Shifting from What’s Visible to What’s Valuable

Cost reduction and efficiency is visible. Flexibility and ability to lead through uncertainty is valuable.  On which have you focused your organization?

 

Reviving old priorities will not quell adoption challenges that are formidable obstacles to establishing competitive advantages.  These challenges must be solved by designing a new decision structure and forming a new innovation skeleton.  This innovation skeleton demands a new construction and the foundation is not ROI, it is faith.

 

This concept of faith (trusting your leaders) is difficult to fund and even harder to monitor because it is qualitative initially, and doesn’t succumb well to quantitative analysis. Digital is new–faith in people and those whom lead your organization is not.

 

The Gartner 2015 CIO Agenda highlights the importance of value over the visible and emphasizes the belief that change equals faith in great leaders.  Digital success is fueled when executive leadership acknowledges that our organization’s future is in the hands of our best and worst leaders.  Whether action is taken or not, this fact remains steadfast.  This acknowledgement helps reinforce employee trust in leadership.  

 

How is an organization’s security footprint hardened?  How are cloud services leveraged for business use? How are business functions and technical components consolidated for shared services?  Faith in people.

 

End-of-life ideas like “credit the leader” or “blame the leader” do not work today. They don’t drive value.  They don’t even grow visibility.   We must promote our faith in leaders as executives. Jim Collins articulately concluded, “We keep putting people in positions of power who lack the seed to become a Level 5 leader, and that is one major reason why there are so few companies that make a sustained and verifiable shift from good to great” (Collins, 2005)

 

An IDC FutureScape Report predicts by 2017, 80% of a CIO’s time will be focused on analytics, cyber-security and creating new revenue streams through digital service (IDC, 2014).   Digital services don’t drive revenue until they provide value for a better customer experience. That value begins with faith and trust in leaders.

 

References:

 

Collins, J. (2005). Level 5 leadership: The triumph of humility and fierce resolve. Harvard Business Review, (July)

 

International Data Corporation (IDC). (2014). IDC reveals CIO agenda predictions for 2015. Retrieved from http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25225314

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Peter is a technology executive with over 20 years of experience, dedicated to driving innovation, digital transformation, leadership, and data in business. He helps organizations connect strategy to execution to maximize company performance. He has been recognized for Digital Innovation by CIO 100, MIT Sloan, Computerworld, and the Project Management Institute. As Managing Director at OROCA Innovations, Peter leads the CXO advisory services practice, driving digital strategies. Peter was honored as an MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Award Finalist in 2015 and is a regular contributor to CIO.com on innovation. Peter has led businesses through complex changes, including the adoption of data-first approaches for portfolio management, lean six sigma for operational excellence, departmental transformations, process improvements, maximizing team performance, designing new IT operating models, digitizing platforms, leading large-scale mission-critical technology deployments, product management, agile methodologies, and building high-performance teams. As Chief Information Officer, Peter was responsible for Connecticut’s Health Insurance Exchange’s (HIX) industry-leading digital platform transforming consumerism and retail-oriented services for the health insurance industry. Peter championed the Connecticut marketplace digital implementation with a transformational cloud-based SaaS platform and mobile application recognized as a 2014 PMI Project of the Year Award finalist, CIO 100, and awards for best digital services, API, and platform. He also received a lifetime achievement award for leadership and digital transformation, honored as a 2016 Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leader. Peter is the author of Learning Intelligence: Expand Thinking. Absorb Alternative. Unlock Possibilities (2017), which Marshall Goldsmith, author of the New York Times No. 1 bestseller Triggers, calls "a must-read for any leader wanting to compete in the innovation-powered landscape of today." Peter also authored The Power of Blockchain for Healthcare: How Blockchain Will Ignite The Future of Healthcare (2017), the first book to explore the vast opportunities for blockchain to transform the patient experience. Peter has a B.S. in C.I.S from Bentley University and an MBA from Quinnipiac University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude. He earned his PMP® in 2001 and is a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Masters in Business Relationship Management (MBRM) and Certified Scrum Master. As a Commercial Rated Aviation Pilot and Master Scuba Diver, Peter understands first hand, how to anticipate change and lead boldly.