Executive Programs
There are a number of programs that I offer. They last from one to several days and are designed to stimulate thinking about some tough issues and exciting opportunities. The areas change over time; the current ones include:
Business Technology Leadership
This program in Business Technology Leadership is unlike any professional development program or program in the industry. Instead of focusing on hot new technologies or on how to make Chief Information Officers (CIOs) or Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) more effective in their existing roles, it focuses on the intersection of business models, technology and management best practices against a backdrop of leadership. The emphasis is on the interrelationships among business models, processes, technologies and business impact – defined as sales growth, customer satisfaction and profitability. Technology is operational, tactical and strategic. Business is collaborative, continuous and competitive. Leaders must be creative, adaptive and responsive. Our program enables participants to see all this holistically.
We focus on two closely related objectives: the wide and deep understanding of business and technology trends and the components of effective business technology leadership. The program increases awareness of the changes occurring in the industry as well as what effective leaders need to understand about emerging business and technology.
The program is designed to change the way business perceives technology and how technology relates to business. When the program is completed, participants will be able to add measurable value to the business, contribute to business growth, and think as strategic business partners.
The program is about change. We have created a curriculum and learning environment that impacts behavior. Participants are immersed in discussions and exercises designed to increase understanding and business impact.
Internal Consulting
The past few years has restated the importance of “soft skills” in business. Communications skills, negotiation skills, even simple listening skills are all in demand as the speed and complexity of business accelerates. Research indicates that the most successful executive qualities are (broadly defined) communications and business domain skills. We educate and train our professionals in many substantive areas. We also tend to focus more on functional areas than on areas that emphasize synthesis, abstraction or induction. We tend to focus much more on substance than style, more or content than form.
Clearly, the need for domain depth in any discipline or activity is huge. This will always be the case. But without the right form – the right package – for domain depth, effectiveness is often lost. Executives and managers have discovered the gap between form and content and style and substance – and addressed it squarely with initiatives designed specifically to fill the gap between “hard” substantive and functional skills and softer management and leadership skills. The figure below summarizes all this.
The program focuses directly on the internal consulting skills necessary to improve business performance. The program is applicable to business and functional professionals.
Where's IT Really Going?
This program is action-oriented. It's about how to respond to the changes that are occurring in the business technology field, the structure of the industry itself, and how these changes should affect how you buy, deploy and support technology. Will you be buying technology the same way you buy electricity? Time will tell.
The 2nd Digital Revolution: Opportunities for Business Technology Convergence
It’s almost a conundrum - but almost is the key word here. We’re at this unique point in time when three things are absolutely true. Computing and communications technology is actually starting to work: this stuff is coming together in ways we couldn’t imagine ten years ago and had trouble even describing five years ago. Business models are morphing (partially because of technology and partially for other reasons) … morphing toward collaboration, supply chain integration, among other connectivity-based models and processes. The inertia of old business technology management practices is still, however, driving most of our technology investment decisions … still driving us toward piecemeal applications, ill-conceived sourcing and staffing strategies and metrics that focus on the wrong issues.
Technology Trends that Matter – & Those that Don’t
This program is about which technologies make sense, which will crater, and which ones are still in a state of suspended animation. Important distinctions among, concepts, prototypes and technology clusters are drawn with advice about where to invest and what to avoid. (Much of this argument appears in The 2nd Digital Revolution
Business Technology for Non-Technology Executives
What do non-technologists really know about technology? This seminar is designed to communicate technology basics and to identify the major issues that everyone should understand, the major assumptions in the optimization of the business technology relationship, including that:
Business, Technology & Management are Intertwined
There’s an Important Distinction Between Operational & Strategic Technology Investments
There are Technology “Layers” & “Flanks” that We Should Understand, Appreciate & Exploit
There are Major Issues in Software Applications, Communications, Data Bases, Infrastructure, Security & Management that are Driving Change & Opportunity – in Business Technology Acquisition, Deployment & Support
There are Leadership Challenges that are Larger & More Complex Than Usual ...
