To be a great leader you must first be a great communicator. With good communications skills you will be able to articulate your vision clearly and repeatedly. Spell out your plan of action, asking for everyone’s support and showing confidence in a positive outcome.
Think of all of the areas where communications skills are used.
- One-on-one with your employees
- Small groups or your team
- Larger groups and meetings
- Interviewing applicants for a position
- One-on-one with your upper-management
All of these are important tasks and how well you do them is dependent on your communications skills. This two part article will look at communications from the heart of the speaker to the heart of the listener with tips on how you can become a great communicator.
The Speaker
Communication Begins In the Heart
The root of what you communicate comes from the core set of values and principles in your heart. If you do not believe what you are saying you will not do a good job of it. The first step in becoming a great communicator is looking at your own heart. Understand who you are and look for things you need to change within yourself to become a great leader. Base yourself in the core values that never change over time: honesty, respect, faith, caring, perseverance, and diligence.
Verizon Business has released the “2008 Data Breach Investigations Report” that spans four years and more than 500 forensic investigations. It includes analysis of three of the five largest corporate breaches ever reported.
Key findings in the report indicate that 87 percent of all security breaches were avoidable through reasonable security measures.
Other key findings include:
- Most data breaches investigated were caused by external sources. Thirty-nine percent of breaches were attributed to business partners, a number that rose five-fold during the course of the period studied.
- Most breaches resulted from a combination of events rather than a single action. Sixty-two percent of breaches were attributed to significant internal errors that either directly or indirectly contributed to a breach. For breaches that were deliberate, 59 percent were the result of hacking and intrusions.
- Of those breaches caused by hacking, 39 percent were aimed at the application or software layer. Attacks to the application, software and services layer were much more commonplace than operating system platform exploits, which made up 23 percent. Fewer than 25 percent of attacks took advantage of a known or unknown vulnerability. Significantly, 90 percent of known vulnerabilities exploited had patches available for at least six months prior to the breach.
- Nine of 10 breaches involved some type of “unknown” including unknown systems, data, network connections and/or account user privileges. Additionally, 75 percent of breaches are discovered by a third party rather than the victimized organization and go undetected for a lengthy period.
- In the modern organization, data is everywhere and keeping track of it is an extremely complex challenge. The fundamental principle, however, is quite simple – if you don’t know where data is, you certainly can’t protect it.
Agile Agenda is an Adobe Open Air tool for project management, letting you schedule and assign tasks, assigning priorities and more. It currently runs on Windows, Mac OSX.
They will soon offer Linux and web based versions.
The philosophy behind the software:
Durations and Priorities
Agile Agenda asks for durations and priorities and then figures out the start and end dates for you. The more detailed information you enter, such as vacations and dependencies the more accurate it becomes.
Schedules Constantly Change
Nobody has perfect knowledge of how long a project will take before it’s completed. In many projects scope, resource availability, and task estimates all change fairly frequently. Agile Agenda wants to make it as easy as possible to make those changes without going back and reworking unrelated things.
IT departments are always looking at Leadership training, ITIL or other best practices to improve their department. A Gemba walk performed one or more times a day is a zero cost, high impact practice that will give you a better understanding of the work in progress and the people who do the work. Quickly you will find your Gemba walk to be the most valuable part of your day.
Gemba is a Japanese term meaning “the place where the truth can be found”. If you seek solutions to problems to that need to be fixed, go to Gemba. If you want to see the work behind the reports, go to Gemba. If you want to show leadership, go to Gemba. Go to where the work is performed and observe and engage with those who do it.
The purpose is to observe what is going on in the workplace. To gather information on any current problems so they can be resolved. To look for work and workers that are outside of normal business practice. To engage with workers as they do they work. To see and be seen.
In planning for my day, one of my first tasks is to go to Gemba. I walk the floor and every area where work is being done that I am responsible for. Since Gemba visits should be unscripted and unannounced you should do them at various times of the day. This will allow you to see work as it is really done, rather than work that is staged for you.
The best way to observe during a Gemba visit is to find a remote corner where you have a clear view of the workplace and just stand there. Observe what is going on. See what work is being done. See how employees are doing the work. Take a notepad with you to write down any thoughts you may have such as follow-ups or ideas for improvement.
The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a collection of best practices that address core service management issues such as problem, incident, change and request management, is all about servicing the end user.
