Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

We hope the articles in this issue of CBTJ will advance the state of the knowledge for all readers, regardless ofyour specific area of interest in fintech. Whether youwish to gain an overview of the emerging fintech themes, broaden your knowledge of blockchain tech­nology, or understand the impact these technologies arehaving on the insurance and payments industries, there are learnings for you here as you continue on yourfintech journey. 

Businesses cannot establish a culture that is characterized by innovation until they intentionally adopt patterns and practices that enable innovation in the organization. Agile software development consists of many practices that businesses can adopt to facilitate innovation. In this Advisor, I highlight three core practices that businesses need to adopt to keep innovation alive in their organizations.

In the early 1980s, one of the events that kicked US artificial intelligence (AI) efforts into high gear was the announcement that the government of Japan was funding the Fifth Generation Project — a project to design a special computer for AI work. The US government promptly followed suit, and US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the military provided grants for US companies to work on their own “Fifth Generation” computers. I mention this because Japan’s National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (NIAIST) has just announced that it will fund the development of an AI supercomputer.

I propose a discipline of “teamspotting,” which you can think of as a variety of “management by walking around.” It involves direct observation of the group or its surroundings, supplemented with some models of how a team achieves the intellectual equivalent of sofa lifting.

In our experience, one of the most important attributes in the success of top-performing organizations is a collective mindset that differentiates them through a deeper understanding of their customers.

Architecture is an organization function, just like the many other functions. And, it therefore needs to deal with many of the same issues that, say, finance, needs to deal with. Many of these issues are readily apparent if we get in touch with the intrinsic nature of organizations and what they consist of. Sometimes, this “dust” isn’t as visible because it is often swept under the wide rug of “architecture leadership.” This would be okay as long as there is a clear understanding of what architecture leadership is, but if it becomes just an amorphous catchall, it may end up hiding important organizational behaviors and patterns that lie unaddressed and untapped.

In my experience, I've found that IT executives operate, understandably, on a diet of logic, rationality, and the search for the "right" way. This reliance on finding and applying the one and only answer — the "truth" — prevails despite numerous technical advances over the years that have disproved previously held IT "truths." In contrast, business leaders are beginning to realize that today's complex world means that there is perhaps no single truth, no one easy strategy to achieve competitive advantage and add value.

Having an Agile organization attracts a different type of employee, guarantees Agile market behavior, and is fun to work in. It is a sufficient precondition to resilience and fast market reaction, but not a necessary one.