Productization

See this affecting org where heirarchy is present in org structure or culture and where compartmentalization of execution is present.
There is belief that once the org structures are created the enterprise will just work like a machine with many parts. Somehow they presume that the multiple dept, verticals and horizontals will gel and work together seamlessly without politicking or becoming fiefdoms. They end up becoming the latter.
What they forget is people need to work together. These org have well developed innovation units or rnd that churn out innovative proof of concepts effortlessly but are abysmal in productizing that into a tangible product that is valuable to the buyer. Forget about selling them.
Productizing as a concept is not easy. It needs effortless collaboration of these orgs, depts, verticals and horizontals without question of jurisdiction. It's about people from various orgs working together without even for once thinking what will be their reporting structure? Where and at which level they or their peers will be? Will they be reporting to their peers? If that happens how should I behave? Am I by providing supporting that to happen ?
The main thoughts they should be having is making the product valuable. A matured product management team with the help of seasoned technologist can take that research idea and make it valuable if this factors are removed from the workplace. It can be seen that even large corps with high innovation budgets are still not able to make valuable products while small companies are able to. The reason is apparent.
It's about how your diversely talented teams work together without having any other thoughts. The leadership which can create, cultivate and sustain an environment like that will be the one to have a successful business and where the need for financial engg does not arise.

Agile adoption

The last thing you want to hear from leadership on Agile adoption is, " we have deployed industry standard tools and processes, created agile champions, agile/scrum rituals are in place, etc etc ... We are agile now"
Just shows how myopic and non-outcome oriented their thoughts are.

Agile is, as manifesto states, about
-how your people are interacting and communicating in teams, across teams and across time zones
-How the teams were formed to make sure they reach self managed state early
-How the teams don't become a one person team, who makes all decisions, as he/she is favourite among leader/leadership
-How they are adding valuable outcomes to business after each sprint
-How the product owners are defining those values properly in their acceptance criteria
-How close are those criteria to business goals they are trying to meet, who validates them and their priorities
-How are you using the investment to make sure the high priority items that deliver value are implmented first
-How do you interact with the end customers and vice-versa

Best career advice

Software APM to Industrial APM

AppDynamics and new relic defined the new era of software APM which now industrial giants like GE, Siemens etc are trying to replicate for machines. The analogy and architecture are similar though the nuts and bolts are different.

AppD got the visibility it needed by the acquisition even though even before that it was still filling the space up pretty well.

The tenants are the same. Have a mech to catch the various param values on a time scale similar to heart beats of a patient. Put those through a algorithm running on some machine learning system or simple formula processor or complicated series of analytical and physical models. Then take action on the answers.
You might be happy - it's fine but can be improved
You might be concerned - something just went south
Alarmed - the server running hot or that gas turbines combustion is running too rich.

The same APM if deployed in dev and preproduction env can be used with more param readings and readings of more resolution to drill down to the issue and solve it. Many times it mandates architecture or design changes.

But the end to end visibility and ability and flexibiity to act with focus is what makes it interesting and effective. It pivots from being art to being science.