Vendor
	Fletcher Agency Melissa Chinchillo
Original language
English
Categories
Computing & Information Technology

WAR AND PEACE AND IT

Mark Schwartz

Business Leadership, Technology, and Success in the Digital Age

The Business-IT Wall Must Come Down
With A Seat at the Table, thought leader Mark Schwartz pulled out a chair for CIOs at the C-suite table. Now Mark brings his unique perspective and experience to business leaders looking to lead their company into the digital age by harnessing the expertise and innovation that is already under their roof: IT.

In the war for business supremacy, Schwartz shows we must throw out the old management models and stereotypes that pit suits against nerds. Instead, business leaders of today can foster a space of collaboration and shared mission, a space that puts technologists and business people on the same team.

For business leaders looking to unlock their enterprise's digital transformation, War and Peace and IT provides clear context and strategies. Schwartz demystifies the role IT plays in the modern enterprise, allowing business leaders to create new strategies for the new digital battleground.

It is time to change not only the enterprise's relationship with technology, but its relationship with technologists. To accelerate, enterprises must bring technology to the heart of their work, for just as technology is causing this disruption, it is technology that provides the solution. Unlike Napoleon, it is time for business leaders to come down from the hill atop the Battle of Borodino and enter the fray with the technologists, for that is where the war will be won or lost.

Mark Schwartz is an iconoclastic CIO and a playful crafter of ideas, an inveterate purveyor of lucubratory prose. He has been an IT leader in organizations small and large, public, private, and nonprofit. Mark is the author of The Art of Business Value, A Seat at the Table, and War and Peace and IT and the winner of a Computerworld Premier 100 award, an Amazon Elite 100 award, a Federal Computer Week Fed 100 award, and a CIO Magazine CIO 100 award.

Available products
Book Published 2019-05-14 by IT Revolution Press

Comments

Having worked with hundreds of executives from large enterprises in my roles at AWS, it is clear to me that every CEO and CIO should read this book . . . together. As today's leader transform their organizations for the digital era, they invari- ably struggle with issues of cultural change, organizational change, and rigid legacy ways of working. If only they had had this book! It is the book they need to bring together IT and the rest of their businesses in the way that can over- come those hurdles. Mark's book is clearly informed by his executive leadership experience - both doing it himself and working with other enterprise leaders.

In War and Peace and IT, Mark Schwartz effectively highlights how the days of silo'd functions and delivering requirements like a War and Peace novel to IT are over. If you and your teams aren't out on the frontlines with IT fostering a new way of working together, your ability to succeed in the next era is likely over. If you want to learn how to embrace technology, respond effectively to ambigu- ity, and transform your business into an agile organization, then bring all your CXOs together and read this book with the CIO.

In an environment of chaos and uncertainty, there's opportunity, but only if you can recognize it and react quickly. This third book in the trilogy raises the most important issue - decisions need to be made and executed in real time. Outline a set of objectives, get out of the way, and allow the creativity to flow. Mark brings the reader through this journey, and having gone through it with him at the Department of Homeland Security, I can tell you it was one of most impactful initiatives we ever undertook.

War and Peace and IT offers a bold, insightful roadmap for building a company's digital capacity. With the pace of change in IT accelerating at such an unprec- edented rate, I consider this essential reading for my entire leadership team.

Korea: Acorn Publishing