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Valuedance® offers IT leaders access to a multitude of useful downloads and resources. In addition to downloadable tools and seminars, Valuedance provides community members with a library of links to relevant research and Susan Cramm’s published “Executive Coach” columns from CIO Magazine. Be sure to visit the discussion boards to join in a discussion with other IT leaders.


Free Downloads

Type Size Download
application/pdf 88.12 KB Creating IT-Smart Business Leaders
In these digital times, businesses are being challenged to leverage technology and build more intelligent organizations. Successful leaders must develop the capability to recognize and seize new technology-driven opportunities. The creation of IT-smart buisness leaders who understand how to manage technology as an organizational asset is vital. As a result, the "IT-Business partnership" needs to be redefined. Join Susan Cramm, guest speaker and President of Valuedance, at an engaging breakfast panel discussion as she speaks about her new book and how to reinvent IT-business collaboration and drive change. http://www.crito.uci.edu/breakfastseries.asp
application/pdf 590.21 KB 2015 CIO of the Future
An exciting, inspirational, provocative view of the future of IT.
application/pdf 155.09 KB Maturing Your Demand Management Practices
This white paper, written by Susan Cramm, discusses how demand management ensures the right work gets identified, funded and done.
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint 82 KB Strategic Roadmap - First 90 Days
Download this helpful template to build your strategic roadmap.
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint 111.5 KB Valuedance Leadership Development Roadmap
Take a look to learn more about upcoming Valuedance seminar topics and schedules
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint 59 KB CIO Credibility Cycle
The Valuedance® IT Credibility Cycle helps identify and sequence high impact leadership actions that, over time, enhance credibility and influence necessary to position IT strategically in the enterprise.
application/vnd.ms-powerpoint 82 KB CIO Operating Principles
IT leadership is never easy, but some people make it harder than it has to be. Help ensure your success by learning the high leverage behaviors that help ensure success in IT leadership.
application/x-octet-stream 12.73 MB CIO Talk Radio
CIO Performance Appraisal. Susan was a guest on CIO Talk Radio.

Recent Articles

Date Article Curriculum
7/19/10 Outsource the Work, Not the Leadership
When internal leaders outsourced the work, they made the mistake of outsourcing the leadership of the work as well. This is a common outsourcing fallacy, but a crucial one to recognize, because it has led many to believe that there's little need for senior leadership expertise within IT. That is, since IT is outsourced, leadership can be, too. While it's true that IT organizations that operate with an extensive network of outsourcing relationships have fewer employees, those that remain have to be much more sophisticated in their ability to exert indirect — versus direct — influence.
Realize
7/7/10 What To Do If Your IT Group Doesn't Deliver
There are two major reasons an IT organization is "bad," and what you do about it differs depending on the root cause: Mismatch between your expectations and the role OR Inability to fully deliver on the role. If you decide to serve yourself, make sure that you follow these 4 steps.
Strategize
6/29/10 The Four Types of IT Organizations that Leaders Cultivate
By default or by design, companies get the IT capability they've bought and paid for. The CIO, and the IT organization as a whole, reflects an organization's understanding and aspirations for IT. To understand what your organization wants IT to do, identify the role that best describes your IT capability: •The butler. •The grinder. •The team player. •The entrepreneur. Whichever of these four types of IT that your company has, understand that the current state of the organization reflects many years of conscious or unconscious decisions by senior leadership to cultivate that kind of group.
 Aspire
6/24/10 Why Can't My CIO Be More Like Me?
In the last 15 years, companies have wanted CIOs to act less like CIOs and more like general business leaders. Problem is, when you try to have it all, sometimes you don't get what you really need. As long as your CIO is technically savvy and able to deliver results in a high integrity manner, cut her some slack and lend her a hand. Help her define how technology can drive your business. Partner with her to sell in a strategic initiative. Coach her on how to present the IT spend in a way that woos the CFO. Take the lead on driving strategic business change. It's our differences that make us special and underlie our unique contribution. Since your CIO will never be like you, or you like him, it's much more productive to focus on perfecting the relationship and forgo trying to perfect the person.
Aspire
6/9/10 Is the Typical CIO a "Gear Guy"?
A CIO I spoke to thinks that most CIOs are "gear guys." They typically fix their own cars. Talk to them and you'll hear them bragging about their email Exchange migration, disparaging the future of the cloud, and incapable of providing a balanced opinion of off-shoring." She goes on to share that she thinks that 70-80% of CIOs are "gear guys" (versus business visionaries) and constitute the biggest threat facing the future of IT and the IT profession. Research seems to support these views. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, the authors conclude that, "...most CIOs don't have the broad business understanding, strategic vision and interpersonal skills that it takes to run a company or at least play a bigger role in running one." What do you think?
 Aspire
6/2/10 Seven Ways to Secure IT's Future
IT leaders understand that business leaders will take IT matters into their own hands if someone doesn't provide them a roadmap. Translation: Business leaders need your help. To prevent anarchy, you'll need to guide this democracy. Here are a few of the objectives you'll need to consider: •Uplift the IT-smarts of the corporate consumers of technology. •Manage and mine the data that is literally exploding within our companies. •Deploy "sense and respond" and innovation toolkits rather than applications with fixed functionality. •Architect technology platforms that reflect the target business operating model and support integration, change and growth. •Transition from governance breadlines to governance buffet lines. •Lighten the burden necessary to manage the extended IT organizational ecosystems. •Better manage the unanticipated consequences of our increasingly technology-dependent and networked world.
