Lately, I’ve been curling up at night with a fascinating read. The 2009 Shift Index is from Deloitte’s Center for the Edge and written by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Land Davison.

In my last Advisor ("Understanding the Master Data Management Challenge," 4 August 2010), I discussed the demands of Master Data Management (MDM), particularly the difficulties of combining data from multiple sources.

In client consulting engagements, I frequently find that the root cause of a lot of frustration among managers, team members, and executives stems from the inability (or unwillingness) to choose what's most important. I had the interesting experience of trying to build a value-based priorities model with a client, and had the following exchange:

In my last Advisor ("Understanding the Master Data Management Challenge," 4 August 2010), I discussed the demands of Master Data Management (MDM), particularly the difficulties of combining data from multiple sources.

There's no lower-hanging fruit than thin fruit. The adoption of Web-enabled smartphones is outpacing just about every technology in history [1]. As form factors have improved, so has functionality. Lots of assumptions have been challenged along the way. For example, how many of us believed that no one would watch video on a one-inch-by-one-inch screen?

Use of data acquired from social media sites Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Yelp!, and LinkedIn by end-user organizations to support their BI and data warehousing efforts is quite limited. Moreover, it appears this will remain the case for the next 6-12 months or so.

I arrived in my hotel room last night quite tired after a long day giving a workshop on lean-agile for leadership and a presentation on a similar subject at a university. To relax, I turned on the TV and started watching a show hosted by Elvis Costello, who was interviewing Bono and Edge from the band U2.

Ever since the present financial meltdown began, there has been increasing concern about identifying and somehow preventing systemic risk in the global economy.

Often, when I'm called in to evaluate large, troubled projects, I find there are three groups of people involved: 1) a small group at the top who "think" that the project is in trouble, 2) a much larger bunch of people at the bottom who "know" that the project is in trouble, and 3) a bunch of middle managers who are trying to keep the people on the top from talking to the people on the bott

Every large enterprise has what I call "one huge accidentally distributed database"; i.e., thousands of individual database tables, files, spreadsheets, and document stores with the same data elements stored redundantly all over the place and multiple copies of that same data stored over and over again. All of this complexity takes time to get your brain around if you're a new enterprise data architect.

The complex relationship between IT and the business is a critical issue for any business process, especially when it comes to allocating funds to the related IT solution (e.g., a DSS for a strategic decision process; an e-commerce solution for a sales process). But the issue becomes particularly problematic when dealing with a training or learning process.

Every large enterprise has what I call "one huge accidentally distributed database"; i.e., thousands of individual database tables, files, spreadsheets, and document stores with the same data elements stored redundantly all over the place and multiple copies of that same data stored over and over again.

All change involves loss, and people are therefore often resistant to making changes. Even if the benefits of the change are huge and obvious, the process of change involves letting go of things that might be comfortable. If you buy a new car and trade in your old one, sure, the new car is better, more reliable, and nicer, but your old car was comfortable, familiar, and yours.

Egypt is a regional hub that links the Mediterranean, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. With a population of about 80 million, it is the largest country in the region.1 About 28% of its population is enrolled in school and university programs, 58% are under the age of 25, 19 million people make up its workforce, and around 5.7 million are working for the government sector.2 Egypt is witnessing its reincarnation into a modern, liberal, and private sector-led, market-driven economy.

Mobile BI is hardly new.

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

"The Pentagon says it is still investigating the source of the documents. The military has detained Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad, for allegedly transmitting classified information. But the latest documents could have come from anyone with a secret-level clearance...."1

The value of "soft" people skills is often severely underestimated in IT organizations. For example, the psychoanalyst Erik Erickson identified trust as the foundational characteristic for identity and relationships.1 A great IT leader at any level must be able to trust and be trusted. A leader's breach of trust will rapidly spread like a fungus throughout the project team to lower morale and decrease productivity.

Master data management (MDM) is nothing new, but recent trends in the enterprise and industry seem to be breathing new life into it. All of the major platform/infrastructure vendors now have products in this space, including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP, as well as many vendors focused specifically on MDM.

As the 21st century proceeds, we are entering an era where basic assumptions about business organization and employment are evolving. This is resulting in a number of fundamental changes to expectations and skills requirements. People entering the workforce will need new sets of skills and new ways of working. This will be true across all business sectors, but the impacts within IT are likely to be profound.

According to our latest research,1 overwhelmingly, the most troublesome "big data"-related challenges organization face with their data warehousing and BI efforts are (1) meeting complex query-processing requirements, and (2) transforming and loading data due to data volumes and windows of opportunity.

A New York Times op-ed column by Thomas Friedman told of risk managers using a model to assess financial companies' net positions under different assumptions about mortgage interest rates and housing market factors.1 One of the parameters the managers were allowed to enter was year-over-year percentage growth in single-family home value.

At the end of Part I ("The BP Oil Spill: Could ERM Have Helped Avoid It?" 15 July 2010), I asked whether BP PLC Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward -- or at least BP's risk management committee -- should have been made aware of the significant operational risk incurred on the company's behalf by his operational managers

Things are changing -- again. But this time the changes are more profound and definitely more permanent. We're entering a new era of partnership between technology and business. These two camps are inseparable now, and business models and processes cannot be implemented without operational and strategic technology.