The Monthly Book Tuning: The Shape of Digital June 2018

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. At the heart of digital, it is people and how to build a customer-centric organization. Here is a set of blogs to fine tune a high mature digital organization.

     

The Shape of Digital

The Shape of Digital: Three Upward Spirals to Improve Organizational Maturity Digital organizations are hyperconnected and interdependent. Digital boundary has the zigzag pattern on it, it is fluid enough to keep ideas flow and information flow, but solid enough to create order, enable responsibility-taking and manage business effectiveness and efficiency, to achieve a state of dynamic business balance. Digitalization is inspirational, iterative, and progressive, is the shape of digital like the upward spiral to reach the high level of organizational maturity?

Three Refinement to Shape High-Mature Digital Organization Change is multifaceted with increasing speed and velocity. Digitalization is the radical change, Change Management is all about balancing the main elements impacting change such as people, strategies, processes/procedures and IT, refining business success factors to practice digital management disciplines relentlessly.

Three Dimensions of Changes for Tuning a Digital Organization The very nature of digital is about change, and change is multifaceted with increasing speed and velocity. Change shouldn’t be just some random business initiatives, it has to fix an imbalance in those elements by involving executives in IT, operations, or talent management, and take a structured approach to manage three dimensions of changes for tuning a highly responsive digital organization.

Tipping to Scale Digital Systematically Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way businesses are conducted. It is important to understand that digital transformation is multifaceted. Digital management is responsible for designing, enabling, and enforcing a collaborative, innovative, intelligent, inspiring and inclusive working environment for engaging employees, delighting customers, and unlocking business performance. Leading organizations are able to identify the critical spot to scale up, and leverage the framework approach for reaching the next level of business growth and organizational maturity systematically.

Take Interconnected Approach to Drive Digitalization The increasing pace of technological advances and exponential growth of information have clearly impacted the nature and scope of opportunity that the business could ever experience and risks the business exposes to. Business leaders have to understand what it means within their organization, but much more importantly, they have to understand the external changing connected business environment as well as the emerging digital ecosystem and take an interconnected approach to drive digitalization proactively.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2+million page views with about #4800+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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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Three Perspectives of the Digital CIO’s Dynamic Role

The limitation of the CIO role is often the root cause of the business failure in the long run.

There are many roles to be served by an enterprise's IT leadership. Some of these are related to ensuring that the supply-side IT management issues are handled well such as developing IT-enabled business competency and others relate to the demand-side IT management such as building relationships with business managers and professionals; seeding ideas for IT-enabled business strategies and innovative uses of information & technology to maximize digital potential of the business. The role of CIO is the mirror of the business reputation - an innovator or a plumber; a strategist or an operator; a change agent or a controller, etc. Here are three perspectives of the digital CIO’s dynamic role.


Define the role of Information & Technology in shaping a digital organization: IT becomes so critically, many times, it is a determining success factor for the long-term business strategy to achieve fast growth business goals and long-term sustainability. Forward-looking organizations see what IT is driving the business transformation regardless of the industry segment they play in. Digital CIOs need to provide the strategic vision and insight into how Information Technology can better catalyze the organizational capability to achieve strategic objectives of the company. They need to be able to tell the business about the opportunities and possibilities based on reliable data and refined information. Running IT as the business is the digital mantra for CIOs, IT will not be the business if it doesn’t focus on the top prioritized business initiatives. To keep IT relevant, running IT only with operational consideration is not the way forward; it needs to be accomplished by working with business vendors and partners to capture business opportunities timely and change how the businesses compete in the marketplace proactively. Digital CIOs should refine IT as the change department of the company, stay one or multiple steps ahead of other functions of the organization. The objective of running digital IT is to recognize what needs to be done, to assess how well things are being done, to assign and reassign priorities to what needs to be done and make wise IT investment and make continuous improvement in mindful ways.

Know your audience and enforce tailored communication: To run IT as the business differentiator, digital CIOs need to be the great leader who can communicate effectively with all levels of the company, tailor the audience to deliver cohesive message about IT as well as interpret the customers’ needs to technical requirement without “lost in translation.” CIOs are not just tactical IT managers, they are the peer to other C-level executives, not subordinate, and they are involved in key business decisions, have a solid grasp for the business goals and objectives, mapping them into IT strategy and practices. It is the exciting time for the IT trailblazers that are prepared to engage their business partners and enforce cross-functional communication & collaboration. CIOs need to bridge the multitude of gaps between business and IT through building peer to peer executive relationship with functional management, shareholder relationship, customer relationship, and vendor relationship. Traditional IT often acts as the technology controller, but to move up the organizational maturity, IT needs to forge a mature adult relationship with business users; IT should also have some touch-feely chatting with end customers or walk through the customers’ experience, in order to run IT from the outside-in lens. Digital CIOs are modern “Chief Interaction Officer” and “Chief Interpretation Officer.”

Inspire and motivate a digital workforce, make people work with you, not for you: IT skillset gaps are often the reality. IT leadership needs to ensure that the right talent is available and developed to fit the business’s long-term strategic need. IT leadership should shift the command & control management style to empowerment and motivation, build the culture of innovation, welcome unique viewpoint, improve flexibility, to make people work with you, not for you. Because you cannot command innovation or adaptation, but only inspire, enable, and encourage and even lead for improving workforce performance and unlock digital workforce potential. There isn’t any general rule or magic formula to accelerate IT workforce performance, a management process could be put in place to get an in-depth understanding of what flaws are in place, impeding good performance and its improvement, with the goal to motivate talent in the right way and maximize the collective potential. If you ensure that individuals have autonomy within their tasks, they have the intangible performance drivers that get them motivated every day with purpose and creativity, you'll be able to address performance issues with deeper touch and improve employee engagement effortlessly.

