Avoiding the Alignment Trap in Intormation Technology Essay Example for Free

Avoiding the Alignment Trap in Intormation Technology Essay An alarming pattern has surfaced in that many companies are concentrating on alignment and are finding that their performance is either declining or moving sideways. Companies are focusing on the wrong solutions with respect to their Information Technology problems, resulting in severe bottlenecks to growth. Companies need to learn how to break out of the trap and build IT organizations that allow for growth rather than obstruct it. Companies will need to be committed as doing so will require a continuous effort. The essential goal for these companies in order to succeed is to move IT into the upper-right quadrant, where they will be highly effective and highly aligned, and where IT appears to be enabling growth rather than inhibiting it. In order to move in this direction, it is my recommendation that the companies begin by installing local area networks locally, as well as a central database stored on a server to connect to head office. This option is economically feasible, will improve local efficiencies and will allow the sharing of resources and records. I would also recommend that the companies begin feasibility testing to explore the implementation of an internal ERP system to support global operations in the near future. Doing this will help companies to keep up with the competition. Current Situation Companies are getting caught in an â€Å"alignment trap† whereas they are spending large amounts of resources towards being highly aligned and not realizing the importance of being highly effective as well. There are four quadrants within which companies are being categorized with respect to their ability to be effective. They are being measured based on the ineffectiveness as far as completing projects on time and on budget, and the ineffectiveness of alignment to an important business objective. The first of these quadrants is â€Å"alignment trap†. Despite being highly aligned, the companies within this group are less effective in completing budgets on time and within the budget. Charles Schwab Co. is currently in this position and as a result, continues to spend money on projects and seeing no growth. The second quadrant is â€Å"maintenance zone†. Companies in this quadrant are less aligned to major business objectives but are maintaining below average levels of growth even though they are less effective and spending more in IT as a result. In this zone, IT is not performing well, is not valued and is segregated from the company’s main functions. Management is budgeting enough to keep the system running, but IT is not providing any added value to the business. Third is the â€Å"well-oiled IT† quadrant which can be categorized as second best. In this group, companies are highly effective at bringing projects in on time and on budget. They are more focused on execution. Still, companies are less aligned meaning that their IT group does not fully understand the priorities of the business and where to spend the resources. Lastly, the â€Å"IT-enabled growth† quadrant is where all companies would like to be. This quadrant encompasses those companies who are not only highly effective at making IT projects successful, but are also highly aligned in relation to their business objectives. Examples of companies who have succeeded in this respect are Nestle, Wal-Mart, FedEx and Dell. The following are IT-related issues that organizations are currently facing as they attempt to align their business goals with IT technology: Believing that alignment is the solution to their IT problems, companies are spending enormous amounts of money without solving any problems. Various divisions are driving independent initiatives, each one designed to address its own competitive needs, resulting in complexity of IT systems (no standardization). As a result, costs increase and the fragmented divisions make it harder for managers to coordinate across business units. Complexity in systems is making enhancements to systems and improvements to infrastructures more and more difficult to implement and potential benefits are left unused. Redundant applications that perform the same or similar functions. Outsourcing the wrong activities. Data in multiple information systems are viewed as â€Å"garbage† and producing inconsistencies (i.e. salespeople are promoting products that are discontinued) In companies similar to Charles Schwab Co. for example: IT staff response have become slow and expensive; IT engineers are spending more time fixing bugs in the systems than ever before; and several big and ambitious projects are overdue and preventing the company from being competitive. Criteria The following criteria will be used to evaluate each of the alternatives: IT spending must be aligned with the company’s growth strategies (need to reduce IT costs i.e. savings on software licensing costs where bleeding money, and head count). Must be shared ownership and shared governance of IT projects. Need to reduce complexity (or emphasize simplicity). Increase efficiency (doing things in a cost effective way with no duplication of time and effort). Economically feasible. IT infrastructure to support networked operations in multiple locations. Need to centralize and simplify the IT functions. Need high effectiveness to achieve an objective through the use of: 1. simplicity (or reducing complexity) – by implementing companywide standards, replacing legacy systems, building new solutions on simplified and standardized infrastructure; 2. right sourcing – choosing the right source for a capability and maximizing effectiveness while minimizing cost; and 3. accountability – executives should get the information they need to measure the progress of IT and IT people should be held accountable for outcomes. IT needs to be reliable, without excess complexity, and needs to deliver projects consistently with desired functionality, timing and cost. IT systems need to run smoothly and reliably. IT functions such as architecture and infrastructure need to be balanced with respect to the needs of the entire organization and those of individual businesses. Need a good governance structure so as to set parameters to keep an organization on track (i.e. no more than four new technology releases per year).

