Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

This Executive Update series examines how organizations, particularly commercial firms, are beginning to exploit virtual worlds in order to create and capture value. In Part I, 1 I pointed out that virtual worlds have been with us for a long time (they predate the Web by more than a decade).

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

"The Pentagon says it is still investigating the source of the documents. The military has detained Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad, for allegedly transmitting classified information. But the latest documents could have come from anyone with a secret-level clearance...."1

Most senior executives want to know when they will get business value from a project, more than when it will be complete and at what cost. Without completed projects, you can't implement the strategy; yet today a chasm usually exists between business objectives and project management activities. Even when projects are on target with respect to time, cost, and quality, all too often they seem to fail to achieve the anticipated business results.

The value of "soft" people skills is often severely underestimated in IT organizations. For example, the psychoanalyst Erik Erickson identified trust as the foundational characteristic for identity and relationships.1 A great IT leader at any level must be able to trust and be trusted. A leader's breach of trust will rapidly spread like a fungus throughout the project team to lower morale and decrease productivity.

The idea of managing demand has gained much traction in recent years, especially with demand for resources outstripping the available budgets. Increasingly this squeeze is now affecting the relationship between IT and the business. Any successful business model must be built on effective management of demand as well as supply. Yet demand management seems to be deficient or absent in many organizations.