CIOs as Chief Intrapreneur Officer: Three “C”s in Intrapreneur-Executive Leadership

The character is high than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

 Intrapreneur-executive leadership is an emergent trend, if entrepreneurship is to look for changes, deploy it as an opportunity, then, intrapreneurship is about creating new venture from within an established company-  There are three “C” leadership traits intrapreneur-leaders can bring to the board:

1. Character

Character is nature & nurtured: The content of character may come from nature, part of DNA, but the context of character can be developed via life experience, shaped by trial and adversary; character can synchronize one’s mind & heart, as one of the writers well put in character-based leadership: character is more than intelligence, integrity, ethics, judgment, self-awareness, empathy or emotional health. Character is about

Authenticity: Character-based leadership is based on authenticity via both heart and mind, it takes the character to be confident, energetic and persistent, character-based leadership is how to lead with purpose, authenticity comes from self-awareness, value proposition, and fair judgment. At today’s hyperconnected, over-complex world, leaders are expected to be more as thought leader than a professional manager or technical stewards, leadership brand equity building is another important trend,  it requires leaders to share insight & wisdom, gain mind space of their peers, teams, and followers; they need be voice and make influence in the areas and ecosystems they concern.

Motivation: The heart of entrepreneurship is also about changes, and organizations no matter large or small, all face the unprecedented change, uncertainty, and accelerated business dynamic, intrapreneur leaders not only need to be self-motivated but also motivate teams to cultivate change capabilities and continue to improve.  

2. Courage

It takes courage to be an entrepreneur, as well as a CIO, because it's not an easy job to face and manage risk and ambiguity, and overcome barriers every day, more specifically, it takes:

• Positive Thinking: Positives are seeds in entrepreneurship, Intrapreneur-CIO leaders can bring such optimism to influence the organization’s culture, break down the negative thinking box and linear knowledge, and mono-color culture, inspire positive substance and style in open leadership and equip the new mindset.

• Make Tough Choice: Modern businesses have to make many tough choices in its growth-maturity journey, either making decisions in strategic planning, talent management or innovation exploring, Intrapreneur-CIOs will add a new dimension of vision in making the right choice for balancing the business’s short term gain and long term win. 

• Be Resilient: Success has many parents, and failure is an orphan, many entrepreneurs taste risk as bitter experience, and show resilient to recover, some say, failure + quantity =  success, intrapreneur-leaders may have balanced viewpoints to perceive success and failure more objectively, such mental toughness will help the organization to be more resilient, and nurture the culture of risk-tolerance.

3. Creativity

Creativity often comes from curiosity or concentration; intrapreneur-leaders deploy new idea, new process, the new adventure to adapt to changes:

• Intrapreneur-Leaders vs. Professional Manager: In the 20th century, entrepreneur and professional managers act more like different breeds of leaders: entrepreneurs think out of the box, professional managers set up and manage within the box; entrepreneurs break the rules, professional managers make the policies, entrepreneurs dream big to make the dent in the universe, and professional managers keep focusing on winning finance results; entrepreneurs present resilience; professional managers manage elasticity; actually, in order to embrace and adapt to today’s business dynamic, such two sets of leadership characteristics can complement each other more seamlessly, also integrate each other’s viewpoints to move leadership into the next level.

• Being Innovative: Good intrapreneur-leaders are systematic and good at calculating the risk, the value of piloting a project is tied to the broader importance of staging a venture systematically. Capture opportunity, roll it out and measure the result accordingly. Good intrapreneur-leaders explain the big “whys” clearly, to articulate the strategic rationale behind the venture, as more often than not, intrapreneurship is about balancing innovation with other organizational priorities, it presents a possibly even greater challenge--and reward.

• Being Agile: An effective CIO today may have multiple personas, needs to be a technologist, a business strategist, and diplomat at the same time. Intrapreneur-leaders can be better prepared with necessary skills, experience and agile mentality to fill out the roles. 

For leaders, it takes creativity to be visionary, passionate, and restless. intrapreneur-leaders can enforce the business culture of innovation and advocate learning agile in traditional, hierarchical organizations. Still, leadership is an influence, via adding 3-C ingredients, leadership is more art than science.

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Street Smart on EA: How to Master Five “Things” for Business

 EA can truly become the bridge between strategy and execution, a blueprint than a stovepipe, both as a guru & glue to be intellectual smart & street smart at the same time.

Enterprise architects live at an intellectual smart world, from taxonomy to modeling, from a framework to process, from analysis to synthesis,  however, in order not just being perceived as geeks from ivory tower, EA needs to add drops of “street smart” to highlight what need be focused on:

1.  The Vision Thing

Growth is in our vision  -Mike Barnes

Vision is about to perceive the future of business, help business see the “remote” thing as if it were closer, and highlight a vivid picture to motivate business in pursuit of growth.

Such vision is not linear or mono-color, for example, “Making a profit” is one of the business goals, but it’s not a circular vision & 360 degree viewpoint about business, broader and multi-dimensional vision is needed to not only improve shareholder’s value, but also delight customer, engage employee and benefit society as well.

