Showing posts with label Differentiator. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Differentiator. Show all posts

February 21, 2016

Random Luck My A*s

Here's an interesting enterprise architecture themed fortune cookie. 

"Good luck is the result of good planning."

Everybody wants good fortune, but a big differentiator is whether you are willing to think through life's scenarios, pull together a solid plan (A, B, and C to be on the safe side) and put in the effort and hard work to achieve your dreams and goals.

Fortunes rise and fall likes the tides, but a solid plan (with G-d's blessings) can take you further than any ocean spans.  ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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April 16, 2010

Breaking Down Organizational Bottlenecks

Improving organizational performance is often grounded in identifying bottlenecks (constraints) and fixing them, so that the firm runs better, faster, cheaper than before and at an advantage to it’s competitors.

Enterprise architecture helps us to locate the bottlenecks through an understanding of our business processes, information flows, and systems and then facilitates our reengineering these though business process improvement and the introduction of new technologies.

Harvard Business School (HBS) put out a working paper in February 2010 called “The Strategic Use of Architectural Knowledge by Entrepreneurial firms,” by Carliss Baldwin that describes how “an entrepreneurial firm can use architectural knowledge to unseat a larger incumbent.”

The premise is that knowledge is a firm’s most critical resource, “including knowledge about how to assemble resources to pursue an opportunity.”

We can architecturally disassemble and assemble our resources and processes whereby we—“isolate the bottlenecks” and then “alleviate the bottlenecks.”

This process is grounded in modularity theory, where we use architectural knowledge to modularize (or breakdown) a complex system into its functional components as well as address how these components are related (through their interfaces).

Once we decompose the firms business, data, and systems into its modular components, we can then “remodularize” (or assemble) them into strategically more effective systems for doing business.

Moreover, the paper suggests that the firm “insources bottleneck components and outsources non-bottleneck components,” so as to focus resources (and innovation) on the trouble spots—the areas that are potentially a source of competitive advantage.

Fixing bottlenecks can produce valuable differentiators for a company that we would not want shared with those outside the organization and made available to competitors.

In my opinion, bottleneck functions can also be outsourced, whereby we decide to “let the experts handle it,” when the functions are not strategic in nature. For example, many companies outsource things like payroll and basic call center functions, and it enable the organization to focus its energy and efforts on its core mission.

The notion that enterprise architecture itself is a strategic differentiator for organizations that know how to wield the architecture knowledge is critically important. Through decomposition and assembly of processes and enabling technologies, we can create stronger organizations that not only reduce bottlenecks, but also drive improved decision-making in terms of what to invest in and how to source those investments.

While many organizations treat architecture as a compliance only mechanism and reap little to no benefits from it, those that understand EA’s strategic significance can use the knowledge gained to their organization’s competitive advantage.


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February 20, 2010

Bringing Back The Passion

Typically, success is attributed to nature, nurture, hard work, persistence; plain old luck, and of course, Divine intervention—always. But another, often overlooked, critical determinant of organizational and personal success is passion.

Passion is the deep desire, compelling feeling, and driving force that motivates us. It is our call to action that we are compelled to heed.

An undertaking done without passion is often mere mental or physical drudgery and considered time killed until we can extricate ourselves and do what we really want to be doing. In contrast, when we have passion for what we are doing it is a “labor of love” and is considered “time well spent”—an investment that we make with joy in our hearts and the feeling that we are engaged in what we are meant to be doing.

I remember growing up as a kid and being advised to chose a career that “you feel passionate about.” “Remember,” they used to say, “this is what you are going to be doing for the next 30 or 40 years!”

Too bad, that in the beginning of my career, I didn’t exactly listen. Fortunately, I found my true passion in leadership, innovation, and technology and was able to course correct.

Over time, I have learned that those who are passionate for their work have a huge “leg up” over those who don’t, and that it is a tangible differentiator in performance. Organizations and people that are truly passionate for what they do are simply more engaged, committed, and willing to do what it takes—because they love it!

In light of how important passion is, I read with great interest an editorial in ComputerWorld, 8 February 2010 by Thornton A. May, titled “Where Has IT’s Passion Gone?”

The article provides alarming statistics from the Corporate Executive Board that in 2009 only 4% of IT employees were considered “highly engaged” in their work.

The author questions: Can “IT [workers] crawl out from under the ambition-crushing, innovation sucking, soul-destroying minutiae of just keeping the digital lights on?”

“Trance-walking zombies” just go to work to keep the proverbial “lights on,” but passionate employees come to work to enhance the mission, delight their customers, and innovatively solve problems.

While IT leaders cannot waive a magic wand and make their employees feel passionate about their work, from my experience, when IT leaders themselves are passionate, the passion is often contagious! When we are truly “feeling it,” others start to feel it too.

Now, it’s unrealistic to take it upon ourselves to make everyone happy, but we can certainly do our part by putting leaders in charge that are passionate, letting them lead by example, and allowing them to create a culture of productivity and engagement that everyone can get excited about and be proud of.

One of the big challenges that leaders face when they try to motivate employees is that often there are many good people who were once passionate, but who have lost their inner-drive because of various set-backs, prior poor leadership, or even burn-out. One way to help bring the spark back is to empower these people to lead their own initiatives and to help them succeed where once they were thwarted.

Without passion, what are we all really doing except taking up space?


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