Talking to a number of professionals over the past few days, I came across a common strand: "how to make
clear what I can do, what I'm good in".
All these people had excellent experience in combining hard knowledge of a certain subject with softer skills,
persuasion, intuition, etc. They all had worked in situations requiring change management. But they all struggled to get across
how it worked. You can't draw a simple sketch or flowchart to explain what steps to follow. Some fields don't lend themselves
for a strict planning approach, rather the right conditions need to be created for progress to "happen".
Finally a got a clue when someone started to talk about creating a "learning experience" for his clients,
taking the clients through a small exercise that would "teach" them what he would get from employing the services of
the professional. "Teaching" in the sense of letting others experince/gain insight/discover seems such a different approach
than traditional consulting, which i.m.h.o. is still very much convincing prospective clients by talking to them that you
have the knowledge and expertise to solve his problems.
Today realised some thoughts take too long to capture in a webpage. The page is to restrictive, takes to
much effort to fit the text in, etc. A blog is better for the quick new ideas.
I was struck today by how the concept of turning a problem into an opportunity. The SOX regulations clearly
have caused a lot of frowning: what does this all mean, lots of effort, panful,...etc.
But now a number of articles start to suggest that this problem has been turned around, people start to
see that the increased demand for regulation, transparency, being able to explain how things are organised, are actually a
blessing. It means the way that IT is organised and managed needs to be brought under tighter controll. And this time it is
not so much the IT department, rather the way the business governs IT and interacts with IT needs revision.
I have long been involved with managing IT, but it seems Management of IT is now replaced by a new word:
IT Governance.
The Governance is not just compliance, but much more, e.g. alignment of IT and Business, performance
management, etc.
Very good, I like it. I will rename my seminars on Managing and Leveraging the ICT Infrastructure, something
like IT Governance of ...
