2012

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Intersection: How Enterprise Design Bridges the Gap Between Business, Technology, and People

Many organizations struggle with the dynamics and the complexity of today’s social ecosystems connecting everyone and everything, everywhere and all the time. Facing challenges at the intersection of business models, technical developments and human needs, enterprises must overcome the siloed thinking and isolated efforts of the past, and instead address relationships to people holistically. In Intersection, Milan Guenther introduces a Strategic Design approach that aligns the overarching efforts of Branding, Enterprise Architecture and Experience Design on common course to shape tomorrow’s enterprises. This book gives designers, entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders a holistic model and a comprehensive vocabulary to tackle such challenges. The Enterprise Design framework cuts through the complexity of Strategic Design work, explains how to navigate key aspects and bridge diverging viewpoints. In 9 examples, the author looks at the way companies like Apple, SAP, BBVA, and Jeppesen (a Boeing Company) apply design thinking and practice to shape their enterprises. Moving from strategy to conceptual design and concrete results, Intersection shows what is relevant at which point, and what expertise to involve.

DefrICtion: Unleashing your Enterprise to Create Value from Change

Michael is CEO of a $64 billion global corporation, driving a strategy founded on productivity and growth. Despite having ‘best practices’ in place, spearheaded by Finance, he’s convinced that many of the company’s investments in change are still not delivering the most value they can, or even the value they promised. Late one night, while reading a hard-to-believe Business Case for an IT transformation, he makes it his business to find out why. With the help of his inner-circle of trusted executives and managers, and the serendipitous appearance of a friend-of-a-friend, Michael discovers what’s been missing all along in the Boardroom, the businesses, and the company culture. He is faced with deciding what it’s worth to sort things out, once and for all, with a strategy that combines Enterprise Architecture with Investing in Change. In this conclusion to the trilogy that began with FruITion and continued with RecrEation, Michael finds that the consequences for everyone are part cultural, part structural, and part operational. They mean challenging some of the orthodoxies that were supposed to solve the problem but have made things worse instead. What will he choose to do?

What Matters Now: How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation

Obviously, there are lots of things that matter now. But in a world of fractured certainties and battered trust, some things matter more than others. While the challenges facing organizations are limitless; leadership bandwidth is not. That is why you have to be clear about what really matters now. What are the fundamental, make-or-break issues that will determine whether your organization thrives or dives in the years ahead? Hamel identifies five issues are that are paramount: values, innovation, adaptability, passion and ideology. In doing so he presents an essential agenda for leaders everywhere.

Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation

Living with people who differ – racially, ethnically, religiously, or economically – is the most urgent challenge facing civil society today. We tend socially to avoid engaging with people unlike ourselves, and modern politics encourages the politics of the tribe rather than of the city. In this thought-provoking book, Richard Sennett discusses why this has happened and what might be done about it. Sennett contends that cooperation is a craft, and the foundations for skillful cooperation lie in learning to listen well and discuss rather than debate. In Together he explores how people can cooperate online, on street corners, in schools, at work, and in local politics. He traces the evolution of cooperative rituals from medieval times to today, and in situations as diverse as slave communities, socialist groups in Paris, and workers on Wall Street. Divided into three parts, the book addresses the nature of cooperation, why it has become weak, and how it could be strengthened. The author warns that we must learn the craft of cooperation if we are to make our complex society prosper, yet he reassures us that we can do this, for the capacity for cooperation is embedded in human nature.

Strategic Enterprise Architecture Management: Challenges, Best Practices, and Future Developments (Management for Professionals)

The discipline of Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) deals with the alignment of business and information systems architectures. While EAM has long been regarded as a discipline for IT managers this book takes a different stance: It explains how top executives can use EAM for leveraging their strategic planning and controlling processes and how EAM can contribute to sustainable competitive advantage. Based on the analysis of best practices from eight leading European companies from various industries the book presents crucial elements of successful EAM. It outlines what executives need to do in terms of governance, processes, methodologies and culture in order to bring their management to the next level. Beyond this, the book points how EAM might develop in the next decade allowing today’s managers to prepare for the future of architecture management.

The Strategy Book

Thinking strategically is what separates managers and leaders. Learn the fundamentals about how to create winning strategy and lead your team to deliver it. From understanding what strategy can do for you, through to creating a strategy and engaging others with strategy, this book offers practical guidance and expert tips. It is peppered with punchy, memorable examples from real leaders winning (and losing) with real world strategies. It can be read as a whole or you can dip into the easy-to-read, bite-size sections as and when you need to deal with a particular issue. The structure has been specially designed to make sections quick and easy to use – you’ll find yourself referring back to them again and again.