The CIO’s ability to build fundamental business competency is now greater than ever. The limitation of the CIO role is often the root cause of the business failure in the long run. It is important to understand the dynamic role of IT leadership with clarity. The ultimate goal is to push the IT organization to be clear about its position through the core strategy of the company and pull all the resources for achieving the multilevel of the business excellence.

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The Monthly Insight of “Digital Hybridity” The Digital Workforce Hybridity June 2018

We are experiencing the dynamics of the most significant business transformation since the industrial revolution. The majority of us will work in an organization that is somewhere between old and new; at both industrial speed and digital speed; It is more critical than ever to maintain the right level of digital balance. In fact, striking the right digital balance is a never-ending business life cycle.

         

   The Digital Workforce Hybridity   

Digital Workforce Hybridity As our digitized world becomes hyper-connected, over-complex and interdependent, digital system themes with all the aggregates-spanning business challenges, paradoxes and opportunities bring organizations further towards the challenges of constructing and enacting "hybrid realities" across individuals, teams, looser groups, organizations, network-enterprises, and holistic digital ecosystems. The digital paradigm that is emerging is the sociological organization which is alive, holistic, vibrant, energetic, responsive, fluid, innovative and resilient with hybridity of knowledge, processes, and competencies.?

Digital Master Tuning: Listening vs. Telling -How to Strike the right Balance along the Spectrum of Listening and Telling? Today’s organizations are hyperconnected and over-complex, the traditional “command-control” management style is no longer effective enough to build a collaborative working environment to embrace cross-functional communication and outside-in customers’ feedback and perspective. So businesses today have to do some self-assessment: Do you have a listening & learning organization, or keeps running as a telling only organization? And how to strike the right balance along the spectrum of listening and telling?

How to Manage Digital Balance Cycles Effectively: Digital transformation is inevitable, it means the increasing pace of change and fierce competition. Organizations must keep the lights on and also make strategic movements all the time. Like running up to the string, keeping digital balance is critical in reaching digital aptitude. But how to manage following digital balance cycles effectively?

Three Portmanteau Hybrid Words to Envision a Digital Organization Organizations large or small are on the journey to digital transformation, it is not an overnight phenomenon, but a well-planning strategy with the step-wise approach. There are physical buildings and virtual, always-on working environment; there are next innovation practices and “always do things like this” best practices; there’s abundance of information but still the scarcity of insight. It is the hybrid business world full of options. Digital is the age of alternatives, here are three portmanteau hybrid words to convey the management principles in running a digital organization.

The Monthly Foresight: The Hybrid Nature of Digital Organization Nov. 2016? We live in the world with both “old” and “new,” embracing digital is inevitable as that it is now part of reality. The latest enterprise digital computing technologies enable seamless virtual platforms, enhance physical organizational structures, empower workforce sharing the thoughts and ideas, engage customers and partners to voice concerns and feedbacks, and encourage the broader conversation and interaction within its business ecosystem. The digital organization has a hybrid nature with flexibility, agility, and innovativeness.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with about #4800+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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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Three Aspects to Build Flexible Digital Workplace

Building a flexible digital workplace is able to “navigate” change and deal with the complexity of the present business new normal effortlessly.

Compared to the traditional organizations with the overly rigid hierarchical setting and classic management style, the digital workplace is more dynamic, flatter and engaging. A digital organization is an organic living thing with attributes such as open communication, “ownership,” “flexibility,” and “creativity,” etc, as well as the hyperconnectivity with its digital ecosystem.

Faster to change: Great opportunities, dangers, and disruptions are around every corner, how successful the organization is will directly depend on the changeability of the business. Having change curve awareness means that you understand how organizational change capability is underpinned by people, processes, and technology; as well as how much business capacity is really required for the change effort your are kicking off. Being flexible to change is the digital competency for either digital professionals or the organization as the whole. The business changes could be puzzling, particularly when you know the individuals or group of people have skills, knowledge, and experience to make change and yet they resist. Change Management is about understanding the psychology behind the change, also setting the clear business goals and plan, taking iterative steps to make change happening and sustain it. Building a flexible digital workplace is able to “navigate” change and deal with the complexity of the present business new normal effortlessly, so change happens all the time, and the business can deliver products/services/solutions faster and increasing marketing share, to catch up with the digital speed.

Alternative ways to do things: Being flexible is all about figuring out the alternative ways to do things. One of the biggest challenges in this complex digital world with high velocity and uncertainty is the fact that we need different perspectives, different knowledge and different ways to solve many existing and emerging business problems. Sometimes there is no "one" answer, there are some or many. For many old and emerging problems, you have to challenge automatic assumptions that something needs 'fixing. In the data-abundant digital world, it is important to leverage information & logic but also channel creativity for solving tough business problems or challenges. More specifically, thinking creatively about a problem requires being close to the problem, having context for understanding the problem from different angles and figuring out the alternative ways to shape better solutions. Flexible digital leaders and professional do not focus on hierarchy but on ideas, innovation, openness, and problem-solving. They enforce cross-functional communication and collaboration and embrace collective insight. Together, these flexible teams, with extensive experience, are resolute, responsive, adaptive, able to speed up the decision-making process and alternative way to do things.

