Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software had an interesting post on his blog titled “Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service“. The seven steps aren’t anything new or enlightening but they do serve as a reminder to organizations (and people) that customer service is about more than just answering the phone (or waiting on someone in [...]
Shadow IT (aka Doing What IT Won’t/Can’t)
February 23, 2007 By 18 Comments
Shadow IT has been defined by George Spafford in his article titled The Dangers that Lurk Behind Shadow IT as: …groups providing information technology solutions outside of the formal IT organization. Their existence is due to groups thinking they can do things cheaper and/or better than the formal IT group.Also, it may be that the [...]
Webinar on Service-Oriented Project Management
February 22, 2007 By Leave a Comment
Mindjet is hosting a webinar about Service-Oriented Project Management with Jerry Manas on March 7, 2007. More information is available at the Mindjet Blog here. As I’ve posted before, Service-Oriented Project Management (SOPM) is an interesting approach to Project Management. From my previous post: A key strength, according to Manas, is that SOPM measures success [...]
A good definition of Strategy
February 21, 2007 By Leave a Comment
This definition is from Rob Millard at the Adventure of Strategy Blog in a recent post. Successful strategy is not about a grand plan. Rather, it is an integrated process that prepares the organization for a range of futures by creating what I have previously called a state of “dynamic resilience.” This involves making smaller [...]
Silence is deadly
February 19, 2007 By Leave a Comment
Many other bloggers (Hal Macomber for one) have already discussed this report, but I wanted to say a quick word about it as well. The report, from the Concours Group, says: The ability of senior leaders to execute on business strategy depends largely on whether employees are encouraged to speak up about project failures. A [...]
David Maister on Professional Ethics
February 15, 2007 By Leave a Comment
Learning from Failure
February 13, 2007 By Leave a Comment
The Slow Leadership blog has an interesting post about “Practicing Conscious Incompetence“. What is Conscious Incompetence? In a nutshell, it is the act of learning from failure, but Slow Leadership defines it as: “Conscious Incompetence” is doing something that you know you can’t yet do, let alone do well, for the purpose of learning how [...]
Mike Schaffner: Strategic IT
February 12, 2007 By Leave a Comment
Mike Schaffner over at the “Beyond Blinking Lights” blog has an interesting post titled “Let’s Get Strategic!” that discusses the need for IT groups to become more strategic. Mike writes: If IT wants to be strategic it has to go beyond just being a order takers and implementers. We need to take the steps necessary [...]
Seth Godin on Sheepwalking
February 11, 2007 By Leave a Comment
You’ve no doubt heard the term “sheep” applied to people who follow others blindly. You know the the people who buy the new ‘hot’ music album. The people who buy the shirt/hat of the new ‘champion team’ (basketball, football, baseball, etc). The people who go to {insert school name here} because that’s the school to [...]
To Listen; To Lead
February 7, 2007 By Leave a Comment
Do you consider yourself a good leader? How about a good listener? According to Larry Spears, CEO of the Greenleaf Center, one of the top 10 skills that a leader needs to master is the skill (or art?) of Listening. He writes: Traditionally, leaders have been valued for their communication and decision making skills. Servant-leaders [...]
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