Thoughts
Ideas that transform people, businesses, and industries
Deeply rooted in our organizational ethos is the celebration of authentic and unapologetic “thought.” We believe each member of our team brings with them a unique view of themselves, our clients, and of the world we live in. We make a point to not only articulate our individual experiences, senses, emotions, and actions internally, but to share them with you here.
Will social networking replace traditional networking?
The Economist recently published a couple of articles on social networking versus traditional networking, “Insider Out” and “Joining the Club”. They make some interesting points about online social networks creating more of a meritocracy of networking, after...
There’s no magic IT spend benchmark … let’s stop looking!
One of my CIO friends asked me this morning for the best overall benchmarks for IT spend. I told him the only measure I’ve seen consistently is IT spend as a percentage of revenue, which averages around 3% and varies by industry with retail at the low end and...
IT Performance Management Imperative #2: Measure business value. Really.
The most commonly asked question I get from CIOs undertaking a performance management initiative is: “How can I measure business value when our company does not measure benefits achieved?” The truth is that very few companies actually measure benefits realized from...
IT Performance Management Imperative #1: Emphasize business value. Comprehensively.
This blog is part of a series focused on IT Performance Management.The fundamental shift in performance management that Kaplan and Norton led in the 1990s was the balance (as in their “Balanced Scorecard”) of financial and non-financial measures. The framework they...
Passport. Credit Cards. Internet Access.
What would you not leave home without for your international vacation? I've been traveling with my family in Europe for the last couple of weeks (hence no blogs, sorry, coming back soon!) and noticing how different traveling is from a few years ago. I travel...
Guest Post: The role of the business analyst on the IT strategy team
by Laura Brandau(note from Lisa: Laura and I have been talking about this topic lately and thought it would be fun to guest post on each other's blogs. You can read my thoughts on the topics on Laura's blog.)One key challenge faced by any IT strategy team is obtaining...
Scenario Planning for IT
McKinsey just published a good piece on how to do scenario planning in our current, very uncertain environment. We often advocate scenario planning as part of our IT strategy projects; it is a great way for IT organizations to prepare for various business and...
Another idea for managing project benefit estimates
I don’t know a company that doesn’t have more demand for IT projects than the IT organization can fulfill, whether it is due to lack of money or resources. Most IT organizations are very challenged to create a process and define criteria for project approval and...
Is Google Making Us Stupid: The Surface Skim
Before I actually read the "Is Google Making Us Stupid" article in detail and wrote this other blog, I had several conversations about it. Some of these conversations were last weekend, which I spent in the mountains with several friends. On our various drives to the...
Is Google Making Us Stupid: The Deep Dive
I challenge you to spend 16 minutes reading this entire article, Is Google Making us Stupid, by Nicholas Carr. I’ve had this article bookmarked for a couple of weeks, since a contact sent it to me after a related lunch discussion. After several tries, I finally got...
New blog address
I've moved my blog to a new domain... please adjust your RSS readers and bookmarks!http://www.lisabreytspraak.com/Thank you for continuing to read and comment!
Need info? Ask your friends … or wait for them to tell you
I’m more up to date on news and IT information than ever before, but I feel more overwhelmed with information than ever. I read periodicals, email blasts, blogs via RSS and try to keep up with links from friends. These days, the very best articles, blogs and videos I...
Should job seekers utilize facebook?
I came across this article on McKinsey’s Quarterly, the same day I received my first job related request in my Facebook inbox. The requester, who attended a school I used to attend, was asking for guidance in getting a job with a company where I used to work.When I...
Another Dimension for Application Portfolio Planning
I like this example chart, featured in McKinsey’s recent quarterly newsletter, about how IT investments generate short and medium-term profitability improvements. It highlights, by business process, which types of technology investments can provide which types of...
Lost in snow: white phone
If you are looking for an insightful post on IT strategy, please click another link on this blog. I just couldn’t resist posting my iPhone’s adventure of the day, since I did tempt fate twice recently by posting blogs on giving up my phone for Lent and being sure I...
Giving up technology for Lent
I got a kick out of this little article in the Wall Street Journal this morning. Apparently it is quite a trend to give up Facebook for Lent. Last year it was all the rage among college students, now the 30 and 40-somethings are taking on the challenge too.I think I...
Alignment 101
POP QUIZ! Question 1: What are your top five IT projects? I hope most CIOs can answer this question correctly, but can their direct reports? Or random employees in the IT organization, maybe even those who are working on those or other projects? Or the rest of the...
Social Networking Counseling
I received a funny call from a good friend the other day. She was panic stricken about the number of people “friending” her on Facebook and wanted my counseling to help her work through who could access what on her profile. I am no social networking expert, but it...
Constant connectivity – the good outweighs the bad
I had coffee with a friend last week while passing through Austin. About 90 seconds after I dropped him back at his office, I heard a strange buzzing sound in my car. After realizing that for once it was not another issue with my PAX tires, I looked for the source of...
Who will be the next SaaS success?
This is a great article in Information Week about what it will take for software as a service (SaaS) to gain widespread acceptance in 2009. I agree with all the imperatives in this article, but I think it comes down to one takeaway: we will not consider SaaS accepted...
Companies Reap the Flip Benefit of Moore’s Law
Last week’s Economist has a couple of articles on technology in the recession, one which talked about how companies are now choosing cheap over powerful computing. Moore’s Law, which states that the cost of a given amount of computing power falls by half every...