Industry Commentary
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Monday, August 30th, 2010Imagine a map. Imagine yourself folding the map.
Now imagine an economist who, seeing the crease, complains about the canyon you just dug in the middle of someone’s corn field.
The actual headline read “Shocking New Accounting Rules.” Published in The Economist (8/19/2010), which really should know better, it explains that IASB (the International Accounting Standards Board) [...]
Departure tales
Monday, August 23rd, 2010This is a tale of three departures and their lessons for IT leaders.
Departure #1 is Steven Slater. In case you’ve been living in a cave, Slater, a JetBlue flight attendant, experienced an intense customer relationship opportunity with a passenger who retrieved her luggage before the plane reached the gate.
That’s when Slater achieved greatness:
Measure? If you can’t predict you can’t manage
Monday, August 16th, 2010Imagine Pacioli took a different tack.
You remember Pacioli. Italian guy. A friar. Invented modern accounting five centuries ago, give or take a few years. Ring a bell?
We still keep the books the Pacioli way. It’s why, when you buy a computer, you credit cash and debit tangible assets but when you train an employee you [...]
Managing to the numbers
Monday, August 9th, 2010The problem with managing to the numbers is that it doesn’t work. Far too many of those who think having an equity stake in a business qualifies them to run it, is that they think it does.
They are, in a word, naïfs, and in another word, arrogant. Bad combination.
Understanding that the plural of anecdote isn’t [...]
Apples and whoozits?
Monday, August 2nd, 2010Apple’s profit line has beaten Microsoft’s profit line.
It’s an occasion whose importance rivals one of a bygone era: The day the “Whopper beat the Big Mac,” back when the burger wars were upon us.
Comparing very much of anything having to do with Apple to anything having to do with Microsoft is about as sensible as [...]
How business leaders use the news
Monday, July 26th, 2010Balance, it appears, is the new political incorrectness.
Unsubscribes peaked following last week’s satire that drew parallels between voter outrage and how bad bosses have treated people over the years. It was clear many would have had no problem with the subject matter had I validated their outrage instead.
Now don’t go away … this column is [...]
Misdirected anger
Monday, July 19th, 2010Why is everyone shouting at each other these days?
I think I know why: It’s nothing more than pent up resentment over how bad managers have treated people for decades. We can’t get back at the managers, so we’re redirecting the anger.
For example:
Assigning blame
Ever have a boss who, when something went wrong, mostly cared whose fault [...]
A $575 trillion lesson in IT governance
Monday, July 12th, 2010Are we serious?
Total global wealth stands at $125 trillion, more or less. The total world market for financial derivatives stands at $700 trillion. Does anyone else see something terribly wrong with this picture?
I’m hesitant to form a Strongly Held Opinion about complex matters I only dimly understand. So it’s with some trepidation that I ask [...]
IT management’s patriotic duty
Monday, July 5th, 2010It’s time for a few I-told-you-so’s (ITYS), some industry commentary, public policy ramblings, and just connection to IT leadership to justify the rest.
ITYS #1: In his Fatal Exception blog, InfoWorld’s Neil McAllister asks, “Is the SaaS experiment finally over?” (7/1/2010). Citing Gartner, which elsewhere continues to cheerlead Software as a Service, he points out that [...]
Preventing strongly held opinions
Monday, June 28th, 2010Today’s KJR is “Based on a True Story.”
Which, if I worked in the movie industry, would mean it’s a work of complete fiction. Congress should form a regulatory agency to evaluate all claims of true-story-ness. It could provide a rating system, ranging from VA-90 (Verified 90+% accurate) to AP-10 (the names of fewer than 10% [...]
Bob Lewis is president of 