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Decision Making

Industry Articles

The Technology Decision Nobody Can Explain

Ask three executives who made the call on the last major technology investment, and the answers may not match. This article names the structural cause: an official decision process on the org chart running alongside a real, unofficial one that carries the actual authority, unmapped and unreconciled. It closes with what fixes it, mapping what actually happened and making four things explicit before redesigning anything.
Scott Smeester
August 25, 2026
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Why Layered Approval Fails Technology Leaders... And The Levers That Reverse It

Technology decisions often stall inside an approval chain nobody designed on purpose, even when ownership of the decision is completely clear. This article separates decision rights from approval architecture and names the specific levers, from collapsing redundant sign-offs to running independent reviews in parallel, that rebuild an approval chain for speed without lowering the organization's risk standard.
Scott Smeester
July 28, 2026
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Why CIOs Avoid Explicit Tradeoffs... And Why It Hurts Them

CIOs routinely omit the one piece of information executives need most: what is being given up to fund the ask. The executive room reads that omission as incomplete prioritization, and adjusts trust accordingly. The CIOs who declare the sacrifice ... and stand behind the call ... earn a kind of credibility that thorough analysis alone cannot produce.
Scott Smeester
March 2, 2026
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Leadership Blogs

When CIOs Know That Tightening The Belt Is No Longer Good Enough

Begin with the end in mind is standard advice. And is still a missed dynamic in most planning. It’s the big picture, not the individual project, that gets forgotten. Working backwards is the critical way forward.

Joe Woodruff

December 7, 2023

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Why 9/10 Steering Committees Fail And Why Yours Won't

Steering committees fail on a regular basis. The one’s I have been on have been boring at best. A group of CIOs got together and revealed why theirs succeeded. The hard work is in the focus.

Scott Smeester

June 29, 2023

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Two Reasons You Fail To Persuade Other Leaders And How To Change It

We hear a lot about tactics when it comes to persuasion. Relatability and confidence are more effective; unfortunately, what they mean is often misunderstood.

Joe Woodruff

January 26, 2023

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