The authors relate how the data science team at Sanofi’s Toronto, Canada, pharmaceutical manufacturing site moved from a reactive to a proactive operational mode to enhance data analytics and increase efficiency. They describe the prescriptive analytics solution they developed to significantly reduce reaction times when manufacturing issues occur. Their live data analytics engine accommodates various modeling approaches and performs additional data mining.

This Advisor takes a closer look at cyber resilience: companies must protect data systems against cyberattackers trying to take advantage of pandemic-related changes and must adjust their crisis management measures to ensure continuity of activities when a crisis develops.

Leaders need to avoid falling victim to the sunk-cost fallacy. Measure your organization’s perceptions about its emotional investment as well as whatever reputation, political capital, money, time, or any other resource it has committed to the project thus far. The most important step to freeing yourself from making poor decisions based on sunk costs is to recognize the logical fallacy. Even simply being aware of it will help you make more rational decisions in the future.

This article is a compilation of contributions from the Guest Editor’s colleagues at the Atlantic Systems Guild, who believe that the work modes of the pandemic years may have signaled a change in the way we need to work from now on. The article is organized into six potential patterns, from reinvention of the office, the value of group work, and challenges of remote work to work-life-balance, team cohesion difficulties, and the potential to move to an entirely virtual model.

Bill Fox advocates for leaders to transform internally in a way that enables them to shape the future rather than just respond to events. He describes six areas of growth that are key to transformation: forward thinking, self leadership, inner awareness and intuition, inner-leader journey, listening and dialogue, and understanding how the mind works. Fox stresses that insight for new leadership resides not in the “other”; rather, it is accessible to everyone. By enhancing our ability to look and listen within, we shape our world from the inside out.

Debabrata Pruseth and Pooja Subramanian take a sweeping look at how managers can use psychology to mitigate the challenges of today’s changed work environment. The article describes how their Prism View Framework can help us change our work culture, which is based on planning and certainty, to embrace uncertainty. This involves understanding employees’ mental well-being; their need for meaningful goals and flexibility; and the roles of digitization, personalization, and communication. The article also discusses the softer skills that managers can (and should) use to form and sustain successful teams, including self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

Robert Fuchs says self leadership can help us understand teams, ourselves as leaders, and better ways to select and train new employees. He begins by explaining the difference between self and identity (we change identities to suit the situation, but we don’t change our “selfs.”) Fuchs then describes how fragmentation of the selfs makes people less able to use signals from the self in decision making, so we must extend the concept of responsibility beyond our contractual obligations as employees. He explains the importance of understanding the relationship between the soul, the mind, and the body, leading to a discussion of how strong self leadership can result in sustained productivity.

The team is an integral unit of work. Yes, there has always been romantic talk of the superstar, the super-programmer, the one who can outperform a team of 10 mediocre developers, but if you truly watched our world for many years, then it is clear that delivery of the real work is done by teams. In some cases, it comes from teams of teams. And that is why teams are worth studying and are good grounds for discussion; they are fascinating — hence, the reason for this issue of Amplify.

The authors offer their own Agile Teamwork Effectiveness Model via five teamwork components (shared leadership, peer feedback, redundancy, adaptability, and team orientation) along with three coordinating mechanisms (shared mental models, mutual trust, and communication). They describe the three main ways their model can be useful. First, colocated teams can better understand how their team works by reflecting on how well they meet each factor in the model and by using behavioral markers to identify ways to improve. Second, it helps distributed teams, multi-teams, and teams doing safety-critical development to evaluate themselves and make improvement. Third, it’s a way for Agile teams not doing software development to better manage themselves, provided they’re doing knowledge-intensive work.

Jim Brosseau explains that culture and leadership are connected by the form in which power is wielded in an organization. He uses John R.P. French and Bertram Raven’s five forms of power (coercive, reward, legitimate, expert, and referent) to show how these forms result in certain leadership processes and company culture. Brosseau then uses the Lift-Slab Organizational Model to show why organizations in an unpredictable environment must have a participatory structure and a project-centric approach to succeed.