There is a connection between the vision and either increased profitability (most of the time), or survival (there are times, rightly or wrongly), when decreased profitability is considered the best available outcome by a company's leaders.

A clear vision will help to craft a good strategy—make the right set of choices, follow-through guidelines, and take a series of actions to lead to the future. Vision needs to be inspiring, but what is fundamental?

2. The Value Thing

 “The purpose of business (any kind) is to create a customer.” Peter Drucker

The fundamental purpose of an organization is to produce 'value' for its customers. Depending on the type of organization, the value it produces may, or may not, be monetary. As the concept of "Value" is multidimensional: Monetary Value; Utility Value; Quality Value; Perceptual Value. The value of any Product or Service, or business as a whole, needs to be always a combination of these 4 types of value.

Business strategy defines the ways and means by which the organization intends to produce value in order to meet the goals, objectives, and visions it has set for itself. A Value Proposition can be visualized as a 2x4 matrix; where the 2 columns show the Customer Perspective and Organization Perspective of each of the 4 (Monetary, Utility, Quality, Perceptual) value types. furthermore, it may be necessary to use a 3x4 matrix and include a Consumer (final user) perspective, or even 4x4 include a social perspective.

Value analysis and value streams, chains, and systems are important because they show, on an end-to-end basis, how the organization actually produces value, they are also important elements for strategic analysis and design of an enterprise as a whole

(a)   What do we mean by value, 

(b)  How value is created & delivered, and 

(c)   The ways & means by which the organization intends to create value, any exercise in 'design of the enterprise' is an exercise in futility. 

Both vision and value things are complex balance is key.

3. The Balance Thing

Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, and integrated wholeness. --Stephhen R Covey

 The purpose of EA is to discover business wisdom: to balance the multitude of view: long term vision and short term sight; strategic planning and. tactical approach; to balance the multiple perspectives: finance’s crunching numbers and IT’s bit & byte; marketing’s rocket speed and risk management’s control; to balance resources and priority; to balance business’s gray area and technology’s “black & white”; to balance effectiveness and efficiency, productivity and innovation; to balance Yin & Yang of the business life cycle.

From a value perspective, more often than not, EA finds itself in the position of having to "harmonize" the differences between the customer and organization perspectives of value; or to balance business gain and social value. The goal of EA is how to make balance on strategic planning, decision making and governance, in order to keep enterprise ship balanced, and lead toward the right direction.

4. The Culture Thing

Unfortunately, Those companies grew up, and part of that entrepreneurial culture was lost for some period. But it has clearly come back pretty strongly in the past 10 years.  --Jay Katarincic

If the balance is steel wheel, then, culture is like water, can push the enterprise ship forward or drag down, even sink it. Culture is defined as "the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.", it is invisible, but crucial for business in any stage, any sector and anywhere.

The emerging cultures at the age of digitalization include analytics culture, entrepreneurial culture, learning agile culture, risk-awareness culture. etc. Although most of EA frameworks may not include culture as a formal component yet, via many collective thought and valuable debates, the “culture thing” should continue to be retooled by EA and business leaders; Architects can play a significant role in assessing, analyzing, and redesigning culture, their task is not to completely "design a complex structure like a culture"; but to REDESIGN some aspects of an existing organizational culture. Start with the existing culture, analyze it, assess its effectiveness, and then redesign some aspects.

5. The Capability Thing

Leaders create an environment in which everyone has the opportunity to do work that matches his/her potential capability and for which an equitable differential reward is provided. --Eliott Jaques

Business success does need both hard value and soft culture, clear vision and hand-on capabilities. Business capability underpins business strategy, EA may craft two types of capability for business: Competitive Necessities, and Competitive Uniqueness, with both, the business can survive and thrive to out beat competitors.

In detail, EA blueprints multitude of capability for enterprise, the “hard” capabilities include such as functional capability, strategic business capability, analytics capability, and digital transformation capability, as well as “soft” capabilities such as change capability, learning capability and innovation capability., etc.

By mastering such five “things,” EA can truly become the bridge between strategy and execution, a blueprint than a stovepipe, both as a guru & glue to be intellectual smart & street smart at the same time.

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Digital Transformation Research Executive Summary

Digital Transformation may already be listed at every forward-looking business’s agenda, as the pace of pressure for change will continue to increase, leading to further pressure to transform their businesses; for some digital native companies, the change is considerably smoother, however, for many large traditional organizations, it’s a bumpy journey, with many roadblocks.

A recent report published by MIT Center for Digital Business and Capgemini Consulting shared the findings from a global study on how 157 executives in 50 large traditional companies are managing – and benefiting from – digital transformation. The research also describes the elements of successful digital transformation and show how to assess your firm’s digital maturity. 

1. Building Blocks of the Digital Transformation

 The study indicated major digital transformation initiatives are centered on re-envisioning customer experience, operational processes and business models. Companies are changing how functions work, redefining how functions interact, and even evolving the boundaries of the firm.