Resilience to survive or thrive: The fast growth of information and disruptive nature of technology bring both abundant opportunities and unprecedented risks to the highly interdependent business today. Though the meaning of the word "flexibility," in general, more refers to physical movement capable of being bent, without breaking; from the psychology perspective, it is about the adaptation to the changes and resilience to survive, or at the higher level of maturity, resilience makes the business robust and antifragile. With resilience, individuals are able to bounce back from setback or failures; organizations can overcome the continuous digital disruption,  fail fast and fail forward. It is the ability the respond to change proactively, dare to act courageously when facing difficulties, stay positive, focus, and flexible. Antifragility is not just about recovering quickly from setbacks but even getting better, select the best options, with self-healing capability.

Building a flexible and creative working environment can improve employee engagement, productivity, and innovation. The digital workplace is like the magnet to attract and retain the best talent. It enables the organization to get all the right people with the right capability in the right position to solve the right problems from right angles all at once, and ultimately achieve high-performance business.

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 6/22/2018

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with 4800+ 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. Here is the weekly insight of digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Three Aspects of Integral Digital Management Competency At the dawn of the digital era, businesses and the societies are heading into a dynamic, nonlinear, and hyper-connected digital ecosystem in which everything seems to affect everything else, brought silo, tunnel, and mechanistic view to an end. The traditional management discipline based on linear logic and reductional thinking is outdated somehow, an integrated digital management approach is about leveraging nonlinear processes and interconnectivity between problems in a managerial context, to ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces. Integral management Competency = Holism + Interdisciplinarity.

Three Pitfalls in Boardroom The modern digital board has many responsibilities also gets a lot of frustration and hits many pitfalls on the digital transformation. Driving the business forward is extremely difficult. This means looking into an unknown future and attempting to define the landscape with its risks and opportunities, to steer the business in the right direction. Here are three pitfalls in digitizing the boardroom.

Intuition vs. Sensation? Intuition is the perception of inside images, and sensation is the perception of outside images etc. As Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst well described: Sensation and intuition are perceptive functions, they make us aware of what is happening but do not interpret or evaluate it.

To Celebrate the 4800th Blog Posting: The Thoughts and Quotes of the “Future of CIO” Blog Blogging is to pursue the digital communication way of envisioning, brainstorming, sharing, and debating. It’s the journey to make the continuous leadership influence and connect the dots for spurring creativity and advocating digital innovation. It’s the time to celebrate the #4800th blog posting of the “Future of CIO."


CIOs’s Big “HOW” Inquiries to Run Innovative IT With the exponential growth of information and disruptive nature of technology, IT can no longer just “keep the lights on,” IT becomes the business in the business to do more with innovation and lead changes proactively in many forward-thinking organizations. IT leaders need to think strategically and creatively about alternative business solutions and ask themselves tough questions. Here are CIOs’ five “HOW”s to run innovative IT.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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 the 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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Three Concentrations of Digital CIOs

The digital world is so data-driven and information-intensive, there are so many distractions these days, digital CIOs need to concentrate things really matter.

Digital IT is a paradigm shift in role, responsibility, and attitude. IT plays a crucial role in leading digital transformation of the business. Your goals and objectives will be your drivers. IT needs to play different roles in the situation at hand, but also should stay focus on the most important things to ensure IT is value-added and become the strategic partner of the business.

The digital CIO’s concentration should be on what these technologies can do for the businesses, not on the technology itself: A highly effective CIO’s job is to optimize the business operations to reduce the burden on the company while trying to stay current with ever-changing technologies. That includes improving systems, streamlining processes, reducing cost, and providing continually expanding services/solutions. Running digital IT doesn’t just mean to play fancy technology gadgets or overcome technical challenges only. It means how to leverage the emerging digital technologies for solving both existing or emerging critical business problems. Digital CIOs’ concentration is on top-line business value creation, growth, profitability, and customer-centricity. Ask users, customers, and different stakeholders what their expectations are of you, and whether or not you meet those expectations. With digital hyperconnectivity, CIOs need to become business leaders to work within IT and across the business scope and seek ways to grow business revenue and spur innovation. That’s completely different mindset than managing technology only.

The digital CIO’s concentration shifts from “T” centric to “I” - Information-driven: The dawn of the digital era is all about the exponential growth of information and how information-related outcomes getting achieved. From noble business purpose perspective, information management can make a significant effect on multi-faceted aspects of the business; provide ways to better recognize and act on that information for competitive advantage. Information from IT perspective is really data following a managed process. While a lot of information may be kept, IT does not add value by simply storing, maintaining, and securing information. Information Management is the systematic selection, transformation, and presentation of data through technological and quantitative processes with algorithmic and engineering method to automate and support the business decision. At the age of IT consumerization, businesses need to understand not only the power and the opportunity information could bring in, but also the potential risks they might get exposed to. The true magic is when IT helps to harness and understand that information. Part of the digital CIO’s role is to structure information in a way that it can be used to build the trust and improve business effectiveness.

The CIO’s concentration should be on innovation - to manage a balanced portfolio with both incremental and breakthrough innovation: The emergent digital technologies and tools provide the business with new opportunities to reimagine the future of businesses. Leading only with operational consideration is not the way forward. Digital IT success needs to be accompanied by working with business partners to inspire creativity, and leverage opportunities for changing how the business competes in the marketplace. A great CIO with their finger on the pulse of technological advancement or information insight can provide many ideas on how new technology and abundance of information can create fresh new opportunities. Being innovative or close is being able to think and create new things based on its own needs, and there is a recognizable core of approaches that produce profitable innovation. Running a highly innovative IT organization means IT can be used as a tool, enabler, catalyzer, and a digital platform to orchestrate change and facilitate idea creation and implementation, meet the ultimate goal of an organization's short/medium/long-term strategic plans.

