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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

The One Investment CxOs Don't Cut During Inflation

Threats of inflation and recession have companies preparing for budget restrictions. The one thing you can’t cut, that is instinctive to cut, are the outsiders who are key for your insiders. How do you know who they are?

Scott Smeester

August 4, 2022

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When Good Ideas Go Bad :: How CIO's Avoid Idea-Waste

Leaders are thinkers. But good ideas go to waste. For your idea to thrive, you need to avoid four pitfalls and traverse four avenues of idea fruition.

Joe Woodruff

April 26, 2022

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Why Go Back To The Office: A Decision Grid For The CIO

The decision regarding whether to return to the office won’t be answered by a number of considerations. The insightful CIO needs to take only two actions to make a wise choice.

Scott Smeester

February 15, 2022

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