Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

"We really like your proposal, but this idea to take the whole team into a one-day workshop every month -- 'retrospective' was what you called it? -- and have a three-day workshop each quarter is by far too expensive!" If I had a hit list of discussions I have had with managers over the last five years, this would probably be number one.

Companies seek to concentrate on their value-adding processes and often consider IT infrastructure as a noncore area. Thus, a current trend in the organization of IT departments is outsourcing. When outsourcing, companies aim to reduce cost while getting a better grasp on service-level agreements (SLAs). However, IT -- especially business intelligence (BI) systems -- is becoming a key element for enabling agility in enterprise adaptation to changes in the business environment. This poses a serious challenge to traditional IT outsourcing contracts.

With all of the planning rules and principles we have covered so far in this series, there is only one rule that is always be applicable: once a plan is finished and approved, it is wrong! This is the only thing I have ever guaranteed my stakeholders about a plan. That is because I have found no one prescient enough to be able accurately to predict future events.

Advanced data visualization tools have been around for some time. They first gained a following among scientists and engineers, who used them to build models for fluid-flow analysis, aerodynamic simulation, and other complex applications involving large data sets with many cause-and-effect variables.

With so much talk about the management of innovation, we have lost sight of something more important: innovation in management. When innovative products wow us, innovators of those products receive our praise and adulation. It is a time-honored tradition as old as civilization itself. After all, every age will have its Michelangelo.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines concrete as "an actual, specific thing or instance." Chip and Dan Heath (in Made to Stick ) state that "even the most abstract business strategy must eventually show up in the tangible actions of human beings." Concreteness, they say, is an indispensable component of sticky idea

In my last Trends Advisor ("Is Parallel Computing the Next Big Thing?" 17 July 2008), I discussed the hardware trend toward an increasing emphasis on parallel computing.

Behavioral economics has emerged as the hot subspecialty in the dismal science today. While traditional economic theory assumed people were always rational actors in their decision making, from our experience in IT investments, we know otherwise. What can behavioral economics tell us about how to avoid the pathologies that creep into IT investment decision making and destroy value creation?