Articles on Business

I'm regularly asked about how to get started with big data. My response is always the same: I give them my big data roadmap for success.

Some say the IT group and CIO are irrelevant. I disagree. The New CIO can make IT more relevant than ever before.

I'm a huge fan of Amazon. Over the years, more and more of my purchases have moved to Amazon. I've bought books, coffee, electronics, camera equipment and

Making Enterprise Architecture Matter By Martha Heller on CIO.com Quote: The ultimate paradox is this: Architects are as necessary as they are rare. “It’s

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP. I just finished watching the video on the Enterprise CIO Forum titled Challenge your CIOs: fear

After my last post on the topic of Reinventing IT, I decided to think about the different aspects of actually reinventing IT and what it might actually

A few weeks ago I wrote about The diminishing role of IT and the CIO.  That post struck a nerve with quite a few readers so I wanted to expand on the

I get the occasional request to review a book or two from publishers, PR folks and authors. Normally, I get less than one request a month for reviewing

In a previous article titled The Future of IT & the CIO - Redux of the DoDo I pointed to some survey results that should be alarming to most IT

The Case for Listening by Rajesh Setty Quote: To be totally effective, you have to be doing something now or increasing your capacity to do something in

I love peanut butter and jelly.  What a great idea to put those to food items together on a piece of bread. Have you ever thought about how much the

Shadow IT vs. Shadow Marketing By Scott Brinker on Chief Marketing Technologist Quote: IT people work for IT. Marketing people work for marketing. And, as

Image by holeymoon via Flickr CRM tools do not equal CRM (yes...I know...I've said it twice...but it IS important). For the geeks out there, let me spell

I've been thinking about approaches to small business technology initiatives and whether it makes sense for small business to outsource a good portion of

A simple question that can do so much. Whether hiring or choosing vendors, take a few seconds to ask: I can, but should I?

I grabbed a copy of Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead (affiliate link) by Charlene Li for my business trip last week.

Competition is overrated by Chris Dixon on cdixon.org Quote: Startups are primarly competing against indifference, lack of awareness, and lack of

Strategy. That one word can send shudders through many folks.  That one word has made millions and millions for consulting companies and consultants. Can

Can all of the information technology assets within a small business be outsourced?  Could we see the IT desks within small businesses be as empty as

You’re Just the Founder « Steve Blank A great reminder to everyone that what you do today might just come back around to bite you in the future. Applying

How do you create a culture of storytelling? by Steve Denning on The Leader's Guide to Radical Management: Quote: I am sometimes asked: what’s involved in

The future of the information technology group  has been determined...and it doesn't look good. See that bird over there? That's the Dodo.  He's extinct.

Silence is a Leadership Trait by Samuel Bacharach Quote: Between the words, between the actions, between the political strategies, leaders must create

How to Defy Newton's Laws of Motion in Marketing by Valeria Maltoni on Conversation Agent: Quote: Emerging media allows you to develop laser focus in your

Strategy Is Boring by Kneale Mann on One Mann's Opinion Are you stress testing your IT strategies? by Christina Torode on TotalCIO Innovation and the

Pick one and own it by Jason Cohen on A Smart Bear The Strategy Trap: Why focusing too much on strategy could be killing your ability to execute by

I just put down SWAT - Seize the Accomplishment (Amazon affiliate link) by Timothy L. Johnson....and now want to pick it back up and read it again.  It's

To Grow a Company, You Need to be Good at Killing Things by Auren Hoffman on Summation Why IT Shouldn't Be Involved in Marketing Software Decisions by

A few weeks ago I received Leadership Test: Will You Pass? (amazon affiliate link) by Timothy R. Clark, Ph.D. to review The book is a small one (~99 pages

Competing with Pirates by Mark Fidelman on Seek Omega and Cross Posted on CloudAve Why Planning Is Important, Your Plan is Not by George Krueger and

