by Mark P. McDonald | September 19, 2011 | Submit a Comment
Are young developers leaving your company? You know the ones who you have hired in the last few years with skills in developing web services, web sites, mobile apps etc. The ones who naturally work in an agile environment, have the energy, and want to innovate in your organization. If you answer no, then great [...]
Category: Leadership Management Tags: IT Leadership, IT organization
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
by Mark P. McDonald | August 29, 2011 | 4 Comments
We are all sometimes loose with terminology. Just consider terms like architecture, value, strategy and the like and its easy to see how the same words can have slightly different meanings. However beneath every word there is a meaning, a sense, an idea and its helpful to go back to the root of the word [...]
Category: IT Governance Leadership Management Signs of weak management Tags: Change leadership, Change Management, IT Leadership, IT management, Strategy and Planning
by Mark P. McDonald | July 19, 2011 | 1 Comment
If you want to understand someone you need to do more than walk a mile in their shoes, you need to try and do what they do. The other day I had lunch with a former CIO who has recently been promoted to run a business unit in a mid-sized medical device company. The CIO [...]
Category: CIO IT Governance Leadership Personal Observation Tags: IT and Business, IT Leadership, IT management
by Mark P. McDonald | July 17, 2011 | 2 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 | July 13, 2011 | 3 Comments
Blogging Note: Like Gary Trudeau I am taking a week off from blogging, but I would like to share a past post that may be helpful. The original posts were made in the Fall 2009, but much of their points remain true. I have made links to the original posts to make it easy to [...]
Category: IT Governance Lean Thinking Management Re-imagine IT Tags: IT Leadership, IT management, Lean Thinking, Tools
by Mark P. McDonald | July 11, 2011 | 3 Comments
Blogging Note: Like Gary Trudeau I am taking a week off from blogging, but I would like to share a past post that may be helpful. The origional posts were made in the Summer of 2009, but much of their points remain true. I have made links to the original posts to make it easy [...]
Category: 12 things business should know about IT IT Governance Leadership Re-imagine IT Strategy Technology Tags: 12 things business should know about IT, CIO Leadership, CIO strategy, IT and Business, IT Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | June 17, 2011 | Submit a Comment
Being the boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader A powerful resource for every manager and a critical resource for every new manager — 5 stars. When I was coming up the ranks we all observed that whenever someone on our team was promoted into management, they changed. At the time we used [...]
Category: Book Review Leadership Management Tags: Book Review, IT Leadership, IT management, Management
by Mark P. McDonald | April 29, 2011 | 1 Comment
The prior post discussed a comparison between CEO and CIO priorities and the observation that the two are more aligned then many would want. This post talks the limited value of a simplistic view of the CEO/CIO relationship and the nature of the alignment. Comparing priority lists is a popular way of assessing the relationship [...]
Category: CIO Economy Leadership Management Strategic planning Tags: Business Leadership, Business Strategy, IT Leadership, Signs of weak management, Strategy
by Mark P. McDonald | April 8, 2011 | 1 Comment
This week in London marked the end of this year’s CIO Leadership Forum series. What began in February in Dubai continued in March in Phoenix has come to a close. The theme of this year’s forum has been Creative Destruction and Re-imagine IT. A theme that resonated with CIOs here in London as almost 300 [...]
Category: 2011 CIO Management Re-imagine IT Strategic planning Strategy Technology Tags: 2011 Planning, CIO Leadership, IT and Business, IT Leadership, Personal Observation, RE-imagine IT
