Business Management Consulting

An IT manager's budget controls what he and his team are going to be able to accomplish this year. No, creating a budget may not be the most enjoyable thing that you'll be called on to do, but it just might be the most important. The challenge that a lot of IT managers have when it comes to creating a good budget is that it requires them to master a number of terms and concepts that they may never have encountered in school.

All too often we find ourselves in the position of being an IT manager with little or no training on what it takes to correctly staff a team. This is a critical skill for us to have. Ultimately, the success of an IT manager rests on how his/her team preforms. You might think that staffing is all about hiring the right people to come and join your team. It turns out that there is a lot more to this. Staffing involves attracting and retaining the right people. However, it also deals with knowing when it is time to let the wrong members of your team go.

In today's fast-paced Information Technology (IT) field, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are being asked to do more than ever. No longer is it enough to just make sure that the company's various servers and email systems are up and operating correctly, now CIOs have to play a role in setting the company's overall strategic direction.

What is a product manager without a product? Nothing. That's why it's so very important that when a product is being developed that the product manager be involved. Now exactly how best to go about doing that is an entirely different question. The process from having an idea for a product to actually having a product is a long and treacherous road. So many things can go wrong that either cause the schedule to have to be extended or cause a product with the wrong features to be developed.

The art of negotiation depends on your ability to successfully communicate with the other side of the table. An important part of this communication is your ability to signal to the other side what your intentions are. Likewise, they will be signaling to you what they want to accomplish.

Congratulations - you are an IT manager and you've been given a budget to work with. Oh, oh, now what? Oh, and if you're going to want any money next year, you had better learn how to ask for more money. This budget stuff can be tricky. The fact that we talk about budgets using a vocabulary that most IT managers probably don't have (or at least don't use every day) makes it just a bit harder.

As individuals we have a tendency to shy away from getting involved in arguments. We view them as being confrontational and filled with emotions. However, when it comes to negotiating and when we have a different view of the world than the other side of the table, it turns out that a little bit of arguing might be just what the doctor ordered.

When you find yourself in a leadership position, you'll want to make the most of it. This means that you want to be viewed as being both powerful and effective. In order to make this happen, you need to have a good understanding of what leadership is really all about.

It's always been known that the job of being CIO is a tough job. One of the reasons that this job is so hard to do well is because we stand on shifting ground. The technology that we use goes out of style and then gets replaced by new technology almost overnight. One of your tasks as CIO is to be able to take a look at new and emerging technologies and determine which of these will impact your company.

How your next negotiation is going to turn out will be determined by how you open the negotiation. No matter if the other side is a push-over or a tough customer, you are going to have to decide how you want the negotiation to start and then you are going to have to take steps to make it happen.

What a great world this would be if only we could sit down at a negotiating table, have both sides make a few concessions and then we'd suddenly have the deal that we were all hoping to be able to reach. Sadly, getting that perfect deal takes a great deal more effort on both sides.

When you start a negotiation, there is a great deal that you don't know. No matter how much homework and research that you've done in order to better understand the other side of the table and their position, there will always be things that you don’t know. This means that there will be a great deal that you will have to learn while the negotiation is going on. In order for this to happen, you are going to have to master the skill of exploring what is possible during the negotiation.

Anyone can manage IT employees. Due to the fact that the employees have agreed to work for the company, as their manager you hold the ability to fire them in your hands. If they don't do what you tell them to do, you have the right to terminate them. That's management, not leadership. This audiobook will provide you with numerous examples of good leadership. I'll be showing you the skills and talents that IT leaders must have in order to do a good job of motivating their team.

Every negotiation starts with an opening. It's what we all do at the start of a negotiation. What a lot of us don't realize is that how we handle the opening of a negotiation can have a big impact on how the rest of the negotiation goes. The very possibility of success may hinge on how we start things off.