Blog
Hiring Technical Leaders – Finding the right balance
You’re a mid-sized company. You’re thinking of hiring an IT executive. How much technical skill should they have? IT management is a balance. Some folks cling to their technical backgrounds. They may manage a team of 20 but when push…
What happens when you’ve set a clear priority for your IT team.
Management’s key job is to set clear priorities. Without clear priorities, folks keep switching focus from task to task and nothing gets done. So, one of the first things we’ll want to do together is set some clear priorities. To…
The Five Easy Pieces of a Data Project
You’ve decided that a project is worth doing. What to do next? As a non-technical executive, you want to know what you’re signing up for. As non-technical executive, you can’t care about the technical details. But you need to know…
What executives need to do for successful projects
You as the executive are key to your team’s project success. Not the technology you choose. Or the exact skills of the team. But you. I’ve worked with a lot of different executives. Here’s what successful project leaders do:
Project Leadership vs Project Management
Project management vs project leadership Most folks have an idea about what a project manager does. But maybe don’t know what a project leader is about. Project management tells you what needs to get done to make your project work….
Five years of work is not five years of experience
You have an employee. A solid employee, not stellar. Let’s call him Sam. Sam’s been with you for five years. And you’ve made sure his pay keeps up with the cost of living. Including the recent inflation craziness. But here’s…
Can we talk here?
Can you’re team actually say what they’re thinking? Or are they afraid? I’ve been frequently told that I say what everyone else is thinking. And indeed, especially when powered by numbers, I see no reason to hold back. But while…
Change projects vs maintain projects
A project can mean a lot of things. But in my world of data and software, I like to distinguish between maintain project and change projects. Change projects start with the assumption that things as they are don’t work. We can’t…
The right person is not the smartest person
Technical folks are impressed by smart. How fast someone can code. How quickly they can learn a new skill. How many obscure features they’ve mastered of any given system. I think it’s better to ask – how right? As in…
You get what you need.
“Do you really need this data?” is a useless question Because 99 times out of 100 you’ll get a yes. Even if that data was used once three years ago to answer an audit question. Or it helped satisfy a…