I ran across a press release from Progress Software, that I though worth sharing with my regular The New CIO series readers. Below, you'll find an excerpt

Linda Tucci wrote an interesting article on Total CIO titled "PMO becomes cornerstone of IT executive leadership" that got my attention. The title is a

Just finished reading Chris Curran's article on CIO.com titled How to Improve Your IT Planning in 2010 - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership.  Good

I asked "What's your focus?" last week and now I wanted to ask another question: What's your passion? I picked up Gary Vayernerchuk's book Crush It!: Why

You Can Only Lead the Horse by Amber Naslund on Altitude Branding Leadership – What’s Love Got To Do With it? by Terry Starbucker on TerryStarbucker.com

What's your focus? Have you ever stopped to ask yourself this question? What are you focused on in your life or your job?  What's your focus for the

Leadership and Leverage by Steven Levy on No Secret Social Software 2.0: Enterprise Process Ubiquity by Hutch Carpenter on I'm Not Actually a Geek Taking

I've got a few pet peeves.  Linear Thinking is one of them.  Another one is talking about doing something but never doing it. I'm not talking about 'not

Intuition vs. Data-Driven Decision-Making: Some Rough Ideas by Bob Sutton on Bob Sutton - Work Matters CIO and the Art of Decision Making by Arun

In the world of  technology we tend to use either really big words, really small words and/or acronyms. What do you think of when you think of  'the

I ran across an interesting post today titled "Why you don't need Social Media Consultants" on the Brains on Fire Blog.  The main thesis of the post is:

Starting with Trust by Jamie on Get Me Jamie Notter Self-Organization vs. Emergence by Jurgen Appelo on NOOP.NL: Managing Software Development When

Last week I wrote about "Turbulence, IT & The New CIO" and discussed the need to embrace agility and speed in order to address the turbulence that we

How CIOs can sense if their companies are getting ready to fall? by Mark McDonald on The Gartner Blog Network 10 Tips on Building a Better Business by Ted

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. I just completed

What Human Business And the Social Web Are About by Chris Brogan on chrisbrogan.com The Insider Threat: What CIOs Need To Know by Dr. Jim Anderson on The

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. I just read a 'call

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. A few months ago, I

I was lucky enough to get a pre-release copy of Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by IDEO CEO Tim

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. There's lots of

Lego: How much does profit matter? from Hoover's Business Insight Zone by Tim Walker Hire for Trustingness, Train for Trustworthiness from Trust Matters

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. So you want to be a

The Past and the Future of Digital Storytelling from Men With Pens by Taylor The Future of Content Management from assertTrue( ) by Kas Thomas 7 Marks of

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. Do you know the full

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. Are you agile? I'm

How to SWOT away Strategic Planning by Steve Neiderhauser The Role of the CTO: Four Models for Success by Bob Gourley on CTOvision.com A Tendency to Blame

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. As a follow-up to my

What Happens When Managers Coach? by Steve Roesler on All Things Workplace Trend to Watch: Trust in Business Is Running Out by Eric Beinhocker and

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. It as if we're more

The Value Every Business Needs to Create Now by Umair Haque on HarvardBusiness.org Three Key Principles when Leading without Authority by George Ambler on

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. Innovation. That's a

Skilled or Gifted by Stephen Gillett on The Guild CIO Hire People Who Disagree with You by John Baldoni on HarvardBusiness.org Project Management: Is PMP

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. Earlier this week, I

I just finished Toy Box Leadership: Leadership Lessons from the Toys You Loved as a Child...somewhat flawed but a good book nonetheless. Flawed may be a

“None” is Not a Social Media Strategy by Chris Curran on CIO Dashboard Web 3.0 Is Coming – Are CIOs Ready? bt Dr. Jim Anderson on The Accidental

I just finished reading Succession: Are You Ready? (Memo to the Ceo) by Marshall Goldsmith. While the subject was interesting, I think the audience for