Sterioids in baseball :: essays research papers

80.3 million, 80 million, 42 million, and 35 million all have something in common (The Best-Paid Athletes). Could it be the population of the 4 most populated countries in the world? No, it’s the amount of money that the top four athletes will make each year. Tiger Woods, Michael Schumacher, Peyton Manning, and Michael Jordan in that order will make the following dominations as a paycheck each year (The Best-Paid Athletes). Many Americans make less than 1.7 million dollars in a life time [40 years in the work force]. Yet these athletes will make a combined 157.38 million dollars. Do athletes make to much money for their own good? What about our policemen, firefighters, and teachers who are also role models too our youths. They should be getting paid more for what they do for each other and our communities. All the listed professions are lucky if they make over seventy thousand dollars annually. Not to take away from any academic achievements that the athletes have received, but many police officers and all teachers, all have college degrees. Many athletes leave high school or college early because they want to make money like other famous professional athletes. Is money the only thing on athletes' minds? Sports entertain the public to make them love the game. In the 50's and 60's athletes' just played for the love of the game. Athletes would take the time out to sign autographs for the kids without charging them for it. Now, athletes rarely take the time out to sign autographs. If athletes do take the time out to sign something, they charge ten dollars for it, which the fans can buy at souvenir shops. The ple asure for athletes then was to see all the people that came out to see them play. Athletes are paid too much because they fall in love with the money not the sport. Money has taken over many athletes' minds and hearts. Many people come out to see these athletes play. The crowd is always full of students, teachers, labor workers, and lawyers that pay a lot of money to watch their favorite players get on the court or field. Some athletes have more than a high school education, but others just came right out of high school to play sports. For some of the athletes that probably is a good idea and for others, it was a bad idea.

Behavioral change

Managers sometimes fail to promote values involving people and teamwork in the workplace. This condition occurs because managers are afraid being disliked by their employees, do not care about their organizations’ credibility and vitality, or perform their work simply out of obligation or for a paycheck.In addition, organizations are not successful in holding their managers accountable for living such values. The failure to uphold people values and teamwork invite organization’s cynicism, undermine credibility, and sap an organization of its vitality.Thus, organizations should consider advocating for behavioral change so that managers become more accountable for living the values involving people and teamwork. Introduction As one of the assignments to be completed in the first class in organizational behavior, a course project was initiated to find some answers to the questions why managers fail to promote the values involving people and teamwork and why organizations a re not successful in holding their managers accountable for living such values.The new economy of the twenty-first century requires organizations to adapt to changing conditions, and therefore, organizations should consider making their managers accountable for living such values. The methodology used for completing this project was brief. It included reading and understanding the contents cited in articles, books and other medium that are relevant to behavioral changes, organizational behavior, and leadership and management. The results of the understanding of the relevant contents were documented.Such contents included the answers why managers fail to promote the people values and teamwork and why organizations are not successful in holding their managers accountable for living such values. The causes and conclusions for such failures and the recommendations addressing the causes were also documented. Results Managers usually advocate values involving people and teamwork, but some times exempt themselves from their practice. Some organizations’ biggest disappointment is their failure to adopt these general values or people values as noted in a research that involved thousands of participants at more than 30 large companies.The employees rated their managers’ ability to effectively deal with individuals whose behavior undermines teamwork. The results of the rating showed that the employees rated their managers last among 92 elements of effective leadership. In that research, the researchers asked qualitative questions such as asking the employees to describe the difference between the values the managers preach and the values they live. Most of the employees’ common responses included stories of the company’s failure to deal with leaders who do not live the people values.It is rather hard for the managers to realize their own challenge of the changing their employees’ behavior. It is so hard for managers to change their emplo yees’ behavior because the managers sometimes feel that they are human and can also fall into mistakes anytime during their life. Hence they want to be loved by their employees who also at times grade them in a performance based work place. The managers sometimes feel that it would be hard if they talked to their employees about the employees’ lack of coordination and the spirit