ITLP Tuesday Readings

Today’s reading is from the January 2009 Wharton Leadership Digest. It is a portion of a speech “The Responsibilities of Leadership” by Alex Gorsky, Worldwide Chairman of Johnson & Johnson’s Surgical Care Group.

In this part of the transcript Gorsky is discussing the time when he managed a large number of employees for the first time.

While you are not managing 3,000 employees, as he was, I think that you’ll find a number of examples in his story that will speak to you in your situation today:

1. The behaviors you allow in the organization set an important tone. You, as a leader, have a responsibility for creating the right tone, culture and attitude.

2. Build teams comprised of people with diverse skill sets and perspectives.

3. Work to get your organization lined up behind the goal and to get their personal goals lined up with the goals of the organization.

Take a moment today to reflect on these key points from Gorsky's speech. Perhaps, they suggest work you could do to strengthen your team.

Have a great week. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 11:47 AM | Permalink

For today’s reading we turn to advice from José Carlos Eiras, former CIO of DHL-Express US and also European CIO and Global Services Information Officer at General Motors, found in Practical Advice for CIOs Struggling to Survive in Tough Times.

After talking briefly about the choices IT leaders struggling with tough times -- either ”hunker down and wait timidly for fate,“ or ”seize the moment“ -- Eiras advocates seizing the moment and makes seven recommendations:

1. Build a great team. Find and manage talent. ”A deep pool of talent is a great asset and the best hedge against the uncertainties of a bad economy.“

2. Proactively establish goals for IT. ”It’s actually easier to set realistic goals and accomplish them than it is during periods of growth.“ Eliminate legacy systems and redundant applications.

3. Hold vendors accountable.

4. Extract maximum value from existing IT investments.

5. Make sure that everyone knows that you are responsible and accountable. When opportunity presents itself, step up and assume more responsibility.

6. Build and manage relationships up, down and sideways across the enterprise and beyond its traditional boundaries.

7. Act like a CEO. You are responsible for all or a part of a complex organization within a larger complex organization. Focus on the results you are tasked to deliver.

Eiras’ primary message -- for CIOs and, I think for IT leaders as a whole -- is that troubling times provide an opportunity and a call for leaders to step up to the bar.

Have a great week. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 1:30 PM | Permalink

This week’s Tuesday Reading How New Leaders Can Achieve Quick Wins is an interview with Mark E. Van Buren and Todd Safferston who looked at how quick wins affected the success and futures of new leaders. (A full article on this subject, The Quick Wins Paradox,“ appears in the January 2009 of the Harvard Business Review.)

Their research which studied 5400 new leaders demonstrated that the most successful new leaders secured quick wins. These wins enabled these new leaders to establish credibility with their clients and business stakeholders more quickly. Their work also demonstrated that it wasn’t just an individual quick win but rather that it was the result of a collective effort, working with others and building your staff to get results that really made the difference.

Van Buren and Safferston’s work also showed that 40 percent of new leaders fall short of getting the quick win. Their five most common mistakes were:

1. Excessive focus on details, thus losing sight ofthe big picture and losing the ability to prioritize.

2. Reacting negatively to criticism.

3. Intimidating others.

4. Jumping to conclusions.

5. Micromanaging.

Whether you are a new leader or in a new role or not, these five common mistakes are ones that you can easily trip over. So, this week, take a step back and examine your style and take corrective action, if needed, immediately. And if you are a new leader, go with your team, for the solid quick win.

Have a great win. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 10:09 AM | Permalink

In IT•LP, we talk a lot about meetings. Greg Anderson, senior director for General Services at the University of Chicago, recently called my attention to a January 18, 2009 New York Times article Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time. The author is Reid Hastie, Robert S. Hamada Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

The piece serves as an apt reminder that all of our organizations have too many meetings, and that too many of them are poorly designed and doomed to fail. Hastie reminds us that time is the most perishable good in the world; waste it now and we steal time from the future when we would like more time with families and friends or when we don’t have the time to make a commitment. His piece makes three clear recommendations about meetings:

1. Be explicit about the meetings objectives. What do we want accomplished when everyone walks out of the room?

2. Think about the opportunity costs of a meeting. Who is really needed for the planned objective?

3. After all meetings -- both productive and unproductive -- assign credit or blame to the person in charge. Use this to help decide who leads future meetings and to help the person who runs unproductive meetings to improve.

As Hastie states, don’t just call a meeting and hope something magic will happen. Prepare for the meeting so that the right things will happen.

. . . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 2:35 PM | Permalink