The Monthly “Performance Master’ Book Tuning: The Performance Score of Digital Transformation Nov. 2019

Corporate Performance Management is a management control from strategy to the shop floor. "If you can't measure, you can't manage," legendary management guru Peter Drucker once asserted. Managing performance means understanding results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to ensure it happens. It takes multifaceted approaches from multidimensional perspectives to unlock digital performance and catalyze change.

  

        The Performance Score of Digital Transformation

How Would you Calculate the Organization’s Performance Score of Digital Transformation The digital transformation represents the next stage of business maturity. It has to permeate into business vision, strategy, culture, communication, and processes. etc. Thus, performance management should take a multidimensional approach, to connect all important dots, with multifaceted perspectives. In practice, the more meaningful the thing you want to assess, the harder you can measure it objectively. More specifically, what are important factors could be used to measure digital transformation score and how to lead transformative changes successfully?

How to Set Performance Indicators to Measure Return on Digital Transformation Change is inevitable, and the speed of change is increasing. The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves, but it is the thorny journey with many bumps and curves on the way. How do you measure return on digital transformation in order to make the timely adjustment and improve its success rate? A well-defined set of measurement for digital transformation should contain a good mix of outcome measures or the long-term strategic value along with performance drivers to track the progress in the short term (operational measures).

What’re on your Digital Transformation Scoreboard Forward-looking organizations are on the journey of digital transformation. How would you calculate the digital maturity score of your organization? Which management metrics should you apply to measure the progress of changes? Proactive or reactive? On the track or too slow? Healthy or sick? The balanced scorecard is a strategic performance management tool that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. So, what is on your digital transformation scoreboard?

Take a Balanced Scoreboard Approach to Making a Leap of Digital Transformation The purpose of managing performance is about setting performance measurement to evaluate the status of strategy management, making objective assessments, adjusting plans, setting metrics, evaluating performance and understanding results. Digital is not a one-dimensional technology upgrade only, it is multi-dimensional business expansion. A well-balanced scorecard measuring key strategic performance indicators provide the management team both a data-based story and a holistic picture on how to fix critical issues and make a leap of digitalization.

The Performance Dashboard of Digital Transformation Forward-looking organizations are on the journey of digital transformation. You can’t manage it if you can’t measure it. A well-designed dashboard is an effective management tool for enabling business leaders to make better decisions and lead change in the right direction. A well-designed digital management dashboard is an easy to read, often single page, real-time user interface, showing a graphical presentation of the current status (snapshot) and historical trends of an organization’s key performance indicators to enable instantaneous and informed decisions to be made at a glance. A digital performance dashboard helps capture the progress being made or the important issues need to be taken care of, with the goal to improve management effectiveness.

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6200 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

The "Performance Master" Book Amazon Order Link

The "Performance Master" Book B&N Order Link 

The "Performance Master" Book Introduction Slideshare

The "Performance Master" Book Preview

The "Performance Master" Book Introduction 

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 1 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 2 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 3 Introduction 

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 4 Introduction 

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 5 Introduction 

The "Performance Master" Book Conclusion

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection I

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection II

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection III

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The Best “Argument” Quotes of “Digital Master” Nov. 2019

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Argument” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 An argument opens a new perspective; changing perspective will change your mind. Arguments are indeed healthy and prove we are alive.

2 An argument seeks to change a concept, perspectives, ideas and provoke actions, with or without a final satisfying outcome!

3 We become argumentative when the beliefs we hold as our foundation are challenged. This is a sign that one is not adaptive; we should be open to new information or a different view.

4 The good intention to make an argument is about understanding the other point of view and learn something from it.

5 An argument opens a new perspective; changing perspective will change your mind. The truth is the whole coin.

6 Perhaps, unnecessary argumentation is in some way the result of the lack of sincerity of purpose, lack of clarity in communication, lack of openness towards viewpoints of others and the lack of humility in personality.

7 Perspective is a personal " truth," and an argument is based on a position of passionate belief in this truth. Having an argument when you are emotional and egotistical leads nowhere. They are the most dangerous kind of arguments because your beliefs end up overpowering the truth.

8 Having arguments where you practice dissociating from your beliefs and your feelings about them are the ones that lead to learning, empathy, and self-awareness. It's all about letting go of the "looking good" syndrome we all have so deeply embedded in us.

9 Generally speaking, an argument opens new perspective, evokes paradoxical thinking, you don’t need to agree completely with the other side of viewpoint, but you can always gain empathy, insight, and new perspective to see things from the other angle.

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Minding The Resource & Investment Gap of Corporate Learning

It’s critical to mind resource and investment gap of corporate learning to enforce a holistic resource management discipline to unlock the organizational performance, potential, and competency. 

With the exponential growth of information and abundant knowledge, corporate learning is a differentiated business competency and culture shift. One of the main barriers to corporate learning is the business resource. For the long term business success, it is essential for the entire company to be pulling in the right direction, break down resource bottleneck, improve learning agility, and maximize the digital potential of their business.

Resource management becomes a bottleneck for developing corporate learning intelligence: There are different types of resources such as funds, physical assets, people, information, reputation, resources of the individuals who comprise the firm, such as knowledge, education, training, insights, experience, etc. Organizations have limited resources, many businesses took a big bite of resources to keep the lights on, only left very little for catalyzing innovation and building corporate learning as a unique business competency which directly impacts the strategic movement of the company.

