Spark!, Now What?

...If you are paid for your ideas, then it is a different story. While it is often prudent for your good ideas to find and make friends with other good ideas, building a more comprehensive good idea, you frequently do not have that luxury. Your ideas often have to mature quickly. More importantly, your ideas often need to be shared with others under a deadline, and in a manner that will drive behaviors. No small task.

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Leveraging Your Ecosystem for Better Peripheral Vision

In an IT organization, peripheral vision is needed. The technology field is moving too quickly and has too much business impact to be ignored. At the same time, the amount and degree of activity which is squarely in front of IT leaders demands a very large amount of attention. What is needed is a mechanism to give the IT leadership peripheral vision - understanding what is coming up on them external to what is capturing their immediate attention.

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Blood Type of a Consultant

Before getting into blood type, it's worthwhile to define the term "consultant" as I believe the industry has muddied the term to the point of confusion. Unfortunately, it is common today to refer to all labor external to an organization as "consultants." Consultants are hired to advise (or consult) in areas which are outside the body of knowledge inside the organization. Consultants will typically have either extensive first hand experience in the subject matter, or a research arm which identifies the issues and best practices in a leading edge area of business. Organizations hire consultants to provide their opinion and "advise them what to do" often for the purpose of driving highly material decisions

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