Parts of this program have been given to senior executives in Wharton’s Executive Education Programs, “CFO as a Strategic Partner” and the Wharton “Executive Development Program,” among other venues.
Technology Investing: 15 Things that Should Be True
Due diligence is the formal term for the process by which we screen and select options. It’s organized around a set of constant criteria that can be applied to technology investment decisions of all kinds. The investment targets include everything from software applications, personal computers (PCs), laptop computers, cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), communications hardware and software, data, security and technology services. The lenses used to vet investment opportunities and challenges are organized around the specific requirements that all technology investors – including especially CIOs, VCs and technology vendors – need to satisfy to achieve their objectives.
There are differences among the due diligence that occurs within a company to acquire or deploy technology versus investors seeking a return on their technology investment, and companies trying to develop technology products and services for sale to existing and new customers. It’s not that the evaluation criteria are different; in fact, they’re amazingly similar. The differences can be found in how the criteria are weighted and analyzed.
There’s also a difference among the targets of due diligence. Technology comes in multiple flavors: hardware, software and services. The evaluation of each of these flavors requires a different perspective (in addition to the different perspectives that arise from the source and object of the technology investment). Finally, of course, there are differences in the impact the technology is expected to have. Private equity venture capitalists want to make as much money as they can – as quickly as they can – for their general and limited partners. CIOs want to improve operating efficiencies while contributing to the growth and profitability of the business. Technology vendors want to discover and build the next “killer app” so they can capture more market share.
How the World Will Work
So what’s the big idea here? In the midst of all of the hype, all of the technology and all of new ways we’re expected to communicate and compute, there’s precious little insight into how it all ties together. If the world becomes “virtual” through Internet ubiquity, how will it impact our personal and professionals lives? What can we expect? And what’s unlikely to happen?
This program provides some insight into the how computing and communications technology will change during the next 5 - 10 years and how it will impact our lives. It will describe 10 processes about to be changed forever.
Buy & Sell
Negotiate & Partner
Advertise & Market
Manufacture
Distribute
Communicate
Entertain
Heal
Govern
Learn
The program explores how we’ll work with personal digital agents who will do our bidding over the WWW, how we’ll learn new things through virtual reality-based simulations with students distributed around the world, how social referenda will occur in real-time, how we’ll buy the dress of an academy award nominee while watching the awards ceremony, how we’ll walk down the 16th hole at Augusta National chatting with a virtual Tiger Woods about club selection, how we’ll manufacture from our computer consoles and how we’ll treat all varieties of illnesses remotely and compassionately.
While the technologists have an agenda, futurists a vision, and the politicians have a perspective, it’s the intersection of technology, social trends, politics, globalization and capital that’s driving a whole much larger and significant than the parts each “specialist” owns.
Search & Destroy
This program is nasty – but designed to keep you from crashing-and-burning. Here's a topics sampler: If you have systems project life cycles in their third year, kill them. If you have projects proceeding without risk assessments, kill them. If you build software – rather than buy or reuse software – kill the implementation team. If you're not rewarding the productive and marketable, kill HR. If you're computing environment still lacks discipline, kill the managers (and their consultants). If process reengineering is suggested by anyone, kill everyone. If you're not managing to objectives (versus processes), kill yourself.
The essence of this program is the distillation of counter-intuitive best practices into some search-and-destroy missions that will save a lot of time, money and lives.
Instant Technology Impact: 10 Things You Can Do Tomorrow
This program identifies 10 specific steps you can take tomorrow likely to have serious impact. Think of these as jumpstarts to significant change. The program describes some methods, tools and techniques that can help implement the steps, steps designed to focus squarely on high maintenance problems and high impact solutions.
Develop Selling & Servicing Scenarios
Develop Architecture Strategies
Open the IT Acquisition & Management Processes
Retool, Realign & Rethink Necessary Skill Sets
Develop Realistic Yet Opportunistic Migration Strategies
Add the Right Measure of Discipline
Create a Center for Competitive Intelligence
Create a Growth-Focused "Skunk Works"
Acquire Marketing & Service Expertise
Consider a "NewCo"