Excerpt of “What leaders really do” from Harvard Business Review
Management is about coping with complexity; it brings order and predictability to a situation. But that’s no long enough to succeed, companies must be able to adapt to change. Leadership, then, is about learning how to cope of rapid change.
Copied from CIOInsight
You’ve heard it before. The CFO asks “how do we know what value we’re getting from IT?” The business line leader asks “How do I measure the value of IT to my P&L, not just help desk tickets closed?” The CEO asks “How do I know our IT spend is allocated to best support our objectives?”
Economic pressures are putting more emphasis than ever on the CIO’s use of best practice in value measurement — the right measures applied in the right way to get the right insights to improve value. Painfully, this came at the same time that a Center for CIO Leadership study entitled “Communicating Business Value” reported that only 51% of respondents agreed with the statement “I have developed business value indicators that link IT performance metrics and business goals.”
“XXX as a service” has been an extremely hot topic in IT management to leverage on vendor capability and offload non-essential business operations.
In recently workshop I attended for corporate strategy development, some colleagues brought ideas such as “data transfer as a service” and “information as a service” for discussion. Honestly, I do not buy in such initiatives being managing outsourcing teams for years.
Harvard Business Review is one of the best magazine for management. I have read through the Jun issue. Below are excerpt I like. In following weeks, I will try to read more previous issues.
A company that is planning a product launch should as k not only “How can we capture customers’ attentio n and whet their appetites so as to maximize product sales?” but aLso “How can we genuinely improve things for the customer through a better-pla nned launch?” The answer to the first quest ion is to generate myst ique. The answer to the second is to reach as many customers as poss ible at launch and ensure sufficient supply so that there are no stock outs and customers ca n get the product without hardship.
What’s the most important thing as service manager?
READ THE MASTER SERVICE AGREEMENT!!
These are things that we should avoid telling a vendor when doing business with them.
Communication is important skill in project management. The regional IS director shared with me his experience in reporting project delay in communication.
If you manager tried to make you accept an new arrangement by commenting “it is for your good as well”, actually it is more for his good, or at most it is a win-win situation. In no circumstance, a manager will do good for employee without making anything good for the company (or something at his level).
Always try to think from other’s stand, no matter it is to be considerable or simply to find out the truth.
天上不会掉馅饼，就算掉也会砸死人的。
A few IT staffs have been involved in interviewing new software engineering process recently. Below is what my IT director shared with us on what we need to improve on doing this. It will also help when we prepare for external interviews.