When is a strategy not a strategy?

The strategy is not an effective strategy if it is limited to rigid prescriptive strategy formulation.

The strategy defines the desired objective and communicates what will be done, by whom, how, for whom, and why the output is valuable. And a good strategy includes execution as part of strategy, strategy formulation and implementation can not be divorced from one another. Therefore, strategy making, or strategizing, is an ongoing process of discovering purpose, creating and using resources, and guiding supporting activities.  However, for many organizations, the strategy is either as Pot-Pourri or serendipity: When is a strategy not a strategy (a good one)?

1. A strategy is not a strategy when there is a failure to execute the strategy:  People are selected and elevated in direct relationship to strategic and operational plans. Operations are strongly tied to strategic goals and human capacities. "Execution is the job of the Business leader" Bossidy & Charan claimed, the business leader has to be engaged, deeply and personally, in the business; the top dog is not exempt from this. 

2. Strategy (doing the right thing) is not a strategy when it is dealing only with operational excellence (doing things better than competitors). Fixing the issues (quality, productivity, etc.) that you have is not a strategy. And of course, you need the strategic thinking to understand the context in which it operates, growing your business such as changing your business model, creating new markets, new products is the essence of strategy. Simply put: Grow it (Strategy), Fix it (operational excellence) 

3. The strategy is not a strategy if it does not take people, management, and leadership into account and put it in perspective. In the networked society, strategy and execution are more and more intertwined. Therefore, for real agility, business should turn back to the core, not just the core competencies, but the core of the company. People will gravitate towards companies that met their value. Its time horizon may vary, but the strategy should always stay true to the core.  

4. The strategy is not an effective strategy if it is limited to rigid prescriptive strategy formulation. Nor can a strategy be effective if organization and management structures and practices are not flexed to allow strategic thinking to emerge across the organization by multiple organization actors. Development of strategic thinking skills and competencies are directly related to strategic agility. 

5. The strategy is not a strategy when isolated from business eco-system. Any strategy has to consider the external environment (social, political, economic, technological, industry, market, stakeholders, etc.) and the internal environment (resources, capabilities, systems, structure, culture, stakeholders, etc.). If these things are not taken into consideration,  it is not a strategy. 

6. The strategy is not a strategy when it does not help you to realize your business vision & achieve your objectives with metrics. There are more things that cause a strategy NOT to be a strategy such as  Lack of benchmarks, goals, research, etc... It will not only cripple your efforts, they turn what one wants to be a strategy into random, unorganized hopes and ideas. 

7. The strategy is not a strategy if it’s not dynamic process and action oriented. The strategy is defined by business strategists who take an initiative that sets the firm on a new course. Strategy making is, therefore, action-oriented, dynamic process that creates improvement in performance, It is the direction and scope of the firm over the long term, which achieves an advantage in the changing environment through its configuration of resources and competencies with the aim of fulfilling stakeholder expectations. However, this process is rarely a product of a linear analytical process but involves sense making and learning. 

8. The strategy is not a strategy if it lacks creativity. A key challenge for managers is to develop strategic thinking capabilities in order to build agility. However, this is trickier than just developing rational, analytical skills. Traditional strategy emphasis has been on logic over creativity, but what is required is to recognize that creativity over logic also has a role in strategy formation, thus combining both analytical and intuitive cognitive styles. Design disciplines may have an important contribution to make strategy, Further; firms have to rethink how they approach strategy formation through the creation of a culture of openness, creativity, and experimentation that goes beyond creative and lateral thinking skills development.  

• The strategy is not a strategy when it can not assure a competitive advantage in terms of capabilities. Some argue: A strategy is always a strategy. The more specific question should be: "When is a strategy not a successful strategy?" De facto, every organization has a web of strategies: competitive, marketing, product, technology, etc. However, the strategy web only works if it is:
  -Coherent and mutually supporting
  -Is executable by the organization
  -Provides competitive advantage  

9. When is a strategy not a successful strategy?  It is a product of components and if one fails,  the result is unsuccessful, here are seven factors in good strategy.

A: When Strategy is a wish/ if it is not based on internal and external knowledge of the company.
B: When it has not considered/ realistic knowledge of human capacities
C: When it is not based on account of all your operational realities
D: When it does not use data and analysis for support the goals
E: when it is not well-defined timing and ending periods
F: when it is not considered politic, economic, technological and social impact
G: when it is not considered well communication policies and leadership to develop the strategy
Degree of successful or totally unsuccessful Result = A*B*C*D*E*F*G

Crafting a strategy is like to grow a tree, to know the main path, to develop branches when necessary according to the futures events. ...A good strategy embraces three “C”s: Context, Cascade, and Creativity.

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Three Perspectives in Agile Success

The intended and expected impact of adopting Agile methods is to improve quality not worse.

Agile as an emerging software project management methodology, has been adopted in many organizations.  The fact of the matter is that as Agile methodologies are getting more popular, everybody is getting on the Agile bandwagon. As this phenomenon is taking place, the level of discipline, experience, and understanding of Agile practitioners in the industry is getting quite diluted, even causing concerns and confusion upon quality delivery. Thus, what are the biggest challenges with Agile, and how to overcome it?

1.   The Biggest Pitfalls with Agile

The intended and expected impact of adopting Agile methods is to improve quality not worse. The problem is not with the methodology (Agile vs. Waterfall) as much as it is in the mutually exclusive sets of expectations, or the business wants more and more functionality while IT management wants it sooner and sooner. Indeed, there're many pitfalls at Agile journey:

• Top-down standards and practices are de-emphasized: The biggest problem with agile is that software development devolves from a strategic partnership of technology. Agile is touted as a bottom-up development process with just enough top-down oversight to keep it all together. However, in practice, it is more likely that agile methods are implemented in small-scope projects of shorter duration as a bottom-up process where the enforcement of top-down standards and practices is de-emphasized or optional. The larger the assembly, the more likely these independently-built components will have integration issues and require rework, extending build time and cost of the project. 

