End-to-End Strategy Execution

For every initiative an organization undertakes, there are many things that can go wrong for every one that can go right. Every major initiative needs someone to keep things moving in the right direction from a sponsorship, business, technical, personnel, and deployment perspective. Enter the Portfolio Executive. In this week's podcast, we interview Mr. Raj Dolas, President of Akiak Technologies. Mr. Dolas has held a number of leadership positions including Portfolio Executive and Chief Technology Officer at major federal government agencies. In this episode, Mr. Dolas shares what it takes to fulfill the responsibilities of a Portfolio Executive, including the ability to successfully deliver a major transformation initiative while facing down severe organizational headwinds.  

In William Ulrich and Charles Bowman's latest book, they cite Jim Rohn's quote that "discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment". They go on to highlight three essential elements of discipline; the ability to maintain rigor, continuity, and interconnectedness from an end-to-end perspective. In this episode of their strategy execution podcast, they highlight the concept of the business knowledgebase and, coupled with business architecture, the role it plays in maintaining discipline as strategy execution efforts deploy and scale up. The business knowledgebase ensures that multidisciplinary teams can move in coordinated fashion from strategy formulation through solution deployment. When this occurs, every investment, business requirement, and deployed solution can be traced back to the strategy driving deployment. This podcast episode details what it takes to implement a business knowledgebase, including metamodel design, tool selection, scalability, stakeholder accessibility, and the role it plays in becoming a cognitive enterprise. 

Organizations that ignore, sidestep, or underfund solution architecture are missing the glue that binds the architecture perspectives that lead to successful initiative outcomes and strategy deployments. In this episode of the End-to-End Strategy Execution podcast, William Ulrich and Charles Bowman welcome guest, Dr. Michael Bardash, practicing senior solution architect with unique insights into the topic. This episode focuses on the makeup of solution architecture, attributes of the ideal solution architect, the role of the solution architect in relation to planning and execution, and how organizations should either initiate or refine their solution architecture practice as a basis for end-to-end strategy execution. 

In their recently published book, End-to-End Strategy Execution, William Ulrich and Charles Bowman said that problematic data is one of the seven deadly patterns undermining strategy execution. In this podcast episode, they interview distinguished guests, John Bottega, President of EDMA, and Professor Peter Aiken, President of DAMA – the two leading global associations focused on data. Join the podcast as they help listeners understand and address the mounting data challenges presented by poorly architected, incomplete, redundant, and low-quality data. With data being critical to business viability and the ability to realize the promise of artificial intelligence, the interview focuses on what it takes for an organization to become data driven, laying out practical options for near-term and long-term success.

A deteriorating business ecosystem is like an aging house, with inhabiting customers, partners, and business stakeholders abandoning it as the situation degrades. Deteriorating architecture, whether it applies to a building, a bridge, or a business ecosystem, is systemic and can't be addressed by short-term thinking and patchwork solutions. In chapter 6 of their book, End-to-End Strategy Execution, William Ulrich and Charles Bowman identify best practices for justifying, funding, and formalizing business and IT architecture and design, which in turn form the basis for initiative planning, roadmap creation, and solution deployment. Check out this episode and hear how to flip the script on the architecture and design cacophony that undermines planning and execution teams and derails well-intended strategies and corresponding initiatives.

Chapter 5 of our recently published book, End-to-End Strategy Execution, states that the omission of a comprehensive, well-articulated impact assessment is a major factor undermining successful strategy execution. Impact assessments serve as the focal point for dissecting, validating, and synchronizing business goals, objectives, and related courses of action. Specifically, the episode discusses why and how organizations should prioritize, justify, and fund business-first impact assessments by incorporating them into annual planning cycles that leverage built-in feedback loops. Topics include scoping the assessment, driving technical assessments through a business lens, and laying the foundation for architecting the future state. Listen in and learn why this underappreciated yet critical element of strategy execution is not just a luxury, but a necessity.

Getting leadership on the same page with strategy execution is often a challenge. This episode features an interview with Whynde Kuehn, strategy transformation specialist and author of Strategy to Reality. The discussion focuses on strategy formulation best practices, how to deal with executive mandates in the absence of clearly defined business objectives, and business architecture's role in framing and interpreting strategy. The episode also looks at how siloed, unaligned strategies can be aggregated and synchronized into a shared, executable perspective. Other topics include how to deal with siloed budget and compensation models that fly in the face of delivering highly aligned, cross-ecosystem strategies and the challenges of dealing with methodologies that often stall strategy execution versus moving it forward.

William Ulrich and Charles Bowman's Strategy Execution podcast, is based on their new book, tackles one of the main challenges facing organizations today, successfully executing on their business strategies while maximizing the value of related technology investments. Episode one outlines the challenges facing organizations today, where two thirds of technology investments are wasted, strategies go unfulfilled, and initiatives fall short their goals or fail entirely. Ulrich and Bowman introduce the strategy execution framework, challenge the status quote, and lay the foundation for future episodes that will seek to unravel long-standing issues that few organizations have been able to escape. Join them as they kick off this exciting new podcast series and provide the story behind the story of their new book, End-to-End Strategy Execution: From Inception through Solution Deployment.

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.

Interviews with experts from a variety of fields uncovered key factors undermining successful strategy execution. Seven troublesome patterns emerged. One, the strategy execution chain is broken. Two, culture, politics, and siloes form an evil triad. Three, organizations lack holistic perspective. Four, good ideas are confined to the C-suite. Five, program delivery blues undermine strategy execution. Six, data is the weak link in the chain. Seven, business strategy is captive to technological immaturity. This episode overviews each of these problematic patterns and discusses how best to address them to improve end-to-end strategy execution.

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.

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.