CxOs: What keeps you up at night?
My readers–I love you all like family. But can the rest of you excuse us while I have a chat with Dad? That’s you, if you’re a CIO or CTO or upper-level manager–the individual responsible for implementing policies that give your organization an advantage over your competitors.
Normally the good folks at ZDNet who employ me let me use this space to bloviate on issues that I think are important for IT audiences. Every once in a while I need to step back and determine if my intuition matches reality.
I need to know–what’s keeping you up nights? What are you worried you’re not doing well? What do you need to know more about?
I’m looking for specifics, as well as general areas of concern. For example, everyone is worried about protecting their electronic assets, but maybe your worry is about maintaining compatible VPN clients from multiple vendors in a newly merged organization.
What are the priorities in your department for increasing your company’s bottom line? How are you trying to lower your total costs and raise your return on investment? That might mean outsourcing services, leasing equipment, or even renting employees. Or are you finding that managing all your work in-house–even though that might mean buying equipment and hiring staff–is proving more effective? If so, tell me why.
What kind of practices have you learned recently that can help your organization? As vendors roll out new products and technologies, their customers are constantly learning new lessons. What have you learned, Dorothy?
Speaking of learning, how do you keep your employees happy? Technical people can be difficult to manage. How do you train them and help them develop their careers without simply giving them the skills to move on to their next job?
Finally, what can we do to help you? We aim to provide the timely information, thoughtful commentary, and services and tools you can use. What more do you need, and in what form?
You probably didn’t click on my column expecting homework. I promise to return to punditry next time. But if you take a minute to e-mail me and tell me how ZDNet and I can help you, I’ll appreciate it. I may not be able to reply to each of you, but I will read each of your comments, and you’ll see the results reflected on our site.
Articles | Administrator | 
Monday, March 19, 2001 12:00 pm
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