Thus, often resource management becomes a bottleneck for developing corporate learning intelligence. The strategic goal of corporate learning is to develop core business competency. How resource allocation is determined should be understood by important parties. An effective resource allocation scenario helps to get all related people involved, take advantage of resources effectively, optimize cost, set priorities, and keep the process transparent in order to build a high intelligent organization.

From managing people as the human cost to treating humans as resources to investing in people as the capital: People are always the most critical asset of the business, but often the weakest link. The digital era upon us is people-centricity. The true value of people, especially today’s knowledge workforce include many tangible and intangible factors, and their value can be increased through their learning agility and problem-solving competency. When an organization is making a seamless management shift from managing people as the human cost to treating humans as resources to investing in people as the capital, they are on the right track of shaping high-intelligent and high performance digital business.

Human capital is the skills, knowledge, and experience gained in an organization by people that represents a value investment or resource to that organization. Collectively, to keep knowledge update, people should think of knowledge sharing as something they gain, rather than lose. In fact, training and corporate learning is a significant part of digital talent management is an organization's commitment to effectively managing the flow of talent to achieve the strategic goals of the business. Digital organizations should take the continuous practices of identifying, acquiring, developing, deploying, and retaining well-qualified people throughout an organization and cultivate the business culture of learning.

Rebalancing resources and redirecting people to learn and achieve for reinventing the business to get digital ready: With the mixed bag of new information and outdated knowledge, digital organizations and their people must learn through their interactions with the business environment continually for adapting to changes promptly. Successful capacity planning and resource management are critical to ensure that resource is available before they are needed. 

Rebalancing resource helps the organization take advantage of resources effectively, optimize cost, and strike the right balance of “running, growing and transforming” business steadfastly. 

Digital workforce today has to learn and relearn all the time. The skills that made you successful in the past may not necessarily make you succeed in the new world if you do not continue to learn, relearn, re-skill, and build the next level of capabilities, and then apply those lessons to succeed in new situations. Therefore, the talent management, information & knowledge management, and resource management needs to be integrated into a holistic approach to maximizing collective human potential, and ensure people with the right capabilities are in the right positions to solve the right problems.

When resource management becomes a bottleneck for organizational learning and digital transformation success, no wonder companies across the vertical sectors get stuck going nowhere. Organizations have limited resources, it’s critical to mind resource and investment gap of corporate learning to enforce a holistic resource management discipline to unlock the organizational performance, potential, and competency. It’s important to create a business context in which people are encouraged to learn, empowered and respected to create the business synergy that is the essence of the business harmonization.

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The Monthly “Digital Gaps” Book Tuning: Bridging Accountability Gap Nov. 2019

Self-accountability and collective accountability are that we each are creating knowingly or unknowingly the world, environment, culture that we find ourselves in, and we take responsibility and we grow with it.

"Digital Gaps -Bridging Multiple Gaps to Run Cohesive Business” is a guidebook to help digital leaders and professionals today identify, analyze, and mind multiple gaps with the multidisciplinary insight and holistic understanding. Today’s digital organization simply just can’t stand still., bridging the gap of opportunity between where you are and want to become is a welcomed challenge, it is important to identify and strengthen the weakest link and take a step-wise approach to make a leap of digital transformation.

             Bridging Accountability Gap 

Bridging the Gaps of Accountability Digital transformation is all about shaping highly performing and highly innovative organizations. Lack of accountability is often one of the biggest obstacles to getting things done, or cause change inertia. Because people don’t feel “safe,” or run away from accountability because they had a personal experience or they have observed others being treated poorly or unfairly when being held accountable for results. So, how to bridge the accountability gaps and improve the business manageability to encourage responsible communication, decision-making, and action, with the intention to build on morale and real productivity? In detail, how do you drive workforce performance, whilst bridging gaps, and generating accountability for that performance?

Running High-Performance Digital Organization with High Accountability? The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. It blurs the geographical, functional, organizational, and even industrial borders nowadays. Traditional hierarchical lines will phase out and a collective of business partners will emerge working collaboratively to set digital strategy and achieve organizational goals collaboratively. Digital organizations inspire learning and encourage autonomy. It is important to run a high-performance business with shared accountability or collective accountability that involves shared ownership, empathetic communication, and continuous improvement.

An Accountability Mind Accountability is “the obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.” (business dictionary.com). Self-accountability and collective accountability are that we each are creating knowingly or unknowingly the world, environment, culture that we find ourselves in, and we take responsibility and we grow with it.

Digital Reinforcement Management Practices Many organizations are on the journey of digital transformation which represents the next stage of business maturity and will improve how the enterprise works and interacts with its digital ecosystem, with people at the center of its focus. However, every business evolves digital with varying speed. There are stresses in business leadership because organizations must respond to continuous digital disruptions and the increasing pace of changes proactively. Businesses need to become more adaptive, innovative and resilient. Here are three digital reinforcement management practices they should take in order to get digital ready psychologically, technologically, sociologically.

