The Monthly “100 Creativity Ingredients” Book Tuning: Creative Synthesis Jan. 2020

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.   

  

                           Creative Synthesis  

Creative Synthesis Creativity can be defined as the collision between different perspectives, internal programming, mind-states of possibility and necessity and thought patterns that result in novel ideas and innovative solutions.

Creativity, Biology, and Ecology Creativity is all about connecting the dots. It’s an inner process to create novel ideas. What are the evolutionary roots of creativity? Creativity may start with the biological basis of creativity (nature); then the development or suppression of those characteristics during maturation (nurture); and then, the biological and social support of those traits (nutrition). Creativity is simply about connecting the dots. In the hyperconnected digital ecosystem, there are wider dots to connect for sparking creativity within the broader scope.

Change, Creativity and Problem-Solving Change is not for its own sake, the very purpose of the change is often for problem-solving, progression, or innovation. From Change Management perspective, taking people through new experiences, exposing them to additional "information" through those experiences, developing their creativity, and doing that very purposefully will create the opportunity to shift attitudes, beliefs, mindsets that ultimately will cultivate their problem-solving capabilities.

Harness Creativity Multidimensionally Creativity has many forms and manifestations; it is a long-term endeavor. Everyone possesses a certain level of creativity. Creativity relates to intelligence, empathy, idealism, and process understanding. There are many unique ingredients to make a “creativity formula” with a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic elements to ignite creativity. It’s important to leverage specific systems, thought processes, and continuous practices to harness creativity multi-dimensionally.

Multifaceted Creativity Creativity is the most needed skill in the 21st century because digital is the era of innovation. Creativity is both innate and a skill. Developing creativity requires both internal motivation and self-awareness. Being original and being yourself is the first step, breaking down the convention thinking box, and practicing out-of-the-box thinking is one of the mental activities to stimulate creativity as well. Here is a further understanding of the multifaceted creativity.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6300th 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 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 Lunar New Year (The Year of Rat) Celebration

The lunar New Year is around the corner,

To awaken the consciousness by bridging two seasons;

Winter is gradually walking away;

And the warm Spring is approaching,


We are stepping into the “Year of Rat.”

Dragon dance demonstrates energy and symbolizes harmony;

Lantern shines up to wish for a brighter future.

Plum blossom for courage and hope.

Water narcissus for luck and prosperity,

Flow with New Year's best wishes and saying.


Spring Festival is a great occasion,

To celebrate traditions.

Express cultural diversifications,

And spark abundant creativity.

Happy Lunar New Year!

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The Perspectives of the Balanced Scorecard

The balanced scorecard offers a way for a corporation to gain a wider perspective on its strategic decisions and performance management by considering the impact on finances, customers, internal processes and employee satisfaction. The balanced scorecard enables the management more accurately judge the coming curves and obstacles on the path of strategy management and get into actions in a creative, positive and proactive way.

The goals of applying scoreboard are to translate the vision and strategic planning into operational goals: The scorecard contains a good mix of the outcome measure of long-term strategic value along with performance drivers to track the operational progress in the short term. In many cases, the strategy fails not because the fundamental strategy is flawed, but because of poor execution due to either miscommunication or misalignment.

Without well- designed scorecards, often what is tracked and worked toward is separate from the strategic goals of that organization. It’s nearly impossible to cascade appropriately to create strategic alignment. This makes "strategy" a separate and distinct executive exercise with little relevance to operators, finance, and managers. Set “SMART” goals to link the individual performance to the strategic initiatives. An effective scorecard helps to connect KPIs on the strategic level to the operational KPIs so that there is a coherent truth in the company connected to the strategy.

Scorecards help greatly with prioritization: The scorecard allows you to focus on the most important things and tailor the needs of varying business stakeholders. A balanced scorecard is necessary to practice holistic performance management in a structural way, allowing the most effective initiatives to be planned for achieving corporate goals. It is better to start with a small structure that answers your very first strategic questions and then, evolves the scorecard into a more complex, accurate and specific environment.

It is important to provide a “balanced” view of tradeoff variables. You need to consider, among other things, the overall strategic balance, dependencies, and constraints between components and overall risk exposure. The management needs to maintain the commitment if they really want to see their scorecard work well, and make sure that the management of the scorecards does not become an industry in itself, but truly help to improve the success rate of strategy management.

An effective scorecard enables the practical use of performance management concepts and the success factors: A scoreboard is a way of consolidating and comparing metrics relating to a holistic assessment of organizational or functional performance. The success factors that could be used to measure strategy and change management score within a company could be resources invested (human and financial), employees’ motivation, the number of business initiatives launched and organizational culture, etc. Through a well-designed Executive Scoreboard, business leaders can capture both quantitative hard numbers about cost savings and qualitative perspective of management health.

The well-designed scoreboard should motivate changes and innovative actions. Develop a logical structure that helps everyone know what should be measured, what belongs to the scorecard and what does not belong. The analysis takes into account financial and non-financial measures, internal improvements, past outcomes and ongoing requirements as indications of future performance. Measurement systems must be in place as part of overall enterprise portfolio management to ensure the value proposed in any business case is actually realized.

The scorecard helps to understand results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions. An effective scoreboard is easy to measure and compare, helps to improve and evolve for sharing best practices within the team or cross the management, to ensure the seamless strategic alignment and effective strategic management.

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The Monthly System Wisdom Summary: Are You a System Thinking Master

As a social construction, system thinking is positive because it helps understand the links between action, solution, and the different behaviors it might influence. 

Systems Thinking is about understanding interrelationships between parts and the whole. It helps digital leaders and professionals discover the interconnectivity and interdependence of the digital business ecosystem, help them get behind the "surface" validity and give them deeper insight into the nuances of why and how, and ensure that the digital business as an organic system growing and evolving with its environment in harmony.

Are You a System Thinking Master

Are You a System Thinking Master People are all a bundle of assumptions, a collection of cause-and-effect, and a limited ability to put all this together to create a sense of reality. We use our sense of reality to try to understand our world and solve the problems it presents us with, making decisions as to how to interact with our environment. This is adequate to deal with our everyday lives but quite inadequate to fully deal with the complexity of much of the dynamic world that surrounds us.


Digital Master Tuning #82: System Thinking vs. Complexity Management Systems Thinking is the way of thinking to understand holistically the interconnections and interdependencies between parts, and Complexity Management is the way to deal with them to steer the system in the desired direction.


A System Thinker’s Mind: Systems Thinking is thinking about how things interact with one another and get the insight of the whole. As a social construction, system thinking is positive because it helps understand the links between action, solution, and the different behaviors it might influence. By comparing different actions, solutions together give you a better understanding of the potential impact of each action and help to identify the one that will have a better chance of success overall.


How Much Systems Thinking will be a Strategic Skill for Managers or Leaders? Many organizations reach the inflection point to accelerate digital transformation, and they have gone well past the point at which traditional hierarchical and silo management approaches work. And it’s because the paradigm on which they are built is no longer fit for the complexity and hyperconnectivity of digital dynamic managers face.

How to Leverage Systems Thinking in Catching the True Wisdom Wisdom is often abstract, and System Thinking is the ability to think conceptually on a higher level. Systems Thinking is to understand the interconnectivity between parts and the whole. Wisdom is the insightful quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the inner quality of being wise. By practicing Systems Thinking, can contemporary leaders and workers have a better chance to grasp the true wisdom, not just “conventional wisdom”?...


The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 6300+ 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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The Best “Labyrinth” Quotes of “Digital Master” Jan, 2020

 To walk through the digital labyrinth, it’s crucial to strike the right balance, have intellectual to connect the minds and touch the hearts, build trust, gain commitment and engagement, rather than just be compliant with work tasks.

"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 “Labyrinth” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Don't panic and walk through the digital labyrinth confidently, and don’t rest until you’ve done everything you could do to make your organization resilient, inventive, inspiring, and accountable as it could be.

2 Many organizations are struggling to walk through the digital labyrinth because they have no common understanding across the board about digitalization regardless of methodology, due to their overall mindset or culture.

3 Exploring digital innovation and demystifying the digital labyrinth needs to layout different structures, discover solutions to develop the business potential where organizations are combining all that is available to them in imaginative and adventurous ways.

4 To walk through the digital labyrinth, it’s crucial to strike the right balance, have intellectual to connect the minds and touch the hearts, build trust, gain commitment and engagement, rather than just be compliant with work tasks.

5 Unique challenges become more apparent as we push the limits of the available technology and resources, which further push us to find a solution to the problem at hand and discover the path to walk through the digital labyrinth practically.

6 Exploring the business innovation should fully cover wide enough directions, and ultimately walk through the innovation labyrinth smoothly.

7 Innovation shouldn’t be serendipity, “Systematic Innovation” is an appropriately structured framework and a set of practical tools anyone can use to demystify innovation labyrinth and create or improve products, processes, and services that will deliver new value to customers.

8 From doing digital to being digital needs to take a lot of brainstorming, thought-out planning, structural actions, and walk through the digital labyrinth effortlessly.

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Change-Readiness with Synthesis of Socio-Technical Systems-Perspectives

The organizations that have hit the heights of success in the digital world aren’t those that have determinedly followed the old models and ways of thinking.

We are living in a complex world in which inventions, developments, and conflicts are continuously changing and that makes it impossible to have complete knowledge and understanding of many issues facing the business today.

 Organization design is an integral piece of business Change Management. It’s the vehicle through which the business strategy is executed and define the environment where the talent can unleash the potential. Making an objective change impact assessment is an important step in building the organizational level change management competency and achieving high-performance business results. Thus, change readiness is an important indicator of the business competency at the organizational level. Here is the change readiness with the synthesis of Socio-Technical Systems (STS) perspectives.

Sociological perspective: In the industrial business reality, functional silos are generally constant barriers to business advancement or maturity, stifle changes, and lock individual or collective performance. It is a waste of resources to leave any invaluable human potential left unrecognized, untapped and unused. One approach is to create social hubs - pull information and activities from enterprise applications into the social platform to create a central hub for collaborative, task-based, and social activities.

Organizations can leverage collaboration tools to make formerly invisible patterns of social interaction more visible; and apply such information to boost social engagement, encourage new conversations that galvanize inspiration and gain traction on a powerful theme of renewal and growth, co-create new knowledge, stimulate innovative ideas, and improve collaboration, communication, cooperation, and coordination.

More often, organizations are too siloed to be able to relate coherently as a holistic business to the customer's journey. Collaboration is at its essence, the intellectual harmony between humans. With continuous changes and disruptions, the business can only be built on the belief of serving personal growth and providing tools or enabling digital frameworks that allow employees to become better or more capable persons, or to have the organization as a whole become more agile and mature.

Technical perspective: The emerging digital technology and collaboration tools bring unprecedented opportunities for companies to reinvent themselves by optimizing the organizational structure and improving underlying functional efficiency. Technology centrism becomes multidisciplinary. It is true that technology grows exponentially even in the case of the digital paradigm shift. It is also true that the growth of technology may trigger a paradigm shift. How the social and technical aspects of a workplace fit together directly impact the effectiveness and maturity of the company. Ideally, the physical organizational structure, relationships, and digital platforms and social connections wrap around each other to ensure clear responsibility, smooth information flow, and engaged workforces who can set the right priority to accelerate performance.

One of the biggest challenges of social technology is how to manage or curate the volume and variety of artifacts that workers create using social tools. Technically speaking, social technology has the potential to address several perennial goals for effective communication and efficient collaboration in a flexible and low-cost way. Social technologies enable social behaviors to take place online, endowing these interactions with scale, speed, and disruptive economics, provide platforms for content creation, distribution, consuming, co-creation and transformation of personal and group communication into the content.

Systems perspective: The digital organization is hyper-connected and interdependent, the linear system perception needs to be replaced by complex adaptive systems, a goal-seeking system becomes purposeful, and technical behavior needs to be replaced by socio-technical behavior. It’s very important for any high performing organization to leverage the systematic understanding of interconnectivity, get the best alignment and leverage the great human potential that exists or is needed to achieve great results and to tap into the passion of the people.

There's no easy panacea for improving organizational maturity. What now has to be understood are the complex dynamics of the ecosystem within which the business is competing and with which the business is unavoidably entangled - dynamics driven more by horizontal linkages than by vertical accountabilities. The systematic perspective brings greater awareness of the intricacies and the systemic value of digital organizational systems, processes, people dynamics, technology, resource allocation, supply-side variables, market variables, economies of scale, etc. The “whole systems” approach will transcend into an “interconnected systems “ approach - an integration of across local and global business, social, technological, economic, political, and ecological systems.

The organizations that have hit the heights of success in the digital world aren’t those that have determinedly followed the old models and ways of thinking; it’s those that have forged a new path. An objective change management assessment with the synthesis of Socio-Technical Systems against the contexts of business goals, people, processes, procedures, infrastructure, technology, and culture enables the business management leveraging a structural approach to align people, process, and technology to make change happen not only on the structural level but also on the cultural and behavior level for achieving people centricity and improving the overall organizational maturity.

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IT Coming Into the Board Conversation

The corporate board has to ensure management and governance are interdependent and complementary disciplines that are both enabled by high mature digital IT. 

With the fast speed of changes and exponential growth of information today, corporate board directors need to be the digital gurus with the ability to lead, influence and innovate.

Generally speaking, in the boardroom, the key dimensions of practicing corporate governance discipline are policy setting, strategy oversight, performance monitoring, as well as understanding the accountabilities of the environment - regulatory, shareholder, etc.

In practice, where would one expect IT to come into board conversations for improving governance effectiveness and leadership maturity?

Business strategy: Information is growing exponentially and technology needs will only expand. IT as an integral and increasingly important aspect of business strategy development. The disruptive nature of IT is highly likely to have implications for business strategy and some elements of strategy may require IT-enabled organizational capabilities. The question is to establish whether CIOs recognize the strategic importance of information technology and in turn are motivated to set their sights on the boardroom.

On the rocky road to business transformation, innovation, and globalization, the corporate board and senior leadership team need to have a good strategy on how they leverage information technology to make the right decision to win in the marketplace. With an eye toward board service, IT leaders must learn how to better communicate information technology advantages in business terms so that thoughtful strategies can be evaluated and the associated risks weighed against the benefits and focus on the right strategic levers for success.

Business change investment: The corporate boards as a top leadership team can no longer avoid, delegate or ignore the need for technical competency among their ranks. A dysfunctional IT or poor IT investment could cause the entire business to fail even overnight. Corporate board service for IT leaders is about educating board directors with the varying backgrounds to understand the potentiality of information technology, gain an organizational viewing the technology discipline as a strategic function in the same way that finances or marketing strategies would be viewed. Through logical scenario planning, large investments could be avoided if they ultimately turn out to be unnecessary.

Understanding the importance of IT to the company’s business model is important for effective oversight of technology initiatives. The logical investment scenario helps an organization assess whether the business improvement associated technology is the right investment to be done in the first place, and ensure the expected return on investment. IT should come into the board conversations to ensure corporate board directors or senior leaders have sufficient knowledge and understanding of IT, they can make a sound judgment about IT investment and know-how to assess IT performance objectively.

Risk oversight: It is a corporate board responsibility to ensure that the strategy covers all important parts including IT, to question it and to finally make effective decisions about it, such as: How robust was the organization's risk assurance system, all the way up to the management board? How could that system miss something that has had a widespread impact? BoDs do not manage risks but oversee risk and ensure that management has put in place an effective risk-management process, and the directors assess whether risks are undertaken and managed consistently with the established risk appetite.

To oversee risks, the top seasoned board of directors with decades of experiences should share the valuable lessons in the past from time to time, to ensure that management has put in place an effective risk-management process, ensuring that business risks are identified, minimized, and controlled effectively, and the directors assess whether risks are undertaken and managed consistently with the established risk appetite. The corporate board and management can work on what strategies or small low-risk steps you might take now that can better position you to more quickly identify or turn the disruption into your advance.

Board performance: The corporate board’s role, in large part, is to make good decisions that enhance the value creation for the organization. The corporate boards have to spread their limited time on many important things, and they need to have superior time management skills, focus on the performance of the management team as well as their own performance. Effective governance must create excellent performance, especially for long-term business growth. The ignorance about the importance of cognitive difference and the behavioral dynamics that operate within their board is contributing to the generally poor performance of boards. Thus, a tech-savvy corporate board will have the advantage of pulling enough resources and pushing the business model of technology, trustworthiness, prepare, and launch change, innovation, and ensure what happens next.

IT becomes so critical to the success of the organization nowadays. IT savvy board expands its leadership horizon for improving their own performance and the performance of their company sharpens appropriate skills and competence around the board table to deal with business complexity. For the majority of the time, the board agenda should be focused on the performance progress toward the goals, targets, schedules, etc, of the value maximization planning.

The corporate board has to ensure management and governance are interdependent and complementary disciplines that are both enabled by high mature digital IT. The corporate board's role is to pull management out of the trees to see the forest; understand the business landscape through the broad digital lens, continue looking for a new perspective or alternative solutions. set the tone for change and proactively drive change with the step-wise approach and accelerated speed.

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The Best “Relevance” Quotes of “Digital Master” Jan, 2020

 Keep track of performance at the strategic level is important to evaluate the digital relevance of the business.

"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 “Relevance” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 It is important to measure the digital relevance of the business and ensure the organization is on the right track to change and build the business competency for the long term.

2 Coach people to shift from the belief that change is "loss" to a belief that change leads to "growth" and growth leads to organizational viability, relevance, and long-term prosperity.

3 Performance Management should be the holistic management discipline that needs to connect many relevant dots to involve development, enablement, enhancement.

4 Keep track of performance at the strategic level is important to evaluate the digital relevance of the business.

5 The race for IT relevance is still on, be alert to identify blind spots, be flexible to adjust the planning, be open to listening to different points of views and be determined when you have to make tough choices

6 Information is useful only if its content is evaluated for accuracy, relevance, and timeliness.

7 The intent behind NPS is well-conceived ... but it is not a magic silver bullet that is necessarily relevant everywhere.

8 Keeping IT relevant is not just about technical excellence or process efficiency, but also about digital fit, adaptability, innovativeness, intelligence, and customer-centricity. Keep track of performance at the strategic level is impis useful only if its information content is evaluