Why I left SAP…”macro” negatives

Second-guessing oneself is a risk when deciding to leave a leading company, so I needed to ensure that I had no regrets when I left SAP.   In particular,  I didn’t want short-term personal or “micro” stumbling blocks to obscure great “macro” opportunities in the rest of SAP.  Unfortunately, there were too many big picture concerns that nagged at [...]

CIO job rotation and commitment to IT value

Great interview by Linda Tucci at searchCIO.com (here) with Richard R. “Rick” Roy, CIO at CUNA Mutual Group about his experiences as a line manager and how they’ve transformed his IT leadership approach.  This passage on a shared sense of urgency struck me:
I think the other thing in operations is the sense of urgency. In [...]

PM Quote of the Day — Chinese Fortune Cookie

Commitment is what turns a promise into reality.

Deming and Project Management

I liked this post (here) by Bob Tarne on how Deming’s 14 points align with project management (especially agile).  Our studies of  Deming, Crosby, and Goldratt were among the most valuable parts of business school.
While we’re on Deming, I also believe that it is particularly important for initiative leaders to get their arms around his concept of developing [...]

Manager-Leader Gap in IT Strategy

An illustration of the manager/leader gap discussed earlier (here) is drawn in this back-and-forth among Glenn Whitfield (here), Andrew Meyer (here), and others.  All good stuff, though the last two comments on Glenn’s post — from Long Huynh at CIO Assistant and Glenn himself — get closest to my perpsective.
The idea that a CIO can perform well [...]

How do you judge character?

I got an out of left field perspective during the Dalai Lama’s visit to MIT this past week.  He was asked about model leaders and
[h]e singled out President George W. Bush for his straightforwardness, but stopped short on complimenting him for much else.  “I love him”, said the Dalai Lama of President Bush, “but as [...]

PM Quote of the Day — James Michener

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries. 

PM Quote of the Day — Howard Stern

I will never feel successful. 
Howard expresses the emotions that fuel his drive for success and acclaim, which I touched on earlier in my post “The Muse that is Melancholy“.  As that post notes, however, that doesn’t mean one will be happy.  And Lord knows Howard ain’t a happy man.

Missing the point about Capt. Phillips and leadership

While I was in Virginia last week, I saw this interesting piece “When to Take a Bullet” in The Washington Post (here). The WP had solicited comments from leadership experts and started the conversation with this intro:
As the heroic captain Richard Phillips reminded us when he offered himself instead of his crew to the pirates, [...]

Interview on PMOs by Michael Krigsman

Last week Michael and I had a great discussion on PMOs — what they are and how they contribute to IT governance and project success.  In particular, the SAP PMOs have a unique role in optimizing the success of the entire SAP ecosystem…otherwise, relations among the stakeholders can devolve into what Michael calls the IT Devil’s [...]