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. We've all heard the

Get Ready As Corporate Sites and Social Networks Start To Connect by Jeremiah Owyang on Web Strategy Why Authenticity is More Important Than Ever by Aaron

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. I've seen many

Social change takes more than social media by Ivan Booth on the Rootwork Blog (via Beth Kanter's Blog) KISS: The Difference Between Strategy and Tactics -

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. Today's CIO is

I just read a great post by Jeffrey Phillips titled Intense Ambiguity that really brought into light what it's like working for a boss or organization

I was recently reading Dagmar Recklies' article titled What Makes a Good Change Agent? and started thinking about some of the people that I know who are

Why Your Corporate Message Isn’t Being Heard by Jason Falls on Social Media Explorer The 7 Sins of Customer Service by Valeria Maltoni on Conversation

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today's CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges. It's fitting that my

I've been thinking about writing a weekly article and finally found a topic that I think lends itself well to this approach. I'm planning on writing about

I just finished reading an article in the Dallas Business Journal titled Acting like a a 'Best Boss' and the only thing I could think about while reading

Lots of great stuff out there this past week...can't share it all but will share some.  If you want to track all my shared stories from my google reader

What happens when you create the best strategic plan in the world but don't have a plan to implement it? Lots of wheel spinning and very little progress.

Your Success as a Leader Depends on the Kindness of Strangers by Tammy Erickson on HarvardBusiness.org Who's Minding the Store in Corporate America? by

Can an organization be built on individuality with a focus on bringing humanity back to business? I think so. The modern day corporation was developed to

Why Messages Aren't Enough by Amber Naslund on Altitude Branding The first step towards being a networked nonprofit: Simplicity by Beth Kanter on Beth's

I had the pleasure of meeting some great folks at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Dallas.  I learned a lot and had a lot of the ideas that I already had

Hello everyone...I'm back from my trip to Orlando...links are lite this week due to being away from the computer. Enjoy the few I do have. How the Cloud

Customers sometimes do not know what they want by Matt Rhodes on FreshNetworks Blog Mistakes matter: post-project reviews by Elizabeth Harrin on Project

We have a huge budget and too much time to complete our business intelligence (BI) project by Martin Proulx on Analytical Mind 9 tactics to effectively

The Case for Customer Communities by Valeria Maltoni on Conversation Agent Tap Employee Passion by Harry Hoover on THINKing Accountability Begins at the

How your organization's IT department can help support your social media strategy by Beth Kanter Purpose First, Strategy Second, Structure Third by Mark

Mike Schaffner pointed me to a great new blog titled 'Bridging the gap between business and IT' written by Laura Brandau.  The description of the blog is:

Why Ideals are the New Business Models by Umair Haque on HarvardBusiness.org The 5 Percent Trick: Finding Passion and Purpose in Life by Albert on Zen

Last month I received a review copy of NOBLE ENTERPRISE: The Commonsense Guide to Uplifting People and Profits by Darwin Gillett. I had my doubts about

CIO Magazine ran a survey of 208 Chief Information Officers (CIO) and reported the results in an article titled "IT Budget & Staffing Survey Shows

Is Marketing Evil? by Seth Godin Process Improvement - Been there, done that. Have you Really? by Glenn Whitfield on IT Business Alignment (IT2B) 6 Ways

This is a guest post from Michael Sebastian, PhD.   Find out more information about Michael here. Anger, fear, depression and fatigue. These are the

I received an email a few weeks ago asking if I would be interested in reviewing the new book from Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan titled "the three laws of

Help IT Run a Less-Risky Business by Susan Cramm on HarvardBusiness.org Why Social Media Will Not Get You A Job In A Recession by Jason Falls on Social

Oracle's Profit magazine has a nice article titled "The Go Betweens: Ten Tips for Connecting Information Technology with the Business" has some excellent

Received an email yesterday from Simon Stapleton (blog and RSS Feed) with links to a few older articles he wrote about a concept that he calls "The

