Make your Information Technology (IT) Organization More Effective

Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." That sounds like a good thing, but when people expect magic, they expect the impossible. And that's what has happened to IT organizations: they're expected to do things that aren't possible with the resource constraints they've been given. All because IT is so magical and misunderstood.

The first secret to IT success is to get rid of the magic and have complete and honest communication between the business and the IT organization. Once the communication starts, you'll build the trust that you need.

Would you like to achieve these objectives?

• Make Information Technology more valuable to your company by (a) focusing the IT organization on the things that matter most, and (b) improving the communication between the IT organization and its customers and users, so that the IT work stays focused on what matters most.
• Drastically reduce the friction that occurs when business and IT people try to discuss issues
• Establish an IT strategy and a process for project selection and prioritization that guarantees that the best projects are being done and that your IT investment is optimized

Join my free monthly newsletter and learn more

Join over 1,500 subscribers from 87 countries, and get my free monthly email newsletter. Each month you'll receive an article that deals with some aspect of Information Technology, management, or personal achievement. Some articles give you insight about certain problems that we all share. Other articles inspire you to be a better executive or manager. All are entertaining and interesting. You'll want to discuss them with co-workers and employees; many readers post them on their company bulletin boards.

As a bonus, you'll immediately get a free downloadable copy of my article, "18 CIO Secrets for Information Technology Effectiveness." It's a check list to measure the performance of your CIO and your IT organization, and it's full of easily overlooked things that your CIO should be doing.

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Use the resources on this web site to make your IT more effective and make your career more successful

Resources on this web site are my personal attempt to take the magic out of IT. Each resource is designed to help educate both IT and business people about the real problems in IT, and all of the resources are focused on making things better for you and your business:

1. Free Newsletter (a $198/year value) that every month brings you a fresh perspective on IT issues. Every month you'll gain a new insight on making your IT more effective. And in most cases these same ideas can be used to make any organization (not just IT) more effective.
2. Downloadable White Papers and Articles. Use these resources to learn about specific ways to eliminate IT magic, and to supplement your own experience and knowledge. Some are free, and some have a small charge to help me support this web site.
3. List of the 44 Secrets of Wildly Successful Business Information Technology. You can buy my book on Amazon.com, but I've included a list of the forty-four secrets on this web site for easy reference. And for fun, take a 20-question self-test to see how successful your IT is.
4. Courses and workshops – both self-study and group – that will improve IT performance and perception. These courses and workshops are the best solution, because they don't just present you with facts – they make you think, and they make you take steps to implement a solution in your own organization.
5. Links to useful resources, books, and services that I've discovered, and that I recommend for your benefit and enlightenment.
6. Hot Line to me for questions about specific situations that you don't see covered anywhere else in the materials on the web site.

Making IT More Effective: A Quick Lesson to Get You Started

All of the resources available on this site are focused on one thing: helping you improve the effectiveness of your IT organization. But let me quickly point out that effectiveness isn't the same as efficiency. Effectiveness is a measure of how well something works when it's viewed by the end result, in this case when measured by the effect that IT is having on the business. Efficiency, on the other hand, is a measure of how well an existing process is carried out.

Another way to look at it is that efficiency is doing things right, and effectiveness is doing the right things. That's why an IT improvement program that focuses on efficiency (which is what most people focus on) doesn't always give you the best result. If the IT organization is doing the wrong things to begin with, then doing the wrong things well isn't going to result in any improvement in the business. There has to be a change in emphasis, from efficiency to effectiveness, from doing things right to doing the right things.

Learn More

Each issue of my monthly newsletter tackles a different aspect of effectiveness. Here are some topics that have been covered in previous newsletters:

• Getting people to change
• How to motivate employees
• 3 keys to service success
• Making better IT decisions
• 10 Rules for IT job success
• Criteria for outsourcing and offshoring
• Improving project performance
• How to become a CIO
• Using the "hidden consultants" within your organization
• Why ROI (Return on Investment) isn't working, and how to fix it
• How to refocus user training to make it more effective

As you can see, these aren't technical topics, and I promise the newsletters won't be filled with technical gibberish – just useful information in plain English that will help you get a better understanding of the people issues related to Information Technology, and that will help you be more effective.

I've got a lot more ideas to share in the future, so join the newsletter now, and you'll automatically be among the first in the world to receive the newsletter. And I do mean "world" – I currently have subscribers in 87 countries, so you know that these topics have world-wide interest.

Join NOW and you'll receive a free downloadable copy of my article "18 CIO Secrets."

Subscribe to my monthly MakingITclear newsletter FREE right now. This is a private mailing list and it will never be sold or given away for any reason. And if you change your mind at some point, you can easily cancel just by clicking on a link.

P.S. JOIN NOW AND RECEIVE A FREE ARTICLE THAT WILL DRAMATICALLY INCREASE YOUR IT EFFECTIVENESS!

P.P.S.  IF YOU'RE HAPPY WITH YOUR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ORGANIZATION THE WAY IT IS, THEN CLICK THE BACK BUTTON NOW!

Harwell Thrasher

Author, Speaker, and IT Expert