This episode of The North Star will highlight best practices for end-to-end strategy execution based on insights collected from the more than 2 dozen industry experts interviewed over the past 6 months. These interviews, which covered topics as wide ranging as innovation, organizational design, strategy formulation, artificial intelligence, program execution, work management, data management, software design and development, and systems modernization, highlighted the challenges organizations face leveraging these disciplines in an integrated context. Today, most organizations either ignore many of the advancements in these and other disciplines, or they cordon them off into silos, with little or no insight into how to collectively maximize their collective value. Organizations lacking a formal strategy execution framework also lack the perspective needed to maximize the advances being made in many of these fields and disciplines. In this episode, William Ulrich will frame these disciplines within the context of an integrated strategy execution framework, providing business leaders a roadmap for adopting existing and integrating new disciplines under a formal, framework that enables organizations to streamline and improve strategy execution.

Organizations around the globe rely on manual work, spreadsheets, and similar desktop tools to perform both mundane and sophisticated tasks. In some cases, desktop solutions take on appropriate tasks, like crunching data, but in other cases spreadsheets have taken a dominant role in keeping organizations running. In the latter case, spreadsheets serve as a vital link for transforming and porting data between systems, managing operational business data, running assembly lines, automating financial work, and automating other capabilities. These “shadow systems” represent significant risks to organizations as they tend to be undocumented, poorly architected, and largely ungoverned. Consider a large daisy chain of complex interlocking spreadsheets; if one breaks, the ripple effects could easily undermine a variety of internal and customer-facing functionality. Shadow systems undermine security, auditability, business performance, and future efforts to deliver automation to the business areas that rely on them. This episode of The North Star will explore the role of the “Quick Win” approach in strategy execution and business transformation. William Ulrich will discuss how the Quick Win approach was used to transform an organization at the periphery while building a foundation for more extensive, future transformation initiatives. Please join Mr. Ulrich as he explores the Quick Win approach and how it can impact your IT investment strategy and related transformation efforts for years to come.

This encore of Episode 1 of the North Star establishes the show's purpose, basic themes and range of topics to be covered. Host William Ulrich will discuss the suboptimal strategy execution track record that organizations share across the private and public sector, consider the root causes of these execution performance issues and lay the groundwork for optimizing strategy execution. He will share his experiences and lessons learned over the course of his 40-plus year career that has shifted his thinking from a technology-first to a business-first and customer-first perspective. William will also provide insights into why the success or failure of a given strategy can be predetermined well before programs and projects are established and corresponding investments are allocated. Two areas that he plans to explore include the lack of upfront problem diagnosis and holistic solution design, along with the tendency to execute strategies in splintered fragments that invariably create unworkable or unimplementable results. He will share a variety of real-world stories that are likely to leave you shaking your head, thinking how can these things be possible. Another topic he will address involves the penchant that business leaders often have for being drawn into major investments in shiny objects, where those shiny objects become a poor substitute for well-crafted business goals and objectives. Finally, William will provide an overview of upcoming topics and guests who will include thought leaders, researchers, authors and experts from a variety of business and technology disciplines.

Prior episodes of The North Star identified business architecture as a positive factor in successful strategy execution. It should come as little surprise then that, as business architecture has gained traction, the demand for skilled practitioners has grown. One association’s career center that specializes in job opportunities for business architects has scores of job openings. In addition to the fact that there is an actual shortage of skilled practitioners, the lack of well-formed job descriptions makes it difficult to attract talent. Many open requisitions expect every business architect to be a polymath, skilled in everything except those skills desired in a business architect. Misleading, unrealistic job descriptions not only undermine an organization’s ability to attract talent, but also to retain talent. When skilled business architects are placed into jobs that have little to do with business architecture and fail to leverage their unique skills, they will leave. The inability to clearly articulate the skills required in a business architect and leverage those skills as part of a viable practice undermine an organization’s ability to maximize the value of the discipline. On this episode of The North Star, William Ulrich welcomes back popular guests Kelley Eckmayer and Teresa Garcia-Holm, senior business professionals with extensive experience in maximizing the value of business architecture. They will discuss the role of the business architect and skills an organization should look for during the hiring process and when establishing job performance standards and titles. If you are looking to build and staff a business architecture team, or seeking to ensure that your skilled business architects do not walk out the door, tune in to this discussion and learn what every human resource and hiring manager should know.

