Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders
Leadership and teaming skills are front and center in times of rapid change. Meet today’s constant disruption head on with expert guidance in leadership, business strategy, transformation, and innovation. Whether the disruption du jour is a digitally-driven upending of traditional business models, the pandemic-driven end to business as usual, or the change-driven challenge of staffing that meets your transformation plans — you’ll be prepared with cutting edge techniques and expert knowledge that enable strategic leadership.
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Insight
This issue is the seventh annual CBR issue on IT trends. We have the opportunity here not only to "take the pulse" of the IT industry on various topics — adoption levels, HR activities, IT management strategies, and more — but also to compare this year's snapshot with the past six years, giving us insight into the ever-changing landscape of business technology.
This time next year, looking back at 2012, we will remember it as the year Facebook spectacularly went public, HTML5 really took off, and IT unemployment continued to drop. While analysts have begun using phrases like "bubble" to describe what's happening in the IT world, that sort of optimism doesn't describe the feelings of business leaders when asked about the economy. Consequently, IT leaders such as those we surveyed for this year's annual CBR focusing on IT trends, the seventh installment of our series, are more cautious.
What a year we had in 2011! At the end of 2012, I predict we will look back and say, "2011 was nothing compared to what just took place in 2012."
SURVEY DEMOGRAPHICS
This survey explored interest in, and adoption of, various relatively new IT technologies and initiatives and investigated staffing and outsourcing trends in 78 organizations worldwide. Fifty percent of responding organizations are headquartered in North America, 24% in Asia/Australia/Pacific, and 17% in Europe, with the remainder in South America, Africa, and the Middle East.
Back in 2010, in a report on mobile BI (see BI Unwired: The Case for Mobile, Vol. 10, No. 9), I commented on a mobile BI application in use at that time at global nutrition company Herbalife.
Executive Update
The Project Manager as Negotiator
Is the project manager expected to act as a negotiator, too? The answer: you better believe it! It may not be an "official" expectation, but a project manager who isn't prepared to face negotiation situations during the life of a project is not really prepared. The need for negotiation will happen -- trust me. And it will happen when you're not even aware it's happening.