How to Enforce Performance Accountability Digital transformation is all about shaping highly performing and highly innovative organizations (Digital Master) to improve efficiency & effectiveness; agility and maturity. In detail, how do you drive workforce performance, whilst generating accountability for that performance?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6200th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

"Digital Gaps" B&N Order Link

"Digital Gaps" iBook Order Link

"Digital Gaps" Amazon Order Link

"Digital Gaps" Introduction, Slideshare

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 1 Cognitive Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 2  Leadership Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 3 Management Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 4 Capability Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 5 Professional Gaps

Conclusion: Bridging Gaps to Catalyze Digital Maturity

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The Best “Psychology” Quotes of “Digital Master” Nov. 2019

Psychology is the knowledge and insight of our mind. 

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Psychology” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 The positive psychology is like oxygen to nurture life; the negative psychology does the opposite.

2 One of the most influencing aspects of people's psychology is how they perceive the world around and how they relate to it.

3 The psychology is the condensed version of mindset. Psychologically speaking, all humans are bestowed with three basic instincts which are humility, curiosity, and creativity.

4 The psychology to make a decision is embedded with the "choice" process (which includes identification, contemplation, evaluation, and selection of a universe of alternatives) within the thoughts block, rather than separated from it.

5 Organizational Psychology delivers real value in terms of being a sounding board and providing real feedback on the current state of a business.

6 Things like intelligence, basic mental framework, and the collective psychology shapes the culture of organization, how people think and do things in the organization by understanding the proving psychological concept and practice them.

7 Psychology is the knowledge and insight of our mind. But you don't need to be a psychologist to understand change mentality.

8 Manage changes at the mindset level. Understanding the psychology behind changes is a prerequisite for making a leap of digital transformation.

9 The challenge with change is to create emotional states and psychological perspective for people to reduce anxiety and become more open to new ideas and perspectives and get more evolved on the journey of digital transformation.

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Leverage Business Architecture to Orchestrate Strategic Transformation

Business Architecture is not just for knowledge collection, more about capturing business insight and foresight. 

Digital is the new paradigm shift to deeply connect the business nature to the natural ecosystem. Organizational leaders across the vertical sectors leverage business architectures to orchestrate strategic transformation because Business Architecture can bring together aesthetics, use, purpose, materials and more to create a built environment that suits its purpose now and into the future and seek to represent the architecture of an organization in terms of information, process, capability, and performance, either as it exists or as it is intended to be.

Business Architecture as a strategic communication facilitation tool: Business Architecture facilitates the planning and communicating of business change initiatives, translate the abstract concept back into the real world example. It also has the visual ability to “see” an idea and express it in visual terms via interactive way. Thus, the business architecture could become a great executive communication tool, particularly when the architecture discussion is kept at a higher level, keep all executives at the same page by walking through the discussion about strategy planning, governance, transformation.

The real value of business architecture is about keeping the priorities in balance and facilitate the strategic communications, to highlight changes with standardization, coherence, and visualization of business improvement initiatives. It’s an effective communication and governance tool to blueprint the future of business.

Business executives who can speak architectural dialect are able to facilitate the digital dialogues between organizational decision makers and thereby assist the organization in continuously designing and redesigning itself in pursuit of new and more viable strategies, enhancing cross-functional business coordination, developing knowledge and expertise, and enforcing business responsibility.

Business Architecture as a strategic planning tool: Business Architecture contains the organizational context and is strategic in that it gives direction to the business design and transformation. It’s a great strategic planning tool for business leaders to gain the systematic understanding of how relationships, ecosystems, market dynamics, and the connections between related business units and orchestrate the organizational interrelationship between people and process.

 We no longer live in the world that runs in years, but one that runs in minutes. Business Architecture is a critical framework that should support the requirements of the business and will need to be adjusted periodically. And, it is important to think about the interrelation between stability and adaptation, standard and creativity, sequence and iteration; and importantly, the success of the strategy is people and execution.

More specifically, the form of strategic planning includes such as,

(a) Taking a wide look around at what's going on outside the organization- the business ecosystem and how it might affect the organization, identifying opportunities and threats.
(b)Taking a hard look at what's going on inside the organization, including its strengths and weaknesses. (“SWOT” analysis)
(c}Establishing statements of mission, vision, and goals.
(d) Identifying how those goals will be reached (strategies, objectives, responsibilities, and timelines).

Business Architecture as an organization design and structure tool: The role of Business Architecture in designing and planning future enterprise is both interesting and challenging for helping the organization make a smooth transition to run a people-centric organization. In a paradigm-shifting business environment, this may be the most important result of Business Architecture involvement. 

Business Architecture is about boundary conditions. It helps to bridges between the enterprise business model and enterprise strategy on one side, and the business functionality of the enterprise on another side. Business Architect should provide a unique and highly valuable viewpoint about organizational design and structure, Business Architecture input can be used into the organizational structure and scope of responsibilities in an alliance type venture. BA input can also be used into where to direct resources and attention to strengthening business capabilities and transform the manual process and the business requirement to process design and process governance so that the organization’s mission, vision, and goals can be realized.

Business Architecture is not just for knowledge collection, more about capturing business insight and foresight. The ultimate goal of Business Architecture is to architect business in transition to the strategic state. A holistic approach would be to look at the purpose of the business, then look at the function (products and markets), processes required and the structure, resources, authority of the system. Forward-thinking organizations are in search of business architecture totality, re-imagine the future of business, and consider designing the new organizational structural model to embrace high velocity and drive transformative change seamlessly.