Historically, strategy execution has been a linear process, where one group sets strategy and another group implements it. In practice, implementation teams often hold different views of what should be done from the strategy setting team. A second challenge is that strategy is often cast in stone, remaining fixed in place for extended periods. Strategy stagnation is typically based on the errant assumption that markets, customers, and competitors are standing still until the next strategy refresh; a far cry from reality. It is no small wonder that strategy execution failure rates remain stubbornly high. Strategy setting and execution must be more inclusive and more collaborative, incorporating ongoing customer feedback, market research, and competitive analysis. Most important, is the fact that strategies must be continuously validated throughout execution because a well-crafted strategy is not always a winning strategy. In this episode of The North Star, host William Ulrich welcomes guest James Creelman, globally recognized thought leader in strategy management. They will discuss the essential aspects of setting and executing strategy in a dynamic world, including best practices for managing feedback loops across business unit silos. If you are responsible for setting or executing strategy, you will not want to miss this discussion.

Enterprise design is the collaborative practice of designing and creating better enterprises. Enterprise design envisions perspectives on how an organization can and should evolve, addressing relevant aspects of user, customer, product, and organizational design elements. The discipline incorporates design thinking from an enterprise perspective; but where do strategy execution and design intersect? Fundamentally, strategy execution seeks to deliver on a business vision, goals, and objectives, which ideally are influenced by design thinking and practices. Even more critical, however, is the ability of an organization to visualize the future state of the business ecosystem in a way that incorporates the full breadth of enterprise design, architecture, solution deployment, and ultimately experience impact. Along with impact analysis, the all-important design stage of strategy execution is often skipped or given lip service. In this episode of The North Star, William Ulrich interviews Milan Guenther, co-founder and President of Intersection Group. The discussion will focus on how to incorporate enterprise design as a core element in end-to-end strategy execution. The discussion will seek to gain insights into what leading organizations are doing in the area of enterprise design, how it should be introduced into an enterprise, and how it can become part of an overall strategy execution framework.

Every project has opponents who try to manipulate that project for their own gain. This is a well-hidden truth. As most people who have been associated with executing strategy are aware, good projects intentionally gone bad is a reality. But no one wants to be associated with a failed or underperforming project, which is why the current state of projects is often portrayed in a better light than what is happening in reality. Shading the truth of a failing project is often done to maintain or gain more power, income, and respect. Yet the industry cannot run from reality. Based on 25 years of tracking data, only one third or fewer of projects are executed successfully. Could at least a percentage of failed and challenged projects be related to intentional sabotage, aided by enablers who shade the truth for their own gain? Little attention has been paid to the art of undermining and manipulating projects, yet millions of dollars are squandered annually due to project sabotage. If more attention is given to the motivation and methods of project saboteurs, the practice could be combatted, leading to significant cost savings and better results. Join William Ulrich as he welcomes guest Dion Kotteman to The North Star. Dion, a former CIO, will provide insights from the perspective of the project saboteur and explain how to deal with the manipulation of the truth and the influence this manipulation can have on projects. If you have a stake in any aspect of project success, you will not want to miss this episode of The North Star.

Cyber security is a critical issue that is becoming progressively more critical and at the same time more complex, affecting everything that computes, manages, and communicates information. Concurrently, security assurance and certification are an expensive endeavor and the need for automated, repeatable detection is essential to an organization’s business continuity, strategic mission, competitiveness, time to market, and decision-making at all levels. The main factor preventing scalability of certificating systems as safe and secure is the overwhelming reliance on human evaluators. The amount of evidence required to certify a system as being cyber-secure can be overwhelming, resulting in superficial, incomplete, and unacceptably long evaluation cycles. On this week’s episode of The North Star, William Ulrich welcomes cyber security and systems assurance authority Djenana Campara, President and CEO of KDM Analytics. Ms. Campara is leading efforts to standardize and automate systems assurance and cyber security assessments. In this interview, she will share insights into the current state of cyber risks, cyber security, risk categories, risk targets, and the automated detection of threats and vulnerabilities. Listen in to this episode to gain important insights into how your organization should incorporate cyber security and systems assurance into its business strategy.