• Lack of Clear Architectural Foundation: The problems cited for Agile around product quality tend to focus on poorer design and architecture, rather than code.  Agile software development implies concurrent design and concurrent engineering -- parallelization of tasks within a larger framework. Rapid and throwaway prototyping are used to minimize the amount of time and energy spent going down blind alleys. However, without a clear architectural foundation and strong requirements analysis up front, any bottom-up development process will spend its time chasing shadows in an attempt to satisfy fickle customers articulating "needs" that may or may not be relevant, realistic, or in the best interests of the organization 

• Immature Project Management Team: Obviously due to the lack of sustainable processes, Agile has become the most preferred option for most teams ...no one likes to be constrained by "laws" and invoking Agile gives the opportunity to weak teams to sell non-quality to weak management... at the end,  management is responsible for poor project performance as they have agreed to the approach and staffed the team ... the PM is working with what is given and the team is working as per their knowledge...of course the team will always exercise Parkinson's law in the context of doing minimum necessary to fly under the radar and management will always be bashing about speed but that's the nature of the game and will not change unless management becomes more mature and articulated. They're misunderstanding about Agile, as a low mature team believe Agile = little/no for structure, documentation, reuse, adequate workflow structure, PM structure, adequate regression testing, etc. 

• It’s fault of poor practices rather than the methodology: Methodologies have always been iterative and focused on change, at least since Aristotle invented physics. At the end of the day there is no magic in IT software development, regardless of the methodology, it is a discipline and if the discipline is not followed then bad things happen. The unnecessary failures are perhaps caused by misunderstanding Agile or bad management practice, thus, further check following metrics to verify Agile/Scrum practices, which management tools they use in an Agile Project:
  1) Sprint / Iteration Plans (there should be one for each Sprint)
  2) Burndown Chart
  3) Burnup Chart
  4) Velocity Chart
  5) List of Backlog Items
  6) Defect List & at what stage / environment where they found (QA, UAT, Production)
  7) List of Test Plans / Test Results / Test Coverage.

2. High-Mature Team is Key to Agile Success

One of the main points of Agile manifesto is people over process. Software development is an engineering discipline. The process is very important in any engineering discipline Agile is enabling speed; people do not understand the mission values of Agile. Most of the time,  speed is seen as the main driver and the tendency is to achieve speed at any price. It will cause Agile failure if the team is lacking maturity, that is and is not their fault as they are the way they are,  the true root cause is lack of knowledge from those that assembled the team which most of the time is not the PM (if they use a PM and not a Team Leader) could it be the hiring managers or other role…

• The high-performing agile team (either physical or virtual), can communicate well, collaborate well cross-functionally, it's critical for project success as Agile processes generally require better and more mature developers. In waterfall, a senior developer creates a Low-Level Design document and the work that a junior programmer gets is to fill in the function bodies. Agile talks about refactoring, which basically means applying design principles to the code at development time, and a developer with the same skill just will not be able to do that.  

• Pair mentorship: Pair Programming and mentorship are an excellent way of teaching newcomers about correct Agile implementation and becoming better IT professionals in general. The correct way to start an Agile project or practice is to pair your experienced and inexperienced people together until they understand how to do Agile correctly, or train developers to understand the nuances of applications they develop and cultivate analytical capabilities., etc. This sort of training and mentorship is the “Safety Net” that Agile methodologies provide and recommend when building an Agile practice. 

• Overall Scrum Team Maturity: Maturity is not just required out of the developers. Scrum makes a blanket assumption that all team members can do one another's job. This assumption simplifies certain things, but it is not a practical one to make most of the times. There has to be someone mature in the team who keeps things moving and deals with the issues as they arise.  Overall test skills should be provided to fulfill. a) testing skills (methods, ...) b) functional domain skills (business context, processes,...) c) technology skills (platform/application technology, certifications,...) to ensure a foundation for successful testing service can be provided

Therefore, in general, agile does require more maturity on the part of "everybody". It counts on this maturity for aspects like raising issues when appropriate and arriving at a great design as code matures. Agile can be a recipe for failure without this maturity. 

3. Agile is both Engineering and Management Disciplines

Agile is the umbrella and under that,  you will find that there are many different types of Agile development. SCRUM, Crystal, XP,  just to name a couple and there are many more. It is important to know that agile processes don't guarantee a successful delivery. No SDLC process can do this.

However, what Agile can do is let you know you have a problem much earlier than traditional SW development processes.  The objective of Agile is to get incremental improvements or developments in front of stakeholders in a short time to enable the development team to obtain feedback before they spend too much time developing something that does not meet stakeholder expectations. It does not mean developing without specs or without consideration of code quality.Agile is both engineering and management disciplines.

1) Agile, in and of itself, isn't the problem. Poor practices are. Running Agile projects without following necessary Agile practices and discipline can actually be very dangerous. Sometimes Agile is used as an excuse by some for not executing discipline that has been long and hard won. If you really execute Agile well, then it has more effective control, communication, metrics than waterfall - the big difference is you treat code and configured components as an asset and nurture the ability to make the learning of the development lifecycle a critical part of the way businesses deliver change. Agile is a disciplined business approach for IT excellence and code quality - as well as a means to deliver customer service excellence in increments. Agile can be an effective management philosophy. It can also be a cover for ineffective project management. The true approach should be "as soon as possible considering all facets of best practices".

