Total Leadership

In IT, we all make lots of decisions: What tools to buy, who to hire, what to invest in. Decisions are often complex and politically sensitive, involving a large number of stakeholders

Gartner continues to receive enquiries from frustrated IT leaders and their business bosses seeking to up the performance of their IT organizations. Yet recent research reveals that CIOs are surprisingly sceptical about the strength of their own core operations. Of the 1440 CIOs that responded to the annual Gartner CIO Survey in 2007, only 9 percent strongly believe that their IS organization's service levels are meeting business expectations

Growth remains the top priority for most business executives. In most enterprises, this means make more profits

The value of a business investing in IT - like investing in any other asset, such as real estate, a new factory or a TV commercial - is its ability to support and improve business performance. This means that IT value is business value and is expressed as the ratio of business performance to IT investment

Most CIOs face demand for projects that far outstrips their ability to deliver. Moreover, some of these projects duplicate systems already being used elsewhere in the enterprise, and most enterprises are cluttered with IT assets

Conventional management thinking evolved to handle a business environment of relatively predictable change and competition. During the past decade, though, this stability has been supplanted by accelerating change in business and technology, causing the traditional notions of strategy and tactics to be less effective

Increasing business expectations mean more pressure on IT organizations to deliver. More stakeholders and more complexity means more multi-disciplinary teams. Synergy — the productive interworking of IT staff with business, suppliers, partners and customers, is key to enterprise growth and increased competitiveness

Enterprises conduct most of their business processes internally to limit transaction costs and keep intellectual capital confidential, but also partly out of habit

By now, one might assume that all of you senior IT execs out there know how to conduct a job interview

Growth remains a top priority for CEOs. Revenue growth and increasing market share outstrip lowering the cost base as strategic priorities. Enterprises seek to deepen their penetration in home markets, and enter new markets

As one of the contributors to recent Gartner EXP research into legacy assets observed: "A legacy system is a hindrance that fills a business need — so you can't just get rid of it"

Today, organizations need to learn to make workflow changes on the fly.
Otherwise, consumers and trading partners alike are ready to move on.

Reflecting the current global economic turnaround, mergers, acquisitions and divestments (MA&Ds) are on the increase

Boards are important. They exert significant influence over the enterprise on behalf of shareholders and stakeholders. It's easy to say that CIOs must build board-level business acumen. After all, as board interest in IT grows, so CIOs must master the critical skill of interacting well with board members. But how?