On this episode of The North Star, we will explore the root causes of underperforming software teams. William Ulrich will welcome this episode’s guest Darius Blasband, CEO and founder of Raincode, a Brussels-based compiler technology company and author of ‘The Rise and Fall of Software Recipes’. Darius will offer his controversial opinions on topics such as Agile and software team composition. His opinions are not just controversial, but they are human, coming from years of personal field experience. So, are you concerned that your large-scale software development investments are not returning the value you’re seeking? If so, then tune into this episode of The North Star to gain insights from a seasoned professional in his field with an intelligently abstract perspective on software development methodologies.

Long ago, U.S. states set their own standards for railroads, meaning tracks did not align as trains traveled cross country, creating more than an inconvenience. The technology industry also requires standards, which underpin a wide swath of technical and analytical work at organizations. Standards dictate how data is exchanged, business processes are structured, software is designed, mobile phones work and governments stave off cyberattacks. Is your manufacturing, financial services, insurance, transportation or telecommunications company engaged in standards work? As a rule, the answer would be no. Standards tend to be created by a small number of technology companies and, while many vendors donate time on behalf of their customers, self-serving elements are at work. Ever wonder why certain, widely practiced disciplines like requirements definition, customer journey mapping and “high-level process” design lack standards, or why your requirements tool does not integrate with other tools? There are 100s of thousands of business professionals engaged in these disciplines, yet few if any standards support their work. In spite of these factors, the majority of companies across multiple industries are not involved in standards development, even as their work products continue to be misaligned or poorly defined, driving up costs and degrading the customer experience. This episode of The North Star will focus on the important, often overlooked role of industry standards and discuss why organizations should get involved in standards creation. William Ulrich welcomes Steve Nunn, CEO of The Open Group, and Dr. Richard Soley, CEO of the Object Management Group, two global industry standards associations that have a greater impact on your organization than you might imagine. The discussion will explore the current state of standards work and why more organizations should get involved. Check out this episode and get a behind the scenes look at this critically important, yet largely ignored topic.

The last 16 episodes of The North Star examined strategy execution from a variety of perspectives, looking at a diverse set of topics that included innovation, risk management, net income maximization, artificial intelligence, program execution, organizational design, the circular economy, information issues and technology challenges. Across this wide range of topics, seven self-inflicted troubling patterns or sins emerged. These include: the Strategy Execution Chain is Broken; Culture, Politics, and Siloes Form an Evil Triad; Good Ideas Arise Outside the C-Suite; Program Delivery Blues Undermine Strategy; Organizations Lack Holistic Perspective; Data is the Weak Link in the Chain; and Strategy is Captive to Technological Immaturity. In this episode of The North Star, William Ulrich will break down each of the problematic patterns that undercut strategy execution, citing interviews he held with various experts over the past several months. While many of these strategy execution issues were identified in episode 1, the fact that experts from a wide variety of fields surfaced these same issues through widely divergent conversations was highly revealing. Correcting a problem requires identifying that problem. What organizations are doing today to execute strategy is not working because they continue to repeat the mistakes of the past. These issues are not isolated to a given industry or geography, but are rather built into how organizations think and act as a whole. Ignore these seven patterns at your peril. Or face the facts, take a realistic look into what multiple experts have repeatedly reinforced, and change course on strategy execution now.

Is your organization making major investments in cloud and other digital technologies? Concerned that your organization has been left behind in the digital revolution? Does the cost and time spent on information technology grow even as time-to-market, the ability to innovate, and enterprise agility degrade? Is leadership pointing the finger at your mainframe computers as the root of all evil? Are consultants and analysts saying that mainframes belong in a museum, not in a modern enterprise? If so, you may find your organization ensconced in a multiyear, multimillion dollar mainframe migration that strains your budget along with business leaders’ patience and the ability to compete. Reality challenges the mainframe migration myth. Mainframes are still in use by more than 70% of the Fortune 500, handle 90% of global credit card transactions, manage 68% of the world’s computing workload at 6% of the cost, and are more resilient and reliable than their non-mainframe counterparts. Mainframe revenue for IBM’s latest model grew year-over-year 62% in 2019. Yet the drumbeat to migrate from the mainframe seems to just grow louder. Join William Ulrich and his guest, Kevin Stoodley, as they examine the stark reality behind the mainframe migration movement. Mr. Stoodley is currently CTO for IBM Z. William and Kevin will look at the root cause of the challenges facing organizations today that are driving the perception behind the migration movement and deep dive into why many of these massive, high risk mainframe migration efforts may be harming your organization and its reputation in ways you may not even imagine. Listen in to find out why your organization’s technical future may be based on the very hardware systems that are automating your organization today.

