Radical Change in Corporate IT: Recent Episodes
R.M.
The first series (Radical Change in IT) covers interviews with world experts in IT management, business design, or enterprise architecture to get their shot at what radical change is required in corporate IT.
If you had a magic wand and you could radically modify the way corporate IT engages itself in organizations, what would you change?
That's the question I asked Hans van Bommel, an opinionated, lateral thinker about organizations and digital technology changes.
Hans is an author, crafting thought-provoking narratives that capture the essence of human experiences and sharing insightful perspectives on a wide range of topics. He is a speaker, an opinion maker, and a conceptualist, exploring abstract notions and translating them into tangible insights and products. Through Cycle to Accelerate, Hans provides digital transformation coaching and strategy as well as continuous performance identification and growth. He is also one of the key contributors behind the Flow Manifesto.
In this 2nd part of two podcasts, Hans provides valuable insights such as:
- The structure required to 'Flow'.
- You cannot get a competitive advantage with technology.
- People leaving an enterprise.
- Bicycles, Elon Musk, and marathons.
- Transforming you business doesn't mean a new technology base to be built.
- What is risk, and why it isn't if we can name it.
If you had a magic wand and you could radically modify the way corporate IT engages itself in organizations, what would you change?
That's the question I asked Hans van Bommel, an opinionated, lateral thinker about organizations and digital technology changes.
Hans is an author, crafting thought-provoking narratives that capture the essence of human experiences and sharing insightful perspectives on a wide range of topics. He is a speaker, an opinion maker, and a conceptualist, exploring abstract notions and translating them into tangible insights and products. Through Cycle to Accelerate, Hans provides digital transformation coaching and strategy as well as continuous performance identification and growth. He is also one of the key contributors behind the Flow Manifesto.
In this 1st part of two podcasts, Hans provides valuable insights such as:
- Prioritizing knowledge above processes;
- What is "Substantive Governance";
- The difference between building models and gathering real data;
- The 'Domination' processes of the Agile approach;
- The utmost importance of nurturing a 'Disciplined Language';
If you had a magic wand and you could radically modify the way corporate IT engages itself in organizations, what would you change?
That's the question we asked Lisa Woodall, a very active expert and senior business leader with a track record in shaping, leading and implementing portfolio management, enterprise architecture, business transformation initiatives, with an impressive career track record of important and strategic roles such as Chief Enterprise Architect in large organizations in several industries.
She is currently the Global IT Transformation and Value Assurance Lead for WPP, a creativity company focussed on building better futures for clients, people, communities and the planet. She also participates in the Intersection Group, a multi-disciplinary community and platform for creating better enterprises.
Lisa provides smart answers, based on years of field work, about the need to change how IT works in organizations. Her insights cover topics such as:
- IT people need to be more curious about the business of the organization they work in;
- Digital teams are spending too much time with the wrong people;
- The business analyst role faces a lack of respect in digital project teams;
- One of the things to fix: solutions looking for a problem;
- Businesspeople are underwhelmed by the net result of digital transformations;
- We aught to learn from venture capitalists on how to look at investment in tech;
If you had a magic wand and you could radically modify the way corporate IT engages itself in organizations, what would you change?
That's the question we asked Chris Potts, an enterprise architect and designer, who provides work and career mentoring, online, for people all around the world. Chris is also the author of a series of great books on enterprise architecture.
Chris provides great answers, based on decades of field work, about how IT should be viewed, and what organizations need to do to improve value. His insights cover many topics such as:
- The four core capabilities of corporate IT;
- How to find out why you really need your IT department;
- How communities of interest across the organization can make a huge difference;
- Why monitoring and managing the value of technology investments shouldn't be left to those that implement;
- Change requires that some people let go of some of their beliefs;
If you had a magic wand and you could radically modify the way corporate IT engages itself in organizations, what would you change?
That's the question we asked Annika Klyver, a teacher, an innovator in business architecture, the inventor of the Milky Way Enterprise Mapping technique, and co-author of a book on enterprise design patterns. Currently she is a Business Architect/Designer at Scania and an active member of the enterprise design community of the Intersection Group.
Annika provides great answers, based on years of field work, about the need to change how IT works in organizations. Her insights cover many topics such as:
- Raising expectations towards flexibility of IT systems and designing for change rather than being forced by it.
- Going away from the handover of deliverables and to the handover of trust.
- Why value flow roles and product portfolio managers have a weaker position for inducing change.
- The need to make people aware of how you progress from an idea to actual change.
- How corporate IT is often viewed as shadow business.
If you had a magic wand and you could radically modify the way corporate IT engages itself in organizations, what would you change?
That's the question we asked Joe Peppard, Principal Research Scientist at the Center for Information Systems Research of MIT Sloan School of Management.
Joe provides awesome answers based on years of field research about the need to change the IT structure. His insights cover many areas such as:
- Why the classical IT department holds back organizations in their quest for digital success;
- Where do the real opportunities lie;
- Managing information technologies vs organizing for success with information technology;
- Comfortable positions and longstanding behaviors;
- The inwardly focussed self-management regime of IT departments.
If you had a magic wand and you could radically modify the way corporate IT engages itself in organizations, what would you change?
That's the question we asked Bard Papegaaij, Chief Change Facilitator at Transgrowth, and former Research Vice-President at Gartner.
Bard gives awesome answers about the need to change corporate culture when it comes to IT. He also provides insights in many other areas, such as:
- The great divide between IT and the rest of the organization;
- How silos are nurtured by the people inside them;
- The socializing geeks;
- The IT knowledge gap;
- The social responsibility of the IT community;
- How social change can replace a magic wand and create a joyful experience.
If you had a magic wand and you could radically modify the way corporate IT engages itself in organizations, what would you change?
That's the question we asked Mike Rosen, Chief Scientist at Wilton Consulting Group, and co-founder of the Business Architecture Guild.
In answering the question, Mike provides many provides loads of wisdom on:
- The new drivers of the Digital Economy;
- Accountability as a means of achieving cross-enterprise results;
- The Learning Organization: what you have to become, or succumb to;
- The IT knowledge gap;
- The enterprise architect's role and the true value of their work;
If you had a magic wand and you could radically modify the way corporate IT engages itself in organizations, what would you change?
That's the question we asked Scott W. Ambler, author and Chief Scientist of Disciplined Agile at the Project Management Institute.
Scott shares his wisdom on many important topics, including:
- Integrated roles in organizations;
- Collaboration and the great IT-Business divide;
- Leadership;
- Outsourcing;
- Cultural gaps and teamwork;
- Measurements;
- Humility as a means of improvement...
If you had a magic wand and you could radically modify the way corporate IT engages itself in organizations, what would you change?
That's the question we asked Wolfgang Göbl, founder and President of the Architectural Thinking Association®.
Wolfgang provides great answers to the question, with a focus on accountability.
In addition, he shares his opinions on several important topics, including:
- The CIO, a role that is bound to become irrelevant;
- Why certain key tasks should not be left to a distinct IT team;
- The death of the corporate IT department;
- The importance of the vocabulary when designing business change;
- Why the devil may hide in too much detail;
If you had a magic wand and you could radically modify the way corporate IT engages itself in organizations, what would you change?
That's the question we asked Milan Guenther, founding partner at Enterprise Design Associates, author of the Enterprise Design Framework found in his book Intersection.
Not only does Milan provide a great answer to the question by positioning the leadership role that corporate IT has to play, but he shares great insights on many important topics affecting organizations:
- Collaboration.
- The IT mess.
- Start-ups and scale-ups.
- Opportunity seeking.
- The true nature of innovation.