From Adoption to Advantage – Integrating ITIL into the DVMS Approach
Leading on the Edge: Orchestrating Value, Risk, and Culture – A Leadership Call to Action – Part Six
David Nichols – Co-Founder and Executive Director of the DVMS Institute
Bridging the Series
Throughout this series, we’ve examined how leadership evolves in a digital age marked by volatility, complexity, and constant change. We’ve seen that leadership is more than just giving directions; it’s about shaping culture, setting governance, and building resilience. We’ve explored the close link between cultural behavior and organizational capability, and observed how governance, resilience, and assurance (GRA) naturally develop when leaders align their intentions with their actions.
Part Six is where all these threads begin to come together. If the earlier parts of this series focused on examining the raw materials of leadership — culture, governance, the CPD model, the 3D Knowledge Model — this installment concentrates on orchestration. Because the reality is this: leadership in the digital age is less about control and more about composition. It involves orchestrating value, risk, and culture at the “edge of chaos,” where adaptability and stability intersect. That edge is where organizations either stumble or succeed. And the leader’s task is to keep their enterprise balanced on that edge and thriving because of it.
The Strategic Imperative of Adaptive Leadership
Traditional leadership models were designed for periods of relative stability. In those settings, a strategy could be established, communicated through organizational layers, and executed with predictable outcomes. However, static strategies quickly become outdated in today’s environment, where supply chains can change overnight, technology cycles accelerate, and social expectations reshape markets.
This is why adaptive leadership has become a strategic must. Leaders cannot treat strategy as a static artifact. Instead, strategy should be viewed as a dynamic narrative that develops through ongoing dialogue with changing conditions. The 3D Knowledge Model (introduced in Part Three) offers a perspective for this. Leadership is positioned along the Z-axis, providing direction and purpose. Structure is positioned along the Y-axis, supporting alignment and flow. Behavior is on the X-axis, reflecting culture through action. The organization can adapt without losing coherence when these three axes are aligned. When they are misaligned, dissonance quickly spreads, and a strategy becomes empty rhetoric instead of reality.
The leader must remember this model and constantly check for alignment. Adaptive leadership involves asking: Does our structure support the behaviors we need? Do our actions reflect the leadership we claim? Does our leadership story make sense given our current risks and opportunities? These questions can’t be answered just once a year at an offsite; they should become part of the daily leadership rhythm.
Culture as the Linchpin of Execution
Culture is often called “the way we do things around here.” But in reality, culture is the essential link between intent and execution. No matter how polished a strategy or how advanced a governance framework, culture ultimately determines whether value is created, risks are managed, and resilience is maintained.
This is where culture directly connects to Minimum Viable Capabilities (MVC). An organization can align its capabilities with the MVC, assess its maturity, and invest in new controls or tools. However, they remain vulnerable unless the culture supports those capabilities. For example, a company might claim to have strong incident response skills, but frontline staff will hesitate to report issues early if its culture punishes transparency. The capability fails at the moment of truth, not because the structure was incorrect, but because the culture is misaligned.
Leaders cannot delegate culture. They live it and signal it through the behaviors they reward, the risks they tolerate, and the stories they tell. A leader who admits uncertainty models humility and, in doing so, grants others permission to surface uncomfortable truths. A leader who rewards adaptive risk-taking embeds learning loops into the organization. Culture becomes the invisible infrastructure that supports capabilities when pressure mounts.
Governance, Resilience, and Assurance as Byproducts
In earlier parts of this series, we redefined governance, resilience, and assurance not as checklists or isolated functions but as system outcomes. In Part Six, that idea is made fully clear.
When leaders clearly define value and risk, governance develops organically. It isn’t dictated from the top but results from clear intentions. Teams know where to concentrate, what is most important, and where the limits are.
When leaders support capability development and foster adaptive behavior, resilience emerges. Resilience isn’t about avoiding disruptions but dealing with them, learning from them, and becoming stronger. Leadership sets the environment; resilience is the result.
And when leaders reinforce culture through their own behavior, trust develops. People trust not because of a compliance program but because the system aligns. Trust is felt as consistency between leadership signals, structural incentives, and behavioral norms. It’s the confidence that the organization will do what it promises, not just because of oversight but because of real alignment.
The Leadership Overlay on the CPD Model
The Create–Protect–Deliver (CPD) Model is presented as a framework for understanding how organizations generate digital business value. In earlier sections, we looked at it as an operational model. However, in Part Six, we emphasize it as a leadership tool.
At the leadership level, Create involves envisioning. It is about imagining futures, fostering innovation, and providing cultural permission for new ideas to emerge. Leaders don’t generate all the ideas, but they create the environment for them to surface and gain momentum.