2)  The quality of the new, rapidly developed solutions leveraged the quality of the well-designed architecture and component and there was still time to do a full analysis and design The PM should be able to give a detailed gap analysis -- what was supposed to happen, what is actually happening, and the likely source of the difference. A valid choice where there is a predefined and immutable deadline is to accept a reduced feature set or to can the project. If the choice is to accept a reduced feature set then what is delivered should be of high quality. The next choice is whether there is business value in filling out that reduced feature set in subsequent iterations. 

3)  The agile process needs to have fundamental knowledge: Agile process documentation is generally moot on certain points. It either does not want to look rigorous or does not want to repeat the well-known best principles. Thus, while the scrum process documentation would go at great lengths as to how scrum is done, it would not elaborate the various activities -- regression testing being one of them. The point is, the companies that use agile processes need to have this basic knowledge rather than following some agile bible religiously. It's worth resetting collective expectations to understand what the real purpose of Agile, XP, Iterative, Paired Development, TDD, Waterfall, Staged-gate, and SDLC methodologies. 

4)  Agile includes management of stakeholders, who need to understand both incremental development and iterative development. What is unique to agile is the sprint (short delivery cycles) and the continuous stakeholder involvement. They often need to grasp that just because they can see and touch something,  it is not necessarily ready for production- it may only be ready for feedback, adjustment, and refactoring. If they insist on deploying products before they are production ready, that may be a cause of poor code quality. The most important aspect with Agile is you require the full engagement of the client so that they can give feedback and direction in a timely manner. Many customers don't have that capacity. The next step is then to have someone take on that role which is where problem starting to creep into the whole process. 

5) Agile takes both engineering discipline and management practices. Agile is not 'opposite" of Waterfall, without structure, free thinking or doing, Agile is the complimentary methodology of Waterfall, add the flexibility on the rigidity; accelerate speed from the hierarchy; or create cascade from the steep slope., etc. Agile is about discipline and not just for technical teams but for business people as well, the business should never be presented with a choice that accepts poor quality that will be resolved at some later date. Neither should they have poor quality inflicted on them with a similar excuse.

6) The fundamental problem of managing vendors and requirements. The whole point of agile development (and really, all of the iterative, rapid prototyping development frameworks) is to focus on many iterations of task-level work, operating in parallel across the whole of the product, making extensive use of feedback to rapidly bring working software (as opposed to non-working models) to completion. If the vendor is responsible for it (told your team longer development cycles and poorer quality are the norms), you're better off finding another developer. If this is feedback from your team based on observation, then your team requires training in project management, requirements, or vendor management.

In summary, don't blame the methodology, blame the target audience. Blame the people thrusting it down the throats of the target audience without proper oversight to ensure successful adoption of the process. Blame the lack of education on the process and its benefits. Blame the "cold turkey" approach. Therefore, we should not accept that Agile means poor coding or missed deliveries. We should also keep in mind that processes alone do not deliver the product. It takes people, resources, processes and values to make a successful delivery. All of these must be reviewed in context together if one is to find the root cause and apply effective countermeasures.

Read more about Agile Pillars: 

Is Agile Strategy on the Way

Main Characteristics of Agile Enterprise Architecture

Three Perspectives in Agile Success

Agile Process Management

Agile Budget Planning

Agile Talent Management

Agile Governance

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What is Greatest Risk in Risk Management

Doing things better, faster, and smarter, risk management is like the brake pad, not just for stopping the car, but for making car running faster with safety control.

In many organizations, risk management is still running in silos, so what is the greatest risk in risk management The risk that the risk management program is insufficient to identify, evaluate and assess, and respond to all the potential effects of uncertainty as business strive to achieve its goals and objectives.

1. What are the Great Risks in Risk Management?

The major risk overlooked by Risk Practitioners arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of human behavior and human nature (the Social Element). Though people believe that by default most humans are rational, but many studies, the recent financial crisis, and major failures show that humans are "Predictably Irrational". 

• What are the root causes? What are the risk management blind spots? Is it because of your ERM program immature and shortsighted?  The more interesting question is: What to do with this risk even when an ERM program is neither immature nor shortsighted. (Since obvious signs of shortcomings in an ERM program can be fixed if wanted to). But why do you think that most risk management has not been doing effectively and why do you think that most internal auditors have not been providing the necessary reviews of the risk management system. What do you think needs to change so that the kinds of things suggested can actually occur? Isn't it important to understand why something so basic has not been done or if it has been done, has been done so poorly? The greatest risk will be a real business/reputation issue that is not being properly identified/managed.

• This is actually a very thorny issue where judgment still trumps any prescriptive RM standard: Identifying all possible risks is casting such a wide net that it is essentially an elusive goal. Any attempts to refine the scope to make it more manageable end up introducing the potential for the risk you have raised (even if an ERM program is NOT immature nor shortsighted). Self-checks for any biases can only go so far since we are still all subject to human limitations to see all. Having a committee process improves the odds further, but then again introduces 'group think' issues. The Paradox is: Trying to identify (assessment comes later) all possible risks...... One may end up in a huge list that may not be practical to assess. What is done is then low risks (judgment of group/ committee....) are ignored by accepting them.  

• The major source of limitation in any risk management is because of the (knowledge) risk of the unknown. Assuming that in any risk management program, all the known and potential risks would have been covered and managed, and over a period of time the ERM program would be making continuous improvement based on the feedback from the risk management process and what would be left is what is unknown.

