Delivering Benefit: Technical leadership capabilities

By Brian Sutton and Robina Chatham

The development of technical leadership capabilities is often overlooked as a training requirement in organisations but these are key to business success.

In this book, management experts Brian Sutton and Robina Chatham describe six management techniques to help you develop your leadership capabilities and deliver benefit to your customers, team and organisation. With real life examples, tips and mini exercises, you'll also boost your soft skills as you improve your professional value.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT
• Release date: Dec 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781780173849

Brian Sutton

Dr Brian Sutton has over 30 years’ experience of running engineering and IS projects having managed major initiatives and projects varying in size from hundreds of thousands of pounds to tens of millions of pounds. He was formerly a Professor of Systems Management in the Information Resources Management College of the National Defense University in Washington DC and is currently a visiting professor with the Institute for Work Based Learning at Middlesex University.

Book preview

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ISBN: 978-1-78017-39-86

PDF ISBN: 978-1-78017-38-32

ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78017-38-49

Kindle ISBN: 978-1-78017-38-56

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Publisher’s acknowledgements

Reviewer: John Anfield

Publisher: Ian Borthwick

Commissioning Editor: Rebecca Youé

Production Manager: Florence Leroy

Project Manager: Sunrise Setting Ltd

Cover work: Alexander Wright

Picture credits: Shutterstock © sezer66

Typeset by Lapiz Digital Services, Chennai, India.

CONTENTS

List of figures

About the authors

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Preface

1. UNDERSTANDING YOUR CUSTOMERS: HOW TO TRULY DELIGHT THEM

Why is this important?

The impact of the issue

Making sense of it all

Practical advice

Things for you to work on now

Further food for the curious

2. SEEING THE BIG PICTURE AND THINKING STRATEGICALLY

Why is this important?

The impact of the issue

Making sense of it all

Practical advice

Things for you to work on now

Further food for the curious

3. SEEING NEW OPPORTUNITIES AND RECOGNISING THE UNEXPECTED BEFORE IT HAPPENS

Why is this important?

The impact of the issue

Making sense of it all

Practical advice

Things for you to work on now

Further food for the curious

4. BUILDING A SPIRIT OF INNOVATION

Why is this important?

The impact of the issue

Making sense of it all

Practical advice

Things for you to work on now

Further food for the curious

5. BEING SEEN AS SOMEONE WHO HELPS CHANGE TO HAPPEN

Why is this important?

The impact of the issue

Making sense of it all

Practical advice

Things for you to work on now

Further food for the curious

6. HELPING YOUR TEAM TO COPE WITH THE RIGOURS OF CHANGE

Why is this important?

The impact of the issue

Making sense of it all

Practical advice

Things for you to work on now

Further food for the curious

Bibliography

Index

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Backward-pass thinking

Figure 4.1 Three pillars of capability

Figure 6.1 Behaviour through the transition curve

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Professor Brian Sutton has over 40 years’ management and leadership experience. He has developed comprehensive information systems (IS) strategies, conducted large-scale re-engineering initiatives and led major organisational change. He regularly contributes articles to professional journals and speaks at major professional gatherings. He holds a Doctorate in Corporate Education, a Master’s degree in Information Systems Management from the London School of Economics and has worked extensively in both the private and public sectors in Europe and the United States. He was formerly a Professor of Systems Management in the Information Resources Management College of the National Defence University in Washington, DC. He is currently Professor of Learning Performance in the Faculty of Professional and Social Sciences at Middlesex University.

Dr Robina Chatham has over 35 years’ experience in IT. She has held positions that range from IT project manager within the shipbuilding industry to European Chief Information Officer for a leading merchant bank and lecturer at Cranfield School of Management. She is qualified as both a Mechanical Engineer and a Neuroscientist. Previous books include Corporate Politics for IT Managers: How to Get Streetwise; Changing the IT Leader’s Mindset: Time for Revolution rather than Evolution; and The Art of IT Management: Practical Tools and Techniques. Robina now runs her own company specialising in management development and executive coaching. She is also a visiting fellow at Cranfield School of Management and a research associate for the Leading Edge Forum. Her prime focus is on helping senior IT managers to increase their personal impact and influence at board level.

FOREWORD

I am going to start my introduction to this new book by Robina and Brian by quoting Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (2004): ‘Start with the end in mind’, a fairly innocuous but hugely powerful statement once you learn how to truly exploit the meaning of it. We will come back to this later.

I first met Robina early in my career at a point where I had chosen to take redundancy from an IT leadership role I loved, in an organisation that was preparing itself for sale. At that time, I had a choice: to stay and work for the outsourced partner I had selected or to take redundancy. Both paths were unknown to me; each held possibilities but no certainties, and from that moment forwards the one constant in my career, like many others in the IT industry, has been the ability to ‘navigate the grey’ and derive possibilities from planned and unplanned events and opportunities.

While transitioning to