of teamwork that is missing from them.They fear that by confronting their employees, it will break loose their working relationship and this might lead to performance problems. A perfect leader though is one who leads by example and is followed by the people who he is leading. They should be more respected and no one should fear them because they help change the people’s bad behavior. In addition to that, managers understand the mission and vision of the organization; they do not care about living the people values and teamwork necessary to uplift their own standards.What they care about is to come to work simply out of obligation and the monetary gains. People in most cases spend their one third of their lives working in different work places. While for majority of the people who work, work offers them an opportunity to get finance necessary to uplift their living standards. While to others, by working, they develop and make the world a better place than they found it. The managers who started to work afresh from college and are on job orientation, their work gives them the money as a required necessity for their upkeep.They focus on the working their whole lives for the purposes of getting the required money for good sustainability. They depend on their work more than satisfying the need of attaining the required performance in any given work. They are not and will never be workaholics but will indeed give them time to attend to their normal work. The managers see work as something that will reward them and make them richer than is the case. Besides all this, the y again receive more rewards and then continuously seek compensation for any little work that they do.Hence they make work look like it is an exchange of their efforts with the money or the rewards they normally get from the organisation. Most managers believe that, their identities are to support their own families and helping with other issues like ensuring their own children are in school and the like. So they end up believing that they are working and their work is a job that requires their knowledge and the general input of the required information into work. They are less likely to se their needs as a societal issue but only see it as something that will reward them.Therefore, managers at job orientation cares so much for their upkeep, to ensure that their gas is filled and billed but gives little care to those employees who need promotions for their work. The managers need to work to provide the organization with the required knowledge and the productive results that at last will be a credit to their organization. Or don’t managers care because they do not know what to do? Bill Gates had this to say to the many Harvard students graduates on June 7, 2007; that ‘often we don’t do anything about inequities and problems we see in the world, not because we don’t care but because we don’t know what to do’.So turning these studies the students have achieved into meaningful and the desired impact it has on the society, should be the major concern for these graduating students. Further, we can also blame the organizations that do not promote coaching for behavioral change. Due to their lack of coaching for behavioral change, some organizations were not successful to hold managers accountable for living the people values and teamwork. Organizations need to coach for behavioral change. A manager that can be coached for behavioral change can make him/her a more credible leader.Leaders with credible results can help those wit h the essential habit in order to develop into meaningful, personal and the organizational development and success. If the manager delivers his/her promises including measuring employees on their behaviors and attributes, then that manager values and cements the bonds of leadership with employees. Behavioral coaching is simple, however, it is not easy to implement. Managers may have difficulty giving and receiving honest feedback and making the time for genuine dialogue.But, if organizations are serious about their espoused values, shouldn’t they ensure that their managers demonstrate the behaviors the organizations promote. If the policy if the organization is to change the managers way of adopting to different and varied values of their workers, then the organizations have to change the behavior of the managers at work. And again if the organizations have to change the managers way of thinking, it has to first change the principles it has and their way of thinking. For litt le behavioral change, there is an excellent overall change of the drive and the means of change.The organizations need to examine the vision before making any preference to what they want their people to achieve. They need to effect their changes by looking at the employees and specifically exploring the required changes and finally effecting the changes where necessary. The managers need to determine the foundations of the behavioral changes before offering to fix the required changes. Then once they have specifically noted the behaviors to be changed, they can then change those behaviors and indeed this will affect the whole change required in the organization.The managers of any organizations and the organization itself need to be very specific and observe the effects before any good behavior change can take place. They should let people choose their behaviors basing on what hey think might happen to them as result of the lack of the behavior change. Again when resistance is obse rved to any problems, the issue of verbal persuasion rarely works but rather it is an attack to the aggrieved individual. People