• Transforming customer experience

Customers, too, are becoming more demanding. the research provides executive insight from transportation and hospitality industry on highlighting urgency of changes and an “ever-rising tide of customer expectations” for service and convenience, they also share experience on how to create opportunities for digital transformation in three areas: online presence, mobile customer engagement, and internal operational processes.

• Transforming operational processes

In a broader sense, digital transformation replaces limited one way vertical communication with broad communication channels that are both vertical and horizontal. CxOs can engage in 2-way communication quickly at scale. Employees can collaborate in ways that were previously not possible.

Performance transparency was a key highlight mentioned by several executives. Executives in most companies say they are more informed when making decisions.Transactional systems give executives deeper insights into products, regions, and customers, allowing decisions to be made on real data and not on assumptions. Beyond being better informed, digital transformation is actually changing the process of strategic decision-making.

• Transforming business models

It is finding ways to augment physical with digital offerings and to use digital to share content across organizational silos. New digital businesses Companies are introducing digital products/solutions that complement traditional product/services.

• Digital globalization

Firms are increasingly transforming from multi-national to truly global operations. Digital technology coupled with integrated information is allowing firms to gain global synergies while remaining locally responsive.

They are, in the words of many executives, “becoming more centralized and decentralized at the same time." Globalization also entails a different approach to policy: “fewer mandates from headquarters, but more guidelines.”

•  Digital capabilities

Digital capabilities cut across all above pillars. They are a fundamental building block for transformation in customer experience, operational processes, and business models. Although CIOs and existing IT departments are leading digital initiatives across companies, they hire extra skills or implement separate units to coordinate digital transformation.

• Unified Data and Processes

The most fundamental technology need for digital transformation is a digital platform of integrated data and processes. Large successful companies often operate in silos, each with their own systems, data definitions, and business processes. Generating a common view of customers or products can be very difficult. Without the common view, advanced approaches to customer engagement or process optimization cannot occur. Unified data and process is one reason that web-based companies are able to gain advantage through analytics and personalization much more readily than traditional firms. For many traditional companies, the first step in preparing for digital transformation. 

•  Solution delivery

Companies also need the capabilities to modify their processes or build new methods onto the data and process platform. A hospitality executive firm said that knowledge of key emerging technologies is spread across silos of external vendors, making integration difficult. Several executives described knowledge gaps that existed after they ended a vendor relationship.

• Analytic Capability

The statement of an executive who stated  “It’s time to harvest the data and turn it into insights.” Combining integrated data with powerful analysis tools is seen as a way to gain strategic advantage over competitors.

• Business & IT Integration

With trust and shared understanding, IT executives can help business executives meet their goals, and business executives listen when IT people suggest innovations. Where strong relationships exist, executives on both sides of the relationship are willing to be flexible in creating new governance mechanisms or digital units without feeling threatened.

2. Meet Challenges in Digital Transformation Journey challenges

• Initiating Changes: 

A: Lack of impetus, as impetus often starts at the very top of the firm. Executives are justifiably skeptical of the benefits of emerging technologies

B: Another concern issue can be lack of awareness of the opportunities or threats of digital transformation.

C: Regulation & Reputation: concerns are being careful about mobile and social technologies because of security and privacy concerns.

D: Unclear Business Case: as with many innovations, digital transformation investments often have less clear business cases.

E: Innovation Culture: Executives on average rated their innovation culture at only 4.2 on a 7-point scale, without innovative culture, there’s friction to any changes

• Execution challenges

While a top-level impetus for transformation is important, it is often not enough. Interviewees cited three missing elements that threatened to prevent them from moving forward successfully: Missing Skill, Culture Issue, Ineffective IT

• Governance challenges

Benefiting from transformation typically requires changes in processes or decision-making that span traditional organizational or functional structures. Transformation, like any major organizational change, requires top-down effort to help employees envision a different reality, and coordination to ensure the firm moves in the right direction.

• Coordination issues:

Many firms fail to transform because of coordination difficulties across business units or processes. Units are able to make progress in their own areas, but are unable to influence practices in other units

3. How to make Digital Transformation Success

 Successful digital transformations in the study used a common set of elements. Each is a lever executives can use to initiate and drive digital transformation in their organizations. Leaders diagnose the potential value of existing corporate assets and build a transformative vision for the future. Then, they invest in skills and initiatives to make the vision a reality. Fundamental to the transformation is effective communication and governance to ensure that the firm is moving in the right direction

(1) The What and the How

• The What: The inner boxes, consisting of strategic assets, the digital elements, digital capabilities, and investments, are the shape of the transformation. They are the specific set of elements implemented by the organization, and the resources used to do so. Together they represent, in essence, the digital intensity of the organization.

• The How: The outer boxes, consisting of digital vision, governance and engagement, are the ways in which leaders will drive the transformation to a successful outcome. They serve as a form of scaffolding through which leaders can ensure that the elements of the “what” are built effectively and that the organization customer understanding customer's touch point.

Together, the “what” and the “how” represent the digital maturity of an organization They can be thought about as digital “Style” and “Substance.”.

