Washington, DC (January 28, 2019): As women continue to collectively own their voice and demand equality, author, Angela C. Dingle, is providing a guide to help business women and aspiring women entrepreneurs embrace their “Girl Powers,” in her debut book, Discovering Your Girl Powers.

This book holds the keys to helping women build confidence, charisma and credibility in business and when expanding her personal brand. On Thursday, February 7th, men and women are invited to learn more about a woman’s unique ability to use her style, poise and presence to become empowered and successful during an intimate fireside chat with author, Angela C. Dingle.

Attendees of the book tour launch event will receive a complimentary copy of the newly released book Discovering Your Girl Powers, hor d’oeuvres, plus, they’ll experience a fireside chat with Angela C. Dingle.

When: Thursday, February 7th

Time: 5:30 P.M. – 7:00 P.M.

Where: The City Club of Washington
555 13th St., NW
Washington, DC

Speakers: Angela C. Dingle: is a leadership coach, management consultant and speaker. As a Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) ® Certified Practitioner and Certified Management Consultant (CMC) ®, she helps individuals and business
executives develop the skills they need to become effective leaders.

An award winning business owner, Angela is the President and CEO of Ex Nihilo Management, LLC, a management and technology consultancy based in Washington, DC.

What: Book Tour Launch Event

Cost: $25

Please send media inquiries to Angel Livas: 202-930-3262 or angel@dcmediaconnection.com. Individuals can register online at https://www.exnihilo-mgmt.com

If you haven’t already done so, get started by reading the first three chapters of the book. This will give you a sense of how to identify each of the powers. Then, check out the section on Putting it All Together to identify which of the three powers you want to work on developing. Although the strategies are not listed in any specific order, it is important that you develop the first one in order to be successful at the remainder.

Here’s to new discoveries! I would love to hear about your journey, so do keep in touch.

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State your business case.  People want to know “what’s in it for me?” (WIIFM). You must articulate how the best practice supports business goals. When people in different parts of the organization understand how a best practice supports clear business goals, they can actively collaborate to help it spread.

Adapt the practice to fit local conditions. There’s no one size fits all solution to today’s business, managerial and technical challenges, so you may need to tailor the practice to meet the unique needs of or local conditions in an organization. What’s important is that you allocate time for learning from mistakes, adapting, and internalizing new behaviors.

Understand how your practice really works. Team dynamics and individual contributions can play an important role in the adoption of best practices. A team that has worked together successfully in the past will require less of a focus on team communications as would a newly formed team. It is important to recognize and manage these factors throughout the transition.

Make sure your organization supports collaboration. Nothing can derail organizational change quicker than competing reward systems. If the company rewards innovation over collaboration, you’ll have a tough job on your hands. Be sure to assess which systems and structures support or block collaboration within your organization.

Don’t allow gems to get lost in the computer.  Simply stated, don’t allow technology decisions (e.g., which database should be used to store the best practices) to distract people from the task at hand. Technology should be used to facilitate retrieval of best practices in a manner that is convenient and efficient for the people that need to use them.

If you’ve had success propogating best practices, take a minute and share your thoughts.

In response to this need, several Enterprise IT Management and IT Governance frameworks have been defined to provide business leaders with the tools, techniques and resources necessary to proactively respond to regulatory issues, enterprise risk and increasingly complex technology. Enterprise IT Management focuses on managing and security an organization’s IT capability in a way that maximizes business value. IT Governance focuses on the leadership, processes and organizational structures that are responsible for ensuring that the organization’s IT investments are implemented and managed in a way that helps to achive their strategic goals and objectives. A few of the more common frameworks are:

• Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a comprehensive set of best practices focused on delivering IT services to the enterprise.
• Control Objects for Information and Related Technology (CobIT) a set of best practices focused on regulatory compliance and alignment of IT
• Projects in Controlled Environments (Prince2) a best practice framework designed to help managers deliver projects on time and within budget.

This month, we will introduce a newsletter and a series of white papers that discusses the complimentary relationship between ITIL and CobIT. Stay tuned for more.

Project – the risk that an IT project will fail to meet objectives due to poorly defined requirements; inadequate project sponsorship; loss of project resources; project scope; insufficient project management processes or organizational maturity.

Technical – the risk that technology will fail to meet business requirements. Examples include unproven technology; complex technology; outdated, unsupported or unstable technology; increasing maintenance and support requirements.

