Loraine Antrim

You have a great IT product or service.  It's the next killer app or a unique cloud computing play.  You KNOW your message will dazzle the pants off any CEO who hears it. But how do you get your message to resonate in the CXO suite? Take off your IT hat and put on a CEO hat! To ... (more)

New FTC Guidelines Affect Bloggers  On Monday, Oct 5, 2009, the FTC directly touched the lives of some bloggers with its decision to regulate certain blogging activity.  Specifically, the agency addressed  blog posts that review a product or service. Under its new set of guidelines... (more)

Is the battle of the sexes heating up on the web? Who uses Twitter more, men or women? Who uses social media more, the guys or the gals? How men and women use social media sites is of great interest to advertises and companies trying to use social media as a new pathway to reach ... (more)

How much courage do you have? Enough to lead a global team or complete a difficult IT initiative on time or come in under budget? Child's play. Don't brag too much. If you can accomplish these, you're simply par for the course. Want to demonstrate real courage…true accomplishment? ... (more)

Today, CIOs are turned on, You Tubed-in and highly social.  They use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  They blog and appear in videos and engage with their constituents via collaborative technologies. Very hi tech but very low touch. Advice to CIOs: Go Primitive The question is: are... (more)

When non-IT folks listen to technology staff talk about IT, it's a bit like trying to crack the Da Vinci Code. It sometimes seems like a secret language that confuses and maybe even intimidate business users. But by following a few communication best practices, IT personnel can c... (more)

Want to feel old? Sixteen years ago, in 1993, The Late Show with David Letterman premiered on CBS. Where has the time gone? Letterman, for most people, is synonymous with his 'Top Ten List.' It's such a part of our culture that The Top Ten List even has its own Wikipedia entry. F... (more)

Have you ever taken your car in for service and heard the mechanic talk to you about a cracked manifold? (VERY nasty, BTW). Or maybe you've gone to a doctor who told you your symptoms indicated preliminary Pharyngitis and you needed a broad spectrum, BID? All you're thinking is, ... (more)

CEOs are known for flawless communication, right? We understand their ideas and can execute on them. Well, maybe...it depends on the communication vehicle they select. When leaders speak or write, we have the chance to capture the flavor and nuances of their communication: in dep... (more)

Some leaders have minds that are as logical and clear as a bell. We listen to these executives speak and immediately connect with their ideas. They are genuine human beings. And of course, all readers of The CXO Mindset are such genuine human beings and communicators! But...a str... (more)

IT personnel have been referred to as many things: some see the role of IT staff as everything from heroes and essential partners, to %^&**!@#!! villains. But how about a Pit Bull or a Chichuahua? Is there a German Shepherd lurking inside that SOA developer? If you take a look a... (more)

Tweet alert. Almost 100 years ago on August 20th, The Times "telegrammed" the first message for global distribution. The simple sentence: This message sent around the world, comes in at six words, 35 characters. (Was this the original tweet?) OK, cool trivia, but as a busy execut... (more)

The newest target population is IT presenters, and the geographic scope of this nascent disease is now global. Rapid onslaught of symptoms include the inability to focus and then agitation. Physical symptoms are fidgeting, then heavy sighing, culminating in the urge to scream.  T... (more)

How can you not escape the Woodstock hype on this, the 40th anniversary weekend of THE event of the sixties? Peace, love and music are everywhere in the news. No matter what your feelings for this sixties meta-marvel, you have to admit, it DID shape a generation. So what you say!... (more)

Can leadership be boiled down to just three basic lessons? Whether you're a retail team supervisor with a staff of three, an IT project manager overseeing 20 engineers, or a CXO leading thousands of disparate employees, it's a provocative question. Really, it's a great question to ... (more)

Normal 0 0 1 521 2975 Core Ideas Communication 24 5 3653 10.265 0 0 0 As an IT professional, you talk about IT issues all the time. But when you speak to a business crowd, well… it can sometimes be very challenging, to say the least. Have you ever been faced with this type of com... (more)

... _ _ _ ... OK, trivia fans, what did I just say? Ex-boy scouts, sailors, or ham-radio buffs will recognize those dots and dashes as Morse Code for SOS. And for the really trivia-obsessed, today is an SOS anniversary. On Aug 11th 1907, the first SOS distress signal was used by ... (more)

Need a cool metaphor to wow your team into action? Listen-up to how Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz used metaphor to focus his organization and give them a rallying cry. A recent Business Week article highlights Schultz' story about Starbucks and spilled milk. Schultz would not all... (more)

The government is going to pay you to get rid of outdated cars and trade-up to a more efficient vehicle. Sweet. What if you applied that same reasoning to your presentations? What communication clunkers would you get rid of? What are some of the outdated and ineffective words or ph... (more)

At times, do you think you're a Superman or Wonder Woman? Pitted in a daily struggle between the IT department and the business units? We all know that IT managers juggle a number of hats and scramble to put out dozens of fires, and truly can be a superhero to their organizations... (more)