 (2)  Digital transformation maturity

Firms that are mature on both dimensions can drive powerful digital transformation that yields business value. Unfortunately, many firms in the study are mature at only one, or neither

Conclusion

Leadership is essential. Whether using new or traditional technologies, the key to digital transformation is re-envisioning and driving change in how the company operates, how do you communicate the vision and engage the organization? How do you coordinate investments and activities across silos?

• Envision the digital future:

How can you transform customer experience? operation or business model?

How can units work differently and work together differently in a more connected way?

• Focus on the “how” more than the “what”

 The most successful transformations from case studies in report focus as much (or more) on how to drive change as on the detailed content of the change. Build a compelling, transformative roadmap. Invest in digital transformation vision, with related engagement, governance and KPIs will allow people throughout the enterprise to identify new “what” to meet or extend the vision, and how to assess your digital maturity.

 Successful Digital Transformation comes not from creating a new organization, but from reshaping the organization to take advantage of valuable existing strategic assets in new ways.

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New CIO’s First 100 Days: A Seven “P”s Adventure

Use IT framework with process maturity model to determine the level of maturity of your process. This will help identify how much improvement may be needed.

The first 100 days seems to be a honeymoon period of a new CIO, with passion & excitement to start an adventure, however, it is also very critical time frame to use with due diligence to communicate openly, demonstrate strategic business & IT leadership, and make a plan accordingly. General speaking, it is a 7”P”s: People, Perception,  Processes, Plan, Priority, Practice and avoids Pitfalls.

1. People

 The first 90 days are always critical. Focus on communicating with key stakeholders and identifying business goals, strategic objectives and pain points.. Initiate a satisfaction survey to develop a baseline for the future

• Developing the key Relationships

First 30 days - Emphasizes high-level conversations (queries & listening) with all stakeholders and getting to know the new organization or role. Try to get an understanding of the goals and business strategies of the enterprise and organizational units.

• Discover the Corporate Culture

Sort through issues, gather facts, determine the potential for innovation, and seek resources… Find out what is working and what is not. Depending on the size and structure of the organization, the new leaders may be able to meet with more than just the strategic stakeholders and so get a better feel for the culture and mood of the organization-- how to do things here, what are folks thinking process.

• Communicate with IT Team:

Also, talk to IT to discover what their areas of concern are initially – communicate with the team and key individuals in the business (not just the top managers) to learn about "the good, the bad, and the ugly". By end of 90 days, CIO shall have developed a plan, and communicated a goal/direction for the future state, and if possible have achieved a quick win.

2. Perception

Next 30 days - Digging into details (challenges, constraints, opportunities....etc), begin your SWOT analysis ASAP. As you continue this by meeting with staff and key business leaders, to ensure current departmental goals are still in line with corporate strategy.

• 360 Degree View:

Engage with customers, IT team, vendors, and partners in listening to what they want, what works, what is broken and their recommendations for the next steps. identify areas of weakness or processes needing improvement.

• Two-Way Perception

Staff will be assessing you while you are assessing them. Use team building activities to develop trust. It takes both passions from heart and analytics & synthesis from mind to dedicate energy, diagnose the problems, and build up practical strategy

• Conducting a Customer Survey

A brief survey (anonymously with short concise list of questions) can allow you to compare conversations with staff against anonymous responses, collect some survey data or available information on how's IT performance and maturity

3.    Process & Focus check 

What about the structured process to gather the current state of the IT organization and its alignment with the business?

• Review current IT Roadmap
      
   Review current and planned Innovation, Development, Operations, quality initiatives and timelines to see how they align to 360-degree feedback. Start to analyze focus areas – Organization structure, the process of communication & correlation to improve IT integration by increasing customer focus, customer knowledge, speed and quality of execution. 

• Industry and competitor analysis
  
  Review how well you are doing vs. your competitors (same size) and best in industry. Baseline where you started. 

• IT Maturity Assessment

Use IT framework with process maturity model to determine the level of maturity of your process. This will help identify how much improvement may be needed.

Also start collecting IT stats such as Metrics, SLAs and KPIs for future comparisons. Use executive dashboard to assess KPIs mattering for business, industry, how should the latest technology help improve them;

• Know How-Learn more about Process

A. Meet business people and learn business flow.
B: Meet vendors
C: Business strategies and how they are aligning with IT strategies
D. KPI's
E:  How IT is supporting business and External Customers

• Review the broad set of written Documentation:

 Walkthrough written documentation of enterprise architecture, policies, and organizational administrative structure can be helpful. IT customer satisfaction survey analysis, both from the strategic level and operational level to help understand business strategy, capability check, value chain, process optimization point, or governance checkpoint, though the new leader needs to remember that you cannot get 10 years of internal organizational knowledge in 100 days.

4.    Plan

A well-designed plan can keep you organized and on target to accomplish the goals you set during this period

• It is important to have an entry plan. You do not have the benefit of just meeting with people. There must be a purpose, a schedule and the plan should communicate to what you plan to provide them 30, 60, 90 days into the process. Each plan must be laid out according to key discussions with top management,  that plan must be communicated with similar level and lower level staff so that they know you are purposefully seeking their input and are interested in helping them achieve their goals.

