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Signal & Structure Press · Available — Current Book

The Cost Centre in the Corner

Why Strategy Fails When Technology Enters Too Late

The technology problem often begins before technology enters the room.

Why organisations make strategic decisions without technology, discover the consequences during execution, and then blame IT for the result.

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The central problem

The central problem

The room

Strategy happens here.

The executive table. Investment cases, acquisitions, deadlines, operating models and commitments to the market.

Separated

The corner

Technology sits here.

Downstream of the decision. Measured on delivery, cost and uptime — not on the judgement that produced the work.

By the time technology is invited in, the organisation may already have committed to the cost, architecture, deadline and operating model.

That is the cost centre in the corner.

Readership

Who the book is for

  • CEOs

    Who want technology investment tied to business outcomes.

  • CFOs

    Who need to distinguish technology cost from the cost of strategic decisions.

  • CIOs & CTOs

    Who are accountable for outcomes they were not involved in shaping.

  • Executive Teams & Boards

    Who need technology inside strategy rather than downstream from it.

The sequence

How the consequence is created

Nothing in this sequence is unreasonable on its own. The difficulty is the order in which it happens.

  1. 01

    Strategy

    The business decides what it wants to achieve.

  2. 02

    Commitment

    Budgets, acquisitions, deadlines and operating models become fixed.

  3. 03

    Technology enters

  4. 04

    Constraints emerge

    Legacy systems. Integration. Cybersecurity. Data. Architecture. Capability.

  5. 05

    The consequence

    Technology becomes accountable for decisions it did not help make.

Inside the book

What you’ll discover

Five arguments that run through the book — each of them written for the people who make the decision, not only for the people who implement it.

  1. 01

    Why technology gets excluded from strategy

    How organisations unintentionally position IT as an implementation function rather than a strategic capability.

  2. 02

    Why the cost-centre label persists

    And why simply relabelling technology as “investment” does not solve the underlying problem.

  3. 03

    Why timing matters

    The difference between involving technology before strategic commitment and asking it to execute afterwards.

  4. 04

    Why CIOs sometimes make the problem worse

    Technology leadership has also contributed to its own strategic exclusion.

  5. 05

    What better organisations do differently

    Practical approaches for bringing technological consequence into strategic decision-making earlier.

The argument, drawn

Ideas from the Book

The figures that carry the argument, presented as a growing reference rather than a sales page.

  • The Entry Point

    Where technology is admitted into the strategy process — and what has already been fixed by the time it arrives.

    Explore the idea

  • The Commitment Curve

    How the cost of changing a decision rises while the organisation’s confidence in it rises faster.

    Explore the idea

  • The Accountability Gap

    The distance between the people who make a decision and the people who are measured on its outcome.

    Explore the idea

Endorsements

What leaders are saying

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About the Author

Henny Schlebusch, Pr.CIO

Professional Chief Information Officer. Technology Executive. Author.

Henny Schlebusch has spent more than twenty years in the room where technology decisions get made — and rather more time in the corridor outside it.

His career spans logistics, financial services, telecommunications and security, including retail banking technology, global IT leadership across Asia-Pacific, Europe and Africa, and a telematics business he helped build and take to acquisition.

His work has centred on the point where technology, investment, operating reality and executive decision-making meet.

  • Pr.CIO (SA)
  • Vice President — Global CIO Forum South Africa
  • Professional Member — Institute of Directors South Africa
  • MBA Artificial Intelligence
About Henny

Order the book

Put technology back into the strategy conversation.

The Cost Centre in the Corner

Why Strategy Fails When Technology Enters Too Late

Publisher
Signal & Structure Press
ISBN
978-1-0483-4389-2

Speaking & executive engagement

Take the conversation into your boardroom.

The argument in the book works hardest in the room it was written about — with the executive team, before the next commitment is made.

Invite Henny to Speak

  • Executive Keynote

    Why Strategy Fails When Technology Enters Too Late

  • Board Discussion

    Technology as a strategic decision capability

  • Executive Workshop

    Identifying where technology enters your strategy process

  • Bulk Book Orders

    For leadership teams, conferences and executive programmes

Writing

Ideas from the Corner

All insights