Leadership Elephant

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.

There are a number of different ways to make yourself more powerful in a negotiation. Bringing a team to the table is one way to go about doing this, but there are advantages and disadvantages to doing it. Not all negotiations are done by ourselves. If we choose to bring in a professional negotiator to do our dirty work for us, then we're going to need to know how to find out if they truly know their stuff.

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.

An IT manager is only as good as his or her team is. This means that one of the most critical skills that an IT manager has is the ability to build the perfect team. The better a team that you can build, the better your team is going to make you look!

In order to be successful as an IT manager, you need to be able to show the company that under your leadership your team is able to deliver high quality products on time and under budget. If you want to have any chance of being able to pull this off, then you are going to have to discover ways to build a high performance IT team.

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.

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.

There are a lot of bad guys out there. For some odd reason, a lot of them seem to want to break into your company's networks and applications. As the CIO, it's your job to make sure that this does not happen. As much as we like to spend our time looking outwards in order to detect the next threat that our company may be facing, perhaps we're looking in the wrong direction. Just as important may be the insider threat that lurks within the company. No matter where it comes from, cybercrime is your problem to deal with.

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.

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.

Who was it that said "It takes a village…"? They may not have been talking about being a product manager, but they might as well have been. Life has become so complex that product managers can no longer make their product a success just by their own efforts. Today it takes the help of one or more partners to get your product to where it needs to be. Are you going to be ready to work with those partners?

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.

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.

It turns out that most negotiations are over even before they begin. The 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 team to be your team? Planning is what happens before you sit down at the negotiating table. There are no negotiating tactics or tricks at play here. It's just a matter of you doing your homework.

At the heart of what it means to be a product manager lies the ability to market your product. No matter if you are trying to get people inside of your company to provide you with the resources or funding that your product needs in order to get out the door or if it's customers that you are after, you've got to be able to paint a picture of your product that makes people want it.

In the end, it all comes down to what your customer wants to tell you about your product. However, how many of us have been taught how to listen to our customers?