Continuous, honest feedback on your performance is an integral part for future growth, improvements and advancement. You and your teams must know how well they are doing and they should hear the truth from their clients and partners, not simply rely on internal and somewhat subjective opinions. Ask people how you (and your teams) can improve. Ask your boss, ask …
How to get promoted?
Promotion: how to get one? This is a great question, one that each of us have asked ourselves and our colleagues at least once in our careers. First, you can always move to another organization that is better suited to your goals, ambitions, skills and capabilities. However, changing organizations is a challenging concept for so many people due to their …
7 signs your boss is not a leader
7 signs your boss is not a leader is a collection of overarching items that stood out to me over the years. This is not an all inclusive list by any means, but should you come across these seven (or most of them at least), take that as a sure sign that you are not working for a leader. Furthermore, …
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, …
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 …
Why leaders are not experts
As a leader one must motivate, inspire, set standards, coordinate, improve, communicate, collaborate and so on, but they should never mistakenly believe and act as if they know everything. There is a multitude of reasons why teams are built with people of diverse backgrounds, experiences, knowledge and education in order for them to complement each other and cover all responsibilities. …
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 …
Document what you do and communicate often
Documentation is crucial in knowledge sharing, knowledge transfer, management and the operations as a whole. Additionally, any and all procedural or project changes must be documented and shared with everyone who is or may be impacted by this change. Document, verify and communicate frequently what you do, why you are doing it and how it impacts the mission and vision …