Aspire
5/14/10 How To Get Out Of The Doghouse
If you're wondering if you're in the doghouse, you probably are. Ask yourself these questions: •Are your ideas dismissed in meetings? •Are your requests deferred? •Do people seem a little less willing to take your side or ask you out to lunch? •Are people asking you, "How are you?" with a look of sympathy in their eyes? If you answer "yes" or "maybe" to these questions, you're in the doghouse and it's time to get out. Here's how: Act quickly. Be humble. Be patient. Go overboard. Ask for help. Solidify your base. Be confident. Everybody finds themselves in the doghouse at one time or another in their career. It doesn't really matter that you are in trouble. What matters is how you rebound from adversity and demonstrate resilience. An occasional visit to the doghouse won't derail your career unless you are defensive, can't play well with others, continue to fall short of expectations, or refuse to learn from your mistakes. For me it was miserable being in the doghouse. But with the right attitude and a lot of hard work, I learned a few new tricks and used the experience to my longer-term benefit.
Aspire
4/28/10 What Does the Future Hold For IT?
Nobody knows how technology will be managed or consumed in 5, 10, or 15 years, but we do know that change is coming. A recent report from the Corporate Executive Board provided a bold and provocative view of the future of IT based on the premise that "technology will be consumed as part of the business." These are some of the highlights.
Aspire
4/23/10 How to Encourage Smarter Use of IT
My last post profiled a CIO who is interested in increasing the IT-smarts of his organization. To help ensure success, we encouraged the CIO to approach the effort in a way that respects that change is driven from psychological, not just logical, forces. With this in mind, we identified eight steps to smarter IT.
Aspire
4/19/10 The Change-Management Challenge of Increasing IT Smarts
Boosting IT-smarts is a change-management challenge. But classic change-management approaches often fall short because they focus on the logical, rather than psychological, aspects of change. Behavior and decisions are driven not only by rational but also irrational factors, including behavioral norms, old patterns and short-term gratification. There are eight steps that I believe are critical to creating an IT-smart enterprise. We will cover the first 4 in this blog.
 Aspire
4/8/10 Eight Things We (Still) Hate About I.T.
In case any of us doubted it, our frustrations with IT — and IT's frustrations with the business — are alive and well. We recently posted a slideshow, 8 Things Executives Hate About I.T. based on the core principles in my book. The intent of all of this is, as the book's subtitle reiterates, "to move beyond the frustrations and form a new partnership with IT. But clearly, there's still a lot of animosity between the two camps. The opportunity, for IT and business leaders alike, is to better understand the needs of the other and create a partnership that is much more fruitful and far less frustrating. It's time to end the hate.
 Realize
3/25/10 IT Leaders, It's Time to Give It Up
Business users want, and need, more direct control over the technology that fuels their business. Ensuring that business users exercise increased control in a responsible manner requires that they become smarter about how to invest, manage, and deliver IT-enabled change and innovation. In general, IT leaders agree that uplifting the IT-smarts of the other parts of the business is a noble goal. But many don't think it's a realistic goal. Extending IT's reach and impact by enabling the IT capabilities of others is the only real world solution to get past resource constraints and expand the capacity for innovation. And while I have yet to find a company that is uplifting IT-smarts on a broad-scale basis, it's easy to find IT and business leaders who are figuring out how, on a small scale, to break through the "business asks and IT delivers" mode of operation.
 Realize
3/12/10 Smarten Up, and Feel the IT Love
To exploit technology, companies need a combination of IT-smart business leaders and business-smart IT leaders. If you want to make this a goal for your organization, start by baselining and benchmarking current performance. To do so, survey your business and IT leaders to assess them in 3 ways. Find out the results of my survey.
 Aspire
3/3/10 IT and Business Leaders: Getting Along Is Not Enough
We absolutely need business-smart IT leaders. We also need IT-smart business leaders. Companies can increase innovation by uplifting the IT-smarts of the 90-plus percent of the company that works outside of IT. The question is not if we need business-smart IT leaders and IT-smart business leaders, but how we change the fundamental nature of IT-business collaboration.
 Realize
2/16/10 How IT-Smart Is Your Organization?
Consumer electronics. Sensors. Analytics. Web services. The Cloud. The cool technologies that are transforming the competitive landscape and how companies operate are not prototypes in some electronic giant's lab. They're in the marketplace, and affordable. You don't have to overhaul your IT architectures to implement them. If anything, they improve the value of that architecture that you spent gillions putting in place.
 Realize
2/10/10 Why Bad Things (Like Recalls) Happen to Good Companies (Like Toyota)
Success in business, and in life, isn't about eliminating risks, it's about managing them. In spite of your best efforts, Murphy's Law will rule and stuff is going to hit the fan. The leader's job, in a world that is never simple or predictable, is to build safety nets so that when problems occur, they can be quickly reported and dealt with. Anticipating problems is the only prudent course in a world where every company has data issues, buggy software, and security incidents. In the real world, bad things happen to good companies. Be sure, in every change you make, after you have designed what should happen, to take the same amount of time to plan for the unintended disruptions that, you hope, will never come to fruition.