• The reputational damage that is self-inflicted as a result of the consistent failure to (1) recognize the shortcomings of competing sets of guidelines (2) measure, manage or model risk (3) embrace tools to prepare (clients) for uncertainty. Reputational risk is that of the blindness of conventional risk management practitioners to the shortcomings of the incomplete and overpriced solutions.  Reputation is a key consideration. When there is a legal or compliance battle, the reputational damage often means that even if the business doesn't get hit with a judgment or other sanction they still lose. 

2. The Human Factors in Effective Risk Management 

People are still the weakest link in Risk Management, people _are_ the greatest source of risk (both classical downside risk and "upside" risk). However, you can't remove them from the equation without making the equation a nullity.

• There are "human factors" such as irrational, cognitive, or behavioral aspects. We can't and won't be able to manage or predict BUT by mapping and measuring complex interactions in real-time can gain early warning (anticipatory awareness) of possible/plausible negative impact...NOT reflexive or post-loss. 

• Individual Trust and Collective Trust and thus collective human risk (in Enterprises) can be very different. If looking at Risk from a different dimension of "Trust" .. Trust has an element of uncertainty involving the RISK of failure or harm to the trustor. If the trustee will not behave as desired. So when looking at Enterprise Risk Management, look at Trust in Humans, Trust in Processes, Trust in Technology, and when we think of Trust in Humans.. we kind of assume that we are all predictably rational.     

• Many of the difficulties come from subtle psychological factors ~ The difficulty with assessing the effectiveness of the risk management system by the risk management team themselves is the problem that it is ~ effectively ~ self-assessment, discounting risks that are seen as the day to day irritants ("we've never had a problem with that in 5 years") as well as the much more talked about black swans.  

• High-Risk Appetite at Top: In addition, a really high-quality risk appetite discussion between executive members and the board is often a common failing ~ even if the risk management system picks up a risk, a major issue can be a poor judgment about the risk appetite to take. That said, Risk Management is both for top-line business growth and bottom-line compliance, the greatest risk is the weakest link of your organization, usually people 

3. Next Practice in Risk Management 

 Develop a set of next practices to better manage risks, these respective disciplines will converge through best practices, etc. But that is not to say they will become universal, what works well for one industry may not work for another as far as structure or reporting.

1) The first step that is often overlooked is the review. How effective are the mitigants, what has changed both internally and externally, are you satisfied with what you have done and do you then re-prioritize project. Risk Management can ensure that all such risks are revisited and reaccepted as to minimize the risk raised. There has to be a reasonable level of proficiency presumed in risk identification by the RM program

2) Embed RM into Business Processes: Embed risk identification and assessment in operational processes including project management. Just how integrated is the risk management system in the running of the operation, so that if the risk management system doesn't spot it, the business won't either. Often a big risk is that the risk management system is detached from the real management of the business.

3) GRC framework is essential to an effective RM program. Governance Risk and Compliance are coming under one umbrella of GRC. The revenue leaders in cross-industrial sectors are the best practitioner for risk intelligence. Security, Risk, Compliance, and Governance will be converged into more cohesive management discipline and well-integrated into the key component of business strategy.

4) Cultivate Risk Intelligence Enforcement Culture: from board level to front-line customer service, the culture will always trump strategy and even leadership in innovation practices, how to enhance risk intelligence culture will enable business for both top-line and bottom-line growth.

5) Reap what you sow: The next stage should surely be to define the organization’s appetite for risk, then to identify whether the risks identified are above or below risk appetite which gives a priority list. Once the risks have been prioritized, you can then look to mitigate the most important risks to bring them within appetite. While the appetite for risk can reap rewards in the enterprise, it can come with an unforeseen downside. Reap what you sow. Too few business enterprises have appropriately aligned or devoted sufficient resources to their respective risk/compliance/ethics/governance efforts, and they should be or need to be appropriately integrated, with decent reporting structuring and streamlined processes.

6).  Business Resilience -The business capability to make the organization more resilient: not just controlling risk, but fail faster, fail forward, fail cheaper and recover more promptly, even become stronger than before; thus,  the 'greatest challenge' is how to, objectively, quantify the entity (complex system) and how to make key processes more resilient.

7) Business Agility & flexibility: Doing things better, faster, and smarter, risk management is like the brake pad, not just for stopping the car, but for making car running faster with safety control. Digitalization provides the business multitude of choices to serve customers, engage employees, develop products/services, risk intelligence with business flexibility will balance such paradox of choices via next practice.

Genuinely intelligence-led operations (meaning all dimensions, from risk to marketing to logistics), has to be embedded into both processes, and more importantly mindsets, but too much time is spent on the theory rather than the practice of risk management. The key is to use risk management to prioritize daily tasks regardless of whether you call it ERM or GRC or which standard framework you prefer.

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CIOs: How do you Brighten Up Shadow IT in your organization?

As we all know, there are many systems and solutions built and used inside organizations without IT approval and generally people use because it is free, instant set-up and don't care or understand the security implications. IT feels like a race against time! So what’s the right attitude to shadow IT, and as a CIO, should you, or how do you “brighten them up” in your organization?

1.  Shadow IT needs be Seen as an Innovation Opportunity 

Shadow IT exists for real reasons, some subjective (lack of trust, turf games, etc.) and some objective (the way budgets work - sometimes there is no money/resources for it in the IT budget, but there is more than enough in the BU's budget, etc.). Make them your allies - not enemies. 

Accountability can rule the day. Most, if not all CIO's, are accountable for the security and integrity of the enterprise's data and networks. Technically, Shadow IT should not be allowed to introduce anything into the enterprises' architecture. At industrial age, the enterprise IT still acts as controller only, think IT is scarce, while the world of clouds, shadow IT crops up: it means the business department started bypassing IT for purchasing SAAS base applications on their own; on one hand, such circumstances are understandable, as business compete with agility, the speed of application solution can accelerate business growth; on the other hand, IT also has enough good reasons to control it: as IT infrastructure cost fortune, broke easily, shadow IT will cause risk/security loopholes to the business in the long term. 

