Truth from the Trenches
Articles by Mark.Settle
Truth from the Trenches
Information technology – what is it good for?
Technology fads come and go over time but the fundamental business benefits that IT can deliver remain the same. Any technology initiative that can produce dramatic improvements in process automation, data democratization or ease of use will materially improve the business credibility of your company’s IT team and likely enhance the career prospects of its leaders.
Truth from the Trenches
5-stage self-help program for confronting talent debt within your organization
IT leaders bemoan the technical debt afflicting their core systems but rarely confront the talent debt afflicting their workforce. This self-help program enables leaders to accelerate the transition from denial to action in dealing with their talent debt issues.
Truth from the Trenches
How to establish a security culture within IT
It’s impossible to establish a security culture within a modern enterprise if it doesn’t already exist within IT. IT organizations should have pervasive and conspicuous security cultures that can serve as examples to all other parts of a corporation. Here are six management triggers that IT leaders can use to build such cultures.
Truth from the Trenches
Minimizing the distance between IT and your company’s paying customers
Most IT organizations receive feedback from their company’s paying customers through functional teams that each possess a unique perspective regarding true customer needs. Establishing communication channels that promote more direct interactions with paying customers can improve IT’s business effectiveness and, in some cases, ensure its survival.
Truth from the Trenches
Managing enterprise application architectures in 2020: the game has changed!
Enterprise architecture teams that attempt to rationalize and standardize employee engagement applications do so at their own peril. Their recommendations will likely be ignored and their roles as champions of technology innovation will be marginalized.
Truth from the Trenches
The new CIO playbook (psst…this works well for other IT leadership jobs, too)
Newly appointed CIOs have a limited window of opportunity to establish the credibility and relationships they need to implement their change agendas. This playbook may not guarantee success, but it can go a long way towards reducing the risk of failure during the all-important first year on the job.
Truth from the Trenches
Managing your innovation pipeline
Successful innovation in a commercial enterprise is a matchmaking exercise that establishes a long-term marriage between a business opportunity and a new or emerging technology.
Truth from the Trenches
What job security lessons can CIOs learn from the NFL?
The on-the-job management challenges confronting CIOs and NFL coaches are very similar. Their average job tenures are similar as well. CIOs seeking to improve their personal job security might be well-advised to spend a little more time listening to ESPN during the upcoming NFL season and asking themselves if they’re committing any of the same mistakes plaguing the leaders of chronically underperforming NFL teams.
Truth from the Trenches
Secrets of managing really talented people
It’s the responsibility of senior leaders to ensure that talented individuals consciously acknowledge the scalability dilemma they are facing as a first step in turning them into true team managers.
Truth from the Trenches
Misery loves company: the chronic end-user problems that undermine IT credibility
IT credibility is not simply based upon IT’s ability to implement new technologies or support major business initiatives. Keeping end users productive on a day-in, day-out basis is equally if not more important in establishing IT’s reputation.
Truth from the Trenches
Launching strategic IT initiatives: A negotiation exercise between IT and its business partners
To successfully overcome the many execution hurtles, it’s essential that business and IT executives leading major initiatives are fully aligned at the outset of any campaign.
Truth from the Trenches
IT predictions: here’s what won’t be happening in 2018
Nine things that will NOT be happening in information technology this year, for better or for worse.
Truth from the Trenches
Managing your career: knowing when it’s time to move on
Experience has shown that commercial enterprises have no problem parting ways with employees whose skills and experience are no longer relevant to their firm’s needs. Professionals should be equally cold and calculating.
Truth from the Trenches
Future of the corporate data center: what if we are all wrong?
There is a widespread belief, verging upon a theological conviction, that corporate data centers are a thing of the past. Industry prognosticators and practitioners have convinced themselves that cloud computing is an inexorable force that will eventually consume most corporate data centers, rendering them obsolete. But what if this belief is fundamentally flawed?
Truth from the Trenches
Measuring IT business value: let’s get over the puppy dog syndrome
There is no one magic formula for measuring the business value that IT delivers, and many attempts to do so can actually backfire.
Truth from the Trenches
Taming the Tower of Babel: A radical idea for coping with collaboration tool overload
Seven-time CIO Mark Settle shares a creative approach to managing numerous collaboration tools — which should ultimately optimize employee productivity.
Truth from the Trenches
What do they really want? Decoding IT demand signals from your business
Every leader of a large IT organization manages two very different types of business. Okta CIO Mark Settle discusses the varying clientele, and what success (and failure!) looks like for both sides of the business.
Truth from the Trenches
How IT leaders can stop the blame game
An intervention strategy for IT organizations that are constantly blaming others for their performance failures
Truth from the Trenches