Capitalizing Your Technology to Disrupt and Dominate Your Markets: Transforming Cost Centers to Innovation Centers

Description

Every business today has some technology as part of its strategy. Inevitably, it is becoming harder for many CEOs to effectively lead their R&D efforts at the same time that their investment in tech keeps growing. Even startup founders can find themselves flustered when trying to understand whether a particular issue is genuinely impossible to solve, getting the team to provide reliable estimates, and having their top tech leaders speak in plain words as opposed to jargon. This book helps them bridge the culture gap between the C-suite and R&D, covers frequent tech-related decisions and issues, and provides a way to unlock tech as an offensive weapon and a strategic differentiator. To create an environment where technology is not merely an execution mechanism but acts as a fulcrum for strategic opportunities, one must put a particular leadership team in place and equip them with digital literacy. Based on the author’s experience and discussions with hundreds of executives worldwide, he short-circuits common failure patterns and enables nontechnical senior leaders to act with more certainty and clarity regarding their tech efforts. Startups and tech efforts initiated without enough understanding of the technical aspects often have to be scrapped and started from scratch within 18 months. This can make or break certain endeavors, and as the author has helped his clients avoid these problems, the book will help the readers establish a sturdy foundation to work from. This book covers clear guidelines for founders, executives, and senior leaders that are not tech-savvy. These include establishing a tech organization, making the first key hires, assessing the relevance and risk involved in different options, and creating a healthy connection as opposed to a tech silo. On top of that, it will include lessons and case studies that stem from experience in the "Startup Nation," such as how to inject chutzpah into daily discussions and create an organization with habitual innovation. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Acknowledgments About the Author Introduction Chapter 1 You Don’t Need a “Tech Strategy”: Why Most Efforts Perform Poorly Oh, We Wanted to Talk about Tech Scenario A: Short-Leashed Tech Scenario B: The Abdication Spotting the Disconnect How This Limits Your Team Today The Motivational Pull Tragedy of Good Intentions Stop Telling Yourself These I Don’t Know How to Manage R&D They Should Know How to Manage Themselves We’re Too Busy to Take Care of Them They Want the Autonomy What the Best Looks Like Breaking Silos Fusing Engineers with the Business Tech as a Strategy, Not a Tech Strategy Making Time for Innovation Summary Action Items Notes Chapter 2 Geeks in the Boardroom: Tech Leaders Should Take the Lead The Role of Tech Executives in Your Company Going It Alone Short-Term Benefits Long-Term Advantages Talent Maximization With Great Responsibility Should Come Great Power Avoiding Glorified Managers The Hard Decisions R&D Gatekeepers Responsibilities of Tech Executives What Is Your Technological Edge? How Do You Create This Technology? What Problems Should Technology Solve for Your Customers? How Do You Evangelize Your Technological Value Externally? How Do You Maximize Tech Leverage Internally? Mapping Responsibilities to Titles The Different Types of Tech Executives Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Product Officer Vice President of Engineering Other Common Roles How Many Tech Leaders Does It Take to Create Market Dominance? Action Items Note Chapter 3 Defensive Technology: The Fallacy of Digital Transformations What’s a Digital Transformation? The “What Year Is It?” The Overhaul The Dead Letter Transformation A Typical Transformation Lifecycle Analysis and Planning Initiation Execution The Real World Why Transformations Fail Ill-Conceived Beginning Weak Kickoffs The Sausage Factory A Long-Expected Party Righting the Ship Tech as a Strategy