The standard answer is that you promulgate a policy: requests for new tech must pass through the initiation process, etc.; but if that worked you wouldn't have a shadow IT. And if you take a hard line, you risk punishing the innovators who seize an opportunity to add value with a new system or technology (as well as those who are just ignorant of the process or too lazy to follow it). But overall, shadow IT need be seen as an opportunity

• IT can then discover new needs or risks or new tendencies 
• IT can standardize some shadow applications, if there is no major security threat 
• IT can explain the people why some shadow IT applications are for the company not acceptable (data security,...) 
• It's an internal competitor that can in some occasion help to wait for the right IT project      

Every opportunity also has risks. Shadow IT works only when there are no proper IT policies in place. It is always good to test and check new tools which can give benefits but should always be done in supervision of IT or after approval from IT. There has to be a cost to bypassing the process and project requests "submitted" in this informal manner would naturally be at the bottom of the priority pile. But maybe other punishment can be relegated to performance review time. Innovation that adds value mitigates the offence of failing to adhere to corporate policy; but a simple disinclination to follow the process does not, and a violation that compromises security is punishable even up to termination.

2. How to Brighten Up Shadow IT

The IT governance approach ought to be to consider the unofficial tech objectively. Upon the discovery of non-approved tech, treat it as a project inception request with requirements implied by the implementation. If you have to control, best scenario is to control from the root level so that users don't install the freeware or shareware but properly implementing on the Enterprise O/s level security.

• Treat them as the prototyping teams: When IT treat them as an opportunity you can have visibility and much better control of what is going on. - Give them hosting and integration options commensurate with the prototyping paradigm! Then in the end you will gain visibility into what is going on, help them make it more sustainable and catch issues before they become problems. So not to punish the users of shadow IT, either promoting transparency to IT over their uses, so that IT can act or react with the right decision or project priorities or tool.. 

• If Shadow IT exists because so called 'best practice' or innovative initiative, then removing them erodes business success. Perhaps those "shadow" or "darkness" have some innovation light, then IT may amplify and share the best practice, Therefore, only business and IT work as true partners, as IT need get fellow business peers’ support, transform shadow IT into full spectrum of IT services, by building a rich ecosystem of services atop infrastructure -in both public and private cloud environments through integration and GRC management discipline, also well manage business-IT-Vendor trilogy in order to gain purchasing power for negotiation or reducing process redundancy.  

• Establish an environment to support and encourage it – If end users using Shadow IT for innovative work. As CIO, you need to think in a direction where innovative ideas don’t stop, so set up a team to support the business to do what was needed. It helped to enable the means to spot apps that were going critical - and also for small apps created an environment where requirements for something that may go large were effectively defined in an end user environment - ensure some good practice (security, scalability, tech support) would be available for those that grow into business is critical 

 There're a few things "bothering" IT these days, shadow IT, dark process or technology debt, there’re both opportunity and risk in it,  IT need expose and understand why they exist in the first place. The integration of "shadow IT" or "end user computing" teams into the IT organization works best when done as a conscious decision by the business unit running them because it makes business sense and makes things easier. Do more selling. Show real value of doing it through IT leadership and it would not be too difficult to brighten them up. 

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BPM Talent Touch: How to Create Strategic Value in HR with BPM

HR function usually works behind the scenes, often seen as cost centers only, as they usually are facilitators, not owners, and they also over focus on record-keeping, transactions and life-cycle processes, how should HR function use an empirical approach, creating strategic value in HR with BPM, to deliver a unique and differentiated people management strategy that is closely aligned with the company’s strategy?

1.  Ensuring HR Processes Bring Actual Value to the Overall Business 

If HR wants to be a strategic partner, BPM is a great way to free their time from transactional processing and add value to the enterprise.

 

• First of all, HR 2.0 need well define both strategic goal & process and tactical tasks, perhaps HR 1.0 over focuses on administrative side of talent management, from BPM perspective, besides bottom up approach (automate logistic process), more critically, how to perceive people 2.0 from top down, to well align talent with corporate strategy. 

• The importance of HR to define its customers, understand their needs, and then to create processes that contribute to its customers' success -- many of HR processes were created to meet its own needs vs. those of its customers’ needs. HR strategic bases and measurement control should focus on the interrelationships between processes and alignment with strategic objectives. 

• Digitization has a direct impact on the way companies manage talent and their performance. Performance management systems and HR processes are gradually moving away from a static, unidirectional, and time-bound avatar to a more dynamic, continuous, and interactive state. with improved transparency, goal tracking, real-time feedback, which result in the adoption of digital and social recruiting, performance management systems.  

2. HR Involvement in Company Image & Branding 

Another interesting point is company image/branding and HR involvement. Having a hiring process that is clear for everyone (managers, recruiters AND candidates) is very important as well. Having a BPM tool is very helpful and enables the process to be much smoother!

• Optimize Candidate Experience:  HR has a great role to play, being the first contact a potential future employee has with the company. This is what being call candidate experience.  This greatly improves the image of the company and those people will speak positively about it to others, no matter weather they work for you or not. 