The digital world is so data-driven and information-intensive, technology needs will only expand, and most likely expand hyperbolically. The faster the top leadership team understands that IT is not just technical, but rather business-driven, the high visible IT can elevate its maturity from “reactive to change” to proactively driving business transformations. There are so many distractions these days, digital CIOs need to concentrate things really matter. IT needs to be understood and harnessed by all stakeholders to fulfill its potential and strategic importance as a differentiator of companies.

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The Monthly “100 Digital Rules” Book Tuning: Digital Innovation Principle & Practices June 2018

A well-defined set of digital rules are not for limiting innovation, but for setting the frame of relevance and guide through changes and digital transformation.

The purpose of “100 Digital Rules: Setting Guidelines to Explore Digital New Normal “ is to establish digital principles and update business policies that can be applied holistically and guide the digital transformation systematically. Digital rules are based on a set of fundamental beliefs behind the methodologies and they help to shape mindsets behind behaviors. Digital rules encourage mindfulness, authenticity, creativity, inclusiveness, and discourage static thinking, silo, and bureaucracy, help to accelerate collective human progress.

      Digital Innovation Principle & Practices

Setting Principles for Managing Digital Innovation? The blurring border of the digital organization and its business ecosystem make the world hyper-connected, but also over-complex. Organizations today can no longer rely on a single individual or team to drive innovation, or still think innovation as a serendipity. Digital is the age of innovation, and innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. But it’s also important to set principles and manage innovation in a structured way across the organizational scope and digital ecosystem.

CIOs as “Chief Innovation Officer”: Innovation Best Practices vs. Next Practices The business practice is always a combination of people and how they are used to doing things. Digital is the age of innovation. Innovation is the process which can be classified scientifically and managed dynamically. Besides building a set of principles to follow, it’s also important to develop a set of innovation practices to scale up and amplify its effect. The point is that innovation is change, the overly rigid processes could stifle innovation and outdated practices perhaps fail innovation effort and decelerate the pace of innovation. So, best practices vs. Next practices, how to review and update them accordingly to unpuzzling the serendipity of innovation and improve the success rate of innovation management?

Five Digital Credos for Managing Innovation? The blurring border of the digital organization and its business ecosystem make the world hyper-connected, but also over-complex. Organizations today can no longer rely on a single individual or team to drive innovation, or still think innovation as a serendipity. Digital is the age of innovation, and innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. But it’s also important to set principles and manage innovation in a structured way across the organizational scope and digital ecosystem.

CIOs as “Chief Innovation Officer”: What are Your Innovation Leadership Digital Principles & Practices? Innovation is the management process to transform novel ideas to achieve their business value. At the heart of innovation is the lifecycle of idea generation, interaction, selection, and learning. Due to the fact that innovating in today’s digital world has become increasingly complex in nature, organizations can no longer rely on a single individual or team to drive innovation. Innovation management requires much deeper whole systems and taking emergent, generative, iterative, integrative, and holistic approaches. Information is one of the most time-intensive pieces of innovation puzzle and technology is the disruptive force behind digital innovation. CIOs as “Chief Innovation Officer”: What are your innovation leadership digital principles and practices?

Digital Innovation Credos Digital is the age of innovation. Digital innovation has a broader spectrum with hybrid nature, it is the incremental improvement- radical innovation continuum. To improve innovation success rate, organizations should follow the digital principles, fine-tune processes, identify innovation leaders and champions, understand innovation paradoxes, and well-set innovation measurement. Here is a set of digital innovation credos.

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 the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with about #4800 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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 the 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.

Read More

To Celebrate the 4800th Blog Posting: The Thoughts and Quotes of the “Future of CIO” Blog

Blogging is to pursue the digital communication way of envisioning, brainstorming, sharing, and debating. It’s the journey to make the continuous leadership influence and connect the dots for spurring creativity and advocating digital innovation. It’s the time to celebrate the #4800th blog posting of the “Future of CIO.

11 “We still live in the era in which information is rich and insight is poor.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Gaps: Bridging Multiple Gaps to Run Cohesive Digital Business


12 “The simplicity and the complexity are just the opposite ends of the same spectrum.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Gaps: Bridging Multiple Gaps to Run Cohesive Digital Business


13 “Resilience is about B.O.U.N.C.E-Bouncing forward includes bouncing back.”

― Pearl Zhu, Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future


14 “You have to be able to look objectively at the problem, deflating the emotional part of it.”

― Pearl Zhu, Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future


15 “Strategic Thinking = Vision + Creativity + Systems Thinking”

― Pearl Zhu, Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future


16 “Many creative minds, just like many light bulbs, lit up simultaneously, could lead to brainstorming and breakthrough innovation.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone's Playbook to Unlock Creativity


17 “The right people have the right mindsets, they are high-positive, high-innovative, high-influential and high-mature.”

― Pearl Zhu, CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of It


18 “Businesses need both: “Out of the box” and “shaping the bigger box” type of innovative problem-solving.”

― Pearl Zhu, Problem Solving Master: Frame Problems Systematically and Solve Problem Creatively


“You should always leverage performance and potential, look at the overall success of the company for the long run.”

