Business Ethics
« Previous EntriesDeparture 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:
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 [...]
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 [...]
The fifth response to risk
Monday, June 14th, 2010We need to add a response.
The risk management profession lists four ways to deal with risk. There’s:
Prevention (which can mean reducing the odds of an occurrence as well as eliminating them) …
Mitigation, limiting the damage that occurs should the risk turn into reality …
Insurance, spreading the cost of any damage that occurs …
… and, [...]
Enterprise technical architecture management — an old new idea
Monday, May 10th, 2010Ever meet someone who just has to have a strong opinion on every subject, whether or not they know anything about it?
Those known for expertise are particularly prone to this ailment. Some of us, having learned one subject in great depth (in my case the behavior of electric fish), use that experience to recognize our [...]
How not to run IT, courtesy of Oracle, Microsoft, and Apple
Monday, May 3rd, 2010When it comes to innovation, IT should lead the enterprise. And the IT industry should set a good example for internal IT.
It hasn’t. Instead it’s delivering award-winning worst practices. The envelopes, please?
Our first winner is Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who gets the Brain Drain Award by (ahem) failing to sufficiently encourage top talent to stay with [...]
The ethical world is far from flat
Monday, March 29th, 2010The verdict is in.
In the court of public opinion, Google is guilty/innocent of disrespecting-the-laws-of-a-sovereign-nation-in-which-it-does-business/standing-up-for-its-principles.
It is a paragon of/typical example of an ethical-enterprise-at-its-best/corporate-arrogance-at-its-worst.
Read the comments following various blogosphere commentaries on Google’s decision to stop censoring its Chinese search engine and mostly you’ll discover ethics is a popular spectator sport.
More for your book list
Monday, January 11th, 2010Consider Burj Khalifa.
It’s widely understood to be a triumph of architecture and engineering, for the most part due to its height and beauty.
I think so too, although I know nothing important about it. If I had an office on the 157th floor that was too warm or cold, the facilities manager might or might not [...]
Someone Else’s Problem?
Monday, December 7th, 2009Bare Bones Project Management was supposed to be nothing more than a lightweight summary of standard project management practice. A few years and several hundred seminar participants later, it turns out that it is, in fact, more than that. Unlike traditional IT project management it asks project managers and project teams to take responsibility, not [...]
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Bob Lewis is president of 