• Streamline HR with BPM to Sharpen Business Image: It is the end to end process and how each process interrelates to each other that is the key to strengthen talent link. Focused on delivering streamlined best practices to HR departments through the use of a very powerful BPM system. Most HR departments - even at very large employers - have ill thought out, poorly defined, and seldom followed processes. This lack of definition leads to risks and a host of other problems. In addition - because process knowledge lies inside some HR staffers head - makes it very difficult and time consuming to get new HR staff up to speed. You can also see this fact in action with the number of expensive training sessions required to keep HR staff up to date when BPM could alleviate most of this training by providing universal BPM workflows to guide HR staff through complicated processes 

• Soft Aspect (Image, brand, Reputation) Matching: HR need well blend hard practice with soft aspect, a powerful BPM will smoothen the effort. It is important to detect if the candidate is consistent with the values ​​of the company, usually expressed in the business model. It is important to detect whether the applicant meets the company in what being call soft aspects (image, brand, reputation). 

3. Strategic Base HR Metrics

Giving best practices to HR professional to define their metrics will help them breaking the subjective vision people usually have on them. It's about giving an answer to the common "What is HR doing?” 

• HR strategic value and metrics:  Well define a set of metrics to answer questions such as:  "How to Get the HR you Need" – How’s on-boarding and recruitment processes? What about the process of annual reviews/evaluations? Is there strategic value to be found in automating/improving performance reviews? What metrics can be used to show ROI & strategic value of improved HR processes? Which processes bring the most strategic value, and what metrics will show it? 

• Quality+Speed: This is a good metric for HR -- how did you do with Both Quality and Speed? This becomes HR's value-added to the business. It is a metric commonly used for HR which is called Time to hire. However, one must be careful to not put too much emphasis on how long it takes to recruit someone and focus on the quality of the hire. Sometimes, this one becomes challenging. The impact to the company when a position remains open can be staggering -- lost time to market, sales territory coverage, etc. Managers may become pressed to fill positions as quickly as possible, so it's doubly important for HR to establish a wide network of targeted resources with BPM to ensure a stream of top talent available to the company. 

• Additionally, HR need to measure process performance and quality results and customer satisfaction (internal or external). Traditionally, measures are oriented in time, quality, quantity, cost. For example: indicators such as turnover, time processes, process duration, evaluating results, etc. That's fine, but it is not strategic view; for HR, the measurements should seek to measure the gaps between the competencies required and actual occupants, including the work environment and workers perceive their development within the organization and communication between the parties and finally the HR contributes directly to the image and reputation of the company (this being most important is related to socially responsible companies today). 

Therefore, HR must develop a deep understanding of the business, and the measures it proposes must be tied to business outcomes: the impact on customer service, the reduction in costs, the support of a specific new growth area, the increase in staff loyalty, the incentive and rewarding system to inspire innovation and so on, the metrics that define success in HR today will fundamentally change in near future.

Read more blogs about BPM:

BPM's Hybrid Journey

BPM's Best Way

BPM's Talent Touch

BPM's First Step

BPM's Wonderland

BPM's Rocky Road

BPM's Value Trail

BPM's Mighty Waters

BPM's Social Wind

BPM's Hill View

Top Ten BPM Roadblocks

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Is ‘C’ Word Missing in SWOT

SWOT Analysis is instrumental in Strategy Formulation and Selection. It is a strong tool, but it involves subjective element. It is best used as a guide not as a prescription. Some say, there’s ‘C”-Customer missing in SWOT, is it true?

1. The Purpose of SWOT

 For a proper SWOT, you need a clear objective. The team needs to know WHAT you want to investigate. This is very important. Then you need to have the RIGHT QUESTIONS to analyze and you need to get the RIGHT CONCLUSION out of the analysis. 

• The SWOT analysis is not an entire strategy development process. The SWOT process is one of practical tools in the entire strategy process typically used for top level analysis and positioning. The most important point in the SWOT Analysis is how to eliminate / reduce subjectivity and how to prioritize by category. Also there are many other tools for analyzing the customer need profile and value stream and competitive environment that provide the color needed that the SWOT process doesn't provide.

• Internal, External-Factors in SWOT :
  1) The SWOT integrates 2-Factors Groups (Internal and External)
  2) External Factors are analyzed in Opportunities and Threats
  The elements to be considered in the group of External Factors are:
  3) Market / Customers / Buyers (Segmented)
  4) Competitors (Old / New / Potential)
  5) Complementary (Strategic Alliances)
  6) Suppliers
  7) Sector / Industry
  8)Environment (Local & Global PESTLIED: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, International, Environmental, Demographic)      
      
• Many SWOT analyses, as presented, seem nothing more than a "Pot-Pourri" of opinions. However, that is OK if recognized as such. Opinions become hypotheses that become the subject of discussion and analysis. Where the hypothesis can be backed-up by analysis, we no longer have an "opinion" but an "evidence-based" SWOT.  

2. Is ‘C’ Missing in SWOT 

Some say C is missing in SWOT analysis. "C" means "Customer".  Next to Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat should always stand Customer. The SWOT is not just four boxes, but has the Customer in the middle of it. Others argue, the C is implicit in Opportunities. Therefore, the 'C' (Market / Customers / Buyers) is considered within the External Factors. How can one have opportunities without potential customers? It is difficult to imagine conducting a SWOT analysis that doesn't consider opportunities or threats to the organization's relationship to "customers"

• SWOT used as Springboard: SWOT has its uses for simplicity, but it does not capture the complete complexities of the real world, one may say whether popping a "C" in front of it is the magic solution. Same holds true for another approaches summarized in an acronym: NIRC (needs, interests, resources, and capacities). The most important piece is the process of analysis, discussion, and level of engagement from stakeholder, for which SWOT can be used as a springboard, and in combination with other approaches, such as stakeholder analysis, problem analysis, etc 

• Evidence-based SWOT analysis provides a comprehensive view of the "choices" that need to be made and balanced in formulating a strategy. Customer knowledge and value creation are indeed anchors of a strategy. However, in the language of science, they are necessary but not sufficient. Strategy is more than marketing; strategy rests on the assumption that rivalry (competition and cooperation) will occur and that choices must be made (using your knowledge of customers and competitors) in terms of what (and to what extent) customer needs will be satisfied and how rivals (both existing and future) are capable of frustrating the firm in achieving its other (non-customer) objectives.  

