If you’re an executive or a future manager, this book is for you. The author worked at all levels of IT for over 30 years. Then he started his own company to solve communication problems between business and IT organizations. He created a newsletter about his experiences, and the 156 essays in this book are the result.
Business is complex. IT is complicated. These essays cut through the complexity and make it clear.
Here are just a few of the topics covered in this book: - 3 things required to get someone to change; 10 laws of human organizational behavior; 18 things I believe about business; dealing with disagreement; how to listen; handling complaints and complainers; coping with grief
- Why people want to be a manager, and 13 skills you’ll need; 7 biggest challenges of a manager; why middle managers are important; how and who to hire; a manager’s biggest burden; stories of management failure and success; 8 ways to deal with employee personal problems; 8 attributes of an ideal boss; 3 ways to deal with a bad boss
- 15 career mistakes; success versus happiness; job versus passion; finding the truth; the importance of trust; how to prevent a crisis; 4 stages of learning
- Only 2 reasons for strategy; what a good strategy looks like; how to make it successful
- How to create wildly successful projects and reduce their risk; why ROI doesn’t work and how to fix it; how to stop runaway projects; 2 questions to ask after a project
- Why companies do acquisitions; avoiding technology surprises in M how to do technology due diligence; how to tell when people are lying
- 18 CIO secrets for IT effectiveness; a hierarchy of business IT needs; 7 ways IT can improve your business; 5 approaches to software strategy; how to organize IT; reducing business IT expense; aligning IT with business direction; best practices in IT governance; handling “shadow IT;” taking the “magic” out of IT; justifying security investment; how to succeed and fail as a CIO; buying an IT product; how to become a CIO; how to sell to a CIO
Regardless of your IT experience level, this is a book that you must read.
I started working with computers during summers and holidays at the Center for Disease Control while I was still in high school, then I went to M.I.T. and majored in what is now called "Information Technology." I did a few part-time jobs while I was at M.I.T., including working at Project MAC using Multics (the predecessor to Unix) and doing some contract programming on an inventory management system. After graduation, I went to work at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) as a programmer/analyst in the manufacturing area. Over the next few years I got promoted into project leader and then IT management positions. After seven years at DEC, I went to work for The Service Bureau Company in Atlanta, which became part of Control Data Corporation, and then became Ceridian Corporation. I mostly worked in IT management positions in software development, and when I left in 2002 after twenty-two years, I was Vice-President of Technology Architecture and Strategy. In my last few years there, I spent most of my time doing due diligence on approximately 25 corporate acquisitions in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Switzerland. After leaving Ceridian, I started my own consulting company, MakingITclear, Inc., specializing in helping companies improve the relationship between IT organizations and their business customers. I started out writing these articles in 2003 as part of a blog and newsletter that I created in an attempt to establish myself as a knowledgeable expert on IT strategy and the relationship between IT and the business. But as the years went by, I found that the articles that attracted the widest audience were those that talked more generally about being a manager and how to be a better one.
