Showing results by author "Jim Anderson" in All Categories

All too often we find ourselves in the position of being an IT manager with little or no training on what it takes to correctly staff a team. This is a critical skill for us to have. Ultimately, the success of an IT manager rests on how his/her team preforms. You might think that staffing is all about hiring the right people to come and join your team. It turns out that there is a lot more to this. Staffing involves attracting and retaining the right people. However, it also deals with knowing when it is time to let the wrong members of your team go.

What does it really mean to be a CIO? You sure won't be writing any software any more. You won't be stringing network cables or updating firewall parameters. What does a CIO really do? I've got some bad news for you: CIOs manage.

When you start a negotiation, there is a great deal that you don't know. No matter how much homework and research that you've done in order to better understand the other side of the table and their position, there will always be things that you don’t know. This means that there will be a great deal that you will have to learn while the negotiation is going on. In order for this to happen, you are going to have to master the skill of exploring what is possible during the negotiation.

The art of negotiation depends on your ability to successfully communicate with the other side of the table. An important part of this communication is your ability to signal to the other side what your intentions are. Likewise, they will be signaling to you what they want to accomplish.

Every company wants to grow and become more successful. There is no magic formula to make this happen, but it is generally agreed that in order for this to happen the company cannot stand still. Instead, they always have to be trying new things and growing. In an IT team, in order to make this kind of growth occur, innovation has to be encouraged to happen. All too often the workers on the team can get too involved in their day-to-day tasks to spend any time thinking about innovation. That's where the IT manager has to step in.

All too often public speakers think that all that they have to work with are the words that will tumble out of their mouth during their next presentation. Whereas these words are important, a speech offers you many other ways to connect with your audience by demonstrating what you are talking about.

In order to be a success, a CIO needs to be able to find and work with partners. These partners have to be committed to the same things that the CIO is: the overall success of his or her company and IT department. However, finding the right partners can be quite a challenge. All too often alliances don't work out. CIOs need to take the time and study why some of these relationships are successful while others are not.

What is a product manager without a product? Nothing. That's why it's so very important that when a product is being developed that the product manager be involved. Now exactly how best to go about doing that is an entirely different question. The process from having an idea for a product to actually having a product is a long and treacherous road. So many things can go wrong that either cause the schedule to have to be extended or cause a product with the wrong features to be developed.

Every company wants to grow and become more successful. There is no magic formula to make this happen, but it is generally agreed that in order for this to happen the company cannot stand still. Instead, they always have to be trying new things and growing.

Every time we are asked to give a speech, we feel a sense of nervous energy flow through our body. We think, "I hope that this turns out well." We would give anything to be able to control the future and make this our best speech ever. Well, I've got some good news for you: you are in control and you can make that happen.

In the end, it all comes down to what your customer wants to tell you about your product. However, how many of us have been taught how to listen to our customers?

Isn't technology a wonderful thing? As CIO you are in charge of one of the most technologically sophisticated parts of the company. It's very easy to fill your days dealing with issues regarding servers, networks, routers, switches, firewalls, etc. However, it turns out that if you do this, then you'll be overlooking one of the most important tasks that a CIO needs to accomplish: communication. This book has been written in order to show you what you need to be doing in order to get your message out.

Product failures are never something that a product manager wants to talk about. We all live with the secret dread that someday the product that we are responsible for might turn out to be a failure. It turns out that we're all missing an important learning opportunity. Products do fail, and they end up failing for a wide range of reasons. Every product failure is loaded with fantastic learning opportunities for product managers. We just need to take the time and open our eyes to see what we can learn from each failure.

Do product managers have super powers? Probably not, but there are some product managers who seem to be more successful than others. These "super" product managers seem to be able to make things happen almost effortlessly. What's their secret?

Every negotiation starts with an opening. It's what we all do at the start of a negotiation. What a lot of us don't realize is that how we handle the opening of a negotiation can have a big impact on how the rest of the negotiation goes. The very possibility of success may hinge on how we start things off.

In today's fast-paced Information Technology (IT) field, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are being asked to do more than ever. No longer is it enough to just make sure that the company's various servers and email systems are up and operating correctly, now CIOs have to play a role in setting the company's overall strategic direction.

It's not easy being an IT manager. There are constant staffing issue, budget issues, project issues, and the challenge of keeping your management informed about what is going on. The one thing that too many of us end up overlooking as we try to accomplish all of these things is that we have one more management job to do: Manage our careers.

Dr. Jim Anderson explores what public speakers have to do in order to deliver great speeches. Dr. Anderson uses real-world examples of what works and what doesn't work when it comes to capturing your audience's imagination. In order to create and deliver a great speech, you first need to start by planning how you are going to accomplish this. Planning includes identifying the purpose of your speech, understanding who your audience will be, and deciding what type of speech you are going to give.

Power Distribution Units (PDUs) – you mean power strips, right? That's what I thought when I was first introduced to this product. Boy oh boy was I wrong! Yes, the PDUs that are manufactured to be sold to the owners and operators of data centers do bear some similarities to the simple power strips that we all use at home. But we are really talking about two very different products here.

This audiobook has been written with one goal in mind - to show you how you can land the perfect job when you get out of college. It doesn't matter where you are in school (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, or Senior) the strategies laid out here are going to get you the job that you want! It's full of practical, proven techniques that will both help you to find the job that you want and make it yours!