Stories by Divina Paredes

Steve Johansen, chief information officer, Port of Napier, explains why you should read Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds by Howard Gardner (Harvard Business School Press, March 2004).
"Every one of us, not only in our roles as IT leaders, but as valued members of society, occasionally find it necessary to try and talk colleagues, customers, friends and family around to our point of view. And it's not easy. So, how does a leader change the mind of employees, customers or other stakeholders? Or, more importantly, how does a leader change his or her own mind?

Marcel van den Assum

Scott Houston laughs when asked whether he is a "power hungry executive". "Power processing hungry," he clarifies.
These words aptly describe Houston, who heads the New Zealand Supercomputing Centre (NZSC), now one of the largest commercially available supercomputing clusters in the Southern Hemisphere.

These days it has almost become a mantra for networked organisations to be nimble, ready to adjust to the ever changing needs of the marketplace and stakeholders, while ensuring the foundations for long-term growth.
But how about transposing this philosophy to another area close to the hearts and minds of today's contemporary IS executives - their career?

"It gives us a lot of flexibility," says Simon Hull, managing director of the labour hire firm. "We open new branches pretty quickly and it has given us a reasonably seamless changeover. It is just running in the main server and all you need is to get another computer up and running and there it is."
Hull strongly supports a web-based approach for a multi-site business like Allied Workforce. "With this system, we can run our business from almost anywhere, using just a web browser."

Geoff Barber

By 2007 at the latest, the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) will take effect in New Zealand.
IFRS, developed by the London-based International Accounting Standards Board, is a major step to globally harmonise accounting standards.

Deconstructing leadership - what constitutes it, who has it - is a subjective process.
But four months ago, at the Wellesley Club in Wellington, this writer experienced leadership personified.

On acquiring and being acquired

Marcel van den Assum says the meeting starts middle of the afternoon, ends two hours later, and "concludes with a few drinks if it works out, [as] it normally does".
"We present to them collectively our direction, our priorities, our road map." An open forum follows, and sometimes a debate.

Marcel van den Assum, Fonterra: One of the most important aspects of governance pertaining to IS, is alignment within the organisation through different governance structures.
Or, to put it more specifically, alignment of governance structures. For example if you're developing a corporate culture, corporate values, it's vitally important that that culture, those values, are understood in the context of IS governance.

Planning for business continuity

The 2005 winners, chosen by major venture capital and technology companies, includ-ed companies working on anti-terrorism software and treatments for cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
The WEF believes these pioneers have focused on four major trends: Global demographic shifts, an impending energy crunch, mobile devices and greater security concerns.

April Walker, Southern Cross: We are at one of the early stages of considering our strategic direction in telecommunications technology for voice over IP. We're in the process of looking at what we've got, where we might be going in the future, and what we're likely to need. Obviously VOIP has cropped up as a potential direction for us so it's something that we're looking at and considering. Previously one of our call centres was operating on VOIP technology but we disestablished it. We moved the call centre. We merged it back into the main call centre.
Catherine Rusby, IAG: I'm just reviewing the final paper that's going to be submitted to our board in a couple of weeks to say, 'You won't hear from us again because we're done [with our project].'

Nailing the basics of IT governance has been a key step in the development of every world class IT organisation (ITO), notes a recent Meta Group report.
However, the analyst firm points out, for many organisations, governance is a "nebulous" term. "The typical ITO's view of governance is a tactical prioritisation committee incorrectly termed the 'IT steering committee'."