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While many questioned how the company would fare without its iconic leader, Apple continues to thrive in the post-Steve Jobs era. In its most recent quarterly earnings statement, the company reported selling more iPhones, iPads and Mac computers than in any three-month period in its history. This sales surge fueled $46.33 billion in revenue for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2011, beating analyst expectations by a whopping $7 billion. The company's success is no accident; Jobs had a clear, powerful vision that he passed on to his employees and cultivated a corporate culture that rallied around that vision. In the book Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired—and Secretive—Company Really Works (Business Plus/available now), author Adam Lashinsky penetrates the legend of Steve Jobs and his company and breaks down the building blocks that make it all work. Lashinsky illustrates what Apple execs call the “secret sauce” – the systems, tactics and management strategies that produce hit after hit. Lashinsky is a senior editor at large for Fortune magazine and a Fox News contributor. For more about the book, click here. The following are ten of those secret sauce & ingredients& behind Apple's success.
10 Ways to Build Lean, Agile Teams
You know that doing more with less has become par for the course as you rn your IT organization. And with increasing pressure from your C-Suite colleagues to help drive the business forward, you sometimes feel like your hands are tied. The book “Lean but Agile: Rethink Workforce Planning and Gain a True Competitive Edge” (Amacom/available now), can show you how -- with some careful planning and execution -- it is possible to create a lean, agile workforce that can meet your goals. According to authors William J. Rothwell, James Graber and Neil McCormick, maximizing personnel efficiencies doesn’t require you to get tough and single out employees. That leads to burnout and demoralized teams. Instead, CIOs and IT managers need to figure out what work needs to get done and hire employees with the skillsets that can get the job done. Rothwell is a professor of workplace learning and performance at Penn State. Graber is an organizational psychologist and managing director of Business Decisions Inc., a talent management and performance software company. McCormick is senior vice president for Talent2, an HR advisory and recruitment business. For more about the book, click here. Here are 10 highlights.
Tech Salaries Rising After Two-Year Stagnation: Dice Survey
Technology professionals have been pulled through the wringer of a struggling economy, but after two consecutive years of stagnant wages, compensation is — if ever so slowly —on the rise, according to the 2012-2011 Salary Survey from technology career site Dice. & Finally! Compensation has mustered some momentum, as more and more top tech markets are notching increases in pay,& Tom Silver, SVP of Dice North America, said in a Jan. 24 statement about the survey. Dice also looked at whether bonuses were being handed out, and with how generous a hand, as well as how the top 20 cities for tech jobs are faring. Conventional wisdom holds that the tech world follows Silicon Valley. While by broad strokes the survey found that to be true, the more nuanced story is one of stiff competition with the highest salaries going to professionals with the & right skill sets and the right experience level,& according to the survey. The most generously compensated skills were those that enabled enterprises to harness their data in actionable ways. When they can do that, added Dice Managing Director Alice Hill, & is when the tech department is no longer seen as a cost center but a strategic partner in meeting companies' goals.&
10 Things CIOs Can Expect From RIM's New CEO
Worried investors have for months been calling on BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion to replace co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. On Jan. 22, 2012, the company has finally done so, appointing Thorsten Heins as RIM’s President and CEO . Heins joined RIM in 2007 from Siemens Communications Group. After a stint as senior vice president for hardware engineering, he became RIM’s chief operating officer for product and sales in August 2011. As with any other company that has a change in leadership, RIM will undergo a quiet period of sorts as its new chief executive assesses some of the things that might be wrong with the firm, and sets out to change that. The company faces a Jan. 31 deadline to report the findings of a review of its management structure, according to Bloomberg News, and Heins has said he’ll be seeking a new marketing chief for the company. Among the 75 million BlackBerry users are many enterprises that have made deep investments in RIM products, so it’s fair to say you’re probably wondering about the fate of the firm at this stage, and how the leadership changes will affect the company’s future. According to the Wall Street Journal, Heins assured industry analysts that he isn’t looking to sell the company. Yet, some industry analysts are making dire predictions about RIM’s fate , which largely hinges on the new BlackBerry 10 platform and future products featuring the QNX-based operating system. Until then, RIM is relying on a product line running BlackBerry OS 7 to retain customers; the upside, of course, is that IT administrators and others who manage BlackBerry devices for businesses have several months before RIM wholeheartedly embarks on major changes. Here’s what you need to know about Heins and the future of RIM.
