There’s a saying in mu business, “you get hired for your technical skills and fired for your soft skills.” Good article by John McAndrew at Computerworld,com…
As a chief technology officer, you’re good at technology; the C-suite wouldn’t have hired you without that. But you can’t be all about technology. It’s even more important to understand the dynamics — and oftentimes the politics — of the C-suite. It’s your No. 1 client.
By Paul Thurrott at WindowsITpro.com…
In a startling and unexpected announcement, Microsoft revealed today that CEO Steve Ballmer would retire sometime in the next 12 months. During the intervening time, the company will begin a search for his successor.
via Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Retire in 2014 | Paul Thurrotts WinInfo content from Windows IT Pro.
Alright, maybe I’m the real curmudgeon here but I agree with all of these points made by Jason Nazar in his article at Forbes.com…
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get
As a CTO I think this short article offers compelling logic for further investment in online education. By Tanya Roscorla at the Center for Digital Education…
SAN ANTONIO — The pressure is on for school districts to adopt online learning — and the pressure is coming from both parents and students.
By Minda Zetlin at ComputerWorld.com…
Not long ago, IT consultant Mark A. Gilmore was called in to help an IT department that was struggling with project overload. “They’d gotten this kind of attitude — the executive vice president calls it ‘Burger King Syndrome,'” he recalls. “Their approach was, ‘You can have it your way.'”
The business executives believed IT could supply whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it. Salespeople had gotten into the habit of asking the development team to create applications within a week to fulfill promises they’d made to customers. As a result, IT employees were spending about 80% of their time reacting to crises or struggling to meet impossible deadlines rather than calmly planning their workloads, says Gilmore, president of Wired Integrations in San Jose.
This is a good read. Don’t let the title kill your interest. Even though I do not serve as an elected chair, I serve at the will and pleasure of the President of Concord University, it has some great leadership and management tips.
By Greg Downey at his personal blog…
Today I’m attending a “Chair’s Chat” as part of an annual UW-Madison “Campus Showcase” of best practices. Current Department Chairs like me have been asked to “share one or two tips that they feel other chairs might find useful” as part of the discussion:
via Ten Things to Ponder after you are Elected Department Chair | Greg Downey.
This looks like a great idea built on fundamentals of good leadership. By Les Mckeown at Inc.com…
Any great leader faces a multitude of challenges every day. Whether it’s communicating strategy, helping people through change, holding on to excellence in the face of compromise, or just navigating the leadership environment, there is no shortage of development opportunities lurking in each day’s schedule.
I’ve worked over the years with leaders on all of the challenges above–and many, many more. But surprisingly, the skill that I see more leaders struggle with more than any other is relatively mundane (but very important): the ability to work with their team as an equal. To be “merely” a resource, rather than the team leader.
As we’ve seen before, many leaders can only operate in one of two modes–in charge, or not there. In other words, once they join their team (virtually or otherwise), the team instantly defers to them, and they take the lead.
Truly great leaders have a third mode: The ability to sit with their team without needing to be in charge, using their subject matter knowledge just the same way as anyone else around the table would.
If you don’t already have it, here’s how to develop that skill:
It’s interesting to look back and see how the CIO role has evolved. I started aspiring to such a role back in the late 90’s and the article has a table on page 2 that compares the shift from 20 years ago to today.
By David Raths at CampusTechnology.com…
How are you adding value?
It’s a question faced by many higher ed CIOs, as campus administrators look at the dollars budgeted for IT and wonder what they’re getting for the money. And it’s no longer about servers, bandwidth, and e-mail: Increasingly, IT leaders in higher education are under pressure to go beyond finding operational efficiencies, to developing more strategic contributions to pedagogy and university business.