•  “C”s & “V”s Implicit in SWOT:

1) If by "C" you mean "the Customer" then clearly the OT contains an analysis of the customer (contained in the 5 Forces Industry and Competitive Analysis).
2): If by "C" you mean "the Competitors" then clearly the OT contains the analysis of the competitors (contained in the 5 Forces I&CA).
3): If by "V" you mean "creating and capturing Value" then clearly the use of the Value Chain in the SW means you are analyzing how you create and capture "economic value".
4): If by "C" you mean "strategic Choices", then a SWOT analysis is the first step in making the hard choices which customer segments to serve and what value is created for all stakeholders.

If we are talking about Competitive Strategy (at the business unit or corporate level) then a SWOT analysis needs to be done at the (whole) firm level. A SWOT analysis at the customer market segment level would still need to be aggregated to form a "view" for the firm (or enterprise).

3. More Alphabetic Letters Implicit in SWOT

There's no 'one size fits all' approach. Different businesses in different industries under different circumstances may require a tool to take a deep dive in all those factors. With all of these "well-known" analytic tools, SWOT indeed is a valuable tool, there’re more letters implicit in SWOT:

• The 4P (product, price, promotion, place) or 7P (4P + Packaging, Positioning, People) models of the Marketing Mix all rely on a clear understanding of the Customer and the Consumer (who are not necessarily the same) and segmentation therein. The 4P/7P models are the basis for forming a Marketing Strategy, not a Competitive Strategy. SWOT has the ability to encompass 4/7 Ps analysis.  

• The 3 “C”s: Customer, Competitor, Choice: What's happened to your understanding of competitors and the competitive environment? Do you view SWOT only through the prism or conceptual lens of customers or through a broader "industry" canvas which includes competitors and competitive context as well as customers?  

• The 3 ‘T's: Threat, Trends and Truth. SWOT as a snapshot of the current situation, by capturing three ‘T’s-Threat, Trends, and Truth, SWAT can cultivate system thinking, any output is a potential input into some other processes.

• SWOT++: Make SWOT a key building block to CREATIVE Strategic Planning and Creative Change Management by conducting a SWOT++.:What should we NOT change? What is the Urgency (Why Now?) etc. That's just a few samples. The second + creates a layer on top of all the other analyses for Possible Strategies & Actions. For example, if these are our Strengths, then what actions should we take now to maintain them? If these are Opportunities, then what Strategies should we consider initiating those opportunities? Too often leaders and facilitators conduct a SWOT and then do NOTHING with it. 

Whether SWOT is a waste of time, either in anchoring business plans or as a means of examining the current state of an organization, depends entirely upon your perspective, etc. what you believe SWOT does. In some organizations, a SWOT analysis has moved from being ”gathering-pot” of executive (and other) opinions to a better organized, fact-based analysis which can be discussed and verified. It has moved from being a "gut-feel" view of the firm's current market attractiveness and competitive position to something which can be validated through research and analysis. And there are critical “C”s in SWOT.

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Innovationidealization

Openness, playfulness, adaptability, flexibility, and agility are five key characteristics to cultivate innovation.

Innovating is difficult. Innovating in a controlled environment is more difficult. Dissatisfaction is perhaps the first requisite to develop innovation as a culture. The second is to consider innovation, not as a management buzzword, but defined as an ideation process with important organizational characteristics that help to increase the number of choices for innovation management. Maintaining a culture of innovation in an ongoing and sustainable way requires. 

Here are five organizational characteristics for cultivating a culture of innovation

Openness

Innovation comes from the combination of need and culture of openness to new things.

Cultural change in an organization begins with the involvement of the top management and their commitment to change. Provide the resources needed for thinking/working on things beyond the current assignment.

• There are some keys characteristics to building an open culture: These are particularly required during changing times to keep a workforce open to innovation include a compelling future vision and the presence of transformational leadership; high organizational justice (trust); a participatory management style and positive organizational communications. 

• An easy to deploy innovation process: At the very beginning of innovation process, people need to know how to contribute when they have the creative idea or open loop feedback, Make sure the rank and file know that their ideas will be listened to when they come up with them. Without an expectation of a chance to express them, why bother to come up with new ideas? Then, culture is just like water, more easily permeating around, the guideline may still come from the top. 

• A Well-Set Recognition System: Employees should be encouraged to think out of the box, go beyond their defined roles and demonstrate their intellectual capabilities to bring positive change. A recognition system and high visibility for all positive contributions will help in creating a culture of innovation. Innovation must be appreciated. Culture Index actually measures the ability of people to be innovative. Who can come up with the new ideas? Then, who can implement them? Who will embrace change, who will fight it? If you want an innovative culture, then fill your organization with people who are innovative and embrace change 

Playfulness 

Innovation comes from the environment in which thinking & experimenting is stimulated.

Make sure people have some time to do creative thinking. It's very hard to explore "what if?" thoughts if 110% of your time is spent firefighting. 

• Select talent for creativity.

