The North Star takes a deep dive into the topic of strategy execution, often challenging conventional wisdom for achieving an organization’s strategic vision. The host and thought leaders from multiple fields explore concepts that include rethinking innovation, increasing enterprise agility, transitioning to the circular economy, managing enterprise risk and becoming a cognitive enterprise. Setting sights on one’s “north star” is only half the story. Decades of experience point to the headwinds organizations have faced in pursuit of their strategic vision. To that end, the North Star examines how organizations can more effectively deliver on critical business strategies in these uncertain times. The show tackles intractable challenges that many organizations have historically sidestepped, such as optimizing major program investments and untangling high risk technology deployments. While the show often points toward the road less traveled, that road that can make all the difference.
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Strategy Execution: Closing the Loop on Best Practices
Thursday, December 9, 2021 • Duration 01:00:00
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.
Quick Wins: Transforming Organizations at the Periphery
Thursday, December 2, 2021 • Duration 01:00:00
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.
Encore Charting a Path to Your North Star via Strategy Execution
Thursday, November 25, 2021 • Duration 01:00:00
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.
The Business Architect: What HR and Hiring Managers Need to Know
Thursday, November 18, 2021 • Duration 01:00:00
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.
Dynamic Strategy Setting in a Digital World
Thursday, November 11, 2021 • Duration 01:00:00
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: The Missing Link in Strategy Execution
Thursday, November 4, 2021 • Duration 01:00:00
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.
Politics, Culture and Sabotage: Roadmap to Program Failure
Thursday, October 28, 2021 • Duration 01:00:00
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: Neutralizing Threat Risks
Thursday, October 21, 2021 • Duration 01:00:00
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.
The Rise and Fall of Software Recipes
Thursday, October 14, 2021 • Duration 01:00:00
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.
Industry Standards: Why Your Organization Should Care
Thursday, October 7, 2021 • Duration 01:00:00
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.