06
Nov 17

Fast Company – This Is Why We Default To Criticism (And How To Change)

“Susan doesn’t pull her weight. She’s always negative, people don’t like her.”

“Robert is just incompetent. Why am I asked to do my job well when he gets to skate by?”

“This department would be better off if Beth was fired, everyone knows it, what are you going to do about it?”

Tim Cole, now founder and CEO of The Compass Alliance, used to hear criticism like this regularly in a previous work environment. Tasked with taking over a department he admits had a “septic culture,” Cole stepped into a quagmire of low morale. There was legitimate debate on shutting the operation down,” he explains, “despite the contribution to profitability.”

More of the Fast Company article from Lydia Dishman


03
Nov 17

ZDNet – How to turn down bad IT ideas at work – without upsetting your colleagues

Modern CIOs hear an awful lot about the importance of engagement, but partnerships are a two-way street. Sometimes you need to tell people — whether that’s someone on your team, a line-of-business peer, or your boss — that their idea won’t work. What’s the best way to tell people they’re wrong? ZDNet hears from five CIOs.

1. Let people know quickly and remain open to new ideas
Juan Perez, CIO at UPS, says executives must tell people when they’re wrong, regardless of level. At the same time, Perez says relaying this information is a sensitive task. “The worst thing that can happen is that you come across as someone that is not respecting and valuing their opinions and views,” he says.

More of the ZDNet article from Mark Samuels


02
Nov 17

Fast Company – Survey: one in four IT workers are worried that their skills could become obsolete

For the most part, IT workers like their jobs: 79% claim they are satisfied with their positions (up from 73% in 2015) and a whopping 45% are “very satisfied,” according to the new industry report “Evaluating IT Workforce Needs.” However, there is one looming concern among these workers. One in four are worried that their skills could become obsolete, which probably includes anyone who fears automation (read: everyone) and anyone working in programming languages like Visual Basic, Flash, or even Ruby.

More of the Fast Company article


25
Oct 17

Baseline – Why We Should Encourage More Women to Work in IT

A significantly larger number of women tech professionals than men believe that their gender is underrepresented in the IT industry, according to a recent survey from Harvey Nash, an IT recruiting, outsourcing/offshoring and executive search firm, and ARA, an organization that seeks to attract, retain and advance women in technology. The resulting report, “2017 Women in Technology: Overcoming Obstacles and Unlocking Potential,” indicates that much of the issue takes shape at an early age for future tech workers: More men than women said they first grew interested in IT as a potential career in elementary or middle school.

Men are also more likely to focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) classes in college. It should come as no surprise, then, that a majority of survey respondents feel that it’s key to encourage more girls to pursue tech subjects in school. “The visibility and value of a STEM education has skyrocketed in the last decade, but we’re not yet seeing the full impact translate to the IT workplace,” said Bob Miano, USA president and CEO of Harvey Nash.

More of the Baseline slideshow


24
Oct 17

The Register – Survey: Tech workers are terrified they will be sacked for being too old

Almost half of tech workers in the US, like Hollywood stars, live in constant fear that age will end their careers, according to a new poll.

Job website Indeed.com surveyed more than 1,000 employed tech workers and found that 43 per cent of respondents expressed concern about losing their job due to age. And 18 per cent said they worried about this “all the time.”

The survey falls short of a revelation. Rather, it’s a reaffirmation of an issue that has troubled tech employees for years and has prompted lawsuits such as the one brought by Robert Heath against Google in 2015, since joined by at least 269 aggrieved elders.

Heath’s lawsuit should not to be confused with the age discrimination lawsuit brought by Brian Reid that Google settled for an undisclosed sum in 2011.

More of The Register article from Thomas Claburn


23
Oct 17

CIO Insight – Surprising Insights About Strategic IT Leadership

We wanted to give IT leaders a chance to explain what motivated them to want to become more strategic—beyond the fact that they’re being told they must do this.

“Why do you want to become a more strategic IT leader?”
“What is your biggest barrier to becoming more strategic?”
“How is strategy currently handled in your IT organization?”