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The Monthly “100 Creativity Ingredients” Book Tuning: The Innovator’s Profiles and Scorecard Nov. 2019

 Innovators have many traits such as vision, passion, determination, dedication, confidence, disobedience, and resilience, etc.

All humans are born with raw creativity ability. Creativity has many dimensions, with multi-faceted truth and myth, manifold knowledge and multidimensional insight. Creativity is the wings of our mind and the tempo of our heartbeat. Creativity is a constructive disruption, not so bad addiction, and a sensational phenomenon. The purpose of “100 Creativity Ingredients - Everyone’s Playbook to Unlock Creativity “is to classify, scrutinize, articulate, and share insight about one hundred special creativity ingredients, to paint the picture with them, to add colors on them, to embed the music into them, and to make the story via them, in order to unleash our collective creativity potential.   

            The Innovator’s Profiles and Scorecard 

An Innovator’s Scoreboard? Innovation is about transforming novel ideas into business values. Innovation score means an attempt to measure innovation; so the factors included in any scoring system will depend on what you are looking to evaluate (individual vs. organization? potential vs. past performance?), this is usually done through innovation indicators. What’re the pros and cons of measuring innovation and score innovators?

Three Types of Innovation Agents Digital is the age of innovation, but many organizations do not seem to be satisfied with the current circumstances because there are not enough innovations happening in their businesses to disrupt outdated mindsets, systems, processes, cultures, business models, or practices. Thus, it requires inspiring and energetic innovation agents to catalyze corporate culture for renewing creative energy, broadening innovation spectrum and amplifying innovation effect.

An Innovator’s Profile? For many, innovation is serendipity, and innovators are the crazy one, indeed, innovators are among us and within us, it relates to leadership, empathy, idealism, process understanding, communication skills, cultural understanding, and definitely - understanding in what is wrong with the status quo. Can you see yourself in the innovator’s profile?

The “PURE” Traits of Digital Innovators Innovators have many traits such as vision, passion, determination, dedication, confidence, disobedience, and resilience, etc. Innovators are not compromised with mediocrity or conventional wisdom, they get less polluted by negative vibes, discover new possibilities and better ways to do things. They focus on thinking positively and creatively because being creative is a way of thinking, of imagining, of expression, of perceiving things, of inventing, of inspiring, etc. Great innovators have such “PURE” traits to refine their character and stand out from the crowd.

Three Personas of the Digital Innovators With the increasing speed of changes, fierce competition, and unprecedented uncertainty and ambiguity, creativity is the most wanted skill in the 21st century. But who are the innovators? Are innovators belong to a rare breed, or are innovators just among us and within us? With “VUCA” characteristics, what are important personas do digital innovators present today?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6200th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The Best “Real Thinking ” Quotes of “Digital Master” Nov. 2019

Real thinking is thinking in a real path, it diverges and converges; it comes consciously, subconsciously, or super-consciously; it’s nature but also nurtured.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Real Thinking” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Before we can establish what real thinking is, we need to understand the entire thought process in which thinking is only a small part of.

2 "Real" thinking occurs when you look for internal understanding in order to find a way to contribute something of value,

3 Real Thinking comes with quieting the mind. The best way to develop thinking is in solitude turning within for discovery and asking yourself questions.

4 The real thinking is usually profound through the profound outcomes sometimes are not intended.

5 The real thinking often happens when your mind and your heart are in harmony, the creativity is sparkled like the fountain and your thought gets out of the old box, and flow into the time river and the information sea.

6 Real thinking is the child of our imagination and is conveyed via creative communication.

7 Real thinking is thinking in a real (true) path, it diverges and converges; it comes consciously, subconsciously, or super-consciously; it’s nature but also nurtured,

8 Climbing Knowledge-Insight-Wisdom pyramid is important steps in thinking deeply, gaining profundity, and establishing real thinking.

9 Without real thinking and true understanding, the real problems cannot be diagnosed and the complex problems cannot be solved in a structural way.

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The “Universal Principles” of Innovation

Innovation is essentially a management discipline that, if fully understood, read more like a blueprint than science fiction. 

Digital is the age of innovation, innovation is what leads to differentiation. It seems that many companies going through a period of introspection believe that they already implicitly understand the nature of innovation. All too often they perhaps manage a few innovation initiatives successfully. But keep in mind, with today’s digital dynamic, there are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. It’s important to understand the world class universal success principle for innovation, and manage innovation in a structured way across the organizational scope and digital ecosystem.

The Eastern concept of the empty cup: The “empty cup” is the Zen story to receive feedback, to imply that “if you do not first empty your cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?” Innovation is to discover better ways to do things. Thus, having a beginner’s mind is critical to shape a fresh view and cultivate a learning attitude, to see through things from different angles, keep a certain distance from the environment you observe or experience, discover and explore the new path to do things.

Being creative means you need to get used to stepping outside the old box into unfamiliar territory, keep the mind open, acquire new knowledge, and receive constructive feedback, respond or proactively interact according to circumstances, not according to how you assume.

