End-to-End Strategy Execution

According to a recent survey, over half of customers say they stopped using a product or buying a brand because of a bad experience. Only four in ten customers say that their brand loyalty has grown over the years. Yet nine in 10 executives think that customer loyalty has increased during that same time frame. The survey found that there's more than a 50-point gap between executive perceptions of customer loyalty and the reality of the customer experience. This podcast will exam some of the root causes for this disconnect, including the widely propagated myth that "Order to Cash" is a value stream. When collecting customer payment is perceived as a customer value, it corrupts everything from the culture of the organization to the software that implements this false and unrealistic premise. Customers are unhappy. It's time to face reality and invest in ways to shift towards a customer experience that prioritizes how to maximize customer value at every touchpoint.

In this episode, William Ulrich and Charles Bowman outline the "cognitive vision", something that appears to be lacking as organizations struggle to articulate a strategic direction on AI, even as they spend millions of dollars annually pursuing its benefits. The episode charts a path forward that defines the role of cognitive computing in streamlining strategy execution while concurrently making progress towards the cognitive operating environment. The discussion provides examples of cognitive operating model focal points, common practices to avoid, and a streamlined path towards deploying a digital twin.

In this week's episode, William Ulrich and Charles Bowman welcome Seth Earley, author of "The AI-Powered Enterprise", for which he received the Axiom Silver Medal for AI and Business. Seth's work covers artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, knowledge engineering, data management systems, taxonomy, ontology, and metadata governance. The discussion examines the role of AI in corporate strategy, the importance of architecture, formal design paradigms, and high-quality data, the concept of synthetic stakeholders, and ways in which organizations can maximize their AI investments.

This episode features an interview with Joe Cerasani, a senior solution architect and development lead. Our discussion breaks down a topic that most business professionals and even IT professionals see as a black box. Topics include the ideal team setup, the role of business, data, and related architecture perspectives in software service design and development, and best practices that support the viability and scalability of the deployed solutions. A key topic involves the importance of event-driven, state-based solutions and the value of the state machine as a key component of these solutions. The discussion also covers how in-house solutions can serve as a superior approach when compared to vendor constrained approaches.

Solution deployment has traditionally been characterized by development teams parachuting into an ill-defined project that lacks clear goals and objectives, defined scope, formal architecture and design targets, and an optimized deployment roadmap. In this episode, William Ulrich and Charles Bowman discuss how systematically traversing the strategy execution framework ensures that solution deployment is based on well-defined goals and objectives, a rigorous impact assessment, clear architecture and design targets, and highly optimized initiatives along a synchronized roadmap. Topics include optimal deployment team structure, the role of business architecture from an execution perspective, software service and data design, the role of state machines in an event-driven architecture, and the systematic decoupling of shadow systems. Join them as the chart a course towards successful solution deployment.

Business and technology transformation planning is based on rigorously defined metrics, with the culmination of those metric-based assessments resulting in a business and technical debt assessment. The debt assessment, in conjunction with impact assessments and target state architectures and designs, lays the foundation for crafting a formally defined transformation roadmap. Tune into this episode as William Ulrich and Charles Bowman define the key ingredients to transformation road mapping. In addition to metrics-based planning, topics include breaking down transformation initiatives into deployable elements, crafting a business case for one or more proposed hypotheses, and formalizing a transformation roadmap that can not only scale over time, but incorporate business demands as they arise along with way, all while continuing to deliver incremental results and progressing towards an organization's overall vision and long-term strategy.

For every initiative an organization undertakes, there are many things that can go wrong for every one that can go right. Every major initiative needs someone to keep things moving in the right direction from a sponsorship, business, technical, personnel, and deployment perspective. Enter the Portfolio Executive. In this week's podcast, we interview Mr. Raj Dolas, President of Akiak Technologies. Mr. Dolas has held a number of leadership positions including Portfolio Executive and Chief Technology Officer at major federal government agencies. In this episode, Mr. Dolas shares what it takes to fulfill the responsibilities of a Portfolio Executive, including the ability to successfully deliver a major transformation initiative while facing down severe organizational headwinds.

In William Ulrich and Charles Bowman's latest book, they cite Jim Rohn's quote that "discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment". They go on to highlight three essential elements of discipline; the ability to maintain rigor, continuity, and interconnectedness from an end-to-end perspective. In this episode of their strategy execution podcast, they highlight the concept of the business knowledgebase and, coupled with business architecture, the role it plays in maintaining discipline as strategy execution efforts deploy and scale up. The business knowledgebase ensures that multidisciplinary teams can move in coordinated fashion from strategy formulation through solution deployment. When this occurs, every investment, business requirement, and deployed solution can be traced back to the strategy driving deployment. This podcast episode details what it takes to implement a business knowledgebase, including metamodel design, tool selection, scalability, stakeholder accessibility, and the role it plays in becoming a cognitive enterprise.

Organizations that ignore, sidestep, or underfund solution architecture are missing the glue that binds the architecture perspectives that lead to successful initiative outcomes and strategy deployments. In this episode of the End-to-End Strategy Execution podcast, William Ulrich and Charles Bowman welcome guest, Dr. Michael Bardash, practicing senior solution architect with unique insights into the topic. This episode focuses on the makeup of solution architecture, attributes of the ideal solution architect, the role of the solution architect in relation to planning and execution, and how organizations should either initiate or refine their solution architecture practice as a basis for end-to-end strategy execution.

In their recently published book, End-to-End Strategy Execution, William Ulrich and Charles Bowman said that problematic data is one of the seven deadly patterns undermining strategy execution. In this podcast episode, they interview distinguished guests, John Bottega, President of EDMA, and Professor Peter Aiken, President of DAMA – the two leading global associations focused on data. Join the podcast as they help listeners understand and address the mounting data challenges presented by poorly architected, incomplete, redundant, and low-quality data. With data being critical to business viability and the ability to realize the promise of artificial intelligence, the interview focuses on what it takes for an organization to become data driven, laying out practical options for near-term and long-term success.