Think Different

Increase the performance and value of technology investments by increasing business team engagement and influence.

Embrace Opportunities that Come with Change

Four converging demographic, learning, technology, and organization trends allow organizations to create differentiated thinking that can materially increase performance and value from their project initiatives.

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Increasing numbers of tech-savvy Millennials and Gen-Zers in the workplace and leadership require rethinking traditional project roles and organization.
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Expanding technologies like SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytic, and Cloud) and AI change how business solutions and capabilities are designed and deployed.
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Learning methods enabled by rapid development delivery tools and AI deliver know-how when, where, and how employees need it, getting us closer to that Matrix-style, just-in-time learning.
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Increasing global competition requires organizations to excel at agilely creating and applying new knowledge by thinking, organizing, behaving, and acting differently.

Embracing the five masteries below gives business professionals and teams the know-how to increase their engagement and influence on technology projects.

While Millennials and Gen Zers may be more comfortable with social media and mobile devices, those applications and technologies do not make them any more capable than their generational predecessors in harnessing the power of enterprise technologies, applications, and methods. Their know-how in those areas requires education, experiential practice, and nurturing.

Overview of Masteries

Engage System

Realize that successful outcomes can't be achieved unless the System (the Big System) in which your capability and organization operate is engaged and influenced.

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Do you understand the System and how it's impacting your business capability and project?
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What actions can you take to change and influence the System to optimize your business capability and project's success?
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How should your business capability and project adapt to the System if your project can't influence it?

engage system mastery Engage System Checklist

Develop Insight

Develop insight into your business capabilities continuously and apply the knowledge learned to your projects before initiating them.

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Understand and appreciate history -- why projects fail or succeed, and lessons learned from the experience of others.
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Educate nontechnical project team members on the details of project work, what to expect, their roles and responsibilities, and crucial success factors.
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Introduce new and different thinking to increase the engagement and influence of business teams to increase the performance and value of technology investments.

Develop Insight Mastery Develop Insight checklist

Embrace Mission

Embrace mission for your capability and projects. Clear purpose requires asking fundamental questions:

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Why does your business capability exist? What's its purpose? What are the outcomes expected from your business capability? What value should it provide to your organization? How do your business capability outcomes link to your organization's financial statements, e.g., Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, etc.?
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How do the previous questions link to your projects? Are the links clearly understood and articulated?
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Why does your role exist? How does it contribute to your organization's business capability and project value?

Embrace Mission Mastery Embrace Mission Checklist

Optimize Decisions

Optimize vendor partner decisions using one of two approaches:

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Enhanced Request for Proposal (RFP) process to evaluate and select vendor software
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JITDE™ (Just-in-Time Decision Evaluation) -- an agile, partnerial process that leverages intense vendor-partner dialogue to optimize vendor selection decisions

Optimize Decisions Mastery Optimize Decisions Checklist

Think Capability

Practice Capability Thinking®, the Fifth Mastery™.

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Capability Thinking® principles and disciplines serve as guard rails to keep your project and capability within a "cone of success certainty."
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It's also embedded in ongoing business operations to extend capabilities delivered by projects agilely.

Capability Thinking® ↗️

Note: Selecting the link above opens a new browser tab to the Capability Thinking® website.

Capability Thinking® constantly optimizes the utilization and further extension of business capabilities to increase organizational performance and value.

Extend Business Operations Agilely

A crucial tenet of Capability Thinking® is to appreciate that everything doesn't need to be included in project scope.

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Focus on delivering capabilities comprised of the vital few requirements first.
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Add and refine capabilities and requirements based on actual use, learning, and experience.

Return on project investments often struggle or fizzle post-implementation. Ensure job aids, supplemental training, and additional support are available to sustain business performance.

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Capability Thinking® promotes constancy of purpose. Implementation begins with the hard lifting of leveraging capabilities delivered to optimize investment return.
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It facilitates agile pivot and improvisation actions to extend business operation capabilities that further enable investment returns. Post-implementation productivity troughs often arise, and business/industry dynamics require agile changes in strategy and execution.

Business Masteries