• Develop an action plan: Look for low-hanging fruit that can demonstrate your insight and ability to produce results, listen carefully, and move forward accordingly. Also, be prepared to cut loose any dead weight. It takes a village. Cut unnecessary costs, streamline workflows, and watch the bottom line.

• Build a plan to meet expectations or set expectations due to limitations in the budget, competency, capacity, and maturity of the IT organization

5. Priority

 Last 30 Days - Establishes what needs to be done, begin the communication and building relationships.Short term planning with potential actions to take, prioritize for tasks which have a significant impact on financial aspect and customer satisfaction.

• To-Do – Dashboard: Sit with customers and build the dashboard to focus on the things they want most from IT. No more than 7. It may take stages to get to that dashboard. It helps put all on the same page and justify cost and transformation. 
      
• Take a look at the top 10 things in IT today (Mobile, Cloud, Big Data, BPM, Virtualization,..) and see when it was done or the plans to do it. Gives a good idea if IT is forward-looking with skill and capacity, or if business and/or budget is holding it back.

• Rank the Process: From the matched processes and maturity scoring (subjectively), rank the processes to determine which ones require immediate attention and which ones can wait. A plan will need to be developed on how to improve maturity, finding at least one action that can be implemented within 90 days to establish credibility with the business and commitment from team members

• Develop & Communicate Priority List: The following is the possible strategy after 90 days which would be helpful for building a trusted relationship with all major stakeholders (Business leaders)
  1. Prepare & Clear Prioritization lists
  2. Develop One Year Action Plan
  3. Validate and make Alignment Priorities with Business People
  4. Communicate Priorities to IT team
  5. Build Consensus cross IT team with clear understanding of deliverables
  6. Communicate to Business with time frame & deliverables
  7. Start focusing on Longer-term Strategic Planning with possible measurable business values & results.

6. Practice

• Communication Practice:

A. Listen more than you speak,
B. Create an atmosphere of optimism, excitement, and anticipation and
D: Be open about your leadership style, and thought leadership via social channels.

• Innovation Practice: Connect the Dots

A: Observing, listening, digesting information

B: Questioning and communicating broadly in order to get the whole picture of new organization more objectively,

C: Connecting: reviewing business culture/strategy via his/her fresh eye, connect innovation dots to see what kind of key business issues need be solved, how should IT make a contribution on it?

D: Networking: Developing relationship with key stakeholders, customers, vendors, and team.,

• Analytics Practice: Tactical and Strategic areas 

A: Budget - Where do you spend most, operations vs. development, CapEx vs. OpEx;

B: Team Critical Mass, Permanent vs. Consultants vs. service providers.
C: EA - Systems that are redundant in function, legacy in use, retirement plans
D: Technology - Partners, contracts, refresh cycles and asset management

7. Pitfalls need to be avoided

 The first impression is the last impression:

• Don’t over communicate, also do not communicate too little:
• Don’t over analyze, also pay more attention to getting over-analyzed by others
• Fight the urge to solve every problem before you fully understand the current state of the company.
• Be open to breakdown the “invisible” boxes such as:

A: If only listen, not speak, would you be perceived as "non-competitive"?
B. if only observes, not express, would you be defined as an "inefficient communicator"?
C: if only understand problem, not act, would you be labeled as "non-doer" 

• Don’t over promise, and manage expectation accordingly;
• Don’t focus on quick win only, both long term plan and short term win count;
• Don’t pretend to be somebody else, be authentic;
• Don’t be afraid of learning curves: as it can also be a good opportunity to make difference, ask the right questions, connect innovation dots, recognize the potential to make improvements and, besides passion, bring up some fresh insight.

Therefore, either new CIO or old CIO mainly needs to focus on Customer & Business Peer Relationship Management, Project Portfolio Management, Talent Management, Business Process/capability management and Vendor Relationship Management. And follow the new CIO's "SMART" start scenario:

S: Strategic communication, listening, learning, communicating, and get the full picture

M: Mindfulness: Understand culture with empathy, Make a plan for both long term or short term;

A: Assessment: the key issues, priority, the teams, and process, IT Maturity., etc.

R: Review:  Related document, EA, Customer Survey., etc.

T: Tactical Approach: Take some tactical steps, be cautiously optimistic, with logic and analytics.

In conclusion, for new IT leaders, by mastering such 7Ps with Smart Start principles, the journey can be less bumpy, better prepared, and the adventure can be more excited and purposeful.

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Corporate Culture Re-inventing: Is Hybrid Model the Best?

Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.  - Geert Hofstede

Culture is the most invisible, but powerful fabric weaved around the organization and surrounding in our society as well, the culture like water, can make enterprise ship float, push it in the right direction, it may also drag down the ship, even sink it. There are many culture masters and varying culture models around, however, at the age of digitalization, those models designed in the 20^th century may have limitation to adapt to the pace of change and uncertainty facing the organization today. First of all, what are those good business culture models anyway?