Bernard Golden has a two-part series on the IT Drilldown Virtualization section of CIO.com that is informative and interesting. The two-part series,

When I saw the InformationWeek story titled "Outsourcing Bill of Rights Proposed" I had to do a double take.   The words 'outsourcing' and 'bill of

According to research conducted by Harvey Nash, an IT Recruitment firm, everything.  Information World Review reports on this research in an article

Mark your calendars! The 3rd annual University of Texas at Dallas Project Management Symposium is taking place August 13 & 14.  Call for papers is

Paul Dunay over at Buzz Marketing for Technology wrote a post titled "Sin of Inclusion" that pointed me to some commentary on the IT Services Marketing

Time for another round of Sunday Links.  Enjoy! Cluecade by Doc Searls Seven reasons cloud computing works in a tough economy by Kathleen Lau on

I had the pleasure of watching a demo of Clarizen today.  Well...watching isn't right...I was watching as Gil Heiman, Director of Community at Clarizen,

The opening paragraphs of the chapter titled '95 Theses' from The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual says (taken from this page): A

According to Information Week, the Top 10 issues for CIO's in 2009 are: Customer-Facing Innovation Attacking the 80/20 Ratio The Challenging Economy The

Positive Communication and Leadership by Stephen Smith on Slacker Manager A Lean, Scalable Requirements Information Model for the Agile Enterprise by Dean

This post is an excerpt (with slight modifications) of a recent paper titled “Project Selection using Decision Support Optimization Tools.” If you’d like

The Cutter Consortium blog has an interesting post titled "IT Trends and Antitrends for 2009".   Some interesting items listed...I've reproduced

Madoff Madness: When Smart People do Stupid Things by Charles Green on Trusted Advisor Associates Five Reasons to kill IT Projects on TechRepublic (hat

Web 2.0.  A term that is overused and often misunderstood.  And one that has been touted for years by consultants as the 'next big thing' coming to

How Hard Could it Be?: My Style of Servant Leadership by Joel Spolsky on Inc.com Project Management, Teams and Success by Raven on Raven's Brain Employee

Today (the Friday after Thanksgiving) has been given the name Black Friday...and now it is really fitting. Just ran across a news article about a Wal-Mart

Finished this book up earlier this week and I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed.  I feel as though a book by the man who defined the word

According to a research report released by The Hackett Group, and reported by Financial Week, they don't. The Financial Week article, titled "Customers

A new feature here on the blog...Sunday links. Look for 5 to 10 interesting links every Sunday. The Four Dharmas of Project Management by Bas de Baar -

Steve Neiderhauser posted some excellent commentary in a blog post titled "Persuasion Equation".  In the post, Steve mentions a class he attended that

A recent article by J Schwan at The Technology Edge titled "Stop Hiding Behind your Role and Get it Done" has an interesting spin on the world of

David Daly over at Outside the Triangle recently posted a listing of "Great Websites for Project Managers"...and I was surprised to a link to my blog on

For the longest time, I've put off reading "Good to Great" by Jim Collins but finally decided to pick it up. Have you ever realized that your perception

Mike Sebastian, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at SourceCheck....and a great guy to boot, has recently had an article published on InsideARM titled "The

Ever see a book in the bookstore that catches your attention and you realize it was a best-seller sometime in the past?  You realize you never picked it

Would you rather have one great big idea or tons of little ideas? Me?  I'm fond of having a lot of little ideas. Why?  Little ideas are easier to

wanted to follow up my post titled "In a downturn, people are vital" with a few more thoughts on the subject. In that post, I said that "employees are

Management Issues had an article on Sept 25 titled "Looking after talent is vital in a downturn" that gave me hope when I saw the title. The article

I ran across a great book at Half-Price Books last week.  The book, Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big by Bo Burlingham,

I think I found it....and it happened to me. Warning...small rant. Imagine you are a hiring manager trying to find someone to lead a group of IT

