Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

One of my friends wanted help in growing her business. As a local restaurant owner, she had received many accolades and encouragement to expand. Being a wise (and cautious) leader, she wanted first to see if the compliments she was receiving were warranted and whether her "product" was truly worthy of expansion. She didn't want to trust that her friends and family weren't just being nice. Rather, she wanted to measure the quality of her restaurant.

This simple statement -- "the soft stuff is the hard stuff" -- should appear as a screen saver on each device of every IT professional. It was true when either the management and IT guru Tom Davenport or the late reengineering guru Mike Hammer first said it, and it is still true today.

The past few months have been compelling for me in my role as a project management consultant and risk management expert.

Last month we looked at the veracity factor in Big Data, which concerns the uncertainty of input and the need to cross-check and correct it (see "The Veracity Factor"). This is important because results in streams, such as social data comments, do not yield a precise interpretation.

In a mutual boot-strapping beginning with the dawn of Homo sapiens, mankind and information have both exploded in variety, velocity, and volume. Our fates have been intertwined. We advance by harvesting, using, and sharing information. Along the way, information persists, mutates, and diffuses further.

For some time now, tablets routinely have been touted as an ideal platform for making mobile BI practical. But to what extent are end-user organizations actually adopting tablets to support their mobile BI initiatives?

With flat economic numbers, austerity measures kicking in, and armed conflicts roiling most areas of the world, last year came to a close much as it began. Although most equity markets are looking good today, debt levels still make investors, politicians, and credit-rating agencies nervous.