When you are a project owner, manager or a sponsor you are often asked what the project is about. It is important because bosses, employees, customers, and partners all need to ‘buy-in’ and become excited about your idea. They will form an initial impression in three minutes or less. This first impression is the lens through which everything else is viewed.

BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) yesterday appointed a brand new chief executive officer and president, Thorsten Heins

Everybody has a few New Year’s resolutions for 2012 and CIOs are no exception. An old chestnut: Time management.

At Maple Leaf Foods, a $5 billion consumer packaged-goods company, IT doesn't just respond to business decisions, it participates in the planning that leads to those decisions. For starters, CIO Jeff Hutchinson sits on the executive committee, and some of his IT leaders sit on business unit committees.

CIOs at companies where the IT organization is considered a business peer or game-changer predict a good year ahead for their organizations, more so than do CIOs not viewed so favorably-48 percent vs. 34 percent.

What department heads and line managers think of HR, what employees think, and what HR managers think.

Stephanie Christopher, national director of SHL Australia New Zealand, a company which assists companies — including recruitment firms — in their recruitment activities, says that for the more technical positions HR has to fill, “it would lean toward the line manager for advice; it would be the line manager who would have final say”.

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: “Managers aspire to be strategic, but they are required to fulfil their duties as a functional expert.”

In the business world, describing your boss as “ape-like” is not typically considered a compliment. But it turns out there is a lot we can learn from chimpanzees about effective leadership. Applying human instincts to the corporate jungle can help IT leaders bring out the best from their team or manage technology change for end-users. Chimpanzees share 98 per cent of our DNA, making them more closely related to humans than gorillas. So it is little wonder that we have a lot in common.

Think of talent management and we immediately think of managing bright, high potential employees. But although ‘star talent’ individuals are important in any business, just managing stars is not enough. A high performing team means managers must understand the performance and contribution from all the team and manage the talent pool.