Architecture disciplines in general, and business architecture in particular, tend to be viewed as only applying to large, private and public sector institutions as opposed to non-profits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), social entrepreneurs, and other organizations seeking to make a social impact. While approaches vary based on the organization involved and its corresponding mission, architecture delivers value to organizations seeking to directly or indirectly contribute to the social good. Non-profits, NGOs, and other organizations seeking to improve people’s lives and the environment in which they live face many of the challenges shared by the private sector and government. While mission-driven versus profit-driven, organizations seeking to make a difference in the world nevertheless face a wide variety of opportunities and challenges that must be addressed. Join William Ulrich and his guest Whynde Kuehn as they discuss ways in which formal business disciplines can be applied to maximize the ability of mission-driven organizations to contribute more effectively to the global good. The discussion will focus on the need for architecture in mission-driven organizations, how approaches differ for mission-driven versus profit-driven organizations, examples of architecting for good in practice, and how qualified and inclined individuals can contribute in positive ways to architecting for good.

Have you ever been involved in a “brute force” cost cutting exercise? Ever felt helpless as valuable programs were eliminated or gutted and skilled talent walked out the door? If so, you are not alone. You were likely involved in a corporate expense slashing exercise or what many call “corporate downsizing”. These efforts have historically been orchestrated by C-suite executives coupled with management consultants, with little or no input from rank-and-file employees. Unfortunately, the C-suite and their advisors often lack the in-depth knowledge and appreciation for what is involved in the complex operations of medium-to-large enterprises. The fallout from these efforts can be devastating, taking years to restart key programs and rebuild lost talent, if it happens at all. This episode of The North Star is titled “Improving Corporate Earnings via Swarm Intelligence”. William Ulrich and his guest, James Smith, will examine the major shortcomings of historic corporate downsizing efforts and discuss innovative approaches to achieving the long-sought goal of intelligently reducing corporate expenses. If you want to explore more optimal and effective ways to improve corporate earnings, tune in and gain insights into how this innovative approach to cost reduction may be deployed in practice.

Multiple studies show that strategy execution is a major challenge for corporations and government agencies of all types and sizes. As organizations attempt to improve and streamline their ability to execute their strategies, it raises the question as to how well institutions of higher learning are preparing tomorrow’s business leaders in this area. Will new recruits from prestigious schools be able to step into the strategy execution void? Academic institutions have long taught strategy definition approaches and techniques, but evidence suggests that strategy execution program offerings are much less likely to be offered by major universities. In this episode of The North Star, William Ulrich welcomes guest Dr. Brian Cameron to discuss the state of available strategy execution offerings at major universities. The discussion will focus on the strategy execution gap in higher education programs, what is available from selected institutions, and available resources for universities seeking to incorporate strategy execution into MBA and related programs. Join this discussion to gain insights into where this discipline stands in academia, why it should be a focal point for university programs, and opportunities for strategy execution to expand in business and related curriculum.

This episode of The North Star focuses on the practical role of cognitive computing and AI in organizations. Cognitive computing refers to technologies that learn at scale, reason, and interface with humans in a manner aligned with the way people naturally interact. The underlying technologies comprising cognitive computing include artificial intelligence, machine learning, rules-based solutions, state machines, neural networks, predictive analytics, and quantum computing. This episode will look at three focal points: Gamification, AI and Ethics to offer business leaders insights as to how best to plan for and invest in these areas. The discussion will look at the ethical risks and responsibilities that business leaders should consider as AI proliferates across business ecosystems. William Ulrich welcomes esteemed guest and leader in the field Phaedra Boinodiris. The episode will also share insights into how much of what business leaders are hearing is hype versus reality. Join them for this highly informative discussion.

