The recession's effects on IT innovation

A recent survey suggests that IT departments all over the US are targeting less of their budgets toward innovating their businesses than other industrial nations. Innovation is one of the IT department's best strategies for improving their companies and making them stronger and more productive. The survey quoted a corporate vice president that businesses that are just reducing IT costs will not be able to create new solutions and systems to help their companies compete in the future. This tactic will help these companies survive in the near term, but it might spell their demise in the future. I understand that businesses have to keep their basic operations going and provide current services and support but other nation's companies are still funding innovation and will leave our country's companies at a disadvantage to compete global.

Article Link: http://www.insidetech.com/news/articles/5115-microsoft-survey-shows-recession-is-hurting-it-budgets-pros?page=1&utm_content=it_r1_20090730_YAHO&utm_source=nlet

My Leadership Style

My leadership style depends on my responsibilities as well as whom I am leading and/or supervising. My experience has been that each task and employee has different needs. I adapt myself to those requirements to get the task completed successfully and on time.

When I have a task that I need a new employee with limited experience to accomplish I usually use a more authoritarian style. I outline the task and how they are supposed to do it. I then monitor them during the task and check it when it is completed. In contrast, when I have a task for a very experienced employee who I know their strengths, I would assign the task and know they will execute it successfully by themselves with limited input and oversight by myself.

This leadership style or my ability to flow between different styles is a strength that I have to get the job done successfully. This is a definite plus for any company or organization I work for. It allows me to work with all kinds of employees to be more efficient and effective carrying out the company’s desired goals.

I think if I had to acknowledge one particular leadership style it would participative (democratic). Each member of the team has different strengths that they bring to the table. I like to use those strengths and work with the team to come up with the best plan to accomplish and successfully complete the tasks for the maximum benefit of the company or organization. It also has a side benefit in that it creates project buy-in for my team. It allows them to be part of the solution and therefore a supporter of the project. This participative leadership style does require that I know about my staff’s strengths and weaknesses beforehand. This knowledge can take a little while to acquire so if I were new to a team this leadership style would not work. I would have to use the other styles until I gained this knowledge.

TOI-Reunion

I attended a get together of a group of friends from High School last weekend. Our group was called the TOIs. You are probably asking what to heck is that? Well, the name is French for you and we came up with the name in our Calculus class in high school. The group has five numbers and we are all male - no girls in our high school calcuklus class infortunately. This last weekend we all meet at one of the TOI's home in Lee, NH and had a wonderful meal and talked about all our adventures (which were numerous). I can't go into any of them because I think the statue of limitations has not run out on some of the things we did. Only joking, well then again maybe not.