The relentless pursuit of sameness
You are unlikely to create greatness simply by replicating others. It's the business equivalent of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.
You are unlikely to create greatness simply by replicating others. It's the business equivalent of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.
It is very difficult if not impossible to design a jigsaw puzzle by getting independent actors to design certain pieces only and then expect them to work together - yet that is what a lot of organisations today are doing with their business technology systems.
...and when the system goes live users are expected to perform flawlessly.
“Here is a technology, it's really cool, now, let's identify a problem that we might be able to ‘hit’ with this technology.” Sounds familiar?
Waiting for four hours for a three-minute Harry Potter theme park ride gave me prime insights on working with Gen Y.
Most teams try and do everything, please everyone. Owen McCall discusses why this can impede the goal to build a world class IT team.
Businesses can learn from the principles espoused by a doctor and educator that changed the game for schools at the start of the 20th century – and continues to today.
These steps will help create a powerful, flexible and adaptive culture that will not only allow you to survive a crisis, but set you up to thrive through change.
Often, we work really hard on a project and once we achieve our goal, the gains are short-term. Inevitably, organisational focus moves on, and the organisation rebounds back to the way it was. How do we break this cycle?
I am constantly astounded at the number of people who cannot answer this question or can only answer it with generalities or anecdotes. They have no or very little objective data, writes Owen McCall.
Before you can be influential you need to be seen as fundamentally competent, writes Owen McCall. You have to be strategically relevant, that is, you have to understand your business and the issues your peers are dealing with on a daily basis. You have to be influential with your peers so that when you talk knowledgeably about how IT can deliver value to the business or how IT was altering the competitive landscape, they listen.
Sister one, Katie
Are you focused and calm or have you got too many thingsgoing on and rushing around? Do you come away from meetings with your leadersclear on what's needed and focused - or confused and frustrated?
I have written about strategy before and in particular my dislike of our industry's obsession with the need to align IT with the business. The very act of trying to align IT and the business is perhaps the source of our issues as alignment assumes separateness where no separateness exists. IT is a part of the business as a whole.
In the early 1990's my wife Jo and I had the opportunity to live in Atlanta Georgia. While we were there my wife decided to run the Peachtree Road Race. The race is a prestigious 10 kilometre event and one of the largest fun runs in the US with over 85,000 people participating each year. As Jo told me about the race, I became enthused and decided to enter and do the run with her.