If you look at the headline of The CIO Assistant’s Blog, you will see the new tag line “Helping IT Leaders Optimize, Align and Grow”. I will expand on this theme in upcoming posts. Suffice to say that I strongly believe that if you, as an IT Leader, put these 3 notions into action, you will see a marked improvement in your professional life and your relationship with others, CxOs included. The trick is to fully understand and appreciate the true meanings of these words, not just use them as euphemisms for something superficial or instant gratification.
Take Optimization for example, we have frequently used this word to mean Cost cutting - Headcount reduction. However, Optimization goes well beyond these “Resource Actions” (another euphemism used by IBM for its waves of lay-off this year) to encompass any initiatives that make the organization fit for survival and growth. So what are they? There are the obvious ones such as squeezing more pennies out of vendor maintenance contracts and less obvious ones such as eliminating problems, fixes and reworks. Do you have your favorites?