― Pearl Zhu, Performance Master: Take a Holistic Approach to Unlock Digital Performance


19 “Self-reflection is an important stage to diagnose, develop and strengthen your creativity.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone’s Playbook to Unlock Creativity


20 “Perception shows how deep one can understand an issue or a phenomenon, the mental strength.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone’s Playbook to Unlock Creativity


21 “Innovations succeed when failure is seen as a learning step to great success.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone’s Playbook to Unlock Creativity

The digital era has the “VUCA” characteristics: Velocity, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. We are living in a complex world where inventions, developments, and conflicts are continuously changing and that makes it impossible to have a complete knowledge and understanding of any issue individually. Therefore, today’s contemporary digital leaders and professionals must keep learning, adapting, innovating, and practicing on the daily basis for developing differentiated competency.

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Three Dimensions of Changes for Tuning a Digital Organization

With change as the new normal, people’s intelligence is tested by their changeability, and their quality is proved by their changeability.

The very nature of digital is about change, and change is multifaceted with increasing speed and velocity. Change shouldn’t be just some random business initiatives, it has to fix an imbalance in those elements by involving executives in IT, operations, or talent management, and take a structured approach to manage three dimensions of changes for tuning a highly responsive digital organization.

People change: People are always the center of changes. With change as the new normal, people’s intelligence is tested by their changeability, and their quality is proved by their changeability. Change the game is the mindset, Change Agents are able to play the right rule and know which to play and when; change champions can adapt to change with faster speed. Change managers need to identify individual team members’ strengths and weakness; this enables timely intervention where and when challenges are identified. People need time to assimilate change and work through the issues that result from the change, moving from the emotional to the rational. It is critical to identify change gaps, source the mix set of skills, and identify change agents who often have critical thinking skills, high level of adaptability, learning agility, communication and collaboration skills. It is important for creating both internal and external beliefs around how digital management is a movement for enablement and improvement, break through the bottleneck and increase the speed of changes. It is also important to develop the business justification for changes and determine demand and estimated pipeline. People = Leadership + Vision +Development + Innovation + Motivation.

Process change: Change is an ongoing business capability which is underpinned by processes. The criteria to evaluate processes need to clearly identify core competencies and focus more on process optimization opportunities. Change Management processes evaluation is important because process management is an important aspect of change capability building. It is also good to look at processes in terms of their flexibility - how easily they can be reconfigured or changes; risk intelligence - measured in terms of the variability of outputs such as the delivery rate or quality level, as well as evaluate different attributes such as value contribution, reproducibility, reusability, etc, that can be applied to both but are more useful when working with capabilities that are made up of multiple processes. The process of "Planned Change Management" shouldn’t be too rigid or overly prescribed, otherwise, it could create the bottleneck for streamlining change scenario. Change Management process must be open to new insights that should come from the persons involved in the program. It’s important to have the team own a process by bringing them in early and getting their involvement in creating the process. In order to execute a successful Change Management process, there is a need to delegate roles and responsibilities of the process. Process = Goal +Management + Procedures + Training + Metrics

Technology change: Although digital transformation is not just about applying some latest technology gadgets, In fact, technologies are often the disruptive forces behind digital innovation, the digital transformation definitely needs technology to make it happen as today no business is independent of IT or rather IT has become now business technology. Technology related changes request tools, training, and practices in order for participants to feel comfortable that the service level they provide will continue or improve with increased productivity. Digital leaders should ask themselves: Where is the organization on the technology or process adoption curve? Is your organization a pioneer, mature adapter or laggard? Either for implementing a new software tool or upgrade the business system, the powerful digital technology tools not only help to digitize the touch point of users, but also provide digital invaluable information in real time to making effective decisions and improving productivity.

Unfortunately, Change Management has stubbornly a very high percentage of failure rate, set out plan and manage change in a systematic way. The successful businesses are the ones that have learned how to implement change time after time and build it as a solid ongoing business capability. Changeability is the crucial pillar that keeps the business dynamic, energetic, and adaptive.

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Three Pitfalls in Boardroom

The corporate board needs to continue questioning on important issues, overcome barriers, avoid pitfalls, with the goal of providing right guidance to lead business moving forward steadfastly.

The modern digital board has many responsibilities, also gets a lot of frustration and hits many pitfalls on the digital transformation. Driving the business forward is extremely difficult. This means looking into an unknown future and attempting to define the landscape with its risks and opportunities, to steer the business in the right direction. Here are three pitfalls in digitizing the boardroom.

Blind spots: Corporate boards play a crucial role in strategic oversight and risk monitoring, it is important to identify and fill blindspots in improving governance effectively. The root causes of blind spots are often people’s mentality such as ego or bias, lack of interdisciplinary knowledge or insight. Even majority of board directors are seasoned executives with decades of experience, as senior leaders, they should still feel humble to realize that there are many things they might not know due to fast-growing information and overcomplex business dynamic. They should also learn to ask tough questions to themselves, to business management for dealing with blind spots and bridge the multitude of digital gaps; learn how to be quick to listen and slow to speak. Until that happens, you will continue on the lives in blindness. The ignorance about the importance of cognitive difference and the behavioral dynamics that operate within their board (team) is contributing to the generally poor performance of boards. From the board composition perspective, the non-executive members should be selected for their ability and willingness to constructively challenge management. 