Realize
1/27/10 How to Get Along With Frenemies
You've got senior level buy-in, authority, and resources for your project. But you're lacking a few critical supporters. A few people in the middle of your organization are making it tough for you to get your job done. What to do to get them to buy in!
 Realize
1/20/10 Are You Committing Leadership Malpractice?
In the stress of the day-to-day, it's relatively easy to commit leadership malpractice. Leaders carry a heavy burden and, in many organizations, the short-term rules over the long-term and the ends justify the means. However difficult, leaders have an ethical responsibility to get the work done in a way that enriches the organization and the people within it.
Enable
1/11/10 Five Ways to Lead with More Compassion
Question: When working with IT, how can you tell the difference between an introvert and an extrovert? Answer: The extrovert looks at your shoes. We label people. Everyone does it. Labels are convenient. And they are dangerous. Labeling people puts them into little boxes and constrains the possibilities that might arise from the relationship. As a case in point, consider our smallest boxes — those each of us squeeze into when we are with our...
 Aspire
1/7/10 Maybe You're the Reason Your Job is Boring
If you are finding your job a little boring, you aren't alone. There are many who feel trapped in their current jobs since the economy has removed a few of the seats in the corporate game of musical chairs. But I challenge you to see that it's actually you, not the job, that's boring. First, see if you recognize any of these hard truths: You're on autopilot. When bored, our brains shift into autopilot. When bored, our brains shift into autopilot. This...
Aspire
12/21/09 A Year-End Commitment: Engage Yourself
We are selfish creatures. At our best, we reach out to others in their time of need, sometimes at great personal cost to ourselves. At our worst, we spend our time and money on wants, not needs, oblivious to our good fortune relative to others. Last year at this time, I wrote a "Christmas wish" blog post, imploring employers to wrap their arms around their employees rather than shove them out the door. Millions of...
Aspire
12/9/09 Drive Big IT Projects by Thinking Small
It's unfortunate — but true — that it's easier to think shallowly about a big problem than deeply about small ones. In the last post, a business leader and an IT leader appealed to you for help in defining how to deliver a large initiative using a fast-cycle, iterative approach. To force deep thinking, it is important to focus on three key principles: Generate business value early and often. This means determining what combination of...
Deliver
11/3/09 Can You Get the Business and IT to Agree?
My last post asked you to help resolve the business-IT standoff concerning the approach for a large transformation project. To recap, the business leader wants to use a three-year "big bang" consultant-driven approach while the VP of IT wants to use an iterative, fast-cycle approach. The standoff has become apparent to the powers-that-be and the two leaders have been tasked with developing a joint recommendation. With some additional education, the business leader is ready to...
Deliver
10/15/09 The Business and IT Must Work Together. Can You Help?
My last post asked you to be the judge of whether a business sponsor of a major initiative should take the advice of their consultants to "go big" or the advice of their IT counterparts to "go small."
Strategize
10/7/09 IT Versus the Consultants. And You're the Judge.
This is not what you need. Yet again, the IT folks and consultants are at odds and you are stuck in the middle. The last 365 days have been spent in a series of non-stop meetings, debating, disagreeing, and trying to decide what needs to be done and how to do it.
Deliver
9/11/09 How Are You Defying "Best Practice"?
My last post raised the question, "Why does management behavior often diverge from "broadly accepted" theory or best practice?" In response, you shared insights as to why best practices aren't always practical or desirable and, instead, what should be done to (in your words) avoid "giving up on differentiation" and use best practices as "the basis for innovative practices."
Realize
9/11/09 How to Answer IT's Annual Cry for Help
Something out of the ordinary arrived on your desk today: an "IT Annual Report" brought to you by your internal IT department. Resist the temptation to throw it away. Instead, see it for what it is: a cry for help.
 Realize
8/31/09 Why Do We Ignore "Best Practices"?
Why does management behavior often diverge from "broadly accepted" theory or best practice? This question hit me over the head (once again) during a conversation with a talented, young CIO about a big project that was significantly late and over budget.
Realize
7/27/09 How to Get IT and the Business Working Together
My last blog discussed how to promote innovation by dismantling the mistrust that exists between IT and the rest of the business. After more than 30 years, why can't we all just get along?
Enable
7/17/09 Dismantle Mistrust Between IT and the Business
Interested in nurturing technology-enabled innovation? Start by nurturing relationships. IT often impedes, rather than enables, innovation. Yet it's possible to break through the IT resource constraints and long governance lines by tapping in to the knowledge and motivation of business "lead users" and skilling them up, allowing IT to say "go" rather than "no." The "teach them to fish vs. fish for them" approach sounds very logical — until faced with the reality that IT often doesn't really believe their business counterparts can learn to fish.
Enable
6/19/09 How to Support Your IT Innovators
The key to freeing IT up is to increase the "IT smarts" of your business counterparts. Overall, business leaders don't feel very smart about IT. For example, in my recent survey, only 25% consider themselves “IT smart”, only 11% personally use and fully leverage the capabilities of the technology currently in place, and 50% agree with the statement that "business leaders don't understand how to use their systems and technologies". This lack of competence and confidence means that technology is managing them rather than the other way around.
