Top IT Management New Slideshow
In his new book, Beyond the Wall of Resistance (Bard Press), change-management expert Rick Maurer reveals how managers can go about change in a way that engages employees and solidifies commitment. Fear, confusion and resentment can be eliminated or at least reduced through improved communication, listening and follow-through skills, Maurer contends. Otherwise, managers can face the familiar scenario of change being easy to talk about but hard accomplish in productive ways. We've all see in happen: Dozens of employees walk into the company auditorium where a large banner declares, "New Technology for the Future and Beyond." At each seat sits a coffee mug/T-shirt "gift" repeating the phrase. A top manager steps to the microphone and speaks of the company being "on the cusp of great opportunity" with the need to "re-transform the paradigm." The employees may be willing to forgive the wealth of redundant clichés. But the marathon PowerPoint session that follows is a deal-breaker. The audience is lost, surreptitiously checking messages on their smart phones and sending snarky, skeptical texts to co-workers in the room. At this point, the likelihood of success of "the big plan" here is greatly diminished.
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In today’s economy, hiring from within might be the most cost-effective way to fill positions. In a recent post, Harvard Business Review blogger Amy Gallo shares tips about conducting internal interviews from two experts:
Susan Cantrell, senior research fellow at Accenture's Institute for High Performance and co-author of Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent Management through Customization and Peter Cappelli, the George W. Taylor
Professor of Management and the director of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and the author of Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in the Age of Uncertainty. Although companies spend large amounts of time and money recruiting job candidates, most end up hiring from the inside. Gallo stresses that many employers overlook internal interviews because they assume that they already know the candidate. But for fairness and insight, Gallo writes that current employees should be interviewed as formally as external candidates. Check out these internal interview dos and don’ts from Gallo, Cantrell, and Cappelli.
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iPhones and Androids and various Blackberry devices are everywhere, and the revolution has just begun. One day we will tell our children about mobile telephones that only made calls, and cameras that only took pictures, and how we used to need a computer to connect to the Internet (never mind payphones — the only way they’ll believe those were real is from watching old movies on their own smart mobile devices). As cell phone manufacturers continue to push the boundaries of what their phones can do and be, wireless subscribers worldwide are dazzled again and again by increasingly sophisticated designs and capabilities. The cutthroat competition for consumer and business dollars in this market foretells the future of computing, as digital information is ported into smaller and smaller form factors and devices add functionality and range. With Apple’s trailblazing iPhone now on its 4th iteration (albeit one with a significant flaw in terms of reception), it can be hard to remember how quickly these hand-held computers have gone from the stuff of science fiction to mainstays of personal technology, from PDAs that ended up as punch-lines to smart-phones that pack a real a punch — and to remember as well that a lot more cool stuff is on the way.
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Fewer workers trust senior management to make the right decisions, says ”Employees First,” a survey by HCL Technologies. Workers want more opportunities to provide input and solve problems. They believe that the rank and file wins over customers, not managers who devise grand plans. Yet many managers turn a deaf ear to employees' insights. “Leaders must recognize – particularly in the era of social media and the democratization – that the key to success and growth is getting employees to tell you what’s really going on,” says HCL CEO Vineet Nayar, author of the book Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down (Harvard Business Press). “As a manger, you must demonstrate that you are willing to listen and take action.” That said, many employees interviewed for the survey indicate a sense of optimism about their company’s future and ability to change. The study was conducted by Michaels Opinion Research Inc., which did more than 700 telephone interviews with adults living in the U.S.
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Hiring senior executives from within the enterprise is an art that few companies have truly mastered. Even at companies committed to talent development, aspirants to top management often find career guidance that is vague and contradictory. In such an environment, those employees who figure out the unspoken pathways to success are the ones who end up with the most senior-level roles, says an upcoming book, "The Unwritten Rules: The 6 Skills You Need to Get Promoted to the Executive Level" by John Beeson (Jossey-Bass, October 2010). Beeson, a consultant and a former top executive at Harbridge House, Frito-Lay and Hallmark Cards, says the inadequate development system imposes real costs on both employers and would-be executives. Yet familiar career-development tools like annual performance reviews focus too much on the present and the immediate past to offer helpful blueprints for future advancement. That leaves some promising candidates in a holding pattern and pushes others out the door.
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Want a break? You might want to take up smoking. We're not endorsing any unhealthy habits, just looking at some stats on break time at work. Turns out the long recession pinches in ways that go beyond lost jobs, smaller paychecks and increased workloads for survivors. The extended downturn is leaving a dent on workers' lifestyles and attitudes, too, according to a new survey from CareerBuilder. Take two givens of office culture: lunch hour and the smoke break. With a constant sense of uncertainty and even fear about job security, many professionals are avoiding eating out because they want to save money. Some of them don't even feel they have time for lunch anymore; when if they do take time for lunch, they are more likely to be multi-tasking than kicking back with co-workers. Meanwhile, resentment is clearly emerging between those who cut out for smoking breaks and those left behind doing the work. The survey was conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of CareerBuilder, and was taken by nearly 4,500 U.S. workers age 18 or over.
