Author: Mark Schwartz

Introduction by Mark Schwartz In several earlier posts I discussed new strategies for governance in the cloud and the digital world in general. In the first, I talked about the kind of governance that requires standardization and rules. In the second, I wrote about governing projects and investments. The underlying point of these posts was […]

In my last post I talked about the need for leaders to have guts—in the sense of being willing to make decisions under uncertainty once they’ve gathered enough information. But that’s not the end of the story. In this post I want to talk about gutsy management of vendor relations. In the next post I’ll […]

As we’ve all realized by now, the term digital transformation has become slippery and overused. Something big is going on today in the way technology is used in large enterprises, a change that seems to have something to do with digital technology, digital ways of working, and the increasing importance of digital interactions in our […]

The important lesson to learn from COVID-19 is not that we need to be prepared for pandemics: it’s that we need to be prepared for unexpected, high-impact events, whatever they may be. Any particular one of these events is too unlikely to plan for, but taken collectively, there’s a reasonable chance that one of them […]

Machine Learning (ML) is such a powerful new set of technologies, opening up so many business possibilities, that it’s sometimes difficult to imagine how best to put it to use. The possibilities are overwhelming, and there is little history to build on. In this post Baran Karlidag ties ML to the specific challenges that financial […]

Like other industries, insurance must respond to rising customer expectations for digital interactions. In this post, Tony Jacob, Amazon Web Services’ Worldwide Insurance Business Development Manager, explains how insurers can deepen their relationships with customers by engaging them digitally. Interestingly, he finds that the challenges have less to do with the digital interactions themselves, and […]

Can I speak frankly? Leadership requires guts. There comes a time when a leader has enough information and has mitigated enough risks to move forward with any urgent decision. That’s the moment when the leader must proceed boldly and inspire the rest of the organization to act.

In my last post, I talked about one type of governance—the make-a-rule-and-enforce-it governance style, which applies to standardization, controls, compliance, and other areas that can be handled through general rules. For that type of governance, the digital world changes nothing aside from making it substantially more effective.

Governance must balance two objectives: it must control, and at the same time it must enable.

Every Board of Directors should be asking their executive team how they plan to deal with digital disruption. Even if a company is not yet facing disruption, it surely soon will be. And leaving it up to chance or just proceeding with the status quo is not a viable alternative.