IT needs to become more people-centric.
31 March 2008
This recent Fast Company interview with Gartner (IT) researcher Tom Austin articulates something that I’ve been preaching for years - IT is a business tool that should enhance human interaction and collaboration. Favorite Quote (italics mine): “There’s a recognition that if you relax some controls — not all — you’re probably going to get more creative behavior out of the individuals than if everything is locked down. The organization gets far more flexible as well.” WARNING: This article contains cringe-inducing buzzwords.
Fire the Workaholics
9 March 2008
Dueling Bloggers. Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com offers some excellent tips on how to save money running a startup. Included in his advice is tip #11 - “Fire people who are not workaholics”, which touched off a torrent of commentary. In all fairness, a few days later he revised tip #11 to “Fire people who don’t love their work”, though before he did, David of 37Signals responded with “Fire the Workaholics” listing five reasons why workaholics are bad for business. Very thought-provoking. My favorite quote: “Missing out on life in general to put more hours in at the office screams ‘misguided values’”. Worth reading!