Showing results by author "Jim Anderson" in All Categories

The key to being a successful CIO is making sure you have a good understanding of just exactly what a CIO does. This means you have to take a look at what CIOs do and then learn from them. In order to be a successful CIO, you may decide you need an MBA. There are a lot of different ways to go about getting this degree - which one is the right one for you?

At the heart of what it means to be a product manager lies the ability to market your product. No matter if you are trying to get people inside of your company to provide you with the resources or funding that your product needs in order to get out the door or if it's customers that you are after, you've got to be able to paint a picture of your product that makes people want it.

Just in case nobody ever told you, being a principal, teacher, or a parent is a tough job. You are the person who is ultimately responsible for the academic success of one or more students. Your every decision can have an immediate impact on a student, a class, and perhaps even an entire school.

All too often CIOs can get caught up in all of the technical details of the job: boosting uptime, replacing servers, guarding against cyber criminals, etc. What we tend to forget is that IT exists to serve the rest of the business and they are there (in most cases) to make money. This means that there needs to be a business side to IT and that is one of a CIO's key responsibilities.

Let's face it: giving a speech is hard work. First you have to write the speech, then you practice it, then you finally get up your courage and you deliver it. As long as you are going to do all of this, you sure want your audience to understand what you are telling them. In order to make this happen, you are going to have to organize what you tell them correctly.

As the CIO of your company, it's your job to stay on top of all of the different forms of technology that the company uses to accomplish its business goals. This task is made even harder by all of the changes that are always occurring in the various technology fields. As the CIO you need to be understand how to pick the correct type of database to be used on projects. You need to watch the rollout of other large-scale IT projects and learn from them: what went right and what went wrong.

When you became a product manager, did anyone take the time to mention to you that you were signing up to become a member of your company's sales department? You might have thought that you were joining the marketing department, but if your product doesn't sell, then you won't be holding on to your product management job for long!

As an IT manager you understand the value of technology. It's what provides our teams with the tools that we can use to accomplish great things for our company. The challenge that we run into is that technology is always changing. This means that as an IT manager you have a responsibility to stay on top of all of the various technologies that your team will be called on to make use of.

As public speakers, the one thing that we all want to be able to learn to do better is to improve how we speak. The key to doing this successfully is to learn how to plan our next speech. The good news is that planning a speech is actually fairly simple. The first step in making this happen is to understand that the clothes that you wear when you speak will tell your audience a story.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is the one who is credited with saying "The only thing that is constant is change." In the world of giving speeches this is especially true. One does not just suddenly become a great speaker. Rather, what happens is that we start to give speeches and gradually over time we get better at doing it. However, we'll never get any better at speaking in public if we don't know how to change.

As product managers, we all want to become better at what we do. However, sometimes we can find ourselves in a rut: we've solved the immediate problems, our product is doing well, and we've just lost that drive that we need in order to reach the next level. This is when the power of competition comes in. We all like a good challenge. When we are faced with a situation in which we might not be the best, or we might not know exactly what we should do, that's when we can become our best.

I happen to think that being a product manager is one of the best jobs out there. I find it to be very satisfying because I'm in charge of the success of a product. If I do the right things, then my product will be selected by a large number of customers and it will solve their problems. If I don’t do my job right, my company will probably decide to stop offering my product after a while. Ultimately, my career is in my hands.

What a great world this would be if only we could sit down at a negotiating table, have both sides make a few concessions and then we'd suddenly have the deal that we were all hoping to be able to reach. Sadly, getting that perfect deal takes a great deal more effort on both sides.

We'll be talking about what you need to take into consideration when you are planning on updating the websites that your schools are using, how a school district can use its websites when natural disasters strike, how a school website can get students involved in creating content, and how to get some peace and quiet for office staff by creating a great website.

When you start a negotiation, there is a great deal that you don't know. No matter how much homework and research that you've done in order to better understand the other side of the table and their position, there will always be things that you don’t know. This means that there will be a great deal that you will have to learn while the negotiation is going on. In order for this to happen, you are going to have to master the skill of exploring what is possible during the negotiation.

What does it really mean to be a CIO? You sure won't be writing any software any more. You won't be stringing network cables or updating firewall parameters. What does a CIO really do? I've got some bad news for you: CIOs manage.

The art of negotiation depends on your ability to successfully communicate with the other side of the table. An important part of this communication is your ability to signal to the other side what your intentions are. Likewise, they will be signaling to you what they want to accomplish.

Every company wants to grow and become more successful. There is no magic formula to make this happen, but it is generally agreed that in order for this to happen the company cannot stand still. Instead, they always have to be trying new things and growing. In an IT team, in order to make this kind of growth occur, innovation has to be encouraged to happen. All too often the workers on the team can get too involved in their day-to-day tasks to spend any time thinking about innovation. That's where the IT manager has to step in.

After the speech has been written, the practice has been done, all that is left is for you to actually present your speech to the audience. It goes without saying that this can be one of life's biggest challenges! As long as you are taking the time to create and practice a speech, you sure want the speech to make an impact on your audience. You want to be able to deliver a great speech.

All too often public speakers think that all that they have to work with are the words that will tumble out of their mouth during their next presentation. Whereas these words are important, a speech offers you many other ways to connect with your audience by demonstrating what you are talking about.