Innovation becomes possible only if people can keep their curiosity to ask the open-ended “Why, Why Not, What If" questions, for emptying your own cup and being ready to consider other perspectives should they make sense. Innovators often treat each situation with freshness and novelty, no matter how many times they’d seen it or have done it before, they would enjoy exploring the new possibilities or pursue different ways of doing things.

The Western (Greek) idea of renewing your mind: Compared to the previous era with knowledge scarcity and silo setting, the digital era upon us is about information-rich and knowledge abundance. To nurture a creative working environment, foster integrity, trust, and transparency. The digital organization is more like the living thing with self-adaptable and self-renewal capability, encourages great autonomy, “self-generated” engagement, innovation, and self-renewal. You need to understand all these things on an intuitive level and from a holistic perspective.

Either individually or as a team, renew your mind to spark creativity by listening, asking questions, accumulating new knowledge, giving and receiving feedback, as well as dealing with conflict or even constructively advocating a point of view or capturing great insight.

The digital organization needs to focus on creating the right organizational culture so that people can thrive to keep renewing their minds, make meaningful social interactions, understand the interconnectivity of digital flow, and make it possible to turn the organization into “super-conscious and high-innovative mode” with informativeness, creativity, and harmony.

The Thomistic principle: "Quid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur" - an old mediaeval scholastic axiom says (in Latin) translated to “one receives according to one's own mode.” It means that whatever you perceive is likely to be shaped more by who you are than by the characteristics of what you are perceiving. 

Perception is situation or context based. For example, simply by observing self-organizing patterns of complex systems, one may get deep creative ideas about the most appropriate actions to be taken. An innovative organization needs to learn and grow through observation; by observation, you recognize the pattern and connect the things; by observation, you associate innovative services or solutions cross the industrial or geographic boundary. In fact, observation is one of the critical stages of innovation management. 

What you see depends very much on what you are familiar with and on the parading, your personal perception. The essence of innovation is about how to leverage diverse viewpoints, manage people, assets, and resources to meet the business goals for innovation. It must be a matter of perception, but it cannot only be that; it is a matter of influencing the mechanisms through which you actively engage what it is you are perceiving. It requires much more time, energy, passion, courage, experimentation, retreat, and reflection to get clear and focused on the innovative idea, business model, process or solution, and then enact, embody and execute in a disciplined way.

Innovation is essentially a management discipline that, if fully understood, read more like a blueprint than science fiction. Discovering patterns, understanding universal innovation principles and applying disciplines to innovation is to better align innovation management with strategy, to justify the initial investment in the program and the initial results for innovation management and measurement, help the resulting creativity and innovation by forcing yet more ingenuity, rigor, and precision into the approach.

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 11/15/2019

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking, brainstorming, innovating and sharing.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 6200+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight of digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Five Practices to Leap Digital Maturity The journey of digital transformation is the full-scale changes in the way business is conducted so that it’s a multidimensional planning and orchestration. It is necessary for the coherent use of various already known concepts and gradually opening up to the best and next practices for enforcing digital processes and sharpening all crucial business success factors to get digital ready.

The Corporate Board as Digital Trendsetter with Three “P”s The digital paradigm arises out of new knowledge, and the emerging trends as the digital shaper reinforce the digital characteristics of the business such as enlightenment and people-centricity. Digital leadership is the adventure to explore unknown, have confidence and insight to navigate the business on the right path for digital transformation.

The Monthly “100 Digital Pitfalls” Book Tuning: How to Overcome Corporate Silos Nov. 2019 Digital makes a significant impact on how we think, live, and work. There is a mix of old and new, physical and virtual, order and chaos. We are in a time of tremendous change, the dawn of the digital age, the path to the next level of digital maturity, also in the era of confusion and information overload. Therefore, it’s critical to identify, understand, and avoid pitfalls, discover strategic and predictive pathways to change, increase confidence, position a brand and leverage resources to make the digital paradigm shift effortlessly.

The Best “Debate” Quotes of “Digital Master” Nov. 2019 "Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Debate” quotes in “Digital Master.”

The Monthly CIO Debates Collection & “Digital IT” Book Tuning: A Set of Inquires of Running Strategic IT Nov. 2019 Due to the changing nature of technology, IT leadership role also continues to involve & shift the focus, to move up the maturity level. More and more CIOs are requested to take more responsibility and many CIOs present the breadth of leadership competency. The proactive IT debates help IT leaders to brainstorm better ways to do things and improve management capabilities. Here are the monthly CIO debates collections about envisioning digital IT leadership and running high-performance digital IT

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking about the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The Best “Aura” Quotes of “Digital Master” Nov. 2019

The Aura is the energy bag that surrounds the whole body of the individual, and it is the seat of all emotions.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Aura” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 "Aura" is a circle or an outline of energy around us. Aura is the distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person, thing, or place.

2 Aura plays an indispensable part in building up creative energy. It is where you generate the power to be creative.

3 The unit of energy as it grows in size gradually differentiates itself into three parts that are the Aura, the Mind, and the Subconscious.

4 The Aura is the energy bag that surrounds the whole body of the individual, and it is the seat of all emotions.

5 When we find calm inside, we sense the aura outside too. We feel we create a kind of vibration around us. That enthusiasm, energy, optimism, and love oozes out our bodies.

6 There is a natural aura of nature abundantly outside for all of us, we, however, can experience it, only if we really feel so, have such a touch within us.

