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Why Business Architect?
In today's knowledge- and innovation-driven
complex economy,
business architects are in growing demand.
To build a
winning synergistically integrated organization, companies need
cross-functionally
excellent people who can tie several silos of business development
expertise together, create
synergies, design a winning
business model and a
balanced business system and
then lead people who will
put their plans into action.
Business Architect Defined
Business architect is a person that initiates
new business ventures or leads
business innovation, designs a
winning business model, and builds a
sustainable balanced business
system for a lasting success.
Business architects can be found in a multitude
of business settings: corporate change leaders, initiators of
joint ventures, managers of
radical innovation projects,
in-company ventures, spin-outs, or
new start-up ventures.
Although the settings in which business
architects act are different, they all design and run a new venture to
achieve its sustainable growth.
The Power of Your Cross-Functional
Excellence
If you build broad
cross-functional expertise, no idea will be wasted! Your
mind can accept only
those ideas that have a frame of reference with your existing knowledge. It
rejects everything else. If your knowledge is functionally focused, you'll
be open to new ideas related to your functional expertise only and will miss
all other learning and innovation opportunities. If you develop a broad
cross-functional expertise, no new idea will be wasted. It will immediately
connect with the existing knowledge and will inspire you, energize
you, and encourage your
entrepreneurial
creativity. The broader your net, the more fish you catch.
Balanced Organization: 5 Basic Elements
Leadership
(Fire):
Balance Your Business System
The primary goal of any business is to increase
stakeholder value. It is achieved through a dynamic balancing of competing
values. In order for a business to maximize economic value, it must balance
customer satisfaction and competitive market forces with internal cost
and
growth consideration...
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The Tao of Business Success
The Tao helps you achieve much more with much
less effort. This effortless skill comes from being in accord with reality.
You can't tell the singer from the song. You can't tell the dancer from the
dance. When you are in harmony with the Tao, when you go with its current
of energy, your innate intelligence takes over, and the right action happens
by itself.
The Tao teaches you the art of living and doing
business. It gives you advice that imparts perspective and
balance. It applies equally well to
the
managing
of a large corporation or the running of a small business, to the
governing of a nation or the leading a small team, to
your personal development
or to the coaching of others...
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Sustainable Business Models
Sustainable business success is based not on
great ideas, guts, or instinct alone – but on your ability to create an
master your business model. In the
new era of unrelenting change and competition, your face a daunting
challenge: how to sustain the business model of your firm. "The fact is, no
matter how bulletproof your firm's current business model, it will be
challenged by
new business models."4
The new reality is that business models have shorter shelf life. You must
constantly attempt to discover new business models if you hope to survive
and grow...
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9 Signs of a Losing Organization
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Fuzzy
Vision: corporate vision
and mission don't inspire people; lack of strategic alignment; people
don't know where the organization is going and what it is trying to
achieve in the future...
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Building an Innovation-friendly
Organization
Leaders of successful, high-growth companies
understand that
innovation is what drives growth, and innovation is achieved
by awesome people with a shared relentless
growth attitude and shared passion for
creative problem solving and for turning
ideas into realities.
Companies that continuously innovate will create and
re-invent new markets, products, services, and
business models
– which leads
to
more growth. Innovation is founded on your enterprise's ability to
recognize market opportunities, your internal
capabilities to respond innovatively, and your
knowledge base...
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SWOT Analysis:
Questions To Answer
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What is your strongest business asset?
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What do you offer that makes you stand out
from the rest?
-
Do you have any specific marketing
expertise?...
More
Build Your Sustainable
Competitive Advantage
Sustainable competitive advantage is the prolonged benefit of
implementing some unique value-creating strategy based on unique
combination of internal organizational
resources and capabilities
that cannot be replicated by competitors...
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3 Strategies of Market Leaders
The market leader is dominant in its industry
and has substantial market share. If you want to lead the market, you must
be the industry leader in developing
new business models and new products
or services. You must be on the
cutting edge of
new technologies and innovative
business processes. Your
customer value proposition must offer a superior solution to a
customers' problem, and your product must be well
differentiated...
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Case in Point
Silicon
Valley Companies: Deciding If Your Innovation Portfolio Has Enough
Stretch
Adapted from “Relentless Growth,” Christopher
Meyer
-
Balance between revolutionary and
evolutionary initiatives. First, Silicon Valley companies assess the
overall balance between
revolutionary and evolutionary projects. The ultimate arbitrator of
portfolio stretch if the innovation leaders’ judgment, experience,
intuition, and luck...
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Integrated Approach To the Management
Process
The integrated
business systems
approach to business development and the management process is what
distinguishes modern cross-functionally excellent business architects from
functional managers.