Gartner's 2012 CIO Agenda Survey
CIOs will be expected to do more with less once again in 2012, according to a new study from research firm Gartner, Inc.'s Executive Programs. The 2012 Gartner CIO Agenda Survey gathered responses from 2,335 CIOs, representing more than $321 billion in CIO IT budgets and covering 37 industries in 45 countries, during the fourth quarter of 2011. The survey finds that CIOs view technologies like analytics/business intelligence, mobility, cloud and social networking as a way to address business priorities, and changing the customer experience is a main priority. & The 2012 Gartner CIO Agenda survey results show that CIOs believe that the customer experience is the greatest opportunity for IT-enabled innovation,& says Dave Aron, vice president and Gartner Fellow. & As business executives see the potential of technology to transform customer channels and the customer experience, their view of technology has leapfrogged conventional ideas of IT.& Here we take a look at some of the survey's key findings.
10 Questions to Ask Virtual Job Candidates
The Era of the Virtual Employee is here, and managers who prefer more traditional, in-office work relationships may not get what they want anymore. Globalization, mobile technology and the continued decentralization of today's organizations have led the workforce to be more mobile. For CIOs and other managers, this means you'll need to adapt to managing workers who rarely, if ever, show up in the office. In his book & The Virtual Manager: Cutting Edge Solutions for Hiring, Managing, Motivating, and Engaging Mobile Employees& (Career Press/Available now), author Kevin Sheridan advises CIOs to embrace these changes instead of resisting them, and highlights the ways they'll need to adapt when hiring virtual workers. Success begins with the job interview. To help managers make good hiring decisions, Sheridan has listed several open-ended questions specifically designed for these employees, to give managers a sense of whether a candidate is a good fit for the “off-site” working life. Sheridan is chief engagement officer (CEO) of HR Solutions Inc. For more information about the book, click here.
Ten Reasons to Stop Worrying and Love the Millennials
You may think of them as & The PlayStation Generation,& but your Millennial employees may be just the kind of & digital cowboys& that your organization needs to succeed in today's fast-paced, 24/7 business world. While you and your fellow executives may harbor some biases against them – that they're over-entitled and lack a work ethic – it's time to throw away these stereotypes and recognize the unique contributions Millennials can bring to an IT department. In the book & No Fear: Business Leadership for the Digital Age& (Marshall Cavendish Corp/available now), authors Pekka Viljakainen and Mark Mueller-Eberstein illuminate the many positive traits of the Millennial generation. They're less constrained by hierarchy, restrictive corporate traditions and geographic and cultural borders than some of your older staffers, for example. Viljakainen is the former president of Tieto International and now provides consulting for business leaders and tech teams. Mueller-Eberstein is founder/CEO of Adgetec Corp. For more about the book, click here.
10 Ways to Simplify Your Digital Life
Do you find that your devices are running your life instead of the other way around? Fear not. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. The book, & Digital Leader: 5 Simple Keys to Success and Influence& (McGraw-Hill Professional/available now), helps you step away from the smartphone and take command of your technology. Author Erik Qualman finds that while we may not like our digital obsessions, we can blame ourselves; the average household has 20 digital devices, with mom and dad more likely to interrupt dinner for an email exchange than the kids. And trying to stay too connected may actually make us dumber. Checking your email while performing other tasks decreases your IQ in the moment by 10 points, research shows. With this in mind, Qualman has put together a primer for unplugging and simplifying your professional and personal life. But don't worry about someone taking away your smartphone. In some cases, he advocates actually adding apps or products to better manage day-to-day demands. In others, he provides shortcuts that will significantly reduce time spent with devices. For more about the book, click here.
Gartner's IT Spending Outlook 2012
Gartner analysts, summing up fourth quarter IT spending and looking ahead for 2012, offered global scenarios that could play out not so much from good to bad, but mildly bad to far worse. During a Jan. 10 webinar, Gartner analysts revised the firm's global IT spending forecast for 2012 from 4.6% to 3.7%, pointing to a global economic slowdown, the Eurozone crisis and the recent floods in Thailand. While the floods have received considerably less media attention than Japan's catastrophic earthquakes and tsunami, they're expected to have a far greater, and indeed unprecedented, effect on the tech industry, with no global OEMs expected to receive 100% of the HDDs they require. The good news, all agreed, is that 2012 is no 2009. Despite the forecast reduction, there's nonetheless an expectation of some growth, and companies are still spending, if in select areas. One such area is software, where investments are shifting from growth-oriented opportunities to solutions that enable organizations to do more with the same number of people.
