Leadership Elephant

It turns out that most negotiations are over even before they begin. The legal team that has spent the most time planning for the negotiation, doing their homework, and collecting the data that they'll need is the one that's going to walk away from the table with the best deal. Wouldn't you want that legal team to be your team?

Every company wants to grow and become more successful. There is no magic formula to make this happen, but it is generally agreed that in order for this to happen the company cannot stand still. Instead, they always have to be trying new things and growing. In an IT team, in order to make this kind of growth occur, innovation has to be encouraged to happen. All too often the workers on the team can get too involved in their day-to-day tasks to spend any time thinking about innovation. That's where the IT manager has to step in.

What does it really mean to be a CIO? You sure won't be writing any software any more. You won't be stringing network cables or updating firewall parameters. What does a CIO really do? I've got some bad news for you: CIOs manage.

When we enter into a negotiation, we simply don't know everything that we need to know. What this means for us is that we've got to use the negotiation to do some exploring - we've got to get answers to the questions that are unanswered when we start.

In order to be a success, a CIO needs to be able to find and work with partners. These partners have to be committed to the same things that the CIO is: the overall success of his or her company and IT department. However, finding the right partners can be quite a challenge. All too often alliances don't work out. CIOs need to take the time and study why some of these relationships are successful while others are not.

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.

Isn't technology a wonderful thing? As CIO you are in charge of one of the most technologically sophisticated parts of the company. It's very easy to fill your days dealing with issues regarding servers, networks, routers, switches, firewalls, etc. However, it turns out that if you do this, then you'll be overlooking one of the most important tasks that a CIO needs to accomplish: communication. This book has been written in order to show you what you need to be doing in order to get your message out.

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.

I happen to think that being a product manager is one of the best jobs out there. I find it to be very satisfying because I'm in charge of the success of a product. If I do the right things, then my product will be selected by a large number of customers and it will solve their problems. If I don’t do my job right, my company will probably decide to stop offering my product after a while. Ultimately, my career is in my hands.

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.

What does it take to be a successful CIO? Studies have shown that the average CIO only holds on to the job for roughly 4 years - what can you do to have a longer career? It turns out that the answer to this question is simple: You need to find ways to work with the rest of the business. What this means is that although your technical skills and your ability to work with the rest of the people in the IT department are what got you this far, it's not going to be what you need in order to stay in the job. You are going to need to develop a new set of skills.

As the world has become more and more digital, the importance of the role of a CIO within a firm has increased. No longer can CIOs be content to focus exclusively on technical topics. Instead, we now have to consider what the company's goals are and how technology can be used to help the company achieve those goals.

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.

Any manager is only as good as his or her team. I'm pretty sure that we've all heard this before. However, that leaves us in a bit of a bind - more often than not we are just handed a team and told the make the most of them. However, it turns out that over time we have the ability to reshape and mold our team based on who we choose to add and remove from it. Learning how to do this the right way is what can determine the ultimate success of a manager.

One of my negotiating mentors told me that most negotiations are over even before they start. When I asked her what she meant, she explained that the side that prepares the best for a negotiation is the one that will probably walk away with the best deal. Getting ready for a negotiation involves many different things. In order to be successful for your next negotiation, you are going to have to prepare for it. What this means is that you need to understand the steps that are involved, and you need to perform them. Remember, you can win this thing before it even starts.

At the heart of being a CIO is the responsibility to manage an entire department of technical professionals. It is your job to provide an overall direction for the department to move in and when problems arise, and they always do, you are going to have to work with your staff in order to create solutions.

Every company wants to grow and become more successful. There is no magic formula to make this happen, but it is generally agreed that in order for this to happen the company cannot stand still. Instead, they always have to be trying new things and growing.