7 People with great auras can attract others to them since most have wisdom, power, and love exuding from their energetic bodies. Humility coupled with supreme confidence is the rich "AURA" factor indicator.

8 There is also another aspect of the auric field: the COLOR. The thought forms being given out by a personality are reflected in shapes and colors and that is all within their aura as well.Read your aura is about understanding of what connects you, what stimulates your creative energy.

9 Your belief is your aura! Your self-confidence, bravery, commitment, and determination etc, all form as an aura around you when you strongly believe in your strengths.

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The Digital CIO’s Most Critical IT Emphasis

Digital IT is a business conductor in knitting all important business factors for enforcing the strategic focus and harnessing the unique business competency.

With the overwhelming growth of information and rapid change, IT touches both hard business processes and soft human behavior. Keeping IT dynamic is crucial for adapting to unforeseen urgent changes in the business or other fields. IT maturity directly impacts the overall business competency and maturity.

Modern CIOs need to thrive for becoming the digital shaper, envision and participate to co-create the future proactively, put the most critical IT emphasis on building strategic competencies, take continuous initiatives to unlock business performance and delight customers.

Critical thinking practices: Organizations rely more and more on technology, and IT needs will only expand. The CIO’s ability to build fundamental business competency is now greater than ever. A good CIO would keep everyone involved and foster an environment of critical thinking, be able to recognize areas of deficiencies and inefficiencies, and then ask the question 'How can we...?" of the IT team.

The success story of IT is perhaps similar, but each failure has a different root cause, and perils of running digital include such as silo thinking, analysis paralysis, legacy technologies, miscommunication between IT and business, legacy technologies, lack of in-depth understanding of business capabilities and resources, or not leveraging the collective brainpower of strategic vendor partnerships, etc. Digital CIOs need to deal with constant uncertainty and ambiguity, they naturally gravitate to a leadership role when things are unknown, things will change, technology is involved, a tough problem has to be solved, etc.

Thus, digital CIOs as strategic leaders need to practice critical thinking skillfully if they are equally strong in both realms of leadership and management, and build a strong team that offer different perspectives. The purpose of critical thinking is given in the quality of collective thoughts upon business vision and strategy, and how effectively business leaders can make decisions to move the business forward and upward with digital speed. At the organizational scope, the business as a whole has to adopt digital management practices with overarching critical thinking skills to stay ahead of the change curve. Talented people must continually seek to question, inform, and act to improve business transparency and accountability with consequences.

Running IT as the critical link in digital transformation: Many IT organizations are still at the crossroad, should they continue to be run as a cost center to keep the lights only or should they take the bold steps, move up to the next level of organizational maturity? The missing link in holistic IT management can further cause change inertia, stifle innovation and idea flow, and make businesses missing opportunities to innovate and accelerate.

To transform IT from inside-out operation driven to outside-in customer oriented, IT needs to permeate into the business functions and ecosystem, invite customers and partners to provide feedback for making continuous improvement, reconnect the missing link, and create the synergy to run a digital-ready organization.

Digital IT is a business conductor in knitting all important business factors for enforcing the strategic focus and harnessing the unique business competency. When IT considers their customers as the entity who buys the company's goods and services, some great things start to happen. Running digital IT requires thinking beyond, altering or changing the frame of reference to create previously unconsidered solutions to customers, make a shift from transactional IT to innovative IT, and run IT as the critical link in digital transformation.

Building critical IT competencies: IT is no longer just a commodity service provider or a support desk to keep the lights on. Digital CIOs have to define a set of IT competencies to tailor the organizational needs, map to the business strategy management, and rebrand IT as a revenue maker. 

In fact, IT emphasis for any organization (value innovation, operational excellence, architectural flexibility, etc.) changes over time and varies by organizational unit, and the most critical IT capabilities are not the same across an enterprise. CIOs need to be part of the executives for articulating differentiated IT-enabled business competencies to underpin strategy execution. 

The most critical IT emphasis needs to get back to its roots - the big "I" as Information, Intelligence, Innovation, Integration, and Improvement, in order to build critical IT competency. IT is the value-added delivery that makes the organization different and competitive. The high mature digital IT needs to understand stakeholders’ high expectations and propose a balanced service/solution portfolio that corresponds to both demand and cost drivers with a focus on business priority and building unique business competency.

A digital organization can bring greater awareness of business ecosystem intricacies and the systemic perspective of organizational structure, business process, people dynamics, resource alignment, or technological touches. To stay competitive, companies must go beyond just experimenting with some digital technologies,it's import to strengthen the weakest link, put the most critical IT emphasis on building unique competencies, and commit to transforming themselves into a fully digital business powerhouse.

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The Monthly Insight of Information Management: The Information Management Strategy & System Nov. 2019

 Information becomes the lifeblood of digital business, and digital technology is lightweight but more powerful than ever.

The aim of modern Information Management has often been described as getting the right information to the right person, in the right format and medium, at the right time, in order to make the right decisions. The value of information is qualitative, measurable, and defined uniquely by an organization.

    

The Information Management Strategy & System

The Business Benefit of Information Strategy With overwhelming growth of data, information and its life cycle become much more complex. Organizations need to have Information Management strategy as an integral component of the business strategy. Information Management strategy determines the strategic goals of information management, their risk appetite for achieving them, diagnoses existing issues, identifies and assesses information management effectiveness, and makes sure it brings the great business benefits.