might not want to give up on whatever they like or they derive pleasure on. They want something that can categorically turn their weakness to something else.The managers need to come up with innovative different ways of solving the whole issue and creating their own personal experiences. They need to work on behavioral change with the nothing but rather leave this world to change these individuals on their unwelcome ways. As told, the actual real life will change them through the hard hitting life experiences. The stories create an atmosphere that is well understood to change the people views and the world. This is because; stories help individuals transport them towards a social and good listener who is applying different rules for the logical analysis and the criticism to the story itself.Further again, managers may want to consider moving towards findin g the required basics to colleagues who can tutor him or her on the couching available for the situation that demands the task. This is not mystery but it requires an individual who is disciplined and can act with the required integrity and commitment necessary for the behavioral science expertise. Simply by sitting down with the person you are coaching and analyzing the perceptions of his or her colleagues, you will be able to change your relationship with that person. And the person will change too.And when people improve, their self-confidence goes up. They keep doing what works, and they keep getting better. Conclusions Managers should promote use of people friendly procedures and the values for the benefit of the organization. The managers need to change their behaviors in order to assist the management of the organization well so far. The managers of this world today can be successful change leaders if they have the capacity to be flexible and the change and cope with the spec ific needs of an environment within an organization.They should be caregivers and should not fear any employee and the offering of the required services of couching their employees. The managers who must effective leaders care about the employees who come up with contributions that can assist in the accomplishment of the goals of the organizations and teams available within their regions. The managers and or leaders who are effective should not be afraid in providing the required feedback to employees and making them feel appreciated and they should not care so much about their salaries.The values involving people, teamwork and the coexistence can help improve their production and performance and also improve their organization’s ability and responsibility. They should be very careful with managers and hold their managers accountable for any thing that goes wrong within the organization. The one approach to holding them accountable for all the assets and resources within the organization is by coaching them for behavioral change. Coaching should be able to enlighten the society and make the world know and be a better.Since coaching is the best option that could help any struggling company to come to terms with the reality on the ground. Therefore, the management should be very lenient to those who perform according to the well being of the organization. The organization again should help those people who need the couching so as to uplift their morale and the desire to grow through proper development mechanisms that will also help the firm or the organization realize it potential and the growth necessary for its survival and existence.In order to achieve the good results and to boost the morale of every employee and make them realize that they can too achieve anything they set their minds to achieve. The coaches should only help those employees who need their help. Recommendation The organization must select leader who will bring them the desired values and not those who doesn’t have a vision, values and the esteem necessary for the growth of the organisation. Otherwise these individuals might bring the good and the shadow side of the organization to a halt.The business groups should be less so ensure accountability based on the relationships and if the groups are allowed to larger, they make the process to be crippled. The supervisors should be people who have the talents and the capacity to effect the required change. They need to be experts to manage the change and the behaviors necessary for the good growth. hey require leader to involve the supervisors and coach them to produce the good results. Then let the employees have the goals and the desire to effectively establish their visions within the organization.They need to measure how employees live their lives and the help them change anything they need in order to increase performance. They again should have a direct and performance based work that involves the recogni tion of the efforts put in fir the success of the company or organization. There need to be reward schemes capable of rewarding the best amongst them and ensuring that the supervisors and other employees have laid bare their different issues associated to work.There also need to be leaders who need to be aligned with their employees in order to permit maximum utility of the available resources. There need to be issues to deal with the conflicts directly when to happen and these shows the maturity in the leaders. The leaders should be able to teach the accountability to their employees and ensure that the work is done their satisfaction. And finally, the leaders who do not perform should be left out and only work with the leaders that can produce the excellent results.The results could be seen during the evaluation