IT Managers Must Listen to Honest Feedback in Order to Succeed

According to this article in CIO.com communication between teams and honest feedback from managers and employees is essential in order to successfully run an IT team. It might be tough to get feedback from customers in businesses, but meaningful feedback from managers should not be tough to get, especially since it is vital to your job.

When is the last time you received important feedback from one of your IT teams? How did it affect the project?

CIO's and Business Strategy

Michael Idinopulos discusses in this post in the Transparent Office that CIOs are still fighting for a seat at the strategy table when it comes to improving the way their company does business. IT is strategically important but most line managers fail to see that IT for more than just back-office support functions.

Enterprise 2.0 has changed all of this. Managers outside of the IT industry are figuring out that blogs, social networks, micromessaging, and other forms of online collaboration are changing the way that people interact with one another within a company. As an IT manager, companies will be looking at you to teach and explain the benefits that these social media outlets can have in an organization. That is why it is every so important to have IT managers on board discussing strategy with teams early on.

Web 2.0 could lead to Fuel Efficient Corporations

In a recent post by by Bob Larrivee of AIIM, he addresses what Web 2.0 to aid corporations with the current fuel and energy cost crisis. The current cost of fuel is an average of $4.02 a gallon (Source: CNN), and companies are seeing results of increasing power everywhere. Larrivee points out that this could be a big incentive for companies to finally learn to utilize Web 2.0 technologies to their advantage, aiding both their workers who pay to commute, and their companies, who are paying for the power to fuel their companies.

Over the years, many stay-at-home workers have adopted Web 2.0 tools. Now, with increasing energy prices, companies may see it beneficial for their employees to work at home with tools that allow all employees to access each other and the information they need 24/7 in the digital realm. It would involve some adjusting from companies policy, along with strong changes in policies, work procedures, business process management, and enterprise content management.

But having these employees work from home not only helps aid the current expense to fuel the enterprise, but could result in more productivity, flexibility and innovation from the employees. They’d be able to collaborate at any time online, and wouldn’t have to pay for the fuel costs to drive into work.

Do you think there will be an increase of Web 2.0 due to the current energy price increase?

A 12 Step Guide to the benefits of Web 2.0

In a recent article at CIO Australia, they address the challenge of bringing Web 2.0 tools into Australia. Since this country is showing that they aren’t adapting web 2.0 as fast as the rest of the world, they give tweleve simple steps in order to encourage the adaption.

There are many reasons that CIOs are failing to adopt this process, but the magazine states one very important thing:

Organizations must increase their Web 2.0 awareness and capabilities now to prepare for the storm of innovation to come."

It only takes a few changes in the company in order to bring this huge collaborative machine into the picture, and CIO sees it:

"I believe the most important challenge for the CIO is to make the key decision makers in the company aware and to ensure Web 2.0 becomes increasingly embedded in their current and future strategy," Relihan says.

Training is not difficult, most of the tools used are already in common practice outside the workplace, and are seen as time wasters.

"If you want to find out what tools your staff are finding most useful at the moment, just go and see what your IT department is blocking."

The twelve guide to getting the most out of Web 2.0 into your enterprise are:

1. Wake Up Call at the Top – CIOs need to acknowledge that this is the computing and collaboration of the future.

2. Settle the Ownership question – Who calls the shots? Is it the upper level management or the IT department?

3. Borderless creativity – The value of these tools is still emerging and letting itself be seen. It can foster creativity throughout the organization whether the employees are sitting across the world from each other or on two separate continents.

4. If you’re not blogging how will you know what people say behind your back?

5. Consider the dark blog -- Companies are still figuring out how to control the blogs safely behind the firewalls. But employees can be the most valuable source of the information that flows from the blog

6. Push Co-Creation – According to this article, many CIOs see social networking as a waste of time. With the power of Web 2.0 tools, companies can be aided in inventing, developing and sending to new products to market faster due to the fact that they can communicate with other companies to see what they have done to make their enterprise work.

7. Beware of the stealth attack and stay alert – Know excalty which tool are correct for your business. If the wrong social networking tool is used, it could cause many problems throughout the enterprise.

8. Know what mashups will mess you up – Since two different web sources are combining in order to create one piece of information, the wrong source of information released could cause trouble. This could be a source of security problems, therefore it is important to know exactly what to use in these powerful tools.

9. Use web 2.0 for talent attraction and retention -- Most companies block these tools on the internet because they believe it is a great way for employees to waste time. But, if older generations and younger generations come together to work on these applications together, the possibilities are endless.

10. Use it for green computing—These tools allow people to access information faster, leading to a reduction in the need of power for computers. The carbon emissions dramatically decrease if computers are used right.

11. Use it to fix enterprise search – Many times, employees find it easier to find the information online than on the intranet. These tools can correct that.

12. Accept That Good Governance Reduces Exposure – The board and upper level management are the key to the success of these tools. With the correct guidance and exposure, these tools can lead to massive amounts of collaboration and innovation that could not otherwised be found without web 2.0 tools.