Complacency: Organizations and individuals that are complacent do not look for new opportunities or hazards. Leaders often miss the big picture and become complacent! From the board to the front line, riding ahead of the change curve takes vision, strategy, courage, methodology, principles, and practices. Complacency almost always stems from a sense of success or living in a comfort zone. Avoiding complacency is essential to any business's long-term longevity. Thus, boards need to exemplify leadership discipline for overcoming complacency. Once that barrier is broken, a positive change process can commence. A complacency mind gets used to reacting, not being proactive. In addition, never think you know it all even you are at the top of the organizational pyramid. The positive energy for changes needs to flow down from the top (boardroom). Create an innovative boardroom with “free atmosphere,” so directors are inquisitive to ask great, tough questions for understanding better as well as providing invaluable input.

Distraction: The modern digital board has many responsibilities, also gets a lot of distractions. There are so many things in the board agenda spread to the thin slice of their time. Therefore, it has to laser focus on the most critical things to steer the business in the right decision. The catalyst for the question is what appears to be a chasm between what directors claim as the priority and what actually occurs when boards are in session. A high-performance board needs to set the priority right, it has to laser focus on the most critical things, pulling enough resources and pushing the business model of technology, trustworthiness, innovation, and mastering digital fluency. With the strong focus on strategic issues from the boardroom to management, organizations can achieve the high expectation of strategy management and manage a seamless digital paradigm shift.

The corporate board's role is to pull management out of the trees to see the forest; to understand the business landscape and how it will address it; to continue questioning on important issues, overcome barriers, avoid pitfalls, with the goal of providing right guidance to lead business moving forward steadfastly.

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To Celebrate the 4800th Blog Posting: The Thoughts and Quotes of the “Future of CIO” Blog

Blogging is to pursue the digital communication way of envisioning, brainstorming, sharing, and debating. It’s the journey to make the continuous leadership influence and connect the dots for spurring creativity and advocating digital innovation. It’s the time to celebrate the #4800th blog posting of the “Future of CIO."

1 “Self-discipline is nothing but self-consciousness.”

― Pearl Zhu, Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future

2 “Learning a new language, just like opening a new window, allows you to see the world with intimacy.”

― Pearl Zhu, Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future

3 “Critical Thinking brings insight into the situation.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Digital Rules


4 “Fundamentally, leadership is more about the future, but starts at today.”

― Pearl Zhu, Leadership Master: Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity


5 “Breaking rules is indeed an important part of creativity. Innovation needs a level of guidance.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digitizing Boardroom: The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital Ready Boards


6 “Sense and deal with problems in their smallest state, before they grow bigger and become fatal.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digitizing Boardroom: The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital Ready Boards


7 “The simplicity and the complexity are just the opposite ends of the same spectrum.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Gaps: Bridging Multiple Gaps to Run Cohesive Digital Business


8 “Using two-dimensional lenses to perceive the multi-faceted world can limit your ability to observe the world more objectively.”

― Pearl Zhu, Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future


9 “IT continues to grow in importance to organizations, both operationally and as a competitive advantage.”

― Pearl Zhu, 12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices


10 “Creativity is about thinking beyond conventional wisdom.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Digital Rules

The digital era has the “VUCA” characteristics: Velocity, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. We are living in a complex world where inventions, developments, and conflicts are continuously changing and that makes it impossible to have a complete knowledge and understanding of any issue individually. Therefore, today’s contemporary digital leaders and professionals must keep learning, adapting, innovating, and practicing on the daily basis for developing differentiated competency.

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The Art and Science of IT Management

 IT captures organizational knowledge to continuously improve performance and harness innovation.

With overwhelming growth of information, dynamic business conditions, and fierce competitions, IT management has become an art out of necessity to address both the business surviving and thriving issues. Through the traditional lens, IT is an engineering discipline; through the digital lens, IT needs to embed art into the science to explore the art of possible. With emerging lightweight digital technologies and overwhelming growth of information, IT management shouldn't just practice transactional activities, it has to discover both the art and science of digital management discipline.

The science of IT management: The science is the ability to produce solutions in a problem domain repeatedly. IT engineering practices and disciplines require scientific approaches and structural problem-solving capabilities. What defines science from chance is the ability to repeat a process with the same resultant solution every time, through the application of known facts. With engineering as science, different people specify requirements/design you get the same results, and different people read the resulting specifications, you get the same explanation. It takes a scientific approach to enhance IT-business relationship, manage IT-business alignment, cross-functional collaboration, IT integration, and optimization, etc. IT alignment with business design, project portfolio management, continuous innovations is typical in-house retained activities. If idea creation is more art than science, and then the nature of how "implementation of the idea has to follow a logical path for the solution," is absolutely more science than art. Behind the scene, IT is complex. IT organizational development and management need to manage the conflict between classic style and digital style of management. It provides a great opportunity for IT to shine based on its scientific discipline.

The art of IT management: The front side of IT facing customer should be intuitive, easy to use, customer-friendly, and hide the complex nature of technology which is running at the back side. To keep IT relevant, IT management needs to pursue the art of possible - make a shift from mechanical IT to innovative IT. It forces IT leaders to be proactive and get really creative on how they architect and implement changes, to ensure IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next. IT is in the unique position to observe broadly and explore deeply about their business and the related digital ecosystem, and thus, have more opportunities to come out innovative solutions to the existing or emerging business problems, Information potential directly impacts the business’s potential of organizations. Running digital IT needs to work cross boxes instead within the box, for connecting wider dots. IT leadership is key to reimagine IT and reinvent IT as the innovation engine of the business. In addition, IT management development should focus more on “soft stuff,” such as communication or culture, business relationships, in order to build a creative workplace. From IT performance perspective, a pervasive obsession for purely quantitative measurement and numerical success indicators sweep aside much of the softer, more qualitative information that is crucial in understanding the health and well-being of the firm's innovation efforts. The art of possible is achieved by building innovation capabilities because breakthroughs and transformational innovations are not something every business can accomplish, you have to systematically develop and sharpen those abilities which cannot be built overnight.