Deliver
6/2/09 Find the IT Innovator Within
Eric Hippel, in his book Democratizing Innovation, says that every organization has "lead users" who "engage in developing and modifying products" so that they get "exactly what they want, rather than relying on manufacturers to act as their (often very imperfect) agents." In the midst of this half-empty economy, it's comforting to know that innovation is happening at the front lines of every organization.
Strategize
5/27/09 9 Ways to Run Smarter IT Projects
We've all been there. Trapped on a plane, heading home — only to be diverted to another airport. The mind races head — what to do? Caught in this situation our world view narrows to focus on one singular objective: how to get home. Mid-course, the options are few — take a bus, rent a car, book a room, or take a later flight. Once home, rested and refreshed, the memory fades, but a lingering question remains: What should I do differently next time? We've all been through the IT equivalent of the diverted flight.
Deliver
5/12/09 Get Your IT Project Fast-Tracked
To get funding for IT-enabled projects, it's necessary to navigate the IT demand management process to prove that you are investing wisely in IT. Unfortunately, the process can be as bad as its name. Bad, but necessary, given the unquenchable thirst for IT services and the fact that, according to my survey (still in process)...
Deliver
4/30/09 Harness the Value of Scarcity
With the cash crunch, focus is coming back in style. A lot of people are hoping for a future — both professionally and personally — that will be, in the words of Peggy Noonan, "pared down, more natural, more stable, less full of enervating overstimulation, of what Walker Percy call the "trivial magic" of modern times.
Realize
4/17/09 Forging Better Ties With IT
Are you a customer or partner of IT? If you answered "customer," guess again. IT only has one customer — and that is the customer who buys the company's products and services. Serving this customer requires an effective IT-business partnership. As a wise old client of mine articulately states, "IT should be of service, but not subservient."
Aspire
4/9/09 How Sudden Failures Happen Gradually
The book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) discusses the psychological need to feel competent — even when evidence to the contrary abounds. The AIG debacle revealed a classic illustration of this in the denial of responsibility by ex-CEO Maurice Greenberg. He said, "I don't feel any responsibility at all...how can I be responsible for something that happened when I'm not there?"
Realize
4/1/09 Why IT Solutions Are Never Simple
Without concerted effort, what was once neat and tidy becomes marred and messy. Just finding something in the garage feels like an archaeological expedition. Periodically, when someone dies, or relocates, or becomes disgusted, there's a whirlwind of activity to purge and reorganize. This cathartic experience is followed by a brief period of exhilaration, until time passes and entropy exerts itself once again.
Realize
3/20/09 Crisis? It's Business as Usual for IT
If reality was reflected in the media, we'd be in dire straits, both financially and socially. Fortunately, the headlines — consisting of 3 parts crisis and 1 part American Idol — don't reflect our personal bylines. With the 10% unemployed rightfully dominating the front page, it's hard to remember that the 90% employed are working hard, not looking back or acting scared.
Realize
3/13/09 Why Vivek Kundra Needs to Get Back to Work
What a bad day for Vivek Kundra, the recently appointed Federal Government CIO who is now on leave after the arrest on bribery, fraud, and money laundering charges of one of his subordinates and a contractor who did business with his agency. Believe me, I, and many other CIOs, have been in his shoes. There's a lot of money flowing through IT …
Organize
3/4/09 How to Cut Through IT Bureaucracy
In this messed up economy, everyone is working overtime, second-guessing every decision and every dollar. And within every company, there is an IT department struggling with how to make business leaders love them while pushing the bitter pills of strategic alignment, value realization, integration, standardization, self-sufficiency, and risk management.
Realize
2/18/09 Making the Most of Electronic Health Records
Have you heard? Thanks to the new stimulus package, electronic health record (EHR) systems are now on sale! Better hurry, though. There are an estimated 525,000 doctors that need them and only $19 billion dollars to go around...
Strategize
2/13/09 Help IT Run a Less-Risky Business
Bad luck just seems to follow you around. First your dog was run over, then your priceless Monet was stolen from your front steps, and now, your house is flooded due to a botched up repair to the water heater.
Deliver
2/3/09 Don't Use Smart Technologies to Do Dumb Things
Technology can help us do almost anything - for better and worse. In considering the options, leaders need to ask the question: "I know we can do it, but should we?" We all use, or rather misuse, smart technology to do dumb things.
 Aspire
1/26/09 The Right Way to Be an IT Change Agent
By definition, a dead change agent isn't a good change agent. Most leaders have attended the requisite change management workshops and it’s good stuff - as far as it goes. Problem is, no one ever tells you that to be a good change agent, you have to be willing to die in order to thrive.
Strategize
1/12/09 The Satyam Truth: Outsourcers Don't Work For You
It’s heavy irony that satyam in Sanskrit means “truth.” So what are the truths behind outsourcing? The Satyam meltdown provides a critical moment for us to re-assess our outsourcing contingency plans. Done right, outsourcing can enhance focus, flexibility, agility, quality and efficiency. Done wrong, outsourcing puts the enterprise at risk.
Realize
12/30/08 New Year's Resolution: Do Experiments, Not Projects
Recently, I asked some business executives for their top three IT wishes. Across the board, their responses echoed a common plea: "I wish IT projects would come in on time and on budget." Funny thing is - this very reasonable sounding request is actually quite unreasonable. You see, we are no longer simply automating existing manual processes. We are trying to change the way people think and behave.
