Here’s something important to me and you. I just got the below reader email. I’ve taken out personally identifying information and changed his name, but here’s what it was: Hey Jonathan, I greatly appreciate your insight from your latest article, “How To Get More Resources For IT.” I work in ***, *** for a multi-billion […]
10 Commandments Of Selling To IT Leaders
Expect IT to resist buying what you’re selling if you don’t follow these 10 commandments. (Version 1.0) The IT-hates-sales dysfunction drives me nuts. Of course IT needs to talk to sales folks. We can’t deliver great IT unless we use great products and services. Yet, so often, sales folks so very often shoot themselves in […]
Bad Tech Usability? Bye-Bye IT.
In the past, bad technology usability was considered normal; today, this will spell the death of internal IT. Traditionally, IT has been ridiculously bad at making things easy for customers. Traditionally, IT has also had a monopoly on providing corporate IT. IT no longer has the monopoly. IT is now in competition with many, many […]
Why Nobody Should Collect Mobile Phones At Meetings
Again and again, I hear folks talk about the “cell phone basket” at meetings, where everybody drops their little piece of electronic addiction into a basket so that they can focus on the task at hand. Except, it’s ridiculous to blame technology for the core problem: meetings that aren’t engaging. What’s next, taking away people’s […]
Shadow IT Is Over! (If You Want It) And… Ninjas!
What I mean, of course, is that we need to stop using the phrase, “Shadow IT.” It is completely non-descriptive of exactly what we mean. You want “ninja IT” so that employees can stop being prisoners of IT. Let me explain. As you know if you’re a regular reader, my contention is that there is […]
Hack Your IT Budget: Give A Little To Get A Lot
When it comes to IT budgets, the fact of the matter, based on research that I did for InformationWeek, is that many, but not all organizations are fairly flexible with IT, despite the crusty old practice of only planning expenditures once per year. So why is budgeting a topic that makes IT folks cringe? At […]
IT and Business Units: Relationship Rescue?
Some months ago, Terri Griffith wrote a blog on HBR asking “are we asking too much of our CIOs?” My answering post on InformationWeek: it’s complicated. “If IT is now accountable for the success of virtually the entire business, why not put IT in charge of the whole business?” Of course, that’s a snarky answer […]