-Select for the diversity of background, perspective, and personality;
-Encourage appreciative inquiry;
-Facilitate coaching up, sideways and all around;
-Change Agent to abolish hierarchy;
-Thought Leaders to break barriers;
-Select for empowerment, select for curiosity, select for low ego;
-Love the clash of ideas, love listening, love being wrong, love learning 

• Build up Innovation Communities: To continuously innovate within organizations, individuals and groups need to connect and communicate more openly, easily and effectively. From there, they need to work together efficiently on implementing ideas to deliver value. This generally happens through a combination of a community that shares a common interest, using a consistent process while maintaining momentum and urgency. Communities enable organizations to reach out to frontline employees, management, customers and business partners on topics of mutual interest. Communities based on mutual interest encourage close collaboration. These communities can be engaged in offering ideas, enhancing these ideas by combining and building upon one another to shape solutions and work together to implement resulting innovations. This collective action enhances the innovation experience and leads to higher diffusion rate. Innovation communities, then, become a transformational catalyst to diffuse new kinds of thinking throughout an organization. 

Adaptability 

Innovation is the collective capability to adapt to changes. Adaptability is key.

For every organization which loses the atmosphere of innovation to the processes of bureaucratic fossilization, another one is born where an innovating culture still flourishes.

• Policies, processes, and commitment (resources, not words) from top management should establish and foster curiosity, cross-pollination of ideas and a close connection to the market for all parts of the organization. Innovative organizations naturally have closer connections between functions and all functions and levels are more intimately involved with the market and each other on a regular basis (flatter social and organizational structures).   

• The process is a participation framework and an end-to-end route map that can be adapted to the community needs. The main challenge organizations face when attempting to innovate is a consistent process through which they can develop an idea. Communities help to develop ideas. But they need repeatable processes to evaluate, test and deliver those ideas. Adaptive innovation processes can provide the community self-organizing methods to collectively deliver results. It can also provide a consistent way for companies to evaluate the promised value as well as addressing: how to reduce risk and eliminate low-value projects, quickly and effectively? And how to manage a portfolio of investment in innovation projects for the best return?      
      
• Be Resilient: Be willing to take risks, give new projects a fair shake, a reasonable chance to succeed before cutting them off. Innovation should be built into annual goals and compensation schemes. Budgets for innovation should be protected; it requires a corporate willingness to accept that failure is part of the process. Questions like “What new thing did you try that didn’t work, and what did we learn from it” should be part of the annual performance review. 

Flexibility 

 Healthy process for innovation goes between flexibility and hard process. 

Innovation requires more thinking, analyzing, and knowledge leverage creativity with less scripted behavior so if organizations can build communities and let them pursue their passion in line with the organizational goals; the net effect is flattening social and organizational structures to allow for collective idea development and action with more flexibility. 

• "Cross-pollination" needed to come up with the best new ideas. Make sure the work environment encourages collaborative thinking. On the other hand, the current trend toward VERY open workspaces with tiny personal work areas may be counterproductive - you also need some peace and quiet to work in. A balance needs to be struck. 

• Adaptability to create mutual interest communities, to identify common, yet flexible processes that introduce focus and create a sense of urgency. It's easy to say you're flexible or playful and have a lot of innovative desire but culturally within the walls of an organization, what does that mean? How does it translate?
  1)  Greater flexibility
  2). Don't be afraid to fail, until you succeed.
  3). Develop closer relationships with Customers, and listen to and act on their feedback and ideas.
  4) Work closely with customers and partners to develop innovative ideas.
  5). Be prepared to look outside the organization for ideas: Open Innovation Paradigm, etc.
  6). A culture of Innovation should be developed from the top down.
  7). Be prepared to develop an understanding of innovation models. Develop the level of competence to allow you to apply these techniques in the workplace. 

• Finally, the urgency is the need for speed in innovation. Urgency serves as a driving force to address a specific problem or turn an idea into results. With a sense of urgency, innovation will truly enforce communication, solve business problems and enable business growth.

5. Agility 

Innovation efforts work best when focused through fast, rapid cycles to shape and test solutions.

Agile is about doing things better, faster and cheaper. Innovation requires a corporate willingness to accept that failure is part of the process, but rapid recognition of failure can be a positive factor in increasing organizational tolerance.

• Rapid innovation cycles help organizations select or discard concepts and when selected, convert ideas into innovative solutions quickly: This allows communities to maintain momentum and demonstrate results quickly so they can build on continued successes. In addition, building innovation communities help create a diverse asset base and inventory. The agility to leverage this asset intelligence speeds up the innovation process. This changes innovation economics by reducing development time and costs.  

• Test Digital Innovation Internally:

1) Challenge assumptions: Use a different lens and compare how your management, product managers, customers, competitors see your products.
2) Look carefully at how you frame the problem: The answer differs by how an issue is defined
3) Chunk up the issue: It is often difficult to think of something new. Try focusing on what can be done to improve or enhance a product or try a new channel.
4) Borrow: In large businesses especially, there may be other departments with different ideas in the way resources create and support a product. Borrow these ideas to create a new product or service.

• Experiment Digital Innovation Externally: 

1) Look at what others are doing in your industry: great ideas can be gleaned by viewing similar businesses in your own state, country or the other side of the world.

2) Look at other industries locally and around the world who may serve a similar target market: Use these insights to create/ modify your product and lead the way in your industry.

3) Query your non-customers: Why isn’t everyone buying your product? Are there consumers who are not yet in the category but could be if a suitable product was available? The outcome could lead to a whole new market to play in.

4) Review of the past: Some things from the past are circular and keep coming back in. Your business could take advantage through re-introducing the past in a new way.

5) Engage with futurists: Futurists can often inform you of what is coming, It can also tell what customers need and perhaps the future trend of products and services.

Innovation is not serendipity, it takes the right culture, bright talent and adaptive process in a continuous journey. You have to manage it in the right way with the right elements strategically and systematically to achieve consistent business results.

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