Deliver
12/17/08 A Christmas Wish for Business: Selflessness
During these difficult times, I need a lot more "we" and a lot less "me." Many of us are having difficulty accepting that this recession isn't just another blip on our way to early retirement. As observed by Peggy Noonan, "One of the weirdest, most perceptually jarring things about the economic crisis is that everything looks the same." The cognitive dissonance created by the gap between our daily realities and the grim realities of the daily headlines creates a tendency for us to spend more and give less than we should. We are behaving normally in abnormal times. It's just another day of too much of me and not enough of you.
 Enable
12/2/08 Use Technology to Help Your CEO Accelerate Change
Last week, the Conference Board announced that CEOs, Chairmen, and company presidents "were especially concerned about speed, flexibility, and adaptability to change" in the face of the credit crunch and slowing global economy. The ability to change has always been a competitive advantage - now more than ever. With each breaking day, companies are making it up as they go along. Remember when Citibank was the acquirer rather than the acquiree? Change isn't easy, but some executives make it harder than it has to be by ignoring the tools at their disposal. Many executives are unaware of the systems capabilities in place that can be used to rapidly propagate digitized changes to business processes.
Strategize
11/20/08 Smaller IT Budget? Pursue Value-Driven Development
Nowadays, there is precious little money available for developing new IT capabilities. You do the math. Prior to the credit crisis, around 75 cents of each dollar was spent to keeping existing systems up and operational. Now, overlay the reductions due to the recession and the result is that a lot of business needs are chasing very few discretionary dollars. If you are tasked with managing these discretionary dollars, you had better be on top of your game. Value-driven development allows managers to play the game at a higher level than ever before. While the value-driven development approach is consistent with the traditional development process, it ensures that value is managed throughout the entire development lifecycle, rather than limited to the upfront discussions involving project approvals.
 Deliver
11/10/08 Business Cases Are a Waste of Time (But Do Them Anyway)
Many believe that developing business cases for IT-enabled initiatives as a big waste of time. And, most of the time, it is. Everyone knows how to play the game: make the numbers look good, then claim victory at the end. Anything can be justified using 1% increase in sales or profit and no one can disprove assertions about impact to sales or profit given the number of variables in play. McAfee observes that, "Across the hundreds of quantitative IT business cases I've seen, I'd estimate that the average ROI figure was about 100%", and then concludes, with a heavy dose of sarcasm that, "If this ROI figure is at all accurate, why are companies spending money on anything else except IT?"
 Realize
10/30/08 IT Project Funding: Less Is More
When it comes to IT project funding, less is often more. Too much money results in lengthy, bloated projects. While, overall, only 1/3 of IT-enabled business initiatives deliver as planned, project success declines dramatically as project size increases. Of course, big dollars are required to fix big problems. But the way to solve a big problem is to make it a series of small problems.
 Realize
10/23/08 Lean Times: Adversity Builds Character - And Capabilities
We live in a new world that looks a lot like the old world. Black is the new brown. Working and saving is the new investment strategy. It's just like our grandparents taught us: What goes up, must come down. In spite of our fancy asset allocation, short selling, and creative financing strategies - a simple fact remains: It's not what we earn, it's what we keep. Spend wisely, and your dollars will go a lot further than you think. Of course, for the generation that eschewed the basic laws of economic physics, spending wisely is not a core competency.
Deliver
10/14/08 Why Your Top Priority Probably Isn't
There's a big difference between having a top priority and being ready to act on it. Most of the "top priorities" of your organization have been roaming around for quite a while. They appeared a few years ago as potential risks or opportunities and grew up to become problems, and then top priorities, because, even though they were easy to discuss, they weren't easy to resolve.
Strategize
10/6/08 IT Cost Cutting: Like Taking Candy from a Baby
A recent Wall Street Journal blog post mentioned that because of the current credit crunch, IT budgets are being slashed. IT spending is particularly vulnerable to the cold calculus of a CFO because it's difficult to prove that IT investments provide business value and that ongoing, "keep the lights on", costs are well managed.
Realize
9/26/08 Can the IT-Business Marriage Be Saved?
IT changes fast, but how we manage IT doesn't. For almost 30 years, improving IT-business alignment has been a key priority for IT executives and after all this time, IT still has a bad reputation for impeding progress. There's no doubt that line managers are annoyed with the predictable "Yes, but..." from IT. But it's equally true that IT managers are tired of being treated like high priced waiters serving technology de jour on a moment's notice.
Enable
8/25/08 Reduce IT Costs by Managing the Truths
When downturns hit, budgets are cut. And yet, the IT budget seems remarkably impervious to budget cuts. The key to further, smart, cost reductions is to recognize the fact that, in general, companies spend too much on IT because they are unwilling to say "no" to IT-related requests. The path of least resistance seems to rule the day: Too many projects are funded, too many die a slow death, too much technology is procured, too many quality defects are tolerated, and users require too much hand holding.
Realize
8/20/08 How To Get IT Projects Approved
Many managers find it difficult and to get IT projects approved. They don't know how to justify projects in a way that that unlocks the various governance doors that stand between good ideas and good, hard cash. Key to gettng projects approved is to link the initiatives to business strategy - but often the business strategy isn’t written down or articulated in a form that can be easily applied to drive I.T. decision making. What distinguishes leaders from managers is the ability to develop strategic context for their organizations and initiatives in spite of the absence of an actual strategy document and formal processes.