1. Different Culture Models

(1)  Lewis Model of Culture

Lewis Model emphasize on societal culture description, he thought:

• Cultural behavior is the end product of collected wisdom, filtered and passed down through hundreds of generations as shared core beliefs, values, assumptions, notions, and persistent action patterns

• Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one human group from another.

• The iceberg of culture: art, food, fashion, behavior, communication patterns, body language, mass media. custom is just about scratching the surface of in-depth culture discipline,

Culture is deeper, culture is changeable, and the speed of culture change may also be expedited as the world becomes more hyper-connected and interdependent. It may take seven years to be good at a language, but it takes seventeen or longer years to master a culture.....

(2)  Hofstede Organizational Onion Cultural model

Geert Hofstede (1991) also sees culture as "the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another." He proposes four layers, each of which includes the lower level. 'Culture' being like an onion can be peeled, layer-by-layer. The figure on the left shows how Hofstede illustrates the differences between personality, culture, and human nature.

(3)  Hampden-Turner Trompenaars Two-Layered Culture Model

Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997) adopt a similar onion-like model of culture. However, their model expands the core level of the very basic two-layered model, rather than the outer level. In their view, culture is made up of basic assumptions at the core level. These 'basic assumptions' are somewhat similar to 'values' in the Hofstede model.

• Universalism vs. Particularism: Universalism is about finding broad and general rules. When no rules fit, it finds the best rule. Particularism is about finding exceptions. When no rules fit, it judges the case on its own merits, rather than trying to force-fit an existing rule.

• Analyzing vs. Integrating: Analyzing decomposes to find the detail. It assumes that God is in the details and that decomposition is the way to success. It seems people who look at the big picture as being out of touch with reality. Integrating brings things together to build the big picture. It assumes that if you have your head in the weeds you will miss the true understanding.

• Individualism vs. Communitarianism: Individualism is about the rights of the individual. It seeks to let each person grow or fail on their own, and sees group-focus as denuding the individual of their inalienable rights. Communitarianism is about the rights of the group or society. It seeks to put the family, group, company, and country before the individual. It sees individualism as selfish and short-sighted.

• Inner-directed vs. Outer-directed: Inner-directed is about thinking and personal judgment, ‘in our heads’. It assumes that thinking is the most powerful tool and that considered ideas and intuitive approaches are the best way. Outer-directed is seeking data in the outer world. It assumes that we live in the 'real world' and that is where we should look for our information and decisions. 

• Time as sequence vs. Time as synchronization: Time as sequence sees events as separate items in time, sequence one after another. It finds order in a serried array of actions that happen one after the other. Time as synchronization sees events in parallel, synchronized together. It finds order in the coordination of multiple efforts.

• Achieved status vs. Ascribed status: Achieved status is about gaining status through performance. It assumes individuals and organizations earn and lose their status every day, and that other approaches are recipes for failure. Ascribed status is about gaining status through other means, such as seniority. It assumes status is acquired by right rather than daily performance, which may be as much luck as judgment. It finds order and security in knowing where status is and stays.

• Equality vs. Hierarchy: Equality is about all people having equal status. It assumes we all have equal rights, irrespective of birth or another gift. Hierarchy is about people being superior to others. It assumes that order happens when few are in charges and others obey through the scalar chain of command.

(4)  Deal and Kennedy's cultural model

In this model, culture has been classified into four categories:

• Work-hard, play-hard culture: This has rapid feedback/reward and low risk, leading to  Stress coming from a quantity of work rather than uncertainty.  High-speed action leading to high-speed recreation.

• Tough-guy macho culture: This has rapid feedback/reward and high risk, leading to Stress coming from high risk and potential loss/gain of reward. Focus on the present rather than the longer-term future.

• Process culture: This has slow feedback/reward and low risk, leading to low stress, plodding work, comfort, and security.  Stress may come from internal politics and stupidity of the system. Development of bureaucracies and other ways of maintaining the status quo. Focus on security of the past and of the future.

• Bet-the-company culture: This has slow feedback/reward and high risk, leading to Stress coming from high risk and delay before knowing if actions have paid off. The long view is taken, but then much work is put into making sure things happen as planned.

(5) Denison Organizational Culture Model

·       ADAPTABILITY

·       MISSION

·       CONSISTENCY

·       INVOLVEMENT

(6)  Edgar Schein's Model of Organizational Culture

According to Edgar Schein - Organizations do not adopt a culture in a single day, instead, it is formed in due course of time as the employees go through various changes, adapt to the external environment and solve problems. They gain from their past experiences and start practicing it every day thus forming the culture of the workplace. The new employee also strives hard to adjust to the new culture and enjoy a stress-free life. Schein believed that there are three levels of an organizational culture.

• Artifacts: The first level is the characteristics of the organization which can be easily viewed, heard and felt by individuals collectively known as artifacts. The dress code of the employees, office furniture, facilities, the behavior of the employees, mission, and vision of the organization all come under artifacts and go a long way in deciding the culture of the workplace.