10 Apple Products You'll Need to Evaluate This Year
Apple looks set to continue its reign as the designer of computing products that consumers love, and that CIOs love to hate. We understand. With many of your core enterprise applications optimized for the Windows OS, you may not even have enough Apple experts on staff to help support the demand from your workers to bring new iPhones and iPads into the workplace, let alone consider accommodating products such as the MacBook Air. But, as Apple continues to win over consumer hearts and minds, you’ll need to be prepared for the day when your CEO wanders over and asks, “Why aren’t we using this?.” With that in mind, here are the 10 Apple products you’ll need to evaluate this year.
Advance Your Career with The Art of Negotiation
You're a tough negotiator when it comes to working with vendors to make sure your company gets the best technology it can for its money. But, how well do you negotiate when it comes to advancing your own career? Whether you're looking to move on to a new organization, or to get a raise and acknowledgement for your hard work and success at your current job, knowing what to say and how to say it can make the difference between getting what you want and being left out in the cold. According to Stuart Diamond, author of & Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World& and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, there are some sure-fire ways you can interact with your CEO, present or potential, to advance your career. The key, he says, is focusing on people and emotions instead of power and logic. Effective negotiation is situational. There is no one-size-fits-all model. & It’s time for a new model of human interaction,& says Diamond. & Negotiating is not about gaining power over people to force your will on them. It is about how to get more, not getting everything, but doing better every single day.& In his book, Diamond shares situation-specific examples on how to evaluate your goals, what could be standing in your way and who can help you get there. For more on Diamond's book, click here
CES 2012: 10 New Products Every CIO Should Fear
The Consumer Electronics Show 2012, held in Las Vegas Jan. 10-13, has been a techie Bacchanalia filled with products sure to catch the eye of your employees. Whether they’re getting excited by LG’s 4G Spectrum with OLED screens or the countless Ultrabooks being shown off, you can rest assured that any number of new devices will be working their way into your enterprise and bringing you management and data security headaches. Sure, you can take some comfort in the fact that Microsoft is managing to keep folks interested in Windows 8. But there’s also plenty to fear in the year ahead, as the products introduced at this year’s CES find their way into the eager hands of tech-savvy workers. Here are 10 to keep you up at night.
Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2012
Tablets, cloud computing, enterprise app stores and extreme low-energy servers are among the 10 technology trends that Gartner expects to be the most strategic in 2012. How to approach such a list? Most important is to ask yourself who in your organization is examining each trend, Gartner analyst David Cearley said in a Jan. 10 Webinar. In 2012 expect to see mobile define the user experience; social networking and contextual experiences to influence apps and interfaces; the cloud to become still more mainstream; and new strategies for managing the heaps of data coming from once-unimaginable sources. Speaking to the latter, Cearley offered the analogy of the frog in the stockpot, warning CIOs not to sit contentedly as the industry heats up around them. & Don't just throw money at it,& Cearley advised. & But starting this year, do some analysis about where you can deliver on it.& Remain alert and forman actionable plan: This seems sage advice for keeping out of the soup on all counts.
8 Epic Tech Launches of the 21st Century (So Far)
With the second decade of the 21st Century well underway, we thought it was a perfect time to pause and consider the remarkable products and technological innovations we’ve seen so far. The past 11 years have ushered in a parade of disruptive, life-altering (and business-altering) products and services that have settled so firmly into our everyday lives that it’s hard to remember how we functioned without them. In the process, these innovations have rewritten the rules of enterprise IT, reshaped the ways in which we communicate, and revamped our workplaces. The eight technology innovations on this list were chosen based on the impact they’ve had in our work environments, our personal lives, or both.
Top 10 State CIO Priorities Reflect Enterprise IT Trends
Their budgets are being slashed, yet they're still asked to go out and innovate. Sound familiar? It should, because these are the challenges facing state CIOs and they're strikingly similar to challenges that their private-sector counterparts battle. In 2012, public-sector technology leaders say they will be looking at increased consolidation, cloud-computing services, exploring mobility and sharing services and network connectivity, according to a recent survey of state CIOs from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO). NASCIO, which represents state CIOs and IT executives from the U.S. states, territories, and the District of Columbia, conducts the annual survey to identify the top ten strategies, management processes and solutions states are exploring, as well which tech applications and tools on their radar. And government IT leaders are dealing with many of the same internal and external pressures as those in private industry, especially with respect to funding. & Tough times require smarter decision making,& says NASCIO president and Oregon chief information officer Dugan Petty. & Decisions for cutting as well as investing will need to be made with an enterprise perspective, and will need to be carefully evaluated and even defended through appropriate governance and analytics.& For more about the report, click here. Here are their top ten priorities:
Ten Statements That Lead to Project Failure
While business clichés such as synergy and breaking down silos may be hackneyed and worn, there's still value to be found in the ideas behind them, according to a new book by author consultant Tom Kendrick. In Results Without Authority: Controlling a Project When the Team Doesn't Report to You -- A Project Manager's Guide (Amacom/available in January), Kendrick examines the ways in which once-isolated departments and teams can work together on projects, even when they're hired consultants or working in far-flung time zones. CIOs and other top managers are challenged to establish and maintain control, without pulling rank, Kendrick says. To help avoid problems before they arise, Kendrick reveals ten statements that portend trouble when spoken by outside-department project leaders. If you hear these, take charge and make the necessary changes quickly to avoid disaster. Kendrick is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and project/program management consultant for companies such as HP, Visa, DuPont and GE. For more about the book, click here.
