"I got onto this idea after I wrote the post Enterprises Iffy On Windows 7, which reported the early results of an InformationWeek Analytics survey. We found that many businesses were reluctant to upgrade from XP because of migration costs. Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that we've all been assessing the operating system upgrade question like a disoriented pilot trying to fly his way out of the Bermuda Triangle. We're going 'round in the same old circles." The tools are changing, the needs are changing, the apps are changing, and the workforce is changing. Is your Computing Device strategy changing as well?

8) And how's your thinking on another novel approach: social media? Are you relishing the role of Dr. No, devoting time and money to ensuring the purity of essence the thousands or tens of thousands of computing devices in your organization so that they won't be CORRUPTED by time-suckers such as Twitter and Facebook? Or are you pushing for the company to try new ways of exploiting the remarkable power of social media in engaging with customers, reaching out to prospects, and monitoring the conversations that are taking place about your company and your brands whether you like it or not? As Global CIO wrote earlier this week in "Why CIOs Need The Transformative Power Of Facebook": "Twitter is helping corporations of all stripes engage with customers candidly, productively, globally, and inexpensively. In this age of experience-driven marketing, in which customers not only want but expect to be involved in product co-creation and enhancements, Twitter gives businesses the unprecedented ability to tap into customer-driven feedback loops, which just on their own are highly valuable, and turn them into marketing labs, message amplifiers, focus groups, sales tests, and possibly even goodwill ambassadors." If you're unwilling to get to know Twitter merely because much of the content on it makes reading the phone book seem exciting, then why don't you also ban smartphones because, potentially, they could be used to access porn?

9) Do you share with your team examples of game-changing innovation that can inspire and motivate? Do you remind them that the only limits to their own creativity are self-imposed? Do you reward them for reaching out across organizational lines to try to do in collaboration what neither side could do individually? Do you reward risk-taking in fact, or just in word? Here's an example of a tremendous bit of innovation that involved two corporate departments that almost inconceivably had never worked together before in the company's 100+-year history, and it comes with a short video clip that we at The New IT Manifesto fervently recommend you share with your team. In a column a couple months ago, here's how Global CIO described this extraordinary new IT-stuffed product in "Six Lessons CIOs Must Learn From Coke's Dazzling Innovation": "Juicing its entire demand-to-supply chain from factory to consumer, Coca-Cola is rolling out a dazzling new product that's hard to define but nevertheless does all of the following: It lets the company test more new products more quickly with more accuracy, it lets restaurants manage inventory more effectively at lower cost, and it lets consumers select from 100 different drink choices. "As my colleague Mary Hayes Weier described recently in a superb analysis, Coca-Cola's new Freestyle dispenser should also give Coke the ability to sell more product, provide greater value to its middlemen restaurants, and discover breakthrough products more quickly; give restaurants a drink dispenser that's not only massively more flexible than its current lineup but also hip and jammed with intelligence; and give consumers the freedom to experiment with a huge range of potential drink combinations." And you can view the video about Freestyle here. If you don't set the bar for your team high enough to achieve Freestyle-like breakthroughs, then should you be surprised when they respond with largely uninspired work?

10) Life's too short to keep our heads down and just hope the world passes us by. Welcome to the CIO Revolution!

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