As a business architect and an extremely effective
leader, you must have a broad view to be able to link together –
synergistically! – the key
components of corporate success – from functional planning to
cross-functional cooperation, from
supply chain management to
customer value creation,
from the art of continuous learning
to the practice of effective
communication and
influencing people – and bundle them in an intellectual, innovative and
pragmatic package that can be used to achieve
sustainable competitive advantage
and business
growth, both
top-line
and
bottom-line. To fulfil these responsibilities,
a Business Architect typically should have broad
cross-functional expertise.
Systems Thinking and Modern Management
The goal of
systems thinking is to
manage the rapidly growing complexity of the worlds of business and
technology.
The task of a
business architect
and a
process manager is to create systems, within a sensibly structured
business, that empowers
employees
and enables people to achieve higher productivity and greater
competitive advantage.
Systems thinking characterizes many of the world's leading executives. It is
a formal discipline of management science that deals with
the whole business system and in terms of the interconnections and
interactions of its parts.
"Many managers fail to see
the forest for the trees. This is not an either/or problem. The trick is to
see both the forest and the trees. Systems thinking is a methodology for
doing both simultaneously. It's more than a methodology, it's like learning
a new language and takes nearly as long as learning a foreign language to
achieve maturity."1
The Rise of the IT
Architect
IT architects are in growing demand. They
are
cross-functionally excellent people who can "tie several silos of
expertise together," relate to business problems as well as technology, and
then sell their ideas upward and downward in the corporate hierarchy.
"Enterprise architects aren't just technology experts; they are leaders with
broad IT knowledge, the savvy to apply it to business problems and the
communication skills
necessary to coordinate the people who will put their plans into action,"
says Bill Liguori, senior vice president and co-founder of the placement
firm Leadership Capital Group. 2
Enterprise-wide Business
Process Management (EBPM)
EBPM, representing the third-wave of
Business Process
Management, is "a deliberate and collaborative approach to
systematically – and systemically – managing all of a company's business
processes," says
Andrew Spanyi.
EBPM addresses the pressing need of the
new knowledge-driven
economy to integrate business process
thinking with strategy,
organizational
structure and people issues.
It requires that your executive team lead and manage differently and
think more systemically about your business...
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Corporate Culture
In six words,
corporate culture is "How we do
things around here."
Corporate culture is the collective behavior of
people using common
corporate vision,
goals,
shared values,
beliefs,
habits, working language, systems, and symbols. It is interwoven with
processes, technologies, learning and
significant events. In addition,
different individuals bring to the workplace their own uniqueness,
knowledge, and
ethnic culture. So corporate culture
encompasses moral, social, and behavioral norms of your organization based
on the values, beliefs, attitudes, and priorities of its members...
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Building a Team Culture: 10 Action Areas
It is becoming increasingly important that
teams function productively with a minimum of
supervision. Team culture ensures that individual members both demonstrate
their best talents and function synergistically
as a unit to achieve common goals.
When team culture reigns, teams
are dependable and consistent. People voice their opinions openly. They
demonstrate
creativity, innovate and see a job
through to conclusion.
To build a team culture:
-
Provide an inspiring vision
-
Define
shared values
-
Set
stretch goals...
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Creating a Culture for Innovation
By: Soren Kaplan
Shaping
culture, especially when it comes to creating
a culture of
innovation, is a daily task that involves elevating the mundane to the
strategic.
By managing the strategic levers of
culture, and by practicing the strategies of envisioning, communicating
and sponsoring, it becomes possible to create a culture of innovation
and drive long-term strategic advantage...
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Kaizen Culture
Kaizen,
or continuous improvement, is an integral part of corporate culture. It
requires continuous both conscious and sub-conscious thinking about
improvements from everyone. Nurturing and effectively integrating Kaizen
into corporate culture is not easy. It requires a sustained effort. But, as
Toyota
has demonstrated, it offers a more
sustained competitive advantage...
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29 Obstacles To Innovation
Leading Systemic Innovation
There are many parts of the
whole field of innovation: strategy
innovation,
new product development,
creative approaches to problem solving,
idea management, suggestion systems, etc.
Though all of these components are important, in the new era of
systemic innovation, you must design your firm's
innovation process holistically.
Innovation is not divisible –
‘good in parts’ is no good at all. Innovation systems
are only as strong as their weakest links...
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Strategies for Leading Breakthroughs
So what separates
extraordinary leaders from proponents of the status quo?
They break the rules. Except, not in an arbitrary or
capricious way. When you look at examples of extraordinary
leadership, like the Founding Fathers of the United States or
Jack Welch of
GE, certain practices or principles become apparent. To
start, there is a
declaration of what the future will be. There is also a
purpose, something to stand for. And finally, there is a clearly
articulated commitment...
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