Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

Organizations that invest in product and process projects must have a plan for investing in these projects. The human resources needed to staff proposed projects almost always exceed the human resources available. How should an organization decide which projects should be staffed and which shouldn't?

The Web, in the last couple of years, has changed dramatically. Tens of millions of people are now -- for the first time -- actively participating in online communities. Social and professional networking sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, have attracted millions, and the average age of users continues to rise.

I have been thinking about measuring performance, again. Part of this thinking results from reading Implementing Beyond Budgeting: Unlocking the Performance Potential by Bjarte Bogsnes.

Information security incidents and privacy breaches often result from risky behavior by personnel who are unaware that the way they are handling information is unsafe. A significant factor for this problem can be attributed to a lack of security policies, along with inadequate or nonexistent training and lack of awareness communications. According to a recent Cisco study:1

In a strange twist of fate, the annual MySQL Conference was just getting underway in Santa Clara, California, USA, when news hit that Oracle Corporation was acquiring Sun and, along with it, MySQL. That the most aggressive enterprise software company was buying the world's leading open source database struck like lightning.

It's déjà vu all over again. The cycle has repeated. The economy is and will continue to shed jobs. Businesses are trying to get leaner. Again, IT is expected to not only shrink itself, but help other units in the firm shrink themselves. A key approach for doing so involves reengineering the business process (BPR).

On more than one occasion in my career, someone has used the metaphor about changing an engine in flight. Yes, it's hard to fix things in motion or to be creative when budgets are tight. But when times are tough, we need to innovate (cheaply and quickly) more than when things are good. But how?

Several years ago, according to BusinessWeek, 1 Victor Tsernialov, a 36-year-old Moscow software consultant, scraped together enough money -- $6,050 -- to buy a new car. He chose a 1999 Russian Lada and has regretted it ever since. He complained of Soviet loutishness, poor-quality spare parts, and high prices.