IBM's New CEO: What CIOs Need to Know About Virginia Rometty
IBM CEO Virginia M. Rometty took the helm Jan. 1, 2012, as the 100-year-old company’s first female CEO, replacing longtime CEO Samuel Palmisano, who remains as the company’s chairman. When her appointment was announced in October 2011, Rometty told the New York Times that she does not anticipate changing course abruptly. Yet, Romettty’s first move, on Jan. 3, was to make key management changes in sales, growth markets and services. The next day, the company announced its plans to acquire Green Hat, a software testing company. Is this the pace of change we can expect under her leadership? The New York Times calls IBM & a company so predictable that its financial forecast is packaged as a ‘five-year road map.’& . Bloomberg reports that Rometty is trying to reach a goal of $20 billion in new revenue for IBM by 2015. Rometty, who has been with the company since 1981, led the IBM services division for more than a decade before shifting in 2009 to the position of SVP and Group Executive for Sales, Marketing Strategy. She’s been one of the driving forces behind the expansion of the company’s analytics unit, among other achievements. For years now, IBM has been a trusted enterprise partner that many CIOs have relied upon to get the right products and solutions into their offices. The ascension of a new CEO – even one with Big Blue roots as deep as Rometty’s – is likely to raise questions for enterprise CIOs about the direction the company will take next. With that in mind, here are nine things IT leaders need to know about Rometty.
How to Be a Transformative Leader
While you may be one of those CIO mavericks when it comes to the latest technologies and trends, you may find that you sometimes need a hand when it comes to knowing how to leverage your knowledge and expertise to help shape your organization's strategy. How can you inspire people to get behind you and support your ideas? In the book & The Transformational CIO: Leadership and Innovation Strategies for IT Executives in a Rapidly Changing World& (Wiley/Available now), author Hunter Muller explores these issues and offers solutions and strategies to help CIOs transform their organizations. It’s written for the CIO of today, helping build your expertise beyond technology and develop in the spheres of business, leadership and corporate culture. Building these skills is critical, Muller says, because IT is no longer an internally-focused department lurking in the shadows. Instead, CIOs must take an active hand in developing and guiding multiple processes required to achieve broad business goals. Muller is president/CEO of HMG Strategy, a tech-leadership network that presents conferences and professional services for CIOs and other senior IT executives. For more about the book, click Here Here are selected highlights:
Not Office Safe: Ten Products To Keep Out of the Workplace
Have you really looked around your office lately? Chances are, you’ll see a wealth of products and services that you wish your employees weren’t using. Employees are often deciding for themselves what products they want to use at work. At the same time, some CEOs and other top-level executives are leaning on CIOs and IT leaders to permit consumer-focused products into the workplace. It’s beat ‘em or join ‘em time, and the fight against consumerization of IT appears to be a losing battle. That said, there are still some products and solutions that flat-out don’t belong (say, Netflix) or should be permitted only for certain users and with very specific use policies spelled out (say, Facebook or Twitter). Check out our rogues’ gallery and see whether you agree.
Best IT-Business Books of 2011
Just as the pace of technology continues to accelerate, breakthrough thought leadership from countless industry experts, visionaries and corporate leaders is helping us manage and analyze the ever-changing nature of the IT-business relationship. Our picks for the 10 top IT-business books of 2011 cover a broad spectrum—from practical advice on IT leadership and management, to revolutionary theories on the impact of technology change on our business, society and culture. These works—all of which are available on Amazon.com and via other book distributors—help current and aspiring IT leaders to cut through the techno-clutter to drive real results. They provide much-needed perspective on our ever-changing industry. And they offer compelling wisdom and tools that will help you embrace the current reality to accelerate your future. If you haven’t already read these choice books, add them to your reading list for early 2012.