Shows
End-to-End Strategy ExecutionArchitecting & Designing the Future StateA deteriorating business ecosystem is like an aging house, with inhabiting customers, partners, and business stakeholders abandoning it as the situation degrades. Deteriorating architecture, whether it applies to a building, a bridge, or a business ecosystem, is systemic and can't be addressed by short-term thinking and patchwork solutions. In chapter 6 of their book, End-to-End Strategy Execution, William Ulrich and Charles Bowman identify best practices for justifying, funding, and formalizing business and IT architecture and design, which in turn form the basis for initiative planning, roadmap creation, and solution deployment. Check out this episode and hear how to flip the...
2026-02-0451 minEnd-to-End Strategy ExecutionThe Strategy Impact Assessment: The Essential Nature of Feedback LoopsChapter 5 of our recently published book, End-to-End Strategy Execution, states that the omission of a comprehensive, well-articulated impact assessment is a major factor undermining successful strategy execution. Impact assessments serve as the focal point for dissecting, validating, and synchronizing business goals, objectives, and related courses of action. Specifically, the episode discusses why and how organizations should prioritize, justify, and fund business-first impact assessments by incorporating them into annual planning cycles that leverage built-in feedback loops. Topics include scoping the assessment, driving technical assessments through a business lens, and laying the foundation for architecting the future state. Listen in and...
2026-01-2851 minEnd-to-End Strategy ExecutionStrategy Execution: A Leadership PerspectiveGetting leadership on the same page with strategy execution is often a challenge. This episode features an interview with Whynde Kuehn, strategy transformation specialist and author of Strategy to Reality. The discussion focuses on strategy formulation best practices, how to deal with executive mandates in the absence of clearly defined business objectives, and business architecture's role in framing and interpreting strategy. The episode also looks at how siloed, unaligned strategies can be aggregated and synchronized into a shared, executable perspective. Other topics include how to deal with siloed budget and compensation models that fly in the face of delivering...
2026-01-2153 minEnd-to-End Strategy ExecutionStrategy Execution: Setting Course for a Challenging JourneyWilliam Ulrich and Charles Bowman's Strategy Execution podcast, is based on their new book, tackles one of the main challenges facing organizations today, successfully executing on their business strategies while maximizing the value of related technology investments. Episode one outlines the challenges facing organizations today, where two thirds of technology investments are wasted, strategies go unfulfilled, and initiatives fall short their goals or fail entirely. Ulrich and Bowman introduce the strategy execution framework, challenge the status quote, and lay the foundation for future episodes that will seek to unravel long-standing issues that few organizations have been able to escape...
2026-01-141h 02End-to-End Strategy ExecutionThe NorthStar: Politics, Culture and Sabotage: Roadmap to Program FailureEvery project has opponents who try to manipulate that project for their own gain. This is a well-hidden truth. As most people who have been associated with executing strategy are aware, good projects intentionally gone bad is a reality. But no one wants to be associated with a failed or underperforming project, which is why the current state of projects is often portrayed in a better light than what is happening in reality. Shading the truth of a failing project is often done to maintain or gain more power, income, and respect. Yet the industry cannot run from reality...
2025-12-0255 minEnd-to-End Strategy ExecutionThe NorthStar: Seven Deadly Patterns Leading to the Strategy Execution BluesInterviews with experts from a variety of fields uncovered key factors undermining successful strategy execution. Seven troublesome patterns emerged. One, the strategy execution chain is broken. Two, culture, politics, and siloes form an evil triad. Three, organizations lack holistic perspective. Four, good ideas are confined to the C-suite. Five, program delivery blues undermine strategy execution. Six, data is the weak link in the chain. Seven, business strategy is captive to technological immaturity. This episode overviews each of these problematic patterns and discusses how best to address them to improve end-to-end strategy execution.
2025-12-0252 minEnd-to-End Strategy ExecutionThe NorthStar: Incorporating AI and Cognitive Computing into Business StrategyThis episode of The North Star focuses on the practical role of cognitive computing and AI in organizations. Cognitive computing refers to technologies that learn at scale, reason, and interface with humans in a manner aligned with the way people naturally interact. The underlying technologies comprising cognitive computing include artificial intelligence, machine learning, rules-based solutions, state machines, neural networks, predictive analytics, and quantum computing. This episode will look at three focal points: Gamification, AI and Ethics to offer business leaders insights as to how best to plan for and invest in these areas. The discussion will look at the...
2025-12-0255 minEnd-to-End Strategy ExecutionThe NorthStar: The AI-Powered Enterprise: Is Your Organization Prepared?More and more organizations are seeking to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. AI is promoted as being able to transform every aspect of how organizations function, yet this vision is far from reality. As episode guest Seth Earley said in his recent book, The "AI-Powered Enterprise", in spite of multiple generations of investments and billions of dollars of digital transformations, organizations are still struggling with information overload, which undercuts efforts to excel at customer service, reduce costs, and maximize efficiency. The foundation of ensuring that an organization can function as an efficient biological ecosystem is the accurate perception, interpretation, and...
2025-12-0254 min