by Mark P. McDonald | March 15, 2012 | Submit a Comment
Traditional notions of the customer experience revolve around the customer interface and ‘after the failure’ service. But the customer experience is much broader than just the web site, product content and which throat you choke when something goes wrong. An effective and expansive customer experience is one that taps into all the sources of value [...]
Category: Customer Experience marketing Strategy Tags: Business Strategy, customer experience, Innovation, iPad, Marketing
by Mark P. McDonald | February 23, 2012 | 2 Comments
Culture can be your organization’s greatest strength. Too often it is the most powerful source of rigidity as cultural change takes time, disrupts operations and can be difficult. This leads many to see culture as a constraint on strategy and a barrier to transformation. Literally hundreds of books have been written about culture and the [...]
Category: Social Media Social Organization Strategy Tags: Change leadership, Change Management, Culture, Social Organization, Strategy and Planning
by Mark P. McDonald | February 15, 2012 | Submit a Comment
Gary Hamel’s new book What Matters Now is a different type of business, leadership and management book. Where most offer single dimensional prescriptive recipes for success, Hamel has provided a thoughtful, deep and readily accessible look at the current state of business, management, capitalism and society. What Matters Now treats the reader as an intelligent, [...]
Category: Book Review Management Strategy Tags: Book Review, Management
by Mark P. McDonald | February 13, 2012 | Submit a Comment
According to the 2012 Gartner CIO Survey, 61% of companies plan on improving their mobility capabilities. Of those about half are planning to become the innovation leader in their industry. This creates a situation where a sizable group of people is all trying to be ‘well above average.’ Lake Wobegon , where all the children [...]
Category: Strategy Technology Tags: Consumerization of IT, mobility, Technology, Technology Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | February 8, 2012 | 3 Comments
Amplifying the enterprise is the theme for this year’s CIO agenda reflecting the expanding role of technology in the enterprise and its role in raising the power of enterprise strategies and performance. The notion of technology as an enterprise amplifier goes beyond traditional notions of IT and the administration/automation of back office processes. Technologies such [...]
Category: 2012 Amplifying the Enterprise Strategic planning Strategy Tools Tags: 2012 planning, amplify, IT and Business, Strategy, Strategy and Planning, Tools
by Mark P. McDonald | February 6, 2012 | 1 Comment
Every business book you read says that you need to have ‘executive sponsorship’ for any major initiative. Fail to involve the executives and you are likely to fail. That advice has become so prevalent that it is almost worthless. Getting executive sponsorship is not what matters; it’s the quality of the sponsorship that makes all [...]
Category: 2012 Change on the cheap IT Governance Leadership Management Personal Observation Signs of weak management Strategy Tags: 2012 planning, amplify, Leadership, Management, Personal Observation, Signs of weak management
by Mark P. McDonald | January 18, 2012 | 5 Comments
Last year, CIOs responding to the Gartner Executive Programs CIO Agenda indicated that it was time to re-imagine IT. Re-imagining IT meant recognizing that business priorities and technologies had changed enough for IT to rethink its role in the enterprise and its value proposition. For some this meant adopting cloud technologies to reallocate resources from [...]
Category: 2012 Leadership Strategy Tags: 2012 planning, amplify, CIO Leadership, CIO strategy, Strategy and Planning, Technology, Technology Leadership
by Mark P. McDonald | January 12, 2012 | Submit a Comment
Amplifying the enterprise involves turning up the value of technology in the enterprise. Eliminating distortion is one of the ways that technology amplifies the enterprise. Distortion refers to the internal complexities; costs, duplication and redundancies that make it harder to get work done. Think about the things that get in the way, make it difficult [...]
Category: 2012 Strategy Technology Tools Tags: 2012 planning, amplify, CIO-Forum-NA, cost cutting, Economic Recovery, IT strategy, Strategy and Planning
by Mark P. McDonald | January 9, 2012 | 1 Comment
In times of economic adversity, conventional wisdom calls for conserving cash and capital. Firms have amassed record amounts of cash as governments face deep cuts in the fourth year of five-year plans. Leaders know that the future requires re-imaging the enterprise rather than repeated waves of belt tightening. Nowhere is this more evident than in [...]
Category: 2012 budgets Economy Strategic planning Strategy Tags: 2012 planning, amplify, CFO, CIO strategy, CIO-Forum-NA, cost cutting, Economic conditions, Strategy and Planning
by Mark P. McDonald | January 6, 2012 | Submit a Comment
One of the issues facing CIOs in 2012 is the apparent conflict between growing revenue and cutting cost. While IT may be asked to do both, in reality plans and priorities fall heavily on the cost cutting side limiting IT’s impact and value. Customer Experience brings a different perspective to issues of revenue and cost. [...]
Category: 2012 CIO Management Strategic planning Strategy Technology Tags: Business Leadership, CIO Leadership, CIO-Forum-NA, customer, customer centric, Innovation, IT strategy, Strategy
