, the need to build the right one, how you best fit in it, how important leadership is to creating it. People talk about culture constantly as if it was broken, a work in progress, something that they have but always can be better. Its like they [...]
Category: Leadership Management Personal Observation Tags: Business Leadership, Change leadership, CIO Leadership, Culture, IT Leadership, Personal Observation
by Mark P. McDonald | January 7, 2011 | 1 Comment
2011 Resolutions that CIOs may make but too often will break as everyone is overcome by events and day to day challenges. In most years, this situation is regrettable but causes little harm. When things change incrementally, there is little harm in carrying last year’s habits into the next year. However, according to CIOs, the [...]
Category: 2011 Leadership Tags: 2011 Planning, Change leadership, CIO, Operational Leadership, personal musing
by Mark P. McDonald | November 12, 2010 | 1 Comment
We all face the need to make tough decisions mostly around the need to match resources with revenues or results. That may sound like a fancy way of saying cutting costs or saving money, but it is the reality we all face these type s of decisions. Recently I was talking with a CIO who [...]
Category: CIO Leadership web 2.0 Tags: Change leadership, Leadership, personal musing, Social Computing, social media
by Mark P. McDonald | October 12, 2010 | Submit a Comment
As the annual planning process starts its important to recognize that it’s the CIO’s responsibility to work with executives in a way that builds their trust and support for IT and it’s strategy. That comes from speaking with executives in a way they understand rather than trying to ‘teach them IT.’ Speaking in a way [...]
Category: Leadership Tools Tags: 2011 Planning, Change leadership, IT strategy, Tools
by Mark P. McDonald | September 7, 2010 | 1 Comment
Buy In by John Kotter and Lorne Whitehead is a modern day version of how to influence people. The books basic premise is that having a good idea alone is not enough to create value. You need buy-in and a buy in that come from using spill, clear and commonsense responses delivered to both supporters [...]
Category: Book Review IT Governance Leadership Tags: 2011 Planning, Book Review, Change leadership, Change Management, Change on the cheap
by Mark P. McDonald | June 7, 2010 | 2 Comments
That’s true. Enterprises and their systems act like they are more interested in the person – the shell rather than what is inside the person. It is what is inside that matters. You want people’s passion, their knowledge, their motivation, their creativity. Getting inside the shell is one of the things that separates high performing [...]
Category: Leadership Signs of weak management Tags: Change leadership, Leadership, people, Signs of weak 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 | April 19, 2010 | 2 Comments
Change is the goal of change management. It sounds simplistic but change is anything but simplistic. The nature of change is changing. Traditional change management approaches concentrate on making the case for change and adoption of new business solutions and practices. That view measures success in terms of compliance rather then the realization of new [...]
Category: Leadership Tags: Change, Change leadership, Change Management, Operational Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | April 15, 2010 | 1 Comment
Transparency is the new universal solution to all things and it is an integral part of the changing nature of change. Calls for greater transparency reflect many things, from a decrease in trust to the increased capacity of people to take in new information. While being transparent is often thought of in a financial perspective, [...]
Category: Leadership Strategy Tags: Change, Change leadership, Change Management, Leadership, Management
by Mark P. McDonald | April 13, 2010 | 2 Comments
Dissatisfaction is the new driver for change, particularly in an environment requiring greater flexibility and strong social systems. Dissatisfaction will replace the traditional top down performance problem approaches that drive current change management. Now you can a say this sounds like semantics, after all people are dissatisfied because there is a problem. My responses are [...]
Category: Leadership Strategy Tags: Change, Change leadership, Change Management, Leadership, Management
