Ostentatious or Overboard?

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  CRM   Stakeholder Management  

It happens sometimes--after having suffered personally through financially lean periods or struggling to bring our companies to a new level of success by carefully rationing scotch tape and paper clips, we find ourselves miraculously on top of the heap and doing well. Beware though that you do not stray to "the dark side" and let yourself be swayed by overzealous realtors, salespeople, etc., and make overly generous purchases--or your meteoric rise may cause you to plummet into a charred crater.

Gone are the days of outright opulence and visible luxury. In the world of IT, everyone is trying to squeeze extra change out of every dollar, euro, rupee, et al, so it is advisable that you be careful that your signs of flamboyancy don't work against you.

The Consultant Example

Do you hire consultants or outsource some specialized functions to temporary gurus? Aside from the suit-worn-to-impress that they may have had on during their interviews with you, have you noticed what kind of clothing they wear when you see them on a day-to-day basis? In that same vein, have you looked in your company's parking lot? What kind of car do they drive? Better yet--have you seen the facility they operate out of and the equipment that they use?

Let's put it another way: Chances are that when you want to hire contracted staff you are looking for individuals who…

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