Susan H. Cramm

It could keep you up at night--the thought that you could get fired suddenly in spite of the good work you have done. I received a call a few weeks ago from a very talented CIO in shock after being terminated on trumped-up charges of financial improprieties.

You are in a funk. Your work has turned into a grind, your calendar is out of control, and issues are growing into problems. The focus and energy that you once had are dissipating. People in your organization have noticed-they call you distracted, unengaged and tense. You are the MIA CIO

Life's too short to make stupid mistakes--or I should say, Your career is too short to make the same mistakes others have been making for years and years. We have all seen promising careers derailed too early over something that could have easily been avoided, if only they had known.

MIT's Peter Weill says that "an effective IT governance structure is the single most important predictor of getting value from IT," (from his paper "Don't Just Lead, Govern: Implementing Effective IT Governance," coauthored with Richard Woodham). If that's true, how do we explain the fact that many organizations have not set up governance in a way that promotes value?

What are your career goals? That's the first question I ask my prospective coaching clients -- and one very few people can answer. It's ironic that most of us spend too much time working toward goals we cannot specify.

Most leaders seem to interpret the phrase "change management" to mean "a way get the organization to do what I want it to do." They follow the letter rather than the spirit of change management. As a result, their change management plans are a weak, tasteless broth consisting of communication meetings, logos, Lucite paperweights, t-shirts and employee idea programs.

What are your career goals? That's the first question I ask my prospective coaching clients

Many organizations are a shell of what they once were or a shadow of what they could be, because they give the best work to outsiders and while no one intentionally outsources the best work that is, the most important projects and the critical business relationships but it happens all too often, says one corporate executive.