- 6 Signs You Need a New IT Strategy — CIO Dashboard
Quote: IT must institute massive change on multiple fronts: deepen and reshape business relationships, overhaul IT skills, relax and reformulate governance approaches, and adopt more flexible and accessible infrastructures while increasing security. But, before embarking on big change, you need to take stock of where you are now. Based on our recent interactions with business and technology executives, following are a few signs that it’s time to revamp the IT organization:
- You missed your numbers. Now what? : CloudAve
Quote: There are too many reasons companies miss plan to list in one blog post. Some are legit; many err on the side of “excuses”. I think it is important to attribute misses to reasons over which management had some measure of control. If you can’t control it, you can’t make a change in your execution strategy that adjusts for it. All the other “reasons” are interesting, but aren’t particularly useful, with the exception of black-swan style macroeconomic shocks, which aren’t excuses but are facts of life.
- Five Culture Principles at Netflix
Quote: One of the cores at Netflix is letting people go who are no longer a fit, so they don’t often waste time with months of “performance improvement plans” when you know that the needs have changed and that employee doesn’t fit. Built into this principle, by the way, is spending MORE money on severance packages.
- Decision making under uncertainty – O’Reilly Radar
Quote: …each day we should realize how much we actually don’t know.
- Underperforming outsourcing contracts straining relationships with CIOs
Quote: “There is a move towards using such models so that companies can capitalise on different outsourcers’ specialisations and become more agile. They offer an opportunity for both outsourcers and clients to improve the performance of contracts.
- Customers or Employees – Who Comes First?
Quote: Rather than trying to decide where to put your ultimate focus, where to pin your strategy and what you build as your biggest strength, why not think of the bond between Customer and Employee (or if you prefer Employee and Customer) as a self-reinforcing loop?
- How I wasted 82 working days on a logo I didn’t want – The Next Web
Quote: But the bottom line, I’ve learned, is that there is no substitute for creativity and creative partnerships. It’s hard work, a process of discovery which promises great results but usually requires patience and loads of communication
- The Wild West of IT
Quote: IT is one of the most dynamic aspects of any organization. Harnessing it is not easy. But it’s still one of the areas where bold moves, though risky, can make a big difference.
Links for Sunday Jan 26 2014