Security – the risk that individuals may gain unauthorized access to confidential or competitive information or systems; the risk that business systems are unable to adequately protect data, personnel and corporate assets in accordance with business requirements and regulations; loss or theft of corporate information.

Financial – the risk that the business will experience financial losses; a poor return on its investment; cost overruns, overspending or wasteful spending; insufficient budgets; financial instability; funding cuts or loss of business revenue.

Availability – the risk that systems, infrastructure or resources critical to business success may become unstable or unavailable and cause a loss of service.

According to research conducted by the IT Governance Institute, “most IT organizations view security and availability as the highest priorities. Most business executives would agree that these are important. However, increasingly the business focus is on return on IT investment and project and investment risks.” The impact of any given risk can affect the business in ways that may not be evident when viewed purely from the CIO’s perspective. It is for these reasons that risk management needs to be a regular topic of meaningful discussion on the senior executive/board agenda.

Understanding the impact of IT investments and risks can be challenging for some senior executives and business leaders. However, as technology becomes increasingly more complex and organizations adapt to changing regulations regarding information security, customer privacy and breach notifications, the responsibility for responding to these challenges and developing risk mitigation strategies cannot rest solely in the CIO?s office. Management of IT risk is not solely a CIO responsibility.

For IT governance to be effective, senior management should review and approve the risk action plan, agree to priorities and commit the necessary resources to execute the plan effectively. Ultimately it is the business?the user of IT services?that must own business-related risks, including those related to use of IT. The business should set the mandate for risk management, provide the resources and funding to support a risk management plan designed to protect business interests, and monitor whether risks are being managed. – IT Governance Institute

According to a 2002 global study conducted by ITGI, in 80% of the organizations surveyed, IT management, rather than the business, was responsible for defining IT risk impact (business units were responsible in only 37 percent of the responding organizations, reflecting a lack of proper involvement in the risk assessment process by the business process owners).

When performed as part of an ongoing and effective IT Governance process, IT risk management should:

• be a regular topic of meaningful discussion on the senior executive/board agenda
• include senior executive review of major IT investments to ensure that they are aligned with the organization?s business objectives
• involve leadership from business units, general counsel, auditors, and security as well as IT
• include periodic assessments to determine vulnerabilities, threats, potential impacts and probability of occurrence
• provide visibility into the progress of major IT project

In my next post, I’ll take a look at a few common risks and discuss what business leaders have to say about them.

• Transparency – proactively managing risk ensures that the CIO is aware of the risks associated with major IT initiatives and provides him/her with the information needed to implement risk mitigation strategies
• Optimized Costs – improving business processes, using a modular approach to system development and leveraging technology investments enables the CIO to more effectively manage the costs associated with software and system development
• Eliminate Duplication – developing and managing a portfolio of programs enables the CIO to identify and eliminate redundant development efforts and streamline programs
• Reduced Maintenance – by following standardized approaches to hardware and software acquisition, sparing, maintenance and provisioning of power, space and cooling, CIOs can reduce the number and range of skills required to maintain systems and the data centers that house them
• Predictability – defining objectives and measuring performance against expectations enable the CIO to see how well IT is performing and over time begin to predict outcomes
• Informed Decision Making – measuring the return on investment, standardizing technology platforms, and eliminating duplication are a few of the factors that enable the CIO to make informed decisions regarding IT investments
• Prevent Waste and Abuse – aligning IT expenditures with Agency objectives, enable the CIO to ensure that taxpayer dollars are managed in accordance with the law
• Accountability – establishing roles and responsibilities enables the CIO to enforce the responsibilities that relate to IT’s alignment with Agency objectives
• Enhanced Communication – the risk management aspects of IT Governance rely upon open communication in order to be effective

• Ensures that individual programs start early by aggregating a definitive list of the most up to date policies with which it will have to comply – since in most instances, programs may be required to comply with multiple regulations.
• Gets actively involved in all program level acquisitions, systems engineering, software development, network engineering, hardware configuration, system verification, and at each milestone during the development.
• Develops the set of tasks, milestones and deliverables that will have to be accomplished in order to satisfy the requirements.
• Communicates the plan to the project team. It’s important that the project team understands what regulations will be applied to the effort, how the project will be impacted, how project performance will be measured and the impact of non-compliance.
• Measures, reports and acts upon compliance issues throughout the life of the program
• Reports progress, status and risk mitigation
• Serves as an advisor to management on technology and compliance matters