The art and science of information management are to optimize its usage and achieve its value and maximize its full potential. IT captures organizational knowledge to continuously improve performance and harness innovation. The balance of art and science in IT is how to enforce scientific discipline, but also make continuous efforts on building better products/services and improving IT maturity.

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The Monthly “Problem-Solving Master” Book Tuning: The Obstacles to Problem-Solving June 2018

 Human progress is fundamentally achieved through an iterative problem-solving scenario. 

The purpose of “Problem-Solving Master - Frame Problems Systematically and Solve Problems Creatively“ is to throw some light on how to understand, frame, and solve today’s multilayer, interdependent, and over-complex business problems effortlessly. Digital leaders and professionals should self-aware of their role in problems, show professional maturity, and develop a good reputation as the problem-solver.

    

                    The Obstacles to Problem-Solving  

Three Pitfalls in Problem-Solving Human progress is fundamentally achieved through an iterative problem-solving scenario. Either individuals or businesses will be more successful when they realize that one of their greatest strengths will be their problem-solving capability. The art of problem-solving is that there are all sorts of problems and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. The science of problem-solving is that there is the logic behind any problem, the more complex the problem is, the more important to leverage both analysis and synthesis for both breaking down the problems into smaller problems, as well as integrating different pieces of the puzzle to come up with a holistic solution without causing other problems or side effect. Here are three pitfalls in effective problem-solving.

Have You Focused on Fixing the Wrong Cause of a Problem? As human species, we are still facing many problems and challenges. Either for individuals, organizations, or society as a whole, the problem-solving capability is crucial to surviving and thriving. However, many decision-makers fail to fully grasp and accurately perceive what leads to problems and difficulties. Often, events and patterns are observed on the surface, and then the action is taken, but that is too early. After observing events and patterns, there are the underlying structures, the mechanisms, that cause the problem. And people lack critical thinking are usually never question because "it's the way things should be." Problem-solving in the majority of organizations today is woefully inadequate, so what happens when you focus on fixing the wrong cause of problems?

Is there something like an “Illogical” problem? Digital business and society become over complex and extremely uncertain, business problems are also like jigsaw puzzles, sometimes make you feel the lack of clues, at the world with so many flavors of analytics, is there something like an “illogical” problem, if so, how to solve it?

Anti-digital Mindset: The Cause and Effect of Silo Thinking? Silo is perhaps one of the most paradoxical symptoms in running business in the industrial era, on one side, most of the organizations are still operating in the functional base to improve efficiency; on the other side, the digital nature of hyper-connectivity and interdependence makes it inevitable to break down the silo, because more often than not, the silo thinking becomes the root cause of ineffective leadership; the silo team fragment the strategy, stagnate execution, motivate the unhealthy internal competition and cause more problems than benefits. More specifically, what’s the cause and effect of silos and silo thinking?

Three Practices to Overcome Corporate Silo Mentality? We have transitioned from an industrial to knowledge, innovation, and hyperconnectivity economy - with this shift has come to a change in organizational forms away from the traditional rigid hierarchies managed through command and control to more fluid and responsive network forms. Yet many business managers still apply old silo management mindsets to new ways of organizing and this legacy of the old economy limits many 'networked' organizations. Are silos a mere product of organizational design? Or is their nature tied to a deeper level: the humankind's nature? Despite the mountain of evidence pointing the detrimental effects of these silos, they still seem to be quite common in organizations. The question is: why? In today's volatile economy, nothing impedes progress more than protective silos which are simply a form of bureaucratic amorphous mass designed to preserve the status quo. How does one eliminate bureaucracy? What would be some ideas to assist in breaking down silos in an organization where they are present?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with about 4800+ 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; 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 your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.

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CIOs’s Big “HOW” Inquiries to Run Innovative IT

Innovation management requires curious attitude to ask deep questions and scientific discipline to weave much deeper whole systems.


With the exponential growth of information and disruptive nature of technology, IT can no longer just “keep the lights on,” IT becomes the business in the business to do more with innovation and lead changes proactively in many forward-thinking organizations. IT leaders need to think strategically and creatively about alternative business solutions and ask themselves tough questions. Here are CIOs’ five “HOW”s to run innovative IT.

How do you handle investigations of new technologies? The highly innovative organizations depend more heavily on its technological knowledge and information refinement to develop and commercialize innovation. Nowadays, often technologies are the disruptive force behind digital innovation. Therefore, IT leaders should share their vision and run IT as a change department of the business. From an investment perspective, advanced technologies are the driving forces for business growth as well as business model innovation. Adapting and realizing the business benefit requires investment wisely, and thus there are risks evolved. When IT leaders have controllers’ mindset with risk avoidance mentality, IT perhaps ends up to live with current technologies and standards rather than investing in the future aggressively. But forward-look IT leaders understand that technology-led innovation is not only for figuring out the better way to run the business today but also building business competency for the long run. It is important to make sure that the management is foresightful enough for “doing more with innovation.” The focus should be on what these technologies can do for the businesses, not on the technology itself.

