No don’t look away! I have here a potential valuable opportunity for you to use your core technical skills in order to gain more experience in the commercial space, and probably feel good about it in the process. Charities are non-profit organizations, but they are organizations and they are commercial. Actually many are profit-oriented organizations, …
315 technical professionals were surveyed in November 07 (from IT, Insurance Actuaries, Architects and Civil Engineers) and I discovered the following favorites from their childhood’s (aged 5 – 15). Favourite Film: Star Wars: A New Hope Favourite Music: The Muppet Show Album (What? – Simon) Favourite Book: The BFG by Roald Dahl Favourite Toy: Lego …
10 Childhood Favorites of Technical Professionals Read More »
Where does a leader get power from? A leader can use 5 sources of power: here’s advice on when these powers should be used, and perhaps when not
I’m posting this to add context on the pursuit of career progression, and the perceived benefits such as salary. Jobstats.co.uk have published figures showing average salaries against skillsets. It’s interesting to see that management rates are not that much greater than specialist skills, with SAP being the highest paid skill overall. It goes to show …
All posts I have made have been positively biased, i.e. I’ve offered advice to constructively deal with issues and challenges that one typically faces when climbing the greasy pole of an organization. I’ve had a number of conversation recently with folks who feel they are stuck in a groove and can’t get out, but not …
If your job isn’t working for you, get the hell out… Read More »
One of the first mistakes I made when promoted to a department head for an IT consultancy firm was asking my boss what authority I had. I was rebuffed with the response that told me “You have as much authority as you think you have.” It was if I was asking for authority to be …
You should experience AA – Assuming Authority, that is Read More »
In the previous installment of this series I discussed the impact of boredom on motivation, setting yourself aggressive targets and selecting some short term goals. I’ve received some good feedback on the series so far, and I welcome further comments. In this post I would like to offer a practical and implementable tip to create …
Below are two tips that I think will give you opportunities to become more commercially aware of your organization’s business. Try them out. 1) See yourself as the managing director of your personal business, even if you’re an employee. Ask yourself if your customers (mostly colleagues) would buy your services and trust your company and …
Take a moment to read this article in this month’s Information Age (in fact I strongly recommend you subscribe to this magazine). The article discusses research conducted by the magazine and a software vendor which assesses the gap between senior IT executives and business executives, in terms of their opinion of critical business issues. One …
The gap might not be so big between business and IT after all… Read More »
Almost every business manages a budget. That is, a prediction of expected costs against actual costs. It’s a way that a business stops spending too much or too little, and is, in essence, a plan of expenditure. Knowing how businesses manage expense is a powerful way of understanding how businesses work. Do you know your …
Understanding commercials through the budgeting process Read More »