Three Characteristics of Information Management System A system is a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole. A system has a purpose to perform a set of functions to achieve well-defined goals. A system which is composed of interacting and interdependent pieces has a specific structure which is defined by its components and processes - the interrelationship between components. Managing information and the information position of an organization is what ought to be called Information Management. Information Management is a system with interdependent processes, technologies, and a set of interdisciplinary practices for moving the business to a dynamic, iterative, integral and interactive digital flow.

Do you have Enterprise-Wide Data/Information Strategy Information is the lifeblood in modern businesses today, however, from industry survey; a very real gap exists with just over one-third of respondents having an enterprise-wide information management strategy in place currently. What’s holding these organizations back from building out an enterprise-wide information management strategy? What’s needed to close the gap? Also, keep in mind, data/information strategy needs to be the key element of the IT strategy, which is also an integral component of the overall corporate strategy.

Three Perspectives of Information Management Information is growing exponentially, and become one of the most invaluable business assets of the business. However, in many companies, the organizational modern data environment is fraught with inconsistency, redundancy, and multiple data and knowledge platforms, it causes confusion and decelerates business speed. Digital IT organizations should take an integral and holistic approach to manage the information cycle, and ensure that reliable information has been provided to the right people for making the right decisions at the right time.

How Important an Information System can be in Digital Business Success? In the industrial era, the majority of IT organizations are supporting functions to keep the business light on; the cost center to maintain legacy applications and infrastructure, and the gatekeeper to control the status quo. Nowadays IT and its value implication to the business have changed drastically; information becomes the lifeblood of digital business, and digital technology is lightweight but more powerful than ever. The question is –How important an information system can be in today, can you separate technology from an information system in order to achieve the intended results? And how to make Information Management as 'powerful' and 'worthy' to an organization as possible?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6200th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The Corporate Board as Digital Trendsetter with Three “P”s

Visionary board leaders have a clear choice among future scenarios that advocates future trends and identify the clear “destination.” 

The digital paradigm arises out of new knowledge, and the emerging trends as the digital shaper reinforce the digital characteristics of the business such as enlightenment and people-centricity. Digital leadership is the adventure to explore unknown, have confidence and insight to navigate the business on the right path for digital transformation.

The corporate board director is the top leadership role; leadership is all about direction and change.With the accelerating speed of changes, digital leaders such as BoDs have to spend more time on pondering the future and perceive “what could be,” under the “VUCA” digital normal. A clear vision is a good combination of prediction，perception, and precision, and the corporate board can become a digital trendsetter with three "P"s.

The information-based prediction: We live in the exponential digital era, there isn't really much of an enterprise without the massive oceans of data that flows through the company at any given split second. Information Management involves the use of technologies and processes with the aim of refining business insight, allows a company to move into a more advanced stage of digital explorement; helps to set trends and models that work best to meet the business goals for the long turn.

The corporate board plays a critical role in overseeing organizational strategies and enforcing business governance. The corporate board directors often present an in-depth knowledge about the business and expertise in multiple domains. With strong digital acumen, The BoDs can sense emergent opportunities and predict potential risks, provide an insightful outlook about what the future of the digital organization should be and what the existing problems and challenges are.

The digital acumen is also dependent on how effectively the corporate board can leverage information in decision-making. Information is all that is used to create the intelligence and shape a good strategy.  Some trends are more significant than others in their impact on business growth. Some corrections require more radical paradigm shifts with corresponding economic impacts or predictable political challenges.

Conscious perception: A leader changes the course of the business by seeing further than what all others see and by understanding issues from new angles, broader perspectives, or deep perception. People’s perceptions reflect their thinking capacity (the breadth and depth of the cognitive mind) and mentality traits (positive vs. negative; egoless vs. egotism, etc) Your perception affects your world and therefore what you project on the world, which in turn impacts others positively or negatively. Therefore, as the senior leader role, the corporate directors’ perceptions directly impact their breadth and depth of leadership influence.

Having a learning attitude allows you to gain cognizant of the different perceptions of the world, and having a positive attitude gives you the energy to overcome numerous obstacles on the way. The cautiously optimistic attitude with constructively negative feedback at the board level is perhaps the good combination to strike the right balance for leading the ship moving forward steadily. At the board level, when the collective perception is closer to the perception of the mastermind with a high level of cognitive maturity, hopefully, human society can accelerate collective progress significantly.

Forecast precision: To predict is to co-develop the future for running a better business. In a business scope, there are some of the important bits and bytes of information needed to forecast a new market, an emerging technology trend, or the business growth opportunities.

Besides information precision, the highest level of future sensitivity comes from appreciation of the whole situation which relies heavily on intuition and sense as well. Sometimes you need to be able to look for something “hidden,” which is not always so obvious, in order to make better assumptions or improve forecast precision. 

The goal of the business foresight and forecast is about predicting what will happen and step further, what should you do upon it. It’s the scientific management discipline of business orientation. Foresight is an ongoing conversation. Digital leaders such as board directors have to keep evolving and gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between the business and its rich environment, and shape the future together for reaching the next level of the organizational maturity.