• Values: The next level according to Schein which constitutes the organization culture is the values of the employees. The values of the individuals working in the organization play an important role in deciding the organization culture. The thought process and attitude of employees have a deep impact on the culture of any particular organization. What people actually think matters a lot for the organization? The mindset of the individual associated with any particular organization influences the culture of the workplace.

• Assumed Values: The third level is the assumed value of the employees which can’t be measured but does make a difference in the culture of the organization. There are certain beliefs and facts which stay hidden but do affect the culture of the organization. The inner aspects of human nature come to the third level of organizational culture. The organizations follow certain practices which are not discussed often but understood on their own. Such rules form the third level of the organizational culture.

2. Assess Current Organizational Culture via Queries

Most enterprises have primary culture and many sub-cultures as well. Enterprise/Business Architects can play a significant role in assessing, analyzing, and redesigning culture, their task is not to completely "design a complex structure like a culture"; but to REDESIGN some aspects in an existing organizational culture. Start with the existing culture, analyze it, assess its effectiveness, and then redesign some aspects. A series questions to help understand culture:

Q1 How is culture shaped and created or does it just happen and is not manageable?

A1 Culture is Learnt, Knowable, Measurable, Modifiable, and Manageable. Culture is shaped by the values, beliefs, etc. of the founders, in the first instance, and subsequently by the values, beliefs, etc. of the Board/CEO. That said, the spirit of the organization comes from the top.

Q2 Additional what are measures on culture?

A2 Culture can be measured and managed against some "model of the desired culture".  Cultures can be considered to perform well or perform poorly according to the needs of the organization. There is a people version on CMMI called People-CMMI.

Q3 Is heritage and the caste or class system prevalent in many countries part of the enterprise culture?

A3: Societal culture and enterprise culture mutually influence each other, as people bring their value to work, working culture will also change individual’s behavior and beliefs, and further influence the culture in community and society.

3.Retool Corporation Culture via Framework & Methodology

In order to analyze, assess, redesign culture, the enterprise architects need conceptual framework & methodology to demonstrate that analysis, assessment, and redesign of enterprise business culture is possible and practical.

(1) A framework within which to conceptualize, understand & structure the culture. Conceptual Framework -- can conceptualize culture as consisting of three parts:

A) The bottom part which deals with the creation & maintenance of the culture

B) A middle part which deals with how the culture is implemented, and

C) The top part which deals with how the culture is expressed on a day-to-day basis.

These three parts apply to all organizational cultures, irrespective of whether they are 'for-profit', 'not for profit', private or public enterprises

(2) A methodology for analyzing, assessing and redesigning culture in a consistent manner.

Conceptual Methodology –outlined a brief 4 step approach.

(A) Analysis: Identifies conflicts/problems, and Causes of conflicts/problems;

(B) Change What; Identify what needs to be changed, and why it needs to be changed;

(C) Change How: Determine the Ways and Means of effecting change; Small step/success/reinforcement approach; identify dependencies and conflicts;

(D) Change When: Step-by-step plan and roadmap for implementing and realizing change

(3) Social network analysis is a technique which can be used, as one of many techniques, for analyzing, assessing, and changing organizational culture.

(A) Culture is not one level but many. What sociology refers to as culture is a reaffirmation of values through totems, mores, and history. These values are driven by deeper primal motives which are the mysterious need that humans have to connect with each other. The structure of these connections transcends culture and even values.

(B) Culture is what is internal to the group as these connections solidify over time. You make the reference to new members of a group being socialized. That is a second step that happens after assimilation. Before any values are passed, a person can be assimilated into the group structure. In many cases, there is an initiation period after assimilation that starts the socialization process. This is comprised of a set of totemic references that reinforces the group support for a common set of values.

(C) The transition of an individual from one group/status to another group/status consists of three stages: separation, transition, incorporation. Most organizations call the first step "orientation". For EA, focus on redesigning the components of culture to make it innovative, productive and positive.

Either organizational culture or societal culture, culture is complex, culture is a collective habit, culture is your brand, culture reinvention is worthy of the effort. 

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Business Analytics Library & Collection

 1.    Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning

by Thomas H. Davenport

The list author says: "A lucid primer on the ways in which firms are using information to compete in distinctive ways. In other words, how analytics are ENABLING strategies that would not otherwise be possible, thus providing unique advantages to firms that employ analytics." 

2.    Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart

By Ian Ayres

The list author says: "A mass-market illumination of the core principles behind the application of analytics--especially predictive models--to improve business results."

 

3.    Return on Customer: Creating Maximum Value From Your Scarcest Resource by Don pepper

The list author says: "Required reading for clients who want to understand more about Customer Profitability measurement, and why it is valuable." 

4.    The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

By Edward Tufte -The godfather of data visualization  http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

5.    Business Intelligence: The Savvy Manager's Guide

By David Loshin

It is a a higher level - Business Intelligence, rather than just concentrating on Analytics - it builds upon the business case and lays out the foundation to well structured analytics. It is a business oriented approach

6.    Complexity –Organizational Implications of a Scientific Frontier

By Robert Axelrod and Michael D Cohen

The author write: This is a small book about a large question: In a world where many players are all adapting to each other and where the emerging future is extremely hard to predict, what actions should you take? We call such worlds Complex Adaptive System. “

7.  Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence –based Management

By Jeffrey Pfeffer, Robert I. Sutton 

This book guides managers in using this approach to dismantle six widely held—but ultimately flawed—management beliefs in core areas including leadership, strategy, change, talent, financial incentives, and work-life balance.

