'Corporate Politics for IT Managers: How to get Streetwise' addresses some of the most persistent problems faced by IT managers which undermine their power and influence in their organisations and which prevents them obtaining seat on the board of directors.

It deals directly with the IT stereotype and offers advice on how to survive and then thrive despite the odds being stacked against the IT manager. Divided into four parts, ’How the IT Manager Gets Streetwise’ begins by placing the IT stereotype in context, and proceeds to challenge the IT persons’ habitual behaviours of the past, and present ways of rethinking IT services, before concluding with how managers can become "streetwise" in today’s organisations.

There are many books on the market telling IT managers how to construct IT and IS strategies, and even more on how to ’run’ an IT department or function. However, few deal with the politics in organisations.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction: the IT tribe
What’s the problem? - The IT stereotype and organisational politics
I’m just trying to do my job - Coping with the stereotype
The phantom IT strategy
Projects: the illusion of being managed
Staying alive
Writes of passage
Meetings (of minds?)
Reinventing the wheel
Firefighting and rework
Shattering the illusion
Why won’t other people let me do my job? - Leading, managing and abdicating
Recruiting into the tribe
Talk to me
Where are you when we want you?
Lock horns and push
Business priorities and culture: the unspoken agenda
Breaking the taboo: marketing IT services
Suppliers and consultants: the wolves at the door
Let someone else do it for a change
Becoming streetwise - Shades of grey
Say hello to the rest of your brain
Blowing the whistle
All stressed out and nowhere to go
Lighten up a little
IQ is not everything
The road to Damascus
You lead, I’ll follow
The front row of the grid
Where am I going?
Riding off into the sunset - You are not alone.