IT Staff Retention

CIO.com – 7 signs you’re suffering from burnout — and what to do about it

When you absolutely, positively no longer give a damn about your work, it’s time to stop and recharge. Your soul, colleagues and family will thank you.

Suddenly, after years of planning, managing, exceeding goals and conquering challenges, you realize that you no longer really care very much about your work. Formerly exciting activities, such as leading, influencing and innovating, don’t matter much anymore. These days, your biggest work-related thrill is playing the games you find on Slack.

More of the CIO.com article from John Edwards

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29
Oct 18

The Accidental Successful CIO – How CIOs Can Manage Their Millennial Managers

I really hate to share this with you – but, you’re getting old. How can we tell this? Simple, millennials are starting to become managers in your IT department. Wasn’t it just a few years ago that we were talking about how to deal with the millennials who were just then entering the IT department? Somehow time has marched on and now those same millennials are starting to be the ones in charge. As the CIO, how you choose to manage these millennial managers is going to be different and you need to know how to go about doing it correctly.

More of the Accidental Successful CIO post from Dr. Jim Anderson

Business continuity / CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / Disaster Recovery / IaaS / IT Security / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy / Risk Management — Comments Off
26
Oct 18

Continuity Central – For disaster recovery, there are better options than secondary data centers.

Disaster recovery is a headache that every IT department has suffered and in this arena, as in so many others, the cloud offers a better choice, says Laz Vekiarides. In fact, not only is a secondary data center for DR no longer needed, it’s actually no longer a sustainable option…

The days of the secondary data center / centre are numbered, and that is a good thing for the enterprises that have struggled to build them, fund them and maintain them solely for disaster recovery purposes. When on-premises disaster recovery was the only option, IT teams had no choice but to grit their teeth and take on the cost and resource burdens of physical secondary data centers. Today, though, the growing cloud adoption rate and availability of cloud-forward co-location providers have transformed the data center world. One result: the industry has more efficient and cost-effective choices, including hybrid cloud DR.

Key questions to ask before moving DR to the cloud
Nothing is easy in IT, and no data center leader should believe promises about quick or simple transformations from on-prem secondary data centers to cloud or hybrid models.

CIO.com – Shadow IT: the CIO’s perspective

Here’s a must-read for organizations dealing with rogue or shadow IT.

Should CIOs fear or endorse shadow IT? The CIO’s perspective may surprise you.

CIOs have many reactions to shadow IT. Some complain that IT is generally measured as a success only by delivering something the business wants. However, IT organizations can get caught up in just doing cost control, security and overarching governance.

With this context, CIOs say, it’s important to realize that shadow IT is not the problem. Instead, it is a symptom, real or perceived, that IT is not delivering what the business needs. While some CIOs suggest that if you have shadow IT, it means IT isn’t doing its job.

More of the CIO.com article from Myles F. Suer

CIO Strategy / Cloud Computing / Cloud infrastructure / DevOps / Digital Transformation / IaaS / IT Governance / IT Leadership / IT Security / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy — Comments Off
19
Oct 18

CloudTech – How multi-cloud business models will shape the future

Architects of the future build optimal businesses. In an automated, security conscious world, organisations must rethink their cloud strategies, embed security into application development, and embrace new work practices to stay relevant. Now is the time to plan your journey.

Shaping the future
Experts agree that, over the next five years, the multi-cloud world will be the playground for innovation, allowing organisations to launch new services and enhance advanced technologies.

A recent Foresight Factory report entitled, The Future of the Multi-Cloud (FOMC) sponsored by F5, reveals how the pace of digital transformation is already dramatically disrupting existing business models.

More of the Cloud Computing News article from Tristan Liverpool

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16
Oct 18

CIO.com – The CIO as storyteller

Effective communication across the enterprise requires a renewed focus on capturing an audience. Tech leaders from California State University, QEP Resources, and Arup share how they handle the challenge.

Communication is the bedrock of all social behavior. And multilingual communication — what linguists call code-switching — is the human norm. The British Council, the United Kingdom’s international cultural arm, has referred to recent surveys indicating that the majority of humanity is multilingual. The Linguistic Society of America reports that there are upwards of 6,000 languages worldwide, and humans have worked hard to accommodate this diversity. In Novi Sad, Serbia, for example, the sign to the mayor’s office is in the four official languages of the city: Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak, and Pannonian Rusyn.

More of the CIO.com article from Brendan McGowan

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15
Oct 18

Continuity Central – Gartner Emerging Risks Report highlights the rise of talent shortage as a top concern

Gartner’s quarterly Emerging Risks Report has found that talent shortage has joined privacy regulation and cloud computing as the top three business risks that organizations are concerned about.

In a time of historically low unemployment where the supply of available workers is much lower than usual, organizations are struggling to find and retain the talent that they need to meet their strategic objectives.

At No. 3, behind accelerating privacy regulation and cloud computing, this is the first time talent shortage was named a top business risk in Gartner’s quarterly Emerging Risks Report. Cloud computing, which was ranked the No. 1 risk in 2Q18, remains a concern. Cybersecurity disclosure and the artificial intelligence (AI)/robotics skills gap round out the top five concerns among executives surveyed.

Fast Company – Why you need to make your team uncomfortable from time to time

It’s crucial to have a sense of community in the workplace, but too much comfort can hinder progress.

People get comfortable with where they sit, what projects they work on, and what teams they are responsible for. For leaders, no‑drama days where everyone does their thing without any complaints or conflict feel great–so they assume that a calm, hassle-free existence is the one that produces the best work. As a result, they optimize for a steady state, where there are no surprises and people do as they’re told.

More of the Fast Company article from Scott Belsky

CIO Strategy / Digital Transformation / IT Governance / IT Leadership / IT Security / IT Staff Retention / IT Strategy — Comments Off
10
Oct 18

CIO.com – Making IT processes effective for the digital age

Does how IT runs itself matter to their firm’s digital transformation plan?

I have spent a lot of time in the #CIOChat discussing digital transformation. But can the IT organizational design and IT internal business processes impede digital transformation? Can IT, itself, become an obstacle to responding to the waves of digital disruption that are coming? This is the question that I recently asked CIOs.

Do IT processes get in the way?
CIOs say that poor processes and organizational misalignment can get in the way. They say both represent barriers to success when transformational work is built upon them. This, of course, is frequently the case and may explain why so many digital transformations fail.

More of the CIO.com article from Myles F Suer

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05
Oct 18

WSJ – Firms Brace for Wave of Retiring IT Workers

Pilot Flying J is one firm tackling the talent exodus through knowledge-sharing programs and modernization efforts

Baby-boomer retirements over the next few years could leave companies without the IT expertise required to operate their legacy systems, even as they race to update older apps and shift more workloads to the cloud, industry advisors warn.

Part of the problem is that in the rush to modernize IT systems, many firms neglected to document legacy IT processes or hire new people with a working knowledge of how they function, they say.

As a result, a surge in retirements over the next few years “will leave many large companies with unsupported systems,” said Martha Heller, chief executive of Heller Search Associates, a recruiting firm that focuses on technology executives.

“If you don’t have anyone to support those old systems, you will have major gaps in your infrastructure,” she said.

Without taking steps now, the problem will only get worse, she adds. The total U.S. labor force participation rate is projected to hit 61% in 2026 after peaking at 83.8% in 1996, when the entire baby-boom generation was under 54 years old, according to U.S. Census and Bureau of Labor data.

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.