Protect involves establishing ethical boundaries, assessing risks, and building resilience. Leaders identify the non-negotiables, the values they will defend even under pressure. They assign resources and concentrate on developing capabilities to endure shocks and maintain value.
Deliver is about coherence. Leaders ensure that structures, incentives, and narratives are aligned so that intent turns into action. Delivering focuses less on micromanagement and more on removing obstacles, reducing ambiguity, and enabling smooth flow.
When executives implement the CPD model at this level, it shifts from an abstract framework to a leadership practice. It provides a shared language for balancing vision with guardrails, innovation with stewardship, and aspiration with execution.
A Systems Thinking Perspective
One of the most harmful myths in leadership is that decisions are isolated events. In truth, every leadership choice creates ripple effects across systems. A decision about resource allocation shifts cultural priorities. A decision about messaging influences behavior. A decision about structure changes governance.
Systems thinking helps leaders see these connections. Feedback loops reinforce and balance to determine whether a decision boosts or weakens resilience. For instance, if a leader demonstrates transparency, that action encourages reporting, enhances governance, builds trust, and promotes transparency. The cycle continues to strengthen itself.
The metaphor of the symphony conductor is appropriate. The conductor doesn’t play every instrument but influences rhythm, harmony, and coherence. They cue specific sections, soften others, and unite the orchestra for crescendos. Leaders orchestrate in a similar way, not by dictating every note, but by setting the tempo, blending voices, and making the entire ensemble greater than the sum of its parts.
Practical Takeaways for Executives
Part Six must remain practical, so let me offer three questions every executive should reflect on:
- How am I framing value and risk in a way my organization can act on?
Vague aspirations do not guide behavior. Leaders must translate strategy into actionable narratives. - Where am I reinforcing culture through my own visible behavior?
Culture is caught more than it is taught. Employees notice what leaders do far more than what they say. - Am I orchestrating governance, resilience, and assurance — or delegating them as siloed functions?
If GRA is treated as someone else’s responsibility, it fragments. If it is seen as the outcome of leadership alignment, it integrates.
A final exercise to consider is what I call the Z-axis audit. Periodically step back and ask: Is my leadership (Z-axis) aligned with the structures (Y-axis) we’ve built and the behaviors (X-axis) we expect? Where there is misalignment, resilience will decline. Where there is congruence, resilience will grow.
Leading on the Edge of Chaos
Leadership today is about more than stability; it is also about more than change. It involves mastering the paradox of both. The most effective leaders can stand at the edge of chaos, where stability and adaptability meet, and not retreat from it but embrace it.
Leading on the edge of chaos means understanding that risk isn’t something to eliminate but something to manage. It involves realizing that culture isn’t just a soft side of business but the core capability infrastructure. It requires coordinating governance, resilience, and assurance not as mere compliance tasks, but as natural results of aligned intent, structure, and behavior.
The edge of chaos is where innovation takes place, resilience is tested, and trust is either built or broken. Leaders who excel at this edge give their organizations a strategic advantage. They build enterprises that can withstand disruption and become a catalyst for creating value.
As we move into Part Seven of this series, we will shift from discussing principles to focusing on practical application. We’ll examine how leading on the edge of chaos plays out in real situations, from digital transformation initiatives to mergers and acquisitions, supply chain management, and enterprise resilience programs. The idea of orchestration will be transformed into real-world examples, showing how leaders across different industries manage at the edge of chaos in real time.
But for now, Part Six calls to embrace the edge of chaos rather than fear it. Because it is on the edge of chaos, not in the comfort of stability nor the chaos of disorder, but in the dynamic space between, that leadership fulfills its highest calling.
About the Author
Dave is the Executive Director of the DVMS Institute.
Dave spent his “formative years” on US Navy submarines. There, he learned complex systems, functioning in high-performance teams, and what it takes to be an exceptional leader. He took those skills into civilian life and built a successful career leading high-performance teams in software development and information service delivery.
Traditional best-practice approaches to IT Service Management (ITSM), Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), and Cybersecurity are insufficient to manage today’s complex digital ecosystems’ resilience, compliance, and trust requirements.
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The DVMS seamlessly aligns organizational Strategy, Governance, Operations, and Culture into an integrated, adaptive, and culture-driven governance and assurance system capable of ensuring resilient, compliant, and trusted digital outcomes.
By adopting a DVMS, organizations are positioned to:
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DVMS Explainer Videos
- Architecture Video: David Moskowitz explains the DVMS System
- Case Study Video: Dr. Joseph Baugh Shares His DVMS Story.
- Overlay Model – What is an Overlay Model
- MVC ZX Model – Powers the CPD
- CPD Model – Powers DVMS Operations
- 3D Knowledge Model – Powers the DVMS Culture
- FastTrack Model – Enables A Phased DVMS Adoption
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