Internalizing R&D Create a Business Connection Action Items Notes Chapter 4 Forging Cyborgs: Assimilating Tech Throughout Your Ranks Technifying Executives Explaining Tech Creating an Executive Team Staying Current Stand-Alone Tools Business Software Product Integrations Being in the Loop Making Employees Tech-Literate Teaching Literacy The Unknown Unknowns Disarming Fear Moving beyond Faster Horses Cross-Pollinate Internal vs. External Create Healthy Friction Product Mastery Visibility for Mastery Rubbing Elbows No-Code to Eliminate Monopolies Creating Autonomy, Not Anarchy Not a Silver Bullet Action Items Notes Chapter 5 In-House, Outsource, Build vs. Buy?: Your Technology Force Structure Tech in the Org Chart Your Tech Leadership Chain-of-Command Get Your Tech Leaders Tech Leadership Reporting to Whom? Effective Organizational Structure Too Many Cooks Don’t Overdo the Supportive Roles Cross-Functional Teams In-House and Outsource Company Constraints Team Composition Patterns Where Are They All At? Remote and Hybrid Easiest: Colocated Teams Hybrid: Collaboration in Hard-Mode Remote-Only: New-World Collaboration The Salad How Big Is Big Enough? The Case for Smaller Teams Rules of Thumb for Team Sizes Build vs. Buy The Right Investment Action Items Note Chapter 6 Habitual Innovation and Tech Capital: Creating Offensive Creativity On-Demand The Current State of Innovation Types of Innovation Are You Innovating? Measuring Innovation How Much Innovation Is OK? Fostering Innovation Creativity Requires Capacity Introduce Intermissions Prioritize Long-Term Research Introduce Constraints Impact over Novelty Tech Capital Placing Healthy Bets Embracing Failures Action Items Notes Chapter 7 Making R&D Transparent and Predictable: Handling the Soft Parts of Software Software Development Management Delivery Cycles Affect the Entire Company No One-Size-Fits-All Process Common Approaches and Their Strengths/Weaknesses Measuring Agility Choosing Your Agile Principles Using Deadlines Correctly Bad Deadlines The Benefits of Deadlines Leveraging Deadlines Addressing the Language Barrier Define Appetites No Radio Silence Set Up Regular “Resurfacing” Points Inject Feedback and Prevent Drift Action Items Notes Chapter 8 Injecting Chutzpah: Culture Lessons from the World’s Unicorn Capital What Does It Even Mean? Not Insubordination The Benefits Understanding Scarcity Cultural Misconceptions Lack of Agency No Psychological Safety Cultivating Chutzpah Give Permission Embrace Feedback Create Safety Diagnose Awkward Silences Balancing International Differences Mix It Up Rubbing Elbows Create Bridges Action Items Notes Chapter 9 Debugging and Troubleshooting: What to Do When Things Don’t Go According to Plans Productivity Problems The Team Seems to Be Going Slow Even though It Took on More People Are These Time Estimates Justified? Why Does It Seem Like We Cannot Improve Quality Issues? Technical Ability Why Do They Keep Allocating Significant Time for This “Tech Debt”? Tech Is the Bottleneck for Our Business; Why Can’t They Deliver? Do We Really Need to Hire More People? Team Health Why Is Turnover High? We Cannot Seem to Hire People Tech Leadership Is Not Taking the Lead Impact The Team Seems to Be Repeatedly Delivering the Wrong Things How Do You Handle Cases Where the Engineers Seem to Be Focused on the Wrong Things? They Don’t Seem to Really Be Working Hard How Hands-On Should My Tech Executive Be? Action Items Notes Chapter 10 Crypto, NFTs, and Metaverses, Oh My!: Handling Hype and Trends Tech Vertigo Replacing Frivolity with Calculated Bets Treating Fads as Fads Keeping a Finger on the Pulse Demanding Business Cases Got Talent Tailoring Experiments to Your Team Team Adjustment Moonshots and Cutting-Edge Technology Uncovering Blind Spots Tech for Tech’s Sake Action Items Notes Chapter 11 Could You Tell if It Hit You in the Face?: Benchmarks for a Successful Tech Team Measuring Successful Tech Executives Being Good Leaders Tech Leadership Measuring Teams The Simple Stuff Profitable Growth Engineering Impact Action Items Notes Conclusion Index