of the value of the organization and or the firm. In addition to this, if they were dealing with people who have the will, the drive and capacity to change their behavior and operate in an environment that allows them the chance and the opportunity to change and work for an organization that is growing towards an efficient way and headed in the right direction. The management should identify the characteristics and the attributes of manager that is undergoing the cauching.These should not be from scratch but rather should have the necessary knowledge as noted on the Kouzes ( ). The once you have developed the leadership in him or her, it makes the manager to be characterized as an important person who understands the work and the philosophical ways of working and ensures that, he got all the requirement so of the perfect or is it the good manager?. This will in turn boost the process and develop the commitment. There should be systems to determine the good and meaningful feedback that is the core of any growing business.The key people here may include the peers and the customers and also many others. Balanced workforce that does not require or bring challenges to the managers should be put in place to make the work easier for the manager. Always collect feedback from the employees often in the written forms. This helps the managers be well versed with the problems the employees are facing. There needs to be data analysis using the appropriate techniques and the also need to talk to the manager and find out the reason why their employees do not want them to react to their information.There again need to be action plan that will help them analyze and help them also implement the desired goals. This boosts their morale and knows what to do. There lastly need to be a response from the managers to the stakeholders. Then develop a program that goes on and on and that it requires the regular follow up to see how they are doing and also there performance. The results need to be reviewed and the procedure to start over again. Behavioral coaching is an important aspect that can improve behavior though it cannot solve the problems such as the performance problems.Coaches need to plan their work and ensure that the customer is qualified because they have very limited amount if time to invest in their own customers for good returns on their investment. They have a very limited amount of time therefore they only invest their time where they will get a good return on investment. Behavioral changes or rather couching will only work if the manager is willing to adopt the necessary changes. Behavoir changes do not help if the company has already fired the employee or the manager. The person may lack the necessary skills and the intelligence information to undertake the job.Hence that person is written off and it may not be necessary to couch him or her. If the organization has the wrong mission, it will be hard to effect such behavior changes because these changes are how get there process but not where to go process. Therefore,if the organization is headed towards the wrong mission, there is little the process can bring t o the desired level of couching. Annotated Bibliography Gates, B. (2007, June 7). Leadership. Harvard University press. Rollnick, S, Mason, P &butler, C (1999). Health sciences behavior change. Philadelphia.USA Sundel, M (2005). Behavior change in human. California. USA Goldsmith, M. , Govindaharan, V. , Kaye, B. , & Vicere, A. (2003). The Many Facets of Patterson, K. , Grenny, J. , Maxfield, D. , McMillan, R. , & Switzler, A. (2007). Influencer: Canada Goldsmith, G (2000). Coaching for leadership. SanFrancsicle. USA Skiffington, S (2003). Behavioral coaching. Newyork. USA Peltier, B (2004). The psychology of executive coaching. Washington. USA. Crane, T (2001). The heart of coaching. Canada. Whitmore, J (2000). Couching for performance. Washington. USA.

American History Was The Establishment Of Slavery

One of the greatest violent and horrifying forms of American history was the establishment of slavery. In 1619 Slavery began in Jamestown, Virginia when the very fewest slaves were brought to America from Africa. African-Americans were known to be very healthy people and in good shape because of their hard work of surviving in Africa. Many Africans had to do work, walk miles everyday to just get water for their families. As the slaves entered America, they were dispersed throughout the colonies. The main source for money and cheap labor in America was the tobacco agriculture. Slaves were put to work in the tobacco fields. This was an unnatural state for the human soul to be in bondage and captivity ever since the beginning of civilization. Patrick Henry stated, â€Å"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!† Through these centuries the slaves rose up and rebelled. The Middle Passage was known that several slaves were kidnapped from their family and tribes in Africa and Brazil. These natives were thrown onto a ship chained up to one another laying down and stacked up on each other and sold into slavery. In the early 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source. A Dutch ship sent 20 Africans to the colony of Jamestown, Virginia, which then spreadShow MoreRelatedAmerican Revolutions Effects on American Society1292 Words   |  6 Pagesevents in United States history was the American Revolution. However, the significance of the event did not lay in the number of casualties or in Revolutionary wartime strategies. The importance of the Revolution lay in its effects of American Society. 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