Leadership

IT Manager Breakthroughs: The Power Of A Peer Culture

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So where should creativity live in an IT department? We use creativity to solve problems, create designs, and to determine what projects to pursue. IT Managers need to be the ones who have creative control within the IT department in order to ensure that projects get done correctly. However, this is often easier said than … Read more

3 IT Manager Secrets From The Folks At Pixar

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Toy Story, Cars, Finding Nemo, Wall-E – who hasn’t been amazed at the movies that Pixar has created over the past few years? I think that we can all agree that clearly Pixar has found a way to foster and grow creativity within their organization. What if IT Leaders could find out how to do … Read more

Simple Steps To Becoming A Better IT Manager

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A question that I often get asked by both new and old IT leaders is “how can I become a better manger?” The question is a simple one that has complex answers. What all IT leaders want is to become one of those leaders who has the ability to get all of our employees to … Read more

Are You A “Tuned In” IT Manager?

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Just how do great IT managers go about making decisions? We all have different ways of doing this, but many of us talk about making “gut decisions”. What this is really a way of saying is that an IT leader who has good business instincts is a great value to the company that they work … Read more

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall, Who’s The Best IT Manager Of All?

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Those boys who get locked up and do work on behavior neuroscience continue to come up with new and interesting discoveries all the time.  This time around they’ve made a stunning discovery that will have a long lasting impact on how IT managers do their job. Do I have your interest yet? Daniel Goleman and … Read more

Are You A Socially Intelligent IT Leader?

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Them thar brain researchers are at it again. This time around they’ve been doing research in the field of social neuroscience. This is where they study what happens in your brain when you interact with other people. Oh oh! They are starting to get a handle on what it takes to make a good IT … Read more

How Can A Manager Manage IT Workers When There Is No Company Loyalty?

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Welcome to the 21st Century where all IT workers now view themselves as temporary workers. The constant cycles of downsizing and outsourcing have made even the most committed workers view their jobs as being not so much as a career, but rather as a temporary pit-stop. Add to this situation the arrival of the young … Read more

What Can Cool Design Firms Teach IT Managers?

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Each and every IT manager has problems. These problems run from the simple (“How can I meet that deadline”) to the more complex (“These people don’t like each other, how can I get them to work as a team?”). Sometimes we run into problems that despite our deep belief in ourselves, we just don’t seem … Read more

IT Leaders Have Two Of These But Do They Use Them?

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About a year ago I had a chance to sit down with a member of an IT team that was working for me in order to have a heart-to-heart with him. We’ll call him Tim. Tim was a project manager on one of my teams and so far he had been a steady performer. I’d … Read more

IT Leaders’ Secret Techniques For Motivating Staff

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Now that we’ve discovered that all humans, including those in in your IT department / on your IT team, respond to four basic drives, we are now faced with the really big question: how does an IT leader use this knowledge to motivate his/her staff? It turns out that there are actually a number of … Read more