Invest in people first

People must come first in all you do and here’s why. If you invest time, attention, focus and financial resources into attracting, retaining and growing the best people you can afford you will be positioned adequately to improve and grow your business. It all starts with people first, then processes, policies, followed by technology and everything else in THAT order. …

Why Educause matters to me

Each industry has a number of organizations that unify professionals and enable them to network, collaborate, communicate and exchange ideas and knowledge. For me, one of such organizations, is certainly Educause. Educause is an association that unifies all of us who are in higher education (higher ed) information technology (IT) and provides opportunities for collaboration with colleagues and vendors. When …

Attract the best talent, then do your best to retain them

Talented people are hard to find and they are even more difficult to retain long term. They have options and they know it. Having this in mind, it is important to invest in people ahead of anything else. Get the best folks you can and focus on quality over quantity. Once a team is built, then shift your focus towards …

CIO: one of the most rewarding positions

In my humble and somewhat biased opinion, one of the most rewarding positions is that of a CIO (Chief Information Officer). I say this based on their potential to influence positive transformation, change and growth within organizations. CIOs are uniquely positioned and have exposure and partnership opportunities with all business areas (finance, legal, marketing, operations…you name it, technology is involved …

CIOs are joining Boards of Directors

Technology is a the core of nearly everything we do in modern business and as such it needs to be considered as one of the greatest opportunity and difference makers around. With this in mind, it is natural to see more and more technology executives, most frequently Chief Information Officers (CIOs) joining both boards and top management teams. These teams …

Resources follow vision

Complaining about the lack of resources is utterly useless and here’s why. I am yet to meet an organization that has too many amazing people, too much money or too many great ideas, knowledge, technology…and so on. That doesn’t exist, accept it, internalize it and move forward. Instead of complaining, act on delivering value to the entire organization and making …

Information security is everyone’s responsibility

Security of data and information across organizations is everyone’s responsibility. While content management, security, access and backup is generally led by Information technology (IT), they shouldn’t not be the only team involved in managing and securing data across organizations. Proper security training should be an integral part of the hiring process; should be communicated during student orientations and most importantly …

Client experience is the starting point

Client experience is the starting point of all service offerings. When designing services to support your organization it is essential to start with the experience of your users (both internal and external) in mind. Once you are aware how your services impact the lives or responsibilities of others that’s when you reverse engineer the process to make sure proper people …