Hiring managers are moving candidates with this skill to the top of their list. Here are 4 ways to highlight your adaptability .
CIO Research
CIO Research
The surprising power of questions
Asking the right questions, in the right way, is powerful, according to Alison Wood Brooks and Leslie K. John. “It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards,” they write. The problem is not everyone has this important skill, and may unintentionally be killing conversations before they even begin. Choosing the right type, tone, sequence, and framing of questions can make the difference between an open and enjoyable dialogue and an uncomfortable one. In this article, Brooks and John provide their best tips.
How to develop empathy for someone who annoys you
“There are two types of empathy,” explains Rebecca Knight in this article, “cognitive empathy, the ability to understand another person’s perspective, and emotional empathy, the ability to feel what someone else feels.” When you feel annoyed, your ability to feel either shuts down. When this happens at work – with a colleague or even your boss – it can be a challenge that impacts your well being and productivity. Knight offers a few key strategies and some Dos and Don’ts to try if you find yourself in this situation. She also provides case studies that show these strategies in action.
Agile at scale
By now, many IT organizations have experienced success with agile methodologies in some areas, and now the question is – how can we scale agile? Darrell K. Rigby, Jeff Sutherland, and Andy Noble, authors of this article, have studied agile practices at hundred of companies and witness the roadblocks they’ve run into along the way. “Companies often struggle to know which functions should be reorganized into multidisciplinary agile teams and which should not. And it’s not unusual to launch hundreds of new agile teams only to see them bottlenecked by slow-moving bureaucracies,” they write. In this article, they share what they’ve learned about scaling agile from those companies that get it right.
3 ways senior leaders create a toxic culture
If you are responsible for leading teams, what you do and say matters more than you might realize. “Those further down in the organization look to their leaders for cues on what’s acceptable (and what isn’t), and the team’s habits – both good and bad – will be emulated,” writes Ron Carucci in this Harvard Business Review article. With 30 years of experience working with leadership teams, Carucci has viewed three common habits that have the worst impact on teams. For instance, he shows how a leader’s inefficient use of meeting time can result in wasted resources and widespread confusion throughout the organization when similar patterns are repeated. Download this article to learn how to avoid these mistakes before they create a toxic culture.
The ultimate DevOps hiring guide
Not all IT leaders like the term DevOps: Some prefer to just call it the agile way of working. But however you describe it, this style of working – which prizes speed, experimentation, and collaboration, all happening on nimble, cross-functional teams – has taken the enterprise by storm. It has demanded new IT leadership strategies. Above all, it has demanded culture change, as teams ditch old processes, rip down rules between groups, and accept “failures” as quick lessons on how to iterate their way to better products and services. For this kind of change, you need the right people.
Whether you're a DevOps job seeker or you're hiring DevOps experts, this guide delivers peer-to-peer advice from IT leaders and DevOps practitioners, who know the challenges all too well, as well as insights from related experts such as recruiters.
Download the guide for practical advice, analysis, and statistics on the state of the DevOps hiring market.
The new rules of CIO leadership
Are you leading by an outdated rulebook? The future is being built on new technologies, data, and digitization. To transform and compete in the face of disruption, top chief information and digital officers – true transformation masters – are rewriting the rules of CIO leadership.
This new research from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services identifies seven new rules of leadership based on interviews with leading technology executives, including CIOs from Adobe, AT&T, Cardinal Health, Toyota, Vanguard, and Walmart.
Download this report to learn their secrets for breaking down walls, resetting expectations, and leading in a completely new model.
Fast Start Guide: Creating a sense of urgency, with John Kotter
John Kotter, organizational change guru and author of "Leading Change" and "A Sense of Urgency," shares five tips to help leaders infuse a sense of urgency within teams. Get our fast start guide (.PDF):
Hybrid cloud security: 5 questions skeptics will ask
Get advice from your peers on how to get people to buy into your architectural vision and build a strong hybrid cloud security posture. Download our concise guide (PDF).
Happiness traps: How we sabotage ourselves at work
In this article, author Annie McKee points out that “close to two-thirds of employees in the United States are bored, detached, or jaded and ready to sabotage plans, projects, and other people” in their jobs. She challenges the reader to question why there is so much chronic unhappiness at work. In this article, McKee examines the three most common happiness traps – ambition, doing what’s expected of us, and working too hard – and the three emotional intelligence competencies that can help employees break free from happiness traps and cast off an outdated mindset.
15 top CIOs share wisdom on creating revenue
How do you please the CEO? Generate new revenue streams for the business. Abbie Lundberg interviews CIOs from organizations including CVS Health, GE, and Liberty Mutual, and explores their proven strategies. Get our Harvard Business Review Analytic Services study.
Download the full report: "Revenue-Generating CIOs: Smart Strategies to Grow the Business"