8.    The Decision Model: A Business Logic Framework Linking Business and Technology

      By Barbara Von Halle, Larry Goldbery

The decision Model is a solution to the long-standing issues of separating business logic from other dimensions in business systems, automated or not

9. Business Modeling and Data Mining
  by Dorian Pyle 

The list author says:
"The most technical book on our list...an excellent, hardcore reference on the core work of business modeling and data mining. Good for new analysts looking to broaden their horizons."

 

10. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game 

by Michael Lewis

The list author says: "For those who love sports, a great way to make the value of analytics relevant." 

11. The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion   

By John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Land Davison

12. Decision Management System: A Practical Guide to Using Business Rules and Preidict Analytics

By James Taylor

Author wrote: a smart decision system encapsulates business rules, predictive models and optimization.

 

13.Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving

By Jonathan G. Koomey, PhD, John P. Holdre

14.Fooled By Randomness

By Nassim Taleb

Despite not being purely focused on analytics, teach important lessons about correctly interpreting insights from data analysis

15    Predictive Data Mining: A Practical Guide

(The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) by Sholom M. Weiss 

16    The Lady Tasting Tea

A book with a good description of how statistical thinking has shaped the scientific method

    

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CIO’s Three BC/DR Lessons from Super Storm Sandy

Read quite many touching stories shared by folks who were experiencing Super Storm Sandy this week in East Coast, besides showing empathy to them, we may all learn quite a few lessons, on one hand, technology is advanced enough to predict weather one week ahead, to allow people have pre-crisis communication & management, well preparation and minimizing the loss and damage; On the other side, we may all need feel humbled, as human is “powerless” when meeting power of nature.

And for IT leaders, business continuity, risk resilience and work flexibility are all important lessons to learn.  As a CIO, how do you go approach your business continuity plan? What’s the thought process, and what goal do you wish to achieve?

1. Business Continuity is the establishment of processes, supporting documentation, etc

Business Continuity (BC), describes all of the processes that would need to be executed to make a hot site live along with supporting documentation that is supposed to be "idiot proof" meaning that anyone can restore normal business operations regardless of prior experience, periodic reviews of the processes and documentation for correctness, periodic tests of the BC process, etc.

Tactically, first thing to do is to establish which systems are critical to business continuity and concentrate your efforts on these, to help a business rapidly recover in the event of a complete outage up to and including the demolition of the premises where your business is housed. As such, there is no solution per se that will help you institute this. Instead, you need to educate yourself on what is included in the definition of Business Continuity, take the time to educate management so that they support your efforts, and then go through the process of developing and practicing your Business Continuity plan.

Strategically, Business Continuity (BC) is integral component of business Risk Management, or step further, risk intelligence and risk resilience. But BC strategy shall constantly evolves tactical steps need to be in line with the long term goal. Which is why emerging IaaS or hybrid cloud is a good BC solutions because they fall in line with business’s long term BC strategy of having a totally fault tolerant environment that has BC totally built in.

Furthermore, BC is not just technology issue only, it's about how to align people, process and technology more seamlessly; it's also not only IT responsibility, it's both board room and front desk's priority, Thus, the BC's goal need be consistent with your business goal, how to run business with agility, elasticity, flexibility and resilience., etc

  

2. Disaster Recovery (DR) is essentially a logical restore of a previously made backup

If BC is the holistic enterprise view of dealing with all types of corporate assets while DR typically is IT asset related.

Technically, many organizations are pushing more and more stuff to "cloud" because of the inherent risk tolerance that it provides and the reduction of additional systems to maintain and backup specifically for BC/DR plan. In addition, ensure that the DR site is geographically disparate. In other words, ensure that both data centers cannot be affected by the same event. So, for example, if your production data center or cloud is based on the East Coast, ensure that DR is located on the West Coast.

More specifically:

• The development of a formal Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) that meets the needs of the business is a complex process that requires specialized knowledge and information

• Ensure that your DR actually works. Regular DR tests should be conducted -- and this means more than once a year.

• Ensure that you have a enough compute capacity to run your business critical solutions and connectivity is sufficient.

• Ensure that everybody knows what to do in the event of a DR. There is little point in replicating your entire compute estate if nobody knows how to access it.

3. Work Flexibility

Hurricane Sandy is forcing a lot of people to work at home, it may also demonstrate to management that telecommuting works with benefits such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, saving energy, reducing paper usage, or adapting to weather change, flexible working environment can also make business more resilient and improve staff’s satisfaction.  

Crisis Communication & Management:  what management did and should do during a crisis. Do your customers need to hear from you during Hurricane Sandy? Many writers share best practices from companies that are handling communications in a helpful and dignified way.

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