All of you who know me a bit know that I like to be intentional about goals and accomplishments and that I’m not a fan of aimless drifting as a viable strategy. While I’m not always successful in this pursuit, my intent is always to look some 3-5 years ahead and plan where I want to be and what would …
Experience is a lot more than the number of years alone
Experience is what we are all after when looking for a new hire (obviously in addition to personality, skill set and education to name a few). However, this elusive experience is not equivalent to the number of years candidates have, but it is much more related to how were those years spent. When looking to hire, ask yourself, better yet, …
Don’t trade your character for the corner office
As we grow, advance and ascend to positions of greater responsibilities, it is essential to remain grounded and stay true to yourself. No matter what happens and where you end up in your career make sure you remain who you are as a person, as a human being. While I do understand that certain positions may require adjustments to protocols …
Leaders focus on what’s important, not what’s urgent
Each of us are faced with multitude of inputs and decisions to make each day. Keeping this in mind, it is important to spend your time, resources, attention and energy wisely. As a leader, your decisions impact not only your own life, but lives of others and as such you should focus on what is important and valuable to all, …
Set people free, make them successful
We all want to work with the best people available and we want to be part of high performing teams. In this noble quest, we think of ways to retain top talent and have them stay longer, be happier and feel valued. Unfortunately, at times, this doesn’t work. When that time comes, where you know that there’s nothing you can …
How to build your reputation
You are only as good as your last performance. We have all heard this statement or a variation of it and unfortunately, in most organizations, it is partially true. I say partially true as your overall performance and contributions are more important than any single project, service improvement or business development opportunity. Your reputation as a whole is what matters. …
Don’t steal ideas of others, give them credit
Ideas matter, but the execution of those ideas matters even more. Furthermore, wherever an idea might come from, make sure it retains its rightful ownership and attribution. As a leader, it is your duty to properly recognize the contributor and give credit where credit is due. Under no circumstances should you ever claim someone else’s idea as your own. Stealing …
Marissa Mayer: is Yahoo! in need of new leadership, again?
Once again, Yahoo could soon be looking for a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO). That is, if an investor (Eric Jackson) has his way. According to him, Marissa Mayer has been lavishly spending money, Yahoo’s money on events which provided no return on investment. Furthermore, her executive team have made questionable acquisitions in recent past. You can read more about …
Business and IT alignment
Dear fellow IT leaders, please stop aligning IT to business and be the business! Allow me to explain. Generally, in life, one aligns two separate things, two separate items while IT and business need to be one and the same. There are no IT organizations, there is only one organization, one business that you as IT are integral to. Information …
Making important decisions
Decisions, decisions, decisions. We are faced with dozens of them each day and as such they require our attention and consideration. While majority of decisions are not of great significance to future outcomes (both personally and professionally), others can be quite influential. Decisions or choices that you need to make in collaboration with others which are also of great importance …