Listed below are my tweets from the conference.
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Tweets from Gartner Symposium 2012
Listed below are my tweets from the conference.
The CIO Paradox - A Must Read
One day, I hope to write a book and share my best ideas, secrets, and wisdom with fellow CIOs and CTOs. Martha Heller, CIO Magazine columnist, just published her new book The CIO Paradox and has delivered a must-read, must-have reference for IT executives. It is also a great read for CEOs and CFOs who will learn a great deal about the CIO job and its complexities. So when my day comes, Martha will be a tough act to follow.
Martha presents the complexities of the CIO job as a series of paradoxes. Should the CIO focus on cost management, or innovation? How can a global CIO streamline processes yet still support regional and local solutions? How can CIOs be more successful when they are accountable for project success but need business leaders to own the project? How can a CIO communicate IT success when its failures are so visible and impactful to the business?
Great questions and Martha presents CIO stories and general advice throughout the book. I've met several CIOs interviewed in the book at the CIO Global Forum, and they are an exceptional bunch with a lot to learn from. Geir Ramleth, Bechtel Group's CIO, uses a simple formula, Speed = Innovation * Simplicity to remind IT to keep solutions simple in order to target 80% of the payback. Tom Conophy, CIO of the Intercontinental Hotels Group, provides advice to CIOs who need to take on cultural challenges and transform IT's mission to drive innovation. Then there is Ramon Baez, former CIO of Kimberly Clark and now with HP shares some of his secrets about communicating and engaging a global IT workforce.
Part 3 of the book shares some secrets on recruiting IT talent, establishing successors, and hot topics like CIO Board seats and CIO career paths. While some of these are advanced topics, these chapters should help the CIO think expansively about their role and career.
The CIO Paradox is packed with a wealth of advice, and I highly recommend it to CIOs and CXOs.
Big Data's Managerial Challenges
Harvard Business to the Rescue
Harvard Business' October/2012 issue has several gem articles on Big Data and Big Data: The Management Revolution by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson is a must read. Here are a couple of highlights:On Big Data ROI
The more companies characterized themselves as data-driven, the better they performed on objective measures of financial and operational results. In particular, companies in the top third of their industry in the use of data-driven decision making were, on average, 5% more productive and 6% more profitable than their competitors.
On Big Data managerial challenges
The technical challenges of using big data are very real. But the managerial challenges are even greater. “What do the data say?” Where did the data come from?,” “What kinds of analyses were conducted?,” and “How confident are we in the results?”The article ends with five management challenges, and while technology is on the list, it is not in the pole position. I suggest reading the article to get the answer.
About those Managerial Challenges
My next post on this topic will cover Data Scientists. Until then, the media is finally catching on to the managerial challenges and while some of these posts are hyped up, they do provide some insight.
Companies would do better at satisfying and retaining customers if they spent less time worrying about big data and more time making good use of ‘small data’ — already-available information from simple technology solutions — to become more flexible, informative, and helpful. - You can't fix stupid, and other arguments against big data.
So, when the advertisements claim that big data will transform your business, remember that big data brings the potential for transformation, not the actual transformation. - The big data fairy tale
Pursuing big data with small, targeted steps can actually be the fastest, least expensive, and most effective way to go.- Big data doesn't work if you ignore the small things that matter