Category: Leadership

  • Four Dimensions of Sustaining Change Leadership

    One of the paradoxes of strategic change is that the most important things are often the easiest to defer for matters that are more pressing but have less impact on success.  Sponsorship, engagement, and accountability are the greatest drivers of lasting and meaningful change.  However, the activities that sustain ownership, such as communication, governance, and…

  • For Successful Change Leadership, Emphasize a Culture of Engagement and Accountability

    I previously wrote about the challenges that change leaders face as they deal with a “new normal” that is increasingly competitive and volatile.1 Today there are great opportunities for creating new value streams and bringing them to market more quickly, interacting more meaningfully with customers, and building more collaborative and engaging organizations. At the same…

  • Engaging Executive IT Leadership

    In a recent post,((Business Engagement Is Lost when Architecture is Technology-Focused.)) I discussed the value of architecture in structuring people, processes, information, and technology into solutions which address business challenges and enable the organization to deliver business value.  In this way, architecture provides a crucial link between business and technology capabilities, but it also helps…

  • Technical Mechanics vs. Executive IT Leaders

    Marianne Broadbent and Ellen Kitzis1 write about technical managers vs. trusted executive leaders of the enterprise. Technical managers are experts in the mechanics of IT.  They “keep the lights on and do it cheap.”  This role is essential, especially in today’s environment of cost-cutting and rationalization of services.  However, this role can also minimize the impact…

  • The Cost of Program Failure

    The statistics on business transformation failure are overwhelming.  Particularly where technology implementation is involved, and where the stakes may be highest, studies consistently report that over half (and up to almost three quarters) of all programs do not deliver the intended value.  For example, Michael Krigsman examined several analyst reports of the rates of failure…