Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

If the maxim "what gets measured, gets managed" should be used to judge the use of social media in companies, then clearly the topic is moving beyond mere casual interest. Cutter Consortium's recent survey on the topic makes that abundantly clear. However, until I analyzed the results of the survey, I felt that many in industry were thinking somewhat schizophrenically. Most CIOs and business leaders I talk to are -- themselves singly or speaking for their organizations -- of two minds regarding social media.

This issue of CBR was quite interesting and a lot of fun to write about. It centers on a very timely and increasingly pervasive topic: social media, focusing our attention on the monitoring of the social media landscape by organizations. As the saying goes, and which Vince alluded to in his contribution, you can't manage what you don't measure. While the old saying may or may not be true, what is sure is that measuring is costly, in terms of time and the expense associated with the right tools.

It's amazing how organizations spend vast sums in the interest of discovering the newest, latest, and most advanced business practices and technologies. They throw their energies behind radical change, while ignoring the improvements that can be made through effective implementation of existing practice.

It's time we stopped this debate over the roles and responsibilities between the project manager (PM) and the business analyst (BA) and focused our efforts on realizing the benefits of the PM and BA partnering to deliver maximum business value to their clients.

Whenever we deal with challenges of gargantuan proportions, we break them down. This decomposition enables us to understand, manage, and ameliorate the challenges.

If social media is unimportant to a company, the company must consider that it is enormously important to its prospects and customers. But a company cannot simply tack it on and expect it to foster satisfied customers and a more innovative enterprise.

A little less than two weeks ago, the international banking community in the form of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (which is part of the Bank for International Supervision) came together to finalize the Basel III agreement on the minimum capital banks will now need to have.