 The BoDs needs to steer the organization into the uncharted water and blurred territories; visionary board leaders have a clear choice among future scenarios that advocates future trends and identify the clear “destination.” The corporate board as trendsetter sets digital principles and policies, shape advanced mindsets, focuses on what the needs to look like, alongside the impetus and sense of urgency, and promote certain activities and behaviors toward the destination steadfastly. By focusing forward, businesses are able to judge the coming learning curves accurately and overcome numerous obstacles on their path smoothly.

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The Logical Scenario to Build Digital Workforce Competency

A digital workplace encompasses so much that it's hard to isolate it from other dimensions of the enterprise. 

The digital world moves into a hyper-connected and interdependent digital relationship under “VUCA” business new normal. Part of the digital transformation journey is to prepare people to get digital ready psychologically and intellectually.

Modern digital technologies bring unprecedented convenience for people to learn and work, improve their productivity, learning agility, and innovativeness. Evaluating the digital readiness of the business is important to allow room for adjustments and keeping the organization dynamic and informative. Here is the logical scenario to build digital workforce competency.

Balance task management with thought leadership and behavioral leadership: Today’s digital workforce is hyperdiverse and interdependent. To lead effectively, digital leadership is less about “how,” more about “why” and “what.” Authenticity is the foundation to be a Thought Leader and a change agent who presents creativity and wisdom at the core of leadership principles.

Being an authentic leader is critical because if you know yourself, you are also better suited to tackle different challenges that will come your way as a leader; to make you think about what truly drives you to lead and why. It allows you to leverage that knowledge to increase the influential outreach for the betterment of others, and balance task management with thought leadership and behavioral leadership. A motivated digital leader with the right approach can drive the team to become self-disciplined, build digital workforce competency and achieve better business results.

Translate senior management vision and goals into workforce "language": Business management needs to pay attention to creating shared and admirable goals, and then, articulate them into workforce language, develop an inclusive and innovative team to compete and collaborate as they deem fit. Digital leaders today are able to not only articulate the vision but communicate it in various forms and forums, including investor relations, business partners, talent personnel, as well as the other CxOs in the company.

“Language” influences perceptions. For example, many talent management experts dislike the term Performance Management because traditionally, it is a logistic and an administrative process to do routine tasks such as annual performance review, with much negative implication. To truly develop digital workforce competency, "development, enhancement, and coaching" imply a better mindset, captures both the individual's and the organizational needs and sets the scene for a process to achieve your organizational goals at a technical, behavioral and attitudinal level. That's all about bringing your cumulative best talents and efforts to bear on business challenges and maximize performance results.

Feedback allows input into direction and objectives of workforce management: Disorder, friction, mal-performance, etc, are the common phenomenon in ever-changing digital dynamic workplace. Digital organizations are hyper-connected and interdependent; the multidisciplinarity such as psychology, sociology, technology, and philosophy must be applied for improving talent management effectiveness in order to build a conducive organizational climate.

 If you want your team to create a great future, they need to be responsive to feedback. Feedback is information that enables you to improve; it is a solution to the problem of cluelessness, and it’s always about the future. The feedback gaps can only be closed when the working environment is diverse, dynamic, energetic, and innovative. Don’t forget about communication, transparency, and acts of integrity on the part of talent management in building a hybrid and high competent workforce.

Self-management is not practiced on others, but on self: The high degree of the team’s or the organizational self-management capability reflects its maturity to be disciplined to do the work well in a dynamic and highly innovative environment. Individually, self-management is about knowing and comprehending how you can manage emotions and behaviors and as an individual recognize what is best to think and do, in relation to the betterment of his/her own life, including effective communications.

Self-management taps the inner and outer resources of strength, and to get yourself doing things with disciplines, practices and achieve the ultimate goals. Collaboratively, self-organizing is about empowerment and trust. You know the team will deliver the best outcome and give them the freedom to do it on their way. Organize your self-managed digital organization to define your circles, roles, and authority through the members of your organization. It helps empower people, nurture trust, or inspire peace. High level of autonomy is the symbol of digital maturity by streamlining the digital flow from top-down to bottom-up. A self-organizing team, thus, has the full authority on the business practices, processes, tools, engineering methods they would like to use to build business competency.

Digital culture and workforce management refinement: Digital organizations today need to redefine themselves where talent can develop and learn more rapidly than anywhere else. The effective workforce management focuses on attraction, engagement and performance alignment. The business management needs to accomplish the strategic goals through their people. 

 Today’s digital workforce has to continue learning and keep updating their skills and build their professional competency to proactively adapt to changes. Therefore, employee engagement and empowerment are important to build workforce competency. Shape a digital culture so that employees are willing to give discretionary effort and always looking for ways to improve their own and team performance. 

The digital management team should guide and motivate people to maximize their potential, their engagement with business realities and their personal fulfillment. A holistic people management discipline involves development, enablement, and enhancement, to well align with talent management, culture management, and strategy management, and it’s really intrinsically motivated and courageous enough to achieve strategic business goals with accelerated speed.

A digital workplace encompasses so much that it's hard to isolate it from other dimensions of the enterprise. Developing high mature digital workforce won’t happen overnight, it takes the logical scenario for planning, adapting, and innovating for developing high-performance and high-innovative workforce and building differentiated business competency.

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