Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders
Leadership and teaming skills are front and center in times of rapid change. Meet today’s constant disruption head on with expert guidance in leadership, business strategy, transformation, and innovation. Whether the disruption du jour is a digitally-driven upending of traditional business models, the pandemic-driven end to business as usual, or the change-driven challenge of staffing that meets your transformation plans — you’ll be prepared with cutting edge techniques and expert knowledge that enable strategic leadership.
Subscribe to Arthur D. Little's Culture & Leadership Newsletter
Insight
Our goal in this issue is not to put a finite point on decision making but to expose ourselves to the vast array of decision-making complexities. All of this issue's articles give us more to think about, as well as practical tools. We didn't put this issue together to ruin your week. We put it together to arm you with insights. We are confident that readers will store some of the ideas we deliver here somewhere in the backs of their minds and that this information will be triggered at an appropriate time.
Resiliency builds over time by the way an organization responds to change. Avoiding change does not build resiliency; in fact, avoiding change reduces resiliency. The most resilient organizations seek out small ways to continue to improve. In this Executive Update, Sheila Q. Cox advises you on how you can build resiliency.
The growth of mobile technology and devices such as smartphones has created a new phenomenon for communication and deeply changed the way businesses process data. One such phenomenon that has emerged in the business environment is "bring your own device" (BYOD), which means that employees use their personal devices to access company resources for work, inside or outside the organizational environment.
One day, not far into the future, we will regard this era as the time of data breaches. Data breaches will still occur occasionally, but they will be smaller and far less frequent, because those we entrust with data will have learned how to defend it from theft. In that future time, what will we be doing differently to protect our data? One thing we will be doing better is understanding how people think.
In June 2013, the actions of Edward Snowden set off a firestorm of revelations about the inner workings of one of the US's most secretive organizations, the National Security Agency (NSA). As the country began debating the spy versus whistleblower status of Mr. Snowden, a second, equally chilling dialogue began: how was one person, a contractor, able to walk so easily out the door of a heavily monitored facility with a treasure trove of secrets? For all organizations, it served as a sharp reminder of how much damage one insider can generate.
Despite the many billions of dollars in expenditures and millions of people being impacted by data breaches around the world, what we have today is a very expensive -- and seemingly unwinnable -- game of cat and mouse being played by hackers with the companies and agencies they target. And let's face it, the cats (whether they be lone individuals or, as is more common today, organized or even state-sponsored groups of professional hackers) are winning handily. Thus it's time for a paradigm shift in data security -- a new approach that will change the game entirely. It's time for the Data Shell Game. In this article, I will explain how this new form of data security works and what implementing this new way of managing and protecting data will mean for IT and for organizations as a whole.
A corporate information security strategy will advance the understanding of risk management. It can bring with it a sense of security to the shareholders and corporate governance. When producing an architectural assessment, there should be a strategy that includes a management team responsible for operating procedures and a technical team to oversee the security efforts. These efforts include training, education, and implementation. Whether big or small, all organizations should have one primary individual who can direct the support, implementation, and deployment of information security.