Our community of CIOs and IT executives have shared an impressive array of wisdom, advice, lessons learned, and transformation journeys on our site in 2016. We took a look back to see which articles were most popular with our readers this year. Here are the 10 articles that received the highest number of page views in 2016.
1. Looking for IT talent in all the wrong places
A recent report found that California is the place to be for IT talent. CompTIA’s annual report of tech employment ranked states by overall number of tech jobs, number of IT job openings, salaries, and rate of tech job growth, and California was on top by wide margins in nearly all categories. In this article, we asked several IT leaders to share how they’re thinking outside the paycheck to attract and retain their best IT talent. Read the full article.
2. Are 18-month org charts and constant training the new reality for IT?
University of Alabama at Birmingham CIO Curt Carver writes: “To plan for an IT future, you’ve got to be agile and hungry, and that agility has to be demonstrated by strategic plans that are being updated and changed. In fact, some organizations have moved to strategic directives rather than plans because they’re only going to live for 12 to 18 months. At that point the organizational structure aligns with the directive and its goals and then the organization develops performance measurements.” Read the full article.
3. 12 tips to survive the IT talent crisis
The war for IT talent is still going strong as the unemployment rate in technology fields hovers near zero and CIOs are faced with an increasing number of skills gaps in the fast-moving digital age. A recent report from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services offers 12 tips for winning the war based on interviews with CIOs and HR leaders. Read the full report.
4. The end of average IT
Open source software pioneer Michael Tiemann writes: "The commoditization of IT, whether at the hardware level, networking, storage, middleware, or now platforms and even applications, might lead many to believe that the safest place to be is to be average in every way. Buy what others are buying. Deploy what others are deploying. Manage what others are managing. And be happy that what little differentiation this provides is worth the massive amount of risk that is avoided by relying on the law of averages. But the law of averages is not always a safe place to hide, as the U.S. Air Force discovered in the 1950s. And it is not actually working out very well for CIOs, either." Read the full article.
5. 14 bad habits IT leaders should break now
With all eyes on IT to lead their organizations through digital transformation, there's no time like the present to identify the hangups that may be standing in your way. The Enterprisers Project asked IT leaders to share their thoughts on the worst habits in IT, and they came up with this list. Is your IT organization guilty of any of these? Read the full article.
6. 5 ways CIOs can push teams beyond their comfort zones
"If you’re constantly being incremental about everything you do, you’re never going to be able to tackle the big problems your customers face," writes former Time Warner Cable CIO Sven Gerjets. In this article, Gerjets shares five suggestions you can use to push your team beyond its comfort zone so your IT organization can "emerge from the linear, incremental way of doing things." Read the full article.
7. Is IT bad for your health? How our jobs might be killing us
Pharmavite VP of IT and Business Resilience Brian Beams shared a personal story that comes with an important warning. He writes, "I enjoy discussing IT and technology topics with my roundtable group of IT peers. We meet every couple of months and go around the room suggesting topics for discussion. But recently, I threw them all for a loop when I said, 'The topic I’d like to talk about is: How the jobs we’re in could potentially be killing us!' Well, that certainly caught their attention, but I put the topic out there for a very good reason – I recently experienced this firsthand." Read the full article.
8. CVS Health CIO shares his formula for running an effective IT organization
CVS Health CIO Stephen Gold writes, "At CVS Health we have a framework that we’ve formed and embedded inside the IT organization that drives our culture and outcomes. It’s what I call the ACT framework, A-C-T, and it stands for accountability, collaboration, and tenacity. These three cultural and behavioral ingredients, combined with the right technology and the right process, make the recipe for running an effective IT organization." He goes on to share the formula, which he says can be especially useful in times of transformation. Read the full article.
9. 5 tenets you can adopt to make IT run faster
In 2016, Enterpriser Jay Ferro took on a new role at EarthLink, leaving behind his post as CIO as American Cancer Society. In this article, written while Ferro was still with the American Cancer Society, he shares the five core tenets he used “to help us become more successful in how we structure our IT architecture and our organization.” The tenets are useful for all IT leaders. Read the full article.
10. 13 IT leaders confess their scary stories and deep, dark fears
The Enterprisers Project team got in the Halloween spirit this year with this article. We asked 13 IT leaders to share their stories of unexpected or frightening events in their career, or the threats on the horizon making them nervous for the future of IT. They shared their tales from the IT crypt. Read the full article.
Also Popular
Our resources and curated lists are always a hit with readers. These are what resonated most with you in 2016.
- 2016 CIO must-reads for summer
- Surviving the IT talent crisis: A report by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services
- 10 digital transformation book recommendations for IT and business leaders
- 21 Twitter accounts that will inspire CIOs and IT pros in 2016
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