Tag: Leadership

Sometimes an idea becomes so ingrained in conventional wisdom, such an embedded assumption in everything we do, that it demands to be questioned. Think about how often you hear someone in a meeting say, “We need to prioritize,” or ask, “Is this a priority?” When something goes wrong, it may be blamed on a failure […]

 “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist & philosopher   Thinking is hard; energy intensive even. Perhaps that’s the reason we obsess about food. One estimate indicates we make over 200 food-related decisions a day. Another popular internet statistic boldly states that the average human […]

Given today’s economic uncertainties, many companies are focused on ways to reduce—or at least control—their costs. Their approaches are often based on the traditional idea of controlling costs through the mechanism of budgets. “Let’s find places to cut a budget and force the manager working with that budget to find savings.” Often, the easiest areas […]

Managing in times of economic uncertainty means facing difficult choices. Reducing costs is a choice that leaders often face but mostly dread. Many of us on the Enterprise Strategy team have faced multiple macroeconomic headwinds or other industry- and company-specific challenges in our previous roles as CXOs. In this post, I outline some of the […]

“Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.” — From the Agile Manifesto Since my blog post on the Chief People Officer (CPO) and CIO partnership, a new urgency has emerged—popularly named the “great resignation”—triggered by a demand for skills, a search […]

“The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice.” —Brian Herbert, Author It’s easy to think of life as linear stages. Where did you go to school? What do you do for a living? What are your retirement plans? These stages are interspersed […]

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” —John Quincy Adams I have been privileged to meet executives from every sector, many with the newer title of “CDO.” The “D” usually stands for Digital or Data. Here’s my observation from seeing great CDOs in […]

Overview Throughout the year, we write blog posts on whatever topics seem to be most important to the AWS customer executives we speak to. Each of us on the Enterprise Strategy team holds 100-200 customer meetings a year, generally at the most senior executive levels, to try to help with their challenges in digital transformation—cultural […]

by Clarke Rodgers, Enterprise Strategist, AWS Enterprise Strategy Over the last several months, one of the most common discussions I have had with members of the C-Suite is around how to effectively report and/or discuss cybersecurity with the organization’s Board of Directors (BoD) and/or Senior Leadership Team (SLT). Background Before I get into the details, […]

Tom Godden and Phil Le-Brun In our previous blog post, we discussed why we need to rethink how we outsource in the age of Agile. The problems are clear, but how do we overcome them? In this post, we’ll get into some practical keys to success and obstacles to avoid in order to be successful. […]