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Informing the pursuit of digital era ambitions and challenges

February 9, 2015 By brenda michelson

I never intend to halt my public writing. It just happens. A client invites me to work on interesting problem, which can lead to another interesting problem or client, and before long only the crickets remain here. During this latest, much prolonged, cricket chorus I’ve been helping clients pursue digital agenda items.

It is critical to digress for a moment to mention: there is no one-size-fits-all digital agenda, nor is there an all encompassing digital solution. The digital agenda of any given organization (or individual) will depend on ambitions and challenges, as enabled or constrained by existing situation and organizational capacity. </digression>

The work I’ve been involved in ranged from developing digital products, to defining organizational capacity, to guiding architecture actions: bimodal cohesion, systems knitting and information pathways.

While the engagements varied in purpose, problem domain and industry, there were common threads — beyond the coalescing digital technologies of cloud, mobile, social, analytics, sensors and such.

The common threads are best described as shifts forced by the digital era. Five that I witnessed in the wild:

  • Executive embrace of technology for revenue generation and smarter business actions
  • Pivot of attention from the needs of the organization to the needs of the customer (member, citizen)
  • Extension (or two) of the data-to-knowledge pipeline to include reaction and revenue
  • Reconciliation of designing for change (enterprise architecture) with operating for change (digital product development)
  • Recognition that new digital opportunities require new thinking in investment, organization design, roles, practices and measures

An interesting point is who is working on digital initiatives. There are new, often cross-industry, talents who specialize in design, customer experience, or product development. There are deep experts in business, technical or data domains. And at the core are an organization’s go-to problem-solvers.

Those individuals who invariably get tapped on the shoulder to explore new terrain, mount a defense, or unravel a giant hairball. These folks have varied titles, expertise and day jobs, but share traits of critical and systems thinking, curiosity, technical acumen, business savvy, tenacity, collaboration and execution ability.

It is this last group, the go-to problem-solvers that I’ve been thinking about as I pursue my latest independent project. Building from my field work, I’ve begun sketching out key forces, questions, considerations, capacities, actions, implications and so on that inform the pursuit of digital era ambitions and challenges.

The problem space I’ve sketched out includes technical, societal, business, information, organizational, and individual domains, as digital is a cross-discipline, cross-boundary endeavor.

I use the term problem space deliberately, as I’m considering this work from the perspective of a problem-solver, for fellow problem-solvers who are being tasked with crafting and executing their organization’s digital agendas.

I plan to share aspects of my work as I go, along with relevant links and commentary. What I won’t share are specifics on my client work, as non-disclosure is another commonality in pursuing digital ambitions.

If history is a guide, my pursuit and output won’t be linear. But, neither is the subject matter.

And yes, I intend to keep the crickets at bay, at least until summer.

Filed Under: business-technology, digital, enterprise architecture Tagged With: 2015IT, core, digital-ambition, problem-solving

Link: Why Nordstrom’s Digital Strategy Works (and Yours Probably Doesn’t) – HBR

January 15, 2015 By brenda michelson

From the esteemed Jeanne W. Ross on studying customer obsessed, digitally ambitious Nordstrom:

DON’T:

Only a small percentage of companies will gain competitive advantage from [social, mobile, analytics, cloud, and internet of things] SMACIT technologies. Those that do will focus less on the individual technologies and more on how they rally all those technologies, in unison, to fulfill a distinctive purpose. We don’t mean a generic, high-concept purpose like “generating shareholder value.” Instead, we mean something much more down-to-earth – a strategic focus that directs their technology spending.

DO:

It’s time to get serious about defining the purpose of your digital business model. Don’t worry about developing a strategy for social, mobile, cloud, or any other technology. Develop a strategy for succeeding in the digital economy—a purpose that leverages your unique capabilities and responds to market opportunities. Then grab every technology that takes you there.

via Why Nordstrom’s Digital Strategy Works (and Yours Probably Doesn’t) – HBR.

Filed Under: business-technology, digital Tagged With: 2015IT, digital-ambition, stream

The future belongs to systems thinkers

January 20, 2014 By brenda michelson

I’ve often said the future belongs to the dot-connectors. Webber’s Rule of Thumb #7, the System is the Solution, describes it perfectly:

My point is that embedded in every company, in every organization, is a system. When you see the system and not just the individual pieces you increase your chances of winning.

Most people look at a company and see the organization chart. Or the pyramid of functions. Or the products and services the company offers as output.

Systems thinkers see the relationships, not the functions. They see the processes, not the stand-alone components or the final products. It’s the difference between looking at a fence and noticing the barbed wire running horizontally rather than the fence posts standing vertically.

Sometimes it helps to do something as simple as drawing a picture with arrows to show what would otherwise be invisible connections. A drawing of a three-legged stool isn’t a sophisticated operations chart, but it makes the point about how magazines need to operate as a system.

Systems thinking can also help when you’re trying to solve a perplexing problem. If you want to untangle the clues as to how something went wrong, think like a detective: figure out who all the players are and how they relate to each other. Usually it’s the system, not one person or department, that explains the real cause of the problem.

One thing is sure: the future belongs to systems thinkers.

For extra credit, see Rule #10 A Good Question Beats a Good Answer:

Why do questions matter more than answers? If you don’t ask the right question, it doesn’t matter what your answer is. And if you do ask the right question, no matter what your answer, you will learn something of value.

Questions are how we learn. Which means questions are how we create change…

Source: Webber, Alan M. (2009-04-10). Rules of Thumb (p. 32). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Filed Under: business-technology, thinking styles Tagged With: 2015IT, stream, systems, systems thinking

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Brenda M. Michelson

Brenda Michelson

Technology Architect.

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