Strategize
8/8/08 Worksheet: Assessing Your IT Capability
At one time or another, all leadership roles involve some type of IT responsibility, such as serving as an IT liaison, subject matter expert, project or program manager, system or process owner, project sponsor, or participant in IT governance. The key to success is to understand the lay of the land in order to make smart decisions about how to get the right people working collaboratively on meaningful objectives in a way that delivers against short and long term needs.
Aspire
7/28/08 Your Four IT Imperatives: A Short Story
One day, your company "encouraged" managers to attend a two-day workshop on business unit manager's role in managing IT. You were skeptical, but true to your politically savvy nature, you signed up early – with every intention of appeasing the powers that be and getting back to your “real job” as quickly as possible. But what you learned at the workshop has changed how you view IT.
Realize
7/22/08 IT Centralization or Decentralization?
When leaders think about reorganizing IT, they usually start with the assumption that they have two options: To centralize or to decentralize. Of course, in the real world, marketplaces are too complicated and nuanced to be served by one or the other of these two extremes. Organizations architected to run like either a central Soviet economy or a volunteer cooperative are destined to fail. It’s possible to break through this binary thinking by approaching organizational design differently. Instead of starting by deciding on a structure, you can start by deciding who gets to make what IT decisions.
 Strategize
7/18/08 Emergency Care for Your Sick IT Systems
You arrive early one morning only to discover that a mission critical system, the one that supports the fulfillment of inventory in support of your retail operations, is DOA - again. It's a sobering reality that many companies are at major risk due to the fragile technologies that support operations. System downtime or degradation extracts a huge financial toll; up to 3.6% of revenue.
 Deliver
7/10/08 Meet the Challenges of Consistent Innovation
There is a fascinating article in this month’s Harvard Business Review entitled Investing in the IT That Makes A Competitive Difference that discusses how “internet and enterprise IT are now accelerating competition.” As processes become more digitized within enterprise IT, they can be propagated more quickly across the organization. Companies that select the right operating model to digitize, embody the processes within enterprise IT, deploy the solution consistently throughout the enterprise, and then continuously leverage the platform for further innovation and propagation will lead their industries.
Deliver
7/2/08 How You Can Help IT Serve the Enterprise
There is a lot of important work in IT that isn’t getting done. Problem is, as we’ve discussed, IT is so busy managing the trees, they can’t afford to even think about the forest. IT spends 75% of its time managing lights-on activities and the remainder of its time fielding enhancement and project requests that overwhelm the department. On average, the IT backlog (what other business function has backlogs?) is between 1-3 years, a preposterous number for a technology world that works in, at most, 6-month cycles.
Strategize
7/2/08 IT's Dirty Little Secret: No Accountability
If IT has a dirty little secret, it's this: no one is accountable for IT investments. IT accounts for 50% of US capital but there are few systems in place to show that the capital is well spent. In other words, we're managing IT spending, and not IT returns.
Realize
6/25/08 When Service is a Bad Thing
Over the past decade, IT organizations have worked hard to improve services and in turn increase IT’s impact on the business. But in the quest to deliver great service, IT actually may have been disabling rather than enabling the enterprise.
 Enable
6/16/08 As Good as IT Gets
The end goal is to manage IT as an organizational asset, not an organizational structure. Achieving this goal requires tools that allow everybody in the business - across, up and down the organization – to modify their “applications” and underlying infrastructure.
Aspire
6/5/08 8 Reasons Why You Should Love IT
Most of what we hate about IT is based in the unpleasant reality that the system is designed to protect ourselves from ourselves. But too often we confuse hating the system with the people who work in it. We should love the people in IT who are doing their best to make the best of a bad situation. Let’s look at the 8 Things We Hate About IT from my last post from the perspective of IT. Here’s why they deserve love, along with a little insight into what they think about you.
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6/2/08 8 Things We Hate About IT
It's hard to remember the time when criticizing IT was controversial. Now, it's ceased to be even interesting. The now-classic HBR article "IT Doesn’t Matter” resonated so clearly because it underscored the pervasive belief that IT mediocrity is the norm. And how bad is an industry's reputation when a major outsourcer, Keane, can get away with insulting its target market with the slogan, “We Do IT Right”? It’s not personal – nobody hates the people in IT – it’s the system that’s broken. And here’s the rub: IT doesn’t like it either.
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5/29/08 How To Reduce IT Demand by 50%
One of my favorite Druckerisms is, “I have no interest in someone who plays the minute waltz in 56 seconds.” Drucker goes on to explain that, “In terms of technology, we have people trying to play it in 56 seconds when it shouldn't be played at all. Very little of our computing capacity is well used.” When it comes to IT, this quote hits home, big time. Do a random sample of the typical IT request queue and at least 50% of the requests there would bore Mr. Drucker senseless. In my experience, 30% of the IT requests aren’t worth the effort and 20%-30% can be accommodated by leveraging existing systems.
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5/22/08 Inside the Mysterious IT Org Chart
You're new to the organization and you feel like you are trying to sort out a bowl full of spaghetti. You’ve met a bunch of people from IT but still have no idea who to talk with about your project needs, the incomprehensible charge-backs and the helpless help desk. So far, you’ve figured out that IT is organized centrally into three major functions – business solutions (applications maintenance and development), infrastructure services (operations and services, such as the help desk and education), and some strange beast called the office of the CIO.But organization charts don’t describe how work gets done.