Many IT departments have rushed to implement ITIL, but fallen into common pitfalls. The important thing to remember about ITIL is it is not a quick fix solution. It is not a short-term solution. It takes time and a change in culture for it to take root and grow.
Here are some of the common pitfalls found when rushing to implement ITIL.
Purchasing Unnecessary Tools
Organizations assume ITIL based tools are the answer. All they have to do is purchase them or a complete suite of tools and ITIL will work its magic. What they need to do is invest time in mapping a strategy and training their staff about ITIL.
Failing to Do An Assessment
One of the first things you should do is an assessment of your IT department. Look at where you are now and where you want to be and determine what you need to do to get there. How does your current organizational structure compare to the ITIL framework? How will you change your organization and culture to best use ITIL?
ZeNETeX announced today that it has expanded its public IT Service Management Training Services to include a new certification class entitled ‘Foundation in IT Service Management According to ISO/IEC 20000.’
This newly released class is an individual certification for IT leaders that are directly involved in helping their organizations achieve the highly coveted ISO/IEC 20000 certification.
Organizations that have achieved an ISO/IEC 20000 certification have successfully demonstrated an ability to support and deliver IT services in accordance with a well defined industry recognized standard based in large part on the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL(C)). The successful implementation of ITIL(C) has proven to reduce operational costs and improve process efficiencies and end user satisfaction.
Microsoft is preparing a security update for the June 10, 2008 patch Tuesday with seven bulletins, including three rated “critical” for issues affecting Internet Explorer, DirectX and Bluetooth. In addition to the three critical fixes, there are three important and one moderate.
Critical Fixes
1. Bluetooth Bulletin - Remote Code Execution
2. Internet Explorer Bulletin - Remote Code Execution
3. DirectX Bulletin - Remote Code Execution
Important Fixes
1. WINS Bulletin - Elevation of Privilege
2. Active Directory Bulletin - Denial of Service
3. PGM Bulletin - Denial of Service
Moderate Fixes
1. Kill Bit Bulletin - Remote Code Execution
Aternity Inc. announced today the results of its survey, “IT Management: Key Drivers and Challenges in 2008.” More than 70 senior IT and Line-of-Business (LOB) professionals participated in the survey, ranking their key IT priorities for 2008 and sharing their perspective on end user experience management strategies and best practices.
The top five priorities and key IT challenges for 2008 according to survey respondents in order of importance:
Proactive Problem Detection (35.6 percent)
Gaining a more proactive handle on IT problems before the impact is felt by end users or upon business productivity and performance. This is a key function of proactive management and one of the most beneficial aspects to it. Investment in monitoring software and services is expected to grow 45 percent between 2005 and 2011.
Server Virtualization (21.9 percent)
With a constant need to increase do more with less; server virtualization is a growing industry. With server virtualization, you can consolidate workloads of underutilized server machines onto a smaller number of fully utilized machines. Fewer physical machines can lead to reduced costs through lower hardware, energy, and management overhead, plus the creation of a more dynamic IT infrastructure.
Innovation in an organization increases performance and growth through improvements. Innovation is not just about having good ideas. Innovation is a team effort where all areas of an organization contribute. Microsoft is attempting to address this with its Innovation Process Management Solution.
The Microsoft Innovation Process Management (IPM) Solution is built on the Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007, and the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution. It facilitates the following three aspects of innovation process management.
Ideation and Knowledge Capture
The ability to capture and share ideas easily and rapidly to promote a culture of innovation by increasing first the quantity and then the quality of ideas contributed
The capability to collaborate to solve problems, gain incremental benefit or break new ground in a product, service or process by garnering feedback, gauging interest, forming teams and further developing concepts to transform them into well-thought-out ideas
Seiso is the third step in a 5S System. Translated it means to shine or scrub. Now that you have completed the Sort Step and Straighten Step, the workplace should be free of debris and all areas in need of cleaning should be exposed.
In this step you will clean the entire work environment. Everything should be cleaned including floors, workspaces, walls and equipment. If any area needs painting consider adding the extra time to do this.
Before you begin the shine step, be sure you have all of the cleaning tools and supplies you will need. Brooms, mops, dust pans, lots of rags, trash bags and a variety of cleaning fluids. Be careful that you match the cleaning fluid to what is being cleaned. You can damage equipment by using the wrong cleaner.
