Ramon Padilla Resources on ZDNet

ZDNet Resources

10 ways to manage yourself through a challenge: What do you do when you're faced with a task and find that you're not progressing as you should -- or that you're even failing to accomplish it? Fight the temptation to beat yourself up over it and manage your way through the situation. Ramon Padilla offers 10 practical steps...; Tags: Ramon Padilla, Blogging, Strategy, Internet, Management; Download resources 2008-03-25
10 things you should do to prepare for the audit bogeyman: An audit can be a harrowing exercise, particularly if your organization is flying by the seat of its pants. The more time you can invest in defining policies and procedures and documenting adherence to them, separating duties, updating your equipment inventory, and performing all those other mundane tasks that tend...; Tags: Audit, Ramon Padilla, Financial Accounting, Finance; Download resources 2008-03-12
Top personnel management mistakes: Lately, I have been thinking about a couple of management practices that seem (based on my experience of more than 18 years in government) to occur more frequently in government settings and to have significant detrimental effects on employees and the organization. The first one is keeping underperforming employees around...; Tags: personnel management, firing; Blog posts 2006-09-20
IT computing back to the future: I was on vacation last week and found myself waxing philosophic about how computing has evolved in our organizations over the years and where computing is headed over the next five to ten years. I can’t remember exactly when he said it, but John Gage’s statement, “The network...; Tags: INTERNET, Servers, Cyberthreats, information technology, computing, computing environment, client-server; Blog posts 2006-09-19
NIMS: Planning in the real world: I just finished completing the 3rd National Incident Management System (NIMS) compliance course required of me by my organization, and it got me thinking about planning in general. There are a lot of planning processes for which we are responsible or participate in: Disaster Recovery, Continuity of Operations, Accountability...; Tags: National Incident Management System; Blog posts 2006-09-08

How high are your employees' plates piled?: I was fortunate enough to be able to spend some time this week with Nance Guilmartin. She is an Emmy-award winning broadcaster, author, speaker, corporate consultant and executive coach. Nance has a way of challenging you to become better even when you think you are doing well in the area...; Tags: Nance Guilmartin, plate; Blog posts 2006-09-07
Sexy Tools + Zero Planning = Failure: Have you attended a Web conference lately? Have you hosted a Web conference? If you have, you know that attending and hosting are two different things entirely. Ever purchase a new technology and then immediately get asked why you haven’t rolled it out? A colleague and I have had...; Tags: Web conferencing; Blog posts 2006-08-23
Stop coddling the computer illiterate: I was listening to NPR on the way home yesterday when they aired a story regarding teenagers coming of age in this digital world, and how this is the first generation of children to have mastered current technology before their parents did. It went on to describe all the horrible...; Tags: proudly, competence, technology-ignorance; Blog posts 2006-08-09
Hate your job? Look in the mirror: I am sometimes disheartened by the negativity of people’s attitudes towards their job situations. If you comb the TechRepublic discussions or any board where people can comment, you will find a lot of hostility and pent-up frustration. Partly, this is a function of this kind of medium—people can vent in...; Tags: job; Blog posts 2006-08-03
Vista: MS still owns the desktop: When you are looking for an operating system to run your mission critical systems on, you look for an OS that is stable, manageable, secure, scalable, and that can perform when called upon. That being the case, there is little mystery as to why Linux has made inroads into the...; Tags: operating system, desktop; Blog posts 2006-07-11
How essential are you?: It looks like such a benign statement: Please identify the essential personnel in your organization/department/unit. This is usually one of the first tasks in any continuity of operations plan (COOP). However, getting people to agree on who is essential (as well as which functions are essential) is anything but benign....; Tags: continuity of operations plan; Blog posts 2006-07-10
Performance evaluations: Love, hate, need, want: Performance evaluations/appraisals: Do you love them, hate them, need them, want them? To be honest, I'm a bit schizophrenic about them, because all of the above apply to me. I love them when they are meaningful, well prepared, well thought-out, and presented in a fashion that encourages true dialogue regarding...; Tags: performance evaluation; Blog posts 2006-07-07
Is an MBA the only way to advance?: I just finished reading an article in Infoworld that says more and more technology professionals are headed back to school to obtain their MBAs in order to advance/enhance their careers by better understanding business. In some circles, those three letters are a requirement for a C-level position, and while...; Tags: MBA, career; Blog posts 2006-06-13
Â¿Hablas espaÃ±ol?: Raise your hand if your website is multilingual. My guess is you probably do not have your hand raised right now. In fact, you are probably thinking that it is hard enough providing new services and maintaining existing English language websites with your staff and budget, let alone having to...; Tags: Web site; Blog posts 2006-05-24
ROI on a data dictionary?: If you Google the term data dictionary, you will get 100 or more results of definitions that generally mean the same thing. A "data dictionary" is data about data. It is what defines the items in your database(s) and can be looked to for definitions, structures, use, allowable content,...; Tags: data dictionary; Blog posts 2006-05-08
IT project success is all about getting buy-in: I just spent three days at a conference with 70 other people spending time listening, learning and talking about digital object repositories, methods for naming and identifying these digital objects amongst shared repositories, and methodologies for ensuring quality of these digital objects. The information and discussion was interesting, thought-provoking and...; Tags: This Group, information technology, buy-In; Blog posts 2006-05-04
MobiKEY: Poor man's VPN?: "MobiKey is the world's first USB thin-client for instant, secure remote computing. The latest edition to Route1's Mobi Solution family, MobiKEY simply plugs into a USB port to turn any internet-connected Microsoft Windows computer into an instant, secure Virtual Private Office, with computing, applications and data located elsewhere behind...; Tags: MobiKEY; Blog posts 2006-04-24
Survey says: We will cut off our nose to spite our face: Pardon me if I seem a little cynical this week; it's been one of those weeks where I have borne witness to a lot of decision-making that seems to be decoupled from logic. Actually, that's not true; there is logic behind this decision-making, just not common sense. The logic I...; Tags: strategy, planning; Blog posts 2006-04-21
To put an end to constant attacks, do you have to get off the Microsoft train?: Many of you are heads-down in your budget process now, and some of you are perhaps at a juncture where you are choosing a new product to upgrade or replace an existing hardware or software system. There are many things to consider: price, functionality, how it fits in your current...; Tags: Microsoft Corp.; Blog posts 2006-04-12
Getting your job journal into shape: I was in a strategic planning meeting the other day and as part of the discussion, a decision was made to pursue the creation of one or more positions. That’s a good thing, as opposed to talks about layoffs, and it made me think about how job opportunities often spring...; Tags: job, job journal; Blog posts 2006-04-04