Organize
5/14/08 How To Make Friends in IT
Getting projects approved requires working through the IT governance and prioritization processes. Running this system are human beings who are tired of trying to address infinite demand with limited supply – but will go to great lengths to make the system work for those who treat them with respect. You can let the system run you or you can run the system: it all depends on who you know – and how they feel about you.
Organize
5/14/08 Building a New Relationship with IT
Dealing with the typical IT department is like trying to date someone difficult. There’s the promise of something life changing, but the day-to-day realities are painful – always too little, too late, for too much. It would be great to take a vow of IT celibacy - but in today’s information intense, connected world, that’s the modern day equivalent of living on bread and water.
Enable
5/8/08 Coaching: The Process That Works
This is an article that appeared on the CIO Leadership Network. It explains the steps and thought process involved in coaching a potential candidate to becoming an IT leader.
 Organize
4/24/08 Prince to Pig: Are You Developing or Testing Leaders?
This is the third installment in a series on how to prepare future CIOs to run the show.
 Organize
3/19/08 So, You Think You're Ready to be a CIO?
This is the second installment in a series on how to prepare future CIOs to run the show.
 Organize
3/7/08 Ready or Not? The Challenge of Developing Future CIOs
This article is the first in a series on how to prepare future CIOs to run the show.
 Organize
10/26/07 Leading Change with Every Move You Make
This article outlines how smart leaders leverage the attention focused on them by using teachable moments to convey their leadership agenda.
Deliver
9/21/07 Strategies That Stick
How to develop strategies that get implemented by working a process that ensures broad participation.
 Strategize
8/24/07 Decisions by Design
Learn how to engineer good decision making and reduce the wasted effort and increased animosity that results from confusing decision rights and poorly managed decision processes.
Enable
6/21/07 How to Make Nice
Tips for winning back estranged colleagues
 Enable
5/30/07 How to Learn from Your Leadership Mistakes
This article identifies the three key lessons necessary to help convert mistakes into opportunities to improve relationships, credibility, and organizational performance.
 Enable
5/15/07 True Colors
Character is essential to leading others and contributing productively over the long-term. In fact, research concludes that it's impossible to be an effective leader without strong character.
Enable
4/1/07 Coaching for Leadership
When it comes to empowering employees, a little encouragement goes a long way.
 Organize
3/2/07 Maturing Your Demand Management Practices
The demand for IT resources appears to be immune from business and economic cycles as technology becomes embedded within every aspect of the business.
 Strategize
2/1/07 Five Steps for Successfully Transitioning to a New Job
Mapping out priorities when starting a new job can ease stress and help you hit the ground running.
 Aspire
1/1/07 Leadership Under the Influence
"Inexperience, old habits and fear can lead to unnecessary risk taking by the CIO. Avoid this trap by following these simple rules for safe and effective IT leadership."
 Aspire
12/1/06 Tips on Better Decision Making for the CIO
"Smart IT leaders know the key to better decision making is to take a hard look in the mirror and identify what they need to work on to build credibility with the business."
 Aspire
11/1/06 Better Leadership Through Peer Reviews
"CIOs can push their leadership skills to the next level by using a 360 review to understand what they do well—and to start doing it better."
 Aspire
10/1/06 Have Plans In Place Before You're Ordered to Outsource
"Why it pays CIOs to map their plays before a dictate to outsource comes down from on high."
 Aspire
9/1/06 Value? Added.
"How CIOs can engineer a 'tipping point' to speed up adoption of value management practices and prove—once and for all—that IT matters"
 Realize
8/1/06 Soft Skills Will Help You and Your Team Get Deserved Credit
"You know your team is delivering quality, but the organization is not seeing it. Why? Because you’re not delivering on your relationships."
 Enable
7/1/06 Accepting Responsibility Versus Finger-Pointing
"If individuals don’t accept personal responsibility when things go wrong, their organizations will become dysfunctional and stay dysfunctional."
 Organize
6/1/06 Help Employees Cope With Tough Times
"CIOs need to help their staffers understand that if they can hold on during the tough times, the payoff is just around the corner."
 Enable
5/1/06 The Worst Job in IT
"Change is unstoppable, and CIOs are climbing aboard. Nice for them. But they risk losing their staff unless they communicate better. "
 Organize
3/1/06 Survivor - The Organization
"Does it really help you to vote people off your IT island? Isn’t there a better way to build a staff of top performers? In fact, there is."
 Organize
2/1/06 How to Successfully Market IT
"When it comes to selling your organization on IT, it's the people and the product, not the print."
 Enable
1/1/06 Better IT Through Cooperative Leadership
"How to involve everyone in the leadership and management of IT."
 Organize
12/1/05 How to Do More with the IT You've Got
"IT's capacity for growth and change lies within its architecture."
 Enable
11/1/05 Your To-Do List for Managing Demand
"As your business clamors for more and more IT, you need a strategy for determining value."
 Enable
10/1/05 The Business Of I.T. Is Business
"Six keys to lasting alignment with your business partners."
 Enable
9/1/05 How to Get IT Research You Can Use
"Help the IT consultancies understand what kind of research you really need to align with business."
