It’s been a busy year for everyone. I hope you’re taking time this week to take a break and refresh. I’m doing the same because I know next year will be big. Big for everyone!

So for this week’s post, I’m recapping the top five that I published this year. I had over 100 articles published this year and only half on this blog. so please sign up for the monthly Driving Digital Newsletter where you can track all my writing and to the 5 Minutes with @NYIke video channel to follow my how-to videos. You can also browse 15+ years and 750+ articles of my writing on this dashboard.

So long 2021 and looking forward to 2022. I have a big announcement coming soon so stay tuned!

1. 3 Ways to Reform Detractors that Really Undermine Agile and Digital Transformation

Read the pull post! Finding ways to sway detractors into supporters, or at least prevent them from raising their voices to drown out the visions and plans of transformation leaders is critical. It prevents leaders from creating the force multipliers that accelerate digital transformation.

This post was part of a series and you can review the full sequence of posts on culture transformation, handling detractors, and creating force multipliers.

2. Data-Driven Organizations: What are Principal Responsibilities of Successful Chief Data Officers

Read the full post! Confused about the role of the chief data officer? You’re not alone!

Is the CDO the owners, steward, and driver to meet regulations on GDPR, PII, HIPAA, FINRA, KYC, CPRA, and the alphabet soup of other compliance requirements?

Does the CDO oversee data-related audits, or are they stakeholders to them?

Please watch the 5 Minutes with @NYIke video in the post where I share part of a framework on divying up DataOps, proactive data governance, citizens data science, and other data responsibilities among CIO, CDO, and other data/tech leaders.

3. Achievable Ways to Define KPIs and Measure Successful Digital Transformation

Read the full post! We all say digital transformation is a journey. We know it’s not a project with an end date or a static outcome and more like a portfolio of initiatives and roadmaps that evolve over time.So, one common question I get when keynoting about digital transformation is, “How do we define and measure the success of digital transformations?”

4. Why Killing Silos is Crucial in Digital Transformation

Read the full post! Somewhere, sometime in your career, I am betting you had one of these feelings or asked yourself one of these questions.

•  “We’re operating in silos.”
• “The left side isn’t talking to the right side.”
• “We need a meeting to decide who to attend to the next meeting so we can review what we didn’t cover in the last one.”
• “Let’s meet to get on the same page.”
• “We’re agile, sort of fragile, and unfortunately hungover from waterfall.”

5. 5 Ways Vision Statements Drive Achievable Digital Transformations

Read the full post! Our vision statements are not multipage business cases, nor are they big, bold moonshot declarations. They are one page and force teams to think like a product manager. They help answer questions around the customer, value proposition, competition, and strategic value of an investment.

Our vision statements are developed iteratively. We encourage organizations to use them before planning any initiative and update them at least every six months. For organizations using StarCIO’s Agile Planning practices, we encourage writing vision statements for every major release.