Do you work with your team to investigate different paths for the potential future? Innovation is about figuring out alternative ways to do things. With many existing or emerging complex business problems, it is critical to define the most compelling and unique approach to addressing those needs, analyze the benefits per cost of that approach, quantify why the chosen approach is better than the competition and other ways. More broadly speaking, forward-thinking businesses need to think long-term and investigate different paths for the potential future. Digital innovation has a very broad spectrum for accelerating rapid change from all dimensions. Do NOT focus on IT innovation in a low-risk territory and incremental enhancements only. Perhaps most of the times, the business needs to take a hybrid approach to strive for applying good practices to manage innovation. The art of innovation is that it involves new ways of bringing together ideas and resources to create something novel. The science of innovation is to manage innovation lifecycle and executes it in a systematic manner that provides sustained competitive advantage. Most, importantly, IT has to walk to talk, be open to diverse opinions and feedback, be humble to listen to customers, be confident to take the path perhaps no one ever takes before, and be resilient to failure forward.

How do you prioritize the need or desire to innovate? Organizations always have some resource limitations. The resource needs to be assigned scientifically, to make sure that your company has a steady flow of fresh ideas floating in your innovation pipeline, and you need a methodological platform that allows you to do that in an efficient way. A disciplined innovation approach with right priority setting focuses on commercially relevant compounds innovation management which are driven by clear strategic goals, risk management, and integral and interdisciplinary process management. Prioritization also forces people to be more creative, creating internal competition among new ideas and to come up with better ideas. It is situation driven, good for certain organizations and for the specific situations and challenges that are faced and that actually requires different priorities as compared to others. IT organization with high-maturity not only adapts to the changes but plays a pivotal role in setting the right priority and driving the digital transformation of their company proactively.

How do you socialize those prioritized needs with the rest of the company executives? The strategic conversation between CIO and other C levels focuses on both top-line business growth and innovation, as well as bottom line business efficiency. Cross-functional communication is crucial to run highly innovative IT organization. Innovation management requires much deeper whole systems and taking emergent, generative, iterative, integrative, and holistic approaches. The senior executive team’s concerns are customer retention, recurring revenues, new customer acquisition, talent development and profitable bottom line growth. Smart CIOs should talk about the strategic use of technology to meet these concerns. Sometimes when one business area has a new product that can be used by another, IT leaders can connect the wider dots to come up with new innovative solutions and scale up innovation effect at the entire organization scope. Communication is key, to build innovation management competency for IT organization, the difficult challenge is not just launching successful teams, but maintaining the motivation and focus of the people.

How can you measure IT innovation performance: Innovating in today’s digital world has become increasingly complex in nature. The measures should be oriented to justify innovation the organization needs. The innovation assessment is through innovation drivers, the elements that enhance an organization's innovation capacity. What value have those new things designed and implemented? You choose KPIs by deciding which are seen as critical to making progress in order to deliver more innovations. Keep in mind, metrics are not just numbers, but need to be well selected to tell the full story; because historically, performance system for most businesses have been financing driven, but financial indicators only cover part of the story. This is particularly critical for managing innovation. For example, the measurement of creativity in the workplace is through the results, the outcomes of creative thoughts and actions. Building culture of innovation means that you need to break the rules, give people time and resource for exploring, it is totally different from measuring innovation.

Innovation is all about figuring out the better way to do things and transform novel ideas to achieve the business value. Innovation is about moving forward. In any business, if you are not moving forward, you are moving backward. There is no standing still. Innovation needs to be the collective habit of the business, you have to live it and breathe it every day, otherwise, you don’t feel accomplished. Innovation management requires curious attitude to ask deep questions and scientific discipline to weave much deeper whole systems and taking emergent, generative, iterative, integrative, and holistic approaches.

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The Monthly “Dot Connections” Understanding Two Flip Sides of the Coin to Get Digital Ready June 2018

Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, and creativity is all about connecting the dots.

The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Digital is the age of creativity and innovation via connecting dots and spreading the knowledge.

 Understanding Two Flip Sides of the Coin to Get Digital Ready

Simplicity vs. Complexity? Simplicity vs complexity is an age-old dilemma even in English Grammar! The simplicity and the complexity are just opposite ends of the same spectrum. That compounds all "problems." You need complexity to understand and appreciate the simplicity and vice versa. It's all about balance and perception.

The “Push & Pull” Forces of Digital Transformation Digital is fluid, digital is also complex. It becomes complex if things do interact, particularly in the case of "nonlinear" interaction, interdependent relationships, and hyper-connected business association. You can't separate things properly, and often you cannot predict the actual effect of interaction straightforwardly. Therefore, running a high-performance digital business is no longer a single dimensional effort to applying the cool technologies or focus on short-term profitability only, but a multidimensional pursuit to embed digital into core business processes and build differentiated business capability. It is about how to leverage the “push & pull” business forces to adapt to changes and orchestrate a full-fledged digital transformation.

Innovation vs. Rules: Innovation is to transform novel ideas and achieve its business value. Innovation is doing something better than it currently is. Hence, it requires a sound and competent understanding of what is currently being done. Innovation is not serendipity, it's a mindset, a process, and the strategic business capability nowadays. From innovation management perspective, should innovators break rules, or does innovation need rules, and how to improve manage innovation effortlessly and improve its success rate?

Transaction vs. Transformation A well-run business has a healthy business portfolio of “running, growth, and transformation,” focus on both short-term gain and long-term win, to manage a seamless business transaction and transformation continuum. Here are three perspectives to connect dots between transaction vs. transformation.

Efficiency vs. Effectiveness: Effectiveness and Efficiency are two fundamental goals all businesses over the world are pursuing, however, more often, there is a lack of clarity upon their true means and how to achieve them accordingly.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with about #4600th 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 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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