Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

In this Executive Update, the last of three related Updates, we evaluate how financial organizations are responding to the new challenges of cloud outsourcing and continue to distill our findings based on research and data collection conducted from 2014-2016. Using insight from our interviewees, we share some action points through a framework that enables organizations to manage this increasingly complex, crucial area. We also outline some good practices for managing cloud-based innovation on a continuing basis in order to maintain daily compliance. 

Regardless of whether Agile teams operate with or without a scaled frame­work, the need to match the expectations of the business users on the receiving end of the value generated by the team with the internal measures of throughput is critical. The three challenges described in this Advisor highlight the importance of measuring value in the eyes of the recipient of the output of work, not only the effort generated to attain value.

At the Cutter Digital Transformation & Innovation Bootcamp, Cutter Fellow and Harvard Business School Professor Karim Lakhani talked about digitally-driven disruption of traditional business models for value creation and capture, discussing platform models like Facebook and Twitter. To date, Twitter has clearly done a good job “creating value.” But unlike Facebook, it continues to struggle with the capture part of the equation.

In this on-demand webinar, Cutter Senior Consultant Paul Harmon considers the growing role of artificial intelligence and cognitive technologies in all aspects of business. He argues that cognitive technologies will simply extend the ongoing digital transformation requiring that companies reconsider their business models and processes yet again and that they will need to incorporate intelligent elements to remain competitive.

The role of EA leaders in technology innovation is to scan the horizon of emerging technologies to determine how they are being applied and identify opportunities for the organization to innovate for competitive advantage. Once EA leaders have identified and analyzed those opportunities, businesses can formulate strategies for adoption.

For organizations to survive and thrive in the modern world, we should be able to work “remote first”: working online as if we were in the office together. Our companies will only be stronger for it. The things that make remote working successful are the same things we want in place anyway: effortless and fast communication, a shared place for files and conversation, and alignment on a common vision.

Having clearly defined outcomes creates the opportunity for stakeholders to reimagine their business, which informs the shape of future capabilities.

We usually think of leaders in large terms: Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and so on. However, small acts of leadership happen every day, forming the glue that holds civil society together. These include helping a shorter person put a bag in the overhead compartment, organizing neighborhood cleanups, or starting petitions to change government. These are moments of “guest leadership.”