Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Webcast: In the Google Apps Cloud: How to Achieve Your Business Objectives
Dec 3rd, '09, 1 - 2 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Council member Brent Hoag, Director, Global IT, at JohnsonDiversey, as he discusses the adoption of Google Apps which has helped meet four corporate goals; sustainability, simplification, increased employee productivity and global collaboration.
Webcast: Collaboration Initiatives: Benchmarks & Best Practices
Dec 15th, '09, 4 - 5 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Council members Ruth Thorpe, VP & CIO at the U.S. Pharmaceutical Operations of Sanofi-Aventis, and Gary Kuyper, CIO at Bethany Christian Services, as they speak about their collaboration initiatives and experiences in how and why they chose the social networking and collaboration tools they are using and their business goals for collaboration, and facing culture change challenges.
Data Overview: Collaboration Initiatives Field Guide: Benchmarks & Best Practices
This appendix to the Council Field Guide provides an analysis which discusses benchmarks for collaboration IT implementation costs, adoption rates and payoffs. The overview identifies top IT and business goals and satisfaction rates for collaboration initiatives as well as best practices and lessons learned for implementing collaboration IT.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »April 01, 2004 — CIO —
Famed Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, noted for his theory of multiple intelligences, recently published Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). This quick, enjoyable read outlines Gardner’s research and thinking on how best to convince others (or yourself) to adopt a different viewpoint in various settings, including business. Gardner sat down with CIO to talk about the difficulties inherent in the process of changing someone’s mind and the seven "levers" by which leaders can accomplish it.
CIO: Describe the "mind-changing paradox" referred to in your book.
Howard Gardner: People underestimate how difficult it is to change minds. The mind-changing paradox is my attempt to capture that. When you’re little, your mind changes pretty readily, even if nobody pushes it. We are natural mind-changing entities until we are 10 or so. But as we get older and have acquired more formal and informal knowledge, then it’s very, very hard to change our minds. Which doesn’t mean you should give up. It means you need to be intelligent and strategic about it and persevering.
I’m not stating that on small matters it’s difficult to change people’s minds. A coffee break at 3:00 rather than 1:00?that’s trivial. But on fundamental ideas on how the world works, about what your enterprise is about, about what your life goals are, about what it takes to survive?it’s on these topics that it’s very difficult to change people’s minds. Most people, by the time they’re adults, not only have become used to a certain way of thinking, but in a sense it’s work for them [to change] because their neural pathways become set.
[For a leader] to say it’s a new ball game, that [employees] have to make different kinds of assumptions, that the usual procedures and the usual rewards and the usual skills are not adequate or are misplaced?this is really calling for a revisiting of fundamentals [on the part of employees]. And it’s very hard to revisit fundamentals.
For instance, when British Petroleum says, "We’re no longer in the energy business, we’re in the blah-blah business," an employee may very well say, "That’s wrong. We are in the energy business, and we have been for a hundred years. And who’s this guy coming out and saying we’re in the blah-blah business?" That’s hard [for leaders] to overcome.
What are the most important of your mind-changing levers?
It all depends on the situation, on whether you’re talking about employees in a company or lovers or antagonists or your own mind.