Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

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.

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.

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.

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.

CISOs, CIOs, and other technology leaders are well-served with a strong digital- and cyber-savvy corporate board, as are shareholders and other corporate stake­holders. In a world increasingly dependent on complex digital systems for growth and resiliency, ensuring the boardroom is a critical digital and cyber-control point is a necessary and overdue step.

Why do technology projects succeed? The most vital ingredient is organizational and personal courage.

The increases of women in senior or executive roles over the past two decades have been less than inspiring. It would seem, therefore, that although leadership literature has played a significant role in raising the profile of women in management, much needs to happen in actual board rooms and manage­ment suites in order to advance the careers of women in leadership positions.