Owen McCall, chief information officer of The Warehouse, gained a new title early this year: Wage slave. But that is only for his blog, http://viewfield1.blogspot.com/, which features “thought pieces on issues that are exercising my mind”, tackling both ICT and personal concerns. McCall says he ventured into blogosphere following his interest in the hype around blogs, wikis, social networks and virtual words and their relevance, if any, to the corporate world. “It seemed to me the only way to really get to know something about them was to actively participate.”
He joined Facebook, started a blog and “played around” with Second Life. He is “reasonably active” in Facebook, but says his Second Life experience was “mainly frustrating”.
A communications coach encouraged him to write down his thoughts on leadership. “As I did this, I found it quite energising and saw it as a good way to begin to clarify my thoughts.” His favourite blog? “Guide the Passion” where he linked his observations of a family holiday last Christmas in the South Island, to managing his team. “I began to see many instances where I had been killing my team’s passion by trying to make them do things my way. I resolved there and then to begin to look for ways to guide people’s passions at work rather than crushing them. What a difference it would make,” he wrote.
A recent blog, the “IS Hierarchy of Needs”, distilled his recent presentations at a CIO Luncheon and the IBM Forum and was “very well received”, he says. Next year, McCall takes on a new media challenge — as a columnist of CIO magazine.
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