Timothy Johnson takes a swipe at methodologies in his post titled "Worshipping the Hammer".  To be more accurate, he takes a swipe at those people who

John P. Kotter, author of "Leading Change" and "Our Iceberg is Melting" is set to release a new book titled "a sense of urgency" (release date September 3

This is a guest post by Heather Johnson, who writes on the subject of how to become a nurse. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot

Jim Champy's new book titled "Outsmart!: How to Do What Your Competitors Can't" is an interesting book.  It's short and easy to read...and full of some

Peter Vajda has a great post over on Slow Leadership titled "Why People Resist Change" that is well worth the time to read. Peter argues that the reasons

I recently ran across a survey by Accretive Solutions (formerly Horn Murdock Cole, Dickson Allan, BF Consultants, and CFO Service) discussing the results

Recently, while reading a book on Organizational Change and Project Management, I noticed a disturbing pattern. The book I was reading discusses the

A recent study by researchers at University of Michigan and University of Richmond shows that outsourcing/offshoring certain aspects of your business can

The Daily WTF...that great website that always makes me giggle also makes me cringe.   I giggle at the humorous situations...but cringe at the reality of

I've been holding off on this announcement until I finished the paper (mainly to make sure I actually finished it!). I'll be speaking at University of

Where I come from (small town Oklahoma), silos are part of life for dairy farmers.  A silo is a good thing...it stores grains (we called it sileage) to

I asked the following question on LinkedIn earlier this week and received some very insightful responses: What are the top challenges in IT organization's

This book,  with the full title of "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies" is a must read for anyone trying to figure out how

One thing that I've heard often is that a project manager role is a good thing for your career and will help your ascent up the ladder to more

The topic of Information Technology Strategy is one that is near and dear to my heart.  In fact, I've harped on this subject a few times (a few posts for

If you'd like to know the answer that question, I have a new book for you to read: "Why Work Sucks" by Cali and Jody. This book (which I haven't started

Discusses the need to lead information technology

I just finished reading The Strategic Project Leader: Mastering Service-Based Project Leadership by Jack Ferraro....not a bad book. In section two of his

Interesting analysis today over on Jeffrey Phillips' Thinking Faster Blog in an article titled "Productivity Barriers". Note: if you have an interest in

Aligning business and information technology by hiring the right people. Implementing Human Capital Management practices to ensure alignment.

Management issues had posted another article (see the previous one here and my comments on the topic here) topic titled "Still suspicious of flexible

Over the last few years I've started noticing a trend toward specialization within the field of project management. These specializations seem to break

One of my assignments in my Knowledge Management Class had me read and review am article using PowerPoint. I've just submitted the assignment and wanted

A comment left by Raven on my post titled "Is Perfect Worth It?" led me to her post titled "Personal Growth Article: The 3 P’s: Perfectionism,

Read an interesting article on GigaOm yesterday titled "Google’s Infrastructure is its Strategic Advantage" (go read it if you haven't). This post, and

As a follow up to my previous post titled Competitive Advantage - The Human Capital Approach, I wanted to take a second to talk a little bit about the

I recently finished reading Mass Career Customization, the newly released book from Deloitte's Cathleen Benko and Anne Weisberg (published by Harvard

Organization Alignment seems like one of those 'touchy feely' things that most technical folks would rather not discuss but it's actually quite relevant

I recently turned a six month consulting project into a 1 month project...and I couldn't be happier. The client saved ~$1.5 million and they were able to

A candid rant about broken recruiting practices, recycled blog content, and overhyped business books — honest frustrations and notes to organizations.

When I first heard of participative management, I thought that it must be some 'new fad' (which isn't true at all) and after reading a few things about

Question: Want to know one of my pet peeves (hint: re-read the title of this post)? Answer: Linear Thinking (Books on Linear Thinking). What is linear

This is an excerpt from a paper I wrote while working on my MBA. The modern