When a business executive told the board of directors of their financial services firm that their computer systems were preventing them from offering a new type of fund to their customers, he was met with looks of disbelief. While details vary, the storyline is familiar to business leaders across every industry. Legacy software systems that have been running for decades undermine strategy execution across a wide-range of critical business areas. These include customer engagement, regulatory compliance, risk management, security, billing, procurement, production, fulfillment, shipping, payment allocations, and the trading of financial instruments, to name a few. And while new software is created all the time, most of it relies on underlying legacy software systems for core capability automation and access to enterprise data. Legacy software system challenges are first and foremost a business problem and should be treated as such. When business leaders encounter customer discontinuity, a diminished ability to manage risk, regulatory violations, and a wide range of other system-related, strategy-stifling roadblocks, they often make decisions that cost millions and do little to address the underlying issues. One common reaction is to blame the hardware platform, even when the problem lies in the software itself. Moving ineffective, inflexible software systems from one hardware platform to another, or to the cloud, simply moves the problem around, often at the cost of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. This assumes that these projects are not cancelled outright. This episode of The North Star will tackle the issue of how to address legacy software system challenges head on. Host William Ulrich will welcome guest and leading expert Don Estes to discuss the real issues behind the legacy systems challenge, including how one-size-fits-all solutions can be a fast path disaster. Tune in as William and his guest cut through the hype to share insights into the best ways to break through the legacy systems, strategy execution barricade.

Most organizations with notable investments in computing technologies are saddled with highly coupled, monolithic software systems that date back decades and undercut their ability to deliver customer value, compete effectively, and ultimately thrive. The good news is that a couple of decades ago the software industry evolved a better design paradigm based on well-formed, unique, and reusable software services. Service-oriented software systems, regardless of where those services run, enable organizations to be more agile, customer-responsive, resilient, efficient, and competitive. So why hasn’t every organization taken advantage of these modern software design concepts and retired their old heritage systems? The answer lies in how organizations design and build software. William Ulrich and his guest, Charles Bowman, will explore these questions, get to the heart of the underlying challenges, and explore ideas for getting organizations to more effectively leverage the latest technologies and software design paradigms. If you are curious as to why your systems development efforts cost too much, underdeliver, and fail to meet strategic goals and objectives, join our discussion on business-driven software design. Hear how your organization can not only improve time to market, but demonstrate a marked improvement in its ability to deliver on its overall goals and objectives.

More and more organizations are seeking to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. AI is promoted as being able to transform every aspect of how organizations function, yet this vision is far from reality. As episode guest Seth Earley said in his recent book, The AI-Powered Enterprise, in spite of multiple generations of investments and billions of dollars of digital transformations, organizations are still struggling with information overload, which undercuts efforts to excel at customer service, reduce costs, and maximize efficiency. The foundation of ensuring that an organization can function as an efficient biological ecosystem is the accurate perception, interpretation, and communication of data. When organizations are broken into silos that do not or cannot communicate, rely on incompatible information and vocabularies, and are drowning in “junk” data, the overall ecosystem cannot function effectively and AI projects fall well short of expectations. The result of these challenges is degradation of the customer experience and corresponding reductions in revenue and market share. William Ulrich and his guest, Seth Earley, will discuss what it takes to deliver effective AI solutions, including effective ontologies or knowledge domains and relationships. AI tools may sound like an easy path to AI deployment, but when underlying information required by those solutions is incomprehensible at scale, AI technology will not come close to reaching its potential. Check out this episode of The North Star to gain practical insights into the essential aspects of AI deployment as William and his guest take the conversation well beyond the vendor hype to gain clarity for a path forward.

This episode of The North Star challenges what has been a long-held assumption by business professionals around the world – that formally defined, automated business process models increase efficiency, effectiveness, and resiliency. Fifty years ago, computer programs were based on flowcharts, step-by-step decision structures that programmers turned into software. That software, much of which still runs today, could not adapt to conditions not considered in the original flowchart, which forced programmers to build more software. Decades later, organizations are collectively stuck with billions of lines of redundant, bloated software systems that are less adaptable than ever. Fast forward to the 1990s, where the concept of business process modeling first emerged and was ultimately adopted by thousands of organizations. Business process models are essentially flowcharts that business analysts define to optimize work and communicate automation requirements to software developers. Those developers then use these process models to design even more inflexible software, stifling agility further in an increasingly unpredictable world. This episode of The North Star will explore the challenges organizations face when they define, manage, and automate work using models that software developers abandoned decades ago. William Ulrich and his guests, Keith Swenson and Dana Khoyi, will examine these challenges and what organizations can do to reverse a trend that has until now been largely unquestioned. Swenson and Khoyi have led efforts to create multiple work management-related standards, patents, and software tools. They have also authored multiple books, such as Mastering the Unpredictable, that reimagine how organizations should define and manage work to increase ecosystem-wide agility while streamlining software solutions. Tune in to this episode of The North Star and learn if everything you know about defining and managing work may be misplaced.