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The uproar around Apple's iPhone 4 means the increasingly controversial device could end up claiming a spot in the pantheon of spectacularly flawed products. That the iPhone 4 has continued to sell briskly, despite a problem with the antenna that causes it to lose signal when gripped in a certain way, speaks to the fanaticism of Apple's devoted customer base. Anyone still thinking about picking up an iPhone 4 must be choosing to ignore the fact that it's already the subject of a class action suit, and that it could face a recall, and that the device recently got the thumbs down from Consumer Reports because of its antenna and reception issues. In honor of the iPhone 4's difficulties, we offer up our list of 10 other famously doomed technology products—some of them deeply flawed, some just unlucky in terms of timing or competition. The contenders are listed by the dates they were introduced. We should point out that Apple appears twice on this list, but Steve Jobs can take solace in Microsoft's three entries.
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Awful websites remain a hazard for businesses and customers. Fifteen years have elapsed since the Web reached the mainstream, but the bad old days of roll-your-own GeoCities pages never seem too far away. It is one thing for a teenager to create a headache-inducing introduction to her band on MySpace, quite another for your company's front door to the world to look like the result of an explosion at the font factory. Despite the success of Google, which rode to dominance on one of the cleanest page designs imaginable, and other models of efficiency and user-friendly flow, an alarming percentage of Web sites continue to be plagued by eye-straining, illogical, and otherwise displeasing and dysfunctional layouts. Let's face
it: this really should not be so difficult. Below are Ten Egregious Web Site Offenses that any site taking itself seriously should be careful to avoid.
Yeah, we might be guilty of some of these ourselves. Do not be shy about letting us know how our own sites could look and perform better.
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An Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) is a written document agreed to by everyone sharing a computer network. It defines the intended uses of the network, including unacceptable uses and the consequences for violating the agreement. Mike Theriault, President and CEO of B2B Computer Products LLC,lays down some basic definitions and steps to get you started: Although it may be necessary to include some legal terminology in the document, the best AUPs are written in clear terms that everyone can understand. Before you start drafting the AUP, give notice to everyone affected that policy creation or revision is underway and establish a contact point for collecting feedback. Then decide on the purpose of your AUP. Will it only set general guidelines and expectations? Or will it be a legally enforceable document? This will have a strong bearing on the tone and wording. Begin the document with your company’s code of conduct, if you have one. Otherwise, develop a paragraph that sums up your company’s operational ethics. Most companies will add to their AUP as issues arise, but the following key areas are good places to begin.
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There is a big difference between "invention" and "innovation," according to David Croslin, and he should know. Croslin holds 25 patents and formerly served as chief technologist within HP's communications, media and entertainment division, and also held the title of chief product architect for Verizon Business and MCI; he now runs a consulting firm called Innovate the Future. In his new book, Innovate the Future: A Radical New Approach to IT Innovation (Prentice Hall, 2010), Croslin offers these ten steps to ensure the success of new products - wisdom that should translate from consumer markets to enterprise IT. The possibilities, he writes, are sweeping: "Inventions are not limited to physical creations...Business inventions often take the form of a logical business process. These logical business processes can then be manifested physically by implementation within software packages or computer hardware or can even be mechanized through the use of physical implementations such as robots on an assembly line."
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President Barack Obama said on national television that the massive Gulf oil spill had him pondering "whose ass to kick." It was not exactly paint-peeling, Pattonesque stuff, especially considering what’s said across pop culture in this day and age, but it proved an eyebrow-raiser nonetheless in many quarters, and the catalyst for a national conversation on appropriate language by executives. Harvard Business Review blogger Dan McGinn kicked off a lively comment thread at the site with a post titled, "Should Leaders Ever Swear?" The ur-text in this area is a 2007 research paper by Yehuda Baruch and Stuart Jenkins of the University of East Anglia, entitled "Swearing at work and permissive leadership culture: When anti-social becomes social and incivility is acceptable," originally published in the Leadership and Organizational Development Journal. The authors, who did on-site, undercover research within a company, argue for "the relevance, and even the importance, of using non-conventional and sometimes uncivil language in the workplace."
News
Microsoft has not made an official statement but job cuts are the buzz on the websites where Microsoft employees, or former employees, often post about the latest internal machinations and gossip.
Article
Management of complex, integrated enterprises may run more smoothly with the establishment of a Shared Services Organization.
Article
Virtualized storage ensures high availability for customers and employees of the Onslow Water and Sewer Authority.
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The Supreme Court says Sarbanes-Oxley will be with us for a while, striking down a key provision of the law but leaving most of it untouched. That may be good news for managers who have grown accustomed to SOX. A recent survey of 400 executives across the U.S. conducted by consulting and audit firm Protiviti shows that the longer leaders are exposed to SOX compliance efforts, the more likely they are to see the benefits from these activities.
IT Management 
