Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

Being capable to react to change with agility is a key requirement for all companies onboarding digital business models or digital products and processes. And when it comes to competing and staying relevant, agility is becoming a necessity. Large companies, however, appear to face a plethora of challenges with balancing agility and stability. Here in Part II of this two-part Advisor, we answer the question of how to learn and adapt after the pilot launch of an end-to-end Agile process and provide concrete examples of how large corporations have overcome imminent obstacles.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges to businesses across all sectors and throughout the world. Risk management systems and contingency measures have been put to the test, and as is so often seen in moments of crisis, many have been found wanting. The result? A real need now exists to determine what is meant by business resilience and how to apply it to organizations’ different operating models.

Applying a simplistic algorithm to inadequate data fails to deliver expected exam grades as the pandemic exposes flawed thinking and underlying bias in the education system.

A big cause of failure for large organizations is the attempt to apply one of the many off-the-shelf Agile models. These typically work well for small companies, but not so much in large corporate settings. In Part I of this two-part Advisor, we explore the first half of a four-part framework to scale and customize a tailored Agile approach that caters to an organization’s specific requirements, beginning with assessing your needs in the understand phase. We then describe how picking building blocks from the many Agile concepts available will shape a working model according to the needs of your enterprise.

In a recent webinar, Cutter Senior Consultant Rodolfo Guzmán and Daniel Monzón offered insight into what O&G companies need to focus on for the best chance to weather the COVID-19 storm. They also answered questions from participants about digital strategies and technologies that will support such transformations in their organizations.

Robin F. Goldsmith discusses the application of proactive risk management techniques in software testing and development. He observes that many of the risks encountered in software are largely predictable and explores why busi­nesses still manage to fall foul of them and how the real processes employed in our organizations can differ starkly from how we presume them to be. Goldsmith goes on to discuss how a more proactive approach to risk identification at the early stages of a project often saves time and money later.

The edition of The Cutter Edge explores how agile budgeting can create value as a revenue stream generator, why communication is so essential in a digital shift, how to improve software system design, and more.

The team is the fundamental unit of organizational work, not the individual. But the ways we manage our teams — and thus our talent — often set us up for systemic gaps and increasing challenges (versus continuous improvement) over time. Today’s executives face two ongoing complex problems: business strategy and people leadership. The invisible nature of these talent issues makes solving them a strategic need through HR capacity building over time.