Most cyberattacks come from known vectors and methods that are well-defined. As we explore in this Advisor, these threats can be effectively defended against by ensuring that basic security measures are in place.

Explainable AI (XAI) goes deep within the AI system to identify the reasoning behind recommendations, verify the data, and make algorithms and results transparent. Such explainability reduces biases in AI-based decisions, supports legal compliance, and promotes ethical decisions. This Executive Update explores the need for, importance of, and approaches to making AI systems explainable

CIOs and CTOs must steer their organizations toward the right technology portfolio to effectively realize sustainable business models while generating value for stakeholders. Their role in continuously assessing, designing, and implementing sustainable business models by engaging effectively in a sustainable business model canvas can ensure a future-fit business, which will take organizations closer to a zero or negative impact on socio-ecological systems.

CIOs and CTOs must steer their organizations toward the right technology portfolio to effectively realize sustainable business models while generating value for stakeholders. Their role in continuously assessing, designing, and implementing sustainable business models by engaging effectively in a sustainable business model canvas can ensure a future-fit business, which will take organizations closer to a zero or negative impact on socio-ecological systems.

Current interest around sustainability and net-zero initiatives mostly focuses on efforts to reduce carbon emissions associated with various products and services. But, as we explore in this Advisor, methane is another emission that wreaks havoc on the environment and deserves our attention.

In this Advisor, we share a Q&A session from Cutter Fellow William Ulrich's recent webinar on the role of business architecture in software design.

A successful project relies on good relationships among team members. To achieve this, managers must be prepared to address three types of communication-related issues: project conflict, relationship conflict, and task conflict.

Drones will have a future positive impact on advanced air mobility, particularly in the area of package delivery. As we explore in this Advisor, drones can be used in this manner to enable sustain­ability while at the same time leaving a relatively small footprint.

Of all the IT projects underway during the past 15 years, only a small proportion can be classified as “bleeding edge.” The vast majority have been mod­ernizations of existing operational IT systems using proven computing technologies. Thus, it is hard to understand why the level of IT failure has remained relatively constant. This Advisor examines the factors underlying these failures.

Experienced project managers with strong project management acumen still occasionally take part in a project that seems to take on a life of its own, devouring organizational resources. This Executive Update examines a few failure scenarios that could have been avoided with better decision-making processes and offers a set of key questions project managers should continue to ask along the project’s journey.

Yassine Maleh argues that, during the pandemic, companies made hasty infrastructure changes and deviated from their security policies and controls. As businesses recover, he recommends a review of risk management processes in light of pandemic-related changes. He shares practices designed to ensure infrastructure security and resilience and suggests five ways to incorporate risk management into cybersecurity initiatives.

In addition to zero trust and privacy by design, the authors discuss strategies for reducing human-related risk when enterprises are no longer confined to physical spaces. They also call into question some cybersecurity myths that can lead to poor decisions and business practices. The authors argue that while cyber threats are continuously changing and emerging and should remain an area of focus, the ever-expanding attack surface is also a challenge. Another concern to consider is improving security skills, so the authors suggest a decision framework that includes vulnerabilities around social and human elements in addition to physical and information systems.

While the pandemic and enhanced digitalization have introduced more types of cyber threats, the authors assert that most recent high-profile attacks are not very sophisticated. Rather, they happen when basic cybersecurity practices are ignored or overlooked. It is likely that organizations are overestimating certain types of cyber risk, leading to overspending to secure gaps. There is also a danger that overly restrictive practices will reduce employee productivity and stifle innovation. Therefore, a realistic risk assessment after implementation of basic security practices and commensurate controls is important.

This first article of the issue is from a team of cybersecurity researchers from a leading engineering institute in India. They explain how the ubiquitous problem of password authentication can be resolved using Fast Identity Online Alliance’s (FIDO) mechanism.

This inaugural issue of Amplify was carefully organized to encourage dialogue on cyber-resilience strategies and countermeasures. This discussion is extremely relevant, since there is more disruption than ever before, and the truth is that no device is secure! A solid understanding of both risk and resilience is a critical element in every organization’s cybersecurity plan.