Quick Wins: Transforming Organizations at the Periphery
December 2, 2021
Hosted by William Ulrich
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Episode Description
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.
The North Star
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Business Channel
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.
William Ulrich
William Ulrich is President of Tactical Strategy Group, Inc., Cofounder of Business Architecture Associates, President and Cofounder of the Business Architecture Guild and Cutter Consortium Fellow. As a management consultant for more than 40 years, Mr. Ulrich continues to serve as advisor, mentor and workshop leader to corporations and governments worldwide. He is a thought leader in strategy execution, business transformation, business architecture and transformation oversight. Mr. Ulrich has the unique ability to engage executives and practitioners across business and IT boundaries to facilitate and streamline ecosystem-wide transformation. His transformation workshops and lectures have been widely attended by organizations worldwide. Mr. Ulrich blends his IT transformation expertise with his extensive business architecture and business transformation experience to deliver end-to-end solutions that are fully aligned to business strategy. He has authored or coauthored multiple books and transformation methodologies and was an originating contributor to “A Guide to the Business Architecture Body of Knowledge.” Prior to founding Tactical Strategy Group in 1990, Mr. Ulrich served as management consultant, spending the bulk of the 1980s with KPMG where he helped mature its software reengineering practice. His latest writings focus on the cognitive enterprise, transitioning to the circular economy and business-driven IT architecture transformation.
Episode Directory
December 2021
- 12/9/2021: Strategy Execution: Closing the Loop on Best Practices Listen Now
- 12/2/2021: Quick Wins: Transforming Organizations at the Periphery Listen Now