Why?

Because IT leaders are constantly being told they must “become more strategic.” Often, this advice is given without much elaboration. It’s given as if “becoming more strategic” was a simple thing to do. And this guidance is given as if the benefits were so obvious.

After hearing this advice repeated again and again, we realized there was one set of voices missing from the conversation about strategic IT leadership … the voice of the IT leaders themselves.

More of the CIO Insight post from Marc J. Schiller


12
Sep 17

Customer Think – Software Developers Fear That A.I. Will Soon Replace Them

Since its inception in the 19th century, Artificial Intelligence is a growing topic of conversation in both science fiction and intellectual debate. To Cut a long story short, AI turns out to be the most disruptive and pervasive technologies of the current digital revolution. Right from automobiles to health care, home automation, aerospace engineering, material science, sports, the technology has been used very creatively, in hitherto unheard of sectors and has the potential to profoundly affect how we interact across the globe. As a result, the tech industry’s interest becomes stronger than ever.

According to the Oxford dictionary “The theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages.”

More of the Customer Think article from Nishtha Singh


04
Aug 17

CIO Insight – A Practical Alternative to Two-Speed IT (Part 2)

In part one of this series, we explored a pair of competing requests many modern IT leaders receive from their stakeholders:

We investigated one “buzzwordy” solution—two-speed IT—and how implementing this solution often creates more problems than it solves. We proposed an alternate five-step framework for handling these requests. In steps one and two of this framework, we revealed how the above two competing requests are old problems, best solved with an old, proven solution—and not buzzwords.

E-Signatures 201: Get the Details on Integration, Customization and Advanced Workflow Register
In part two of this series, we will walk you through the remaining steps in our practical framework and lead you down a path toward implementing this proven solution: the technology lifecycle.

Step 3: Think technology lifecycle, not “innovation” vs. “operations.”

To better understand why the good-on-paper “two-speed IT” approach often produces problems when implemented in the real world, look at Gartner’s two speeds (or modes) in which they shoehorn all technology systems and services:

Mode 1: Development projects related to core system maintenance, stability or efficiency. These require highly specialized programmers and traditional, slow-moving development cycles. There is little need for business involvement.

Mode 2: Development projects that help innovate or differentiate the business. These require a high degree of business involvement, fast turnaround and frequent updates. Mode 2 requires a rapid path (or IT fast lane) to transform business ideas into applications.

More of the CIO Insight post from Lee Reese


11
Jul 17

Data Center Knowledge – How to End On-Call IT Burnout and Post-Traumatic Alert Fatigue

In so many ways IT operations has developed a military-style culture. If IT ops teams are not fighting fires they’re triaging application casualties. Tech engineers are the troubleshooters and problems solvers who hunker down in command centers and war rooms.

For the battle weary on-call staff who are regularly dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, having to constantly deal with flaky infrastructure and poorly designed applications carries a heavy personal toll. So, what are the signs an IT organization is engaged in bad on-call practices? Three obvious ones to consider include:

Support teams are overloaded – Any talk of continuous delivery counts for squat if systems are badly designed, hurriedly released and poorly tested.

More of the Data Center Knowledge post from Peter Waterhouse


16
Jun 17

HBR – A Little Competition Could Improve Your HR, IT, and Legal Departments

I think we can all agree that corporate functions tend to be a locus of frustration for pretty much all employees — except, of course, the ones from the function that is the object of the frustration in question. If you have ever thought to yourself “Doesn’t legal understand that we are going to lose this deal if they don’t sign off soon?” or “Why is HR’s answer always Our rules don’t allow that?” you are not alone.

Recent McKinsey research showed that senior executives have a low level of satisfaction (an average of only 30%) in their corporate functions across the board. McKinsey’s recommendations are all sensible, such as: “Create incentives for functional leaders to contain costs, instead of allocating costs that business units can’t change.” This issue has long been a bugbear for me. Despite chronically low satisfaction and lots of intelligent prescriptions like this, the problem by all accounts seems to be getting worse, not better.

More of the Harvard Business Review article from Roger L Martin