 Strategize
8/1/05 How to Work with an Executive Coach
"Six ground rules for successful coaching engagements."
 Aspire
7/1/05 The Heart of Persuasion
"It's not how much you know, it's what you know about your audience."
 Organize
6/1/05 Your Work or Your Life
"How to overcome the corporate conspiracy that keeps you chained to your job."
 Aspire
5/1/05 A Team Starts With Two
"The best way to develop employees is one-on-one coaching, yet too few executives seem interested in making the effort."
 Organize
4/1/05 All Talk, No Action - Part 2
"Since answers are not going to come from above, it’s up to those in the unbalanced majority to help resolve work-life balance issues – for themselves and with those whom they lead."
 Aspire
4/1/05 All Talk, No Action - Part 1
"...work-life balance isn’t about having more free time; it’s about devoting your life, and the hours within it, consistent with your values and passions."
 Aspire
4/1/05 Show Them How
"Even perfect execution won't lead to perfect IT. You must encourage business users to develop some IT smarts of their own."
 Enable
3/1/05 Share Power To Gain Control
"Why CIOs should cede the what of IT to business executives and focus instead on the how."
 Enable
2/1/05 Improving Customer Facing Processes Key to Competitive Edge
"Outsourcing and packaged solutions have hollowed out IT. Yet CIOs still have the opportunity to create competitive advantage—by differentiating customer-facing processes."
 Enable
12/1/04 Be Better Than You Really Are
"How to understand your personality type for leadership success."
 Aspire
11/1/04 Balancing Scorecards with Reality
"How to make Balanced Scorecards work for your organization."
 Enable
10/1/04 It's Never Too Late for Time Management
"You can't be a good manager until you learn to manage your own time."
 Organize
9/1/04 Fear of Transparency
"Five excuses CIOs make to avoid practicing what they preach."
 Aspire
8/4/04 The Unnatural Selection Process for CIOs
"Why most up-and-comers aren't ready for the next level."
 Organize
7/1/04 Take Back Enterprise Technology From the Vendors
"It's time for CIOs to stand up to rapacious vendors."
 Deliver
6/1/04 Desperation Outsourcing
"Did you just stand by and let it happen?"
 Organize
4/1/04 Managing IT Demand 101
"Some IT professionals still haven't learned to work with the business to manage demand for IT services."
 Realize
3/1/04 The Perils of the Office of the CIO
"The right way to deploy an Office of the CIO structure."
 Organize
2/1/04 Leadership Agenda for CIOs: Be Nice
"Why being nice is your foremost task."
 Organize
12/1/03 New Year's Resolutions for CIOs
"Ten must-dos for 2004."
 Aspire
11/1/03 Surviving Failed IT Projects
"How to sidestep the organizational death march."
 Deliver
10/1/03 Five Ways to Regain Your Leadership Focus at Work
"Five ways to regain your focus—and retain your job."
 Aspire
9/1/03 How to Win Allies and Influence Your Peers
"Professional relationships can advance—or sink—your career."
 Enable
8/1/03 A Cry for Full-Cycle Governance
"It's the only way to ensure project success."
 Realize
6/1/03 10 Worst Mistakes CIOs Can Make
"How to get yourself thrown out of the game."
 Aspire
5/1/03 Getting the Most Out of Full-Circle or 360 Degree Feedback
"Full-circle or 360-degree feedback assessments must meet three conditions to be useful: tailored, internalized and followed up."
 Organize
4/1/03 Successful Change Management Is Based on Employee Enthusiasm, Not Corporate Directives
"The success of change initiatives depends on employee enthusiasm rather than leadership directives."
 Organize
3/1/03 How to Uncover Your Career Destination
"Is this job all there is?"
 Aspire
12/1/02 Ease the Pain of Your Budget Presentation
"The CIO's green mile..."
 Realize
11/1/02 Don't Think That IT Knows Best
"You can never be smarter than your customer."
 Enable
10/1/02 A Letter to CXOs
"You have the IT capability you deserve."
 Aspire
9/1/02 It Pays to Show Your Reports That You Care
"You have the IT capability you deserve."
 Organize
8/1/02 Three Tips for Delivering Short Cycle Projects
"The fundamental laws of projects."
 Deliver
6/15/02 Why CIOs Should 'Parent' Their Enterprise's Various Business Partners
"It's important to say yes—in the right way."
 Enable
5/15/02 A Crash Course in Strategic Planning
"We all feel better when we are strategically fit."
 Strategize
4/15/02 IT Economics 101
"The fact is, you can work on the 'supply side' all you want and never balance the demand and supply for your resources until you work the 'demand side.'"
 Realize
3/15/02 The New CIO Mantra: Shut Up and Listen
"For the next three months, keep your mouth shut and don't do anything."
 Organize
11/15/01 The Dark Side of Outsourcing
"Farming out the best work will hollow out your organization."
 Organize
10/15/01 Managing Software Development Efficiently
"Break out of the software development cycle chaos."
 Deliver
3/15/01 The CIO as Valet
"Why you should follow the fiduciary model of IT management."
 Aspire
2/15/01 IT Project Planning - Adult Supervision Required
"What is it about technology that can cause smart people to make dumb decisions?"
 Deliver
1/15/01 Focus on Your Focus
"How to make your IT agenda the talk of the office elevators."
 Strategize