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.

About the Author

Mark Schwartz is an iconoclast, former 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.

As an Enterprise Strategist for Amazon Web Services, he uses his extensive CIO wisdom to advise the world's largest companies on the obvious: time to move to the cloud, guys. As the CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, he provoked the federal government into adopting Agile and DevOps practices. He is pretty sure that when he was the CIO of Intrax Cultural Exchange he was the first person ever to use business intelligence and supply chain analytics to place au pairs with the right host families. Mark speaks frequently on innovation, change leadership, bureaucratic implications of DevOps, and using Agile practices in low-trust environments. With a BS in computer science from Yale, a master's in philosophy from Yale, and an MBA from Wharton, Mark is either an expert on the business value of IT or just confused and much poorer.

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. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Reviews
"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 front lines 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 ambiguity, and transform your business into an agile organization, then bring all your CXOs together and read this book with the CIO." -- Chris Richardson, Deputy CIO, IT Development, Mobility, Smart Cities, Arizona State University
"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 unprecedented rate, I consider this essential reading for my entire leadership team." -- Francois Locoh-Donou, President & CEO, F5 Networks
"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 invariably 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 overcome those hurdles. Mark's book is clearly informed by his executive leadership experience-both doing it himself and working with other enterprise leaders." -- Stephen Orban, General Manager, Amazon Web Services, and author of Ahead in the Cloud
"This is the book I would want with me on a walk through the woods in a Russian winter. Mark's three books help to define how an organization should function as a whole, each approaching the question from a different angle and each as helpful in changing the organization. I am buying several copies of this book for my colleagues across all of our business operations...not business and IT." -- Josh Seckel, Specialist Leader, Deloitte Digital
"War and Peace and IT makes a convincing case for change: its real-life examples and the evidence it presents are concrete and compelling." -- Rodriogo Lobo, Partner at PIPA Global Investments
"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." -- Luke McCormack, former CIO of the Department of Homeland Security
"Napoleon couldn't centrally manage his battles in real time, but today's leaders have no excuse. Independent cell-based teams using rapid hypothesis testing will win the battles against competitors who remain old-school. After explaining to IT leaders how to get A Seat at the Table, Mark Schwartz has advice for everyone else at the table." -- Adrian Cockcroft, former VP of Amazon Sustainability Architecture



Book Information
ISBN 9781942788713
Author Mark Schwartz
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint IT Revolution Press
Publisher IT Revolution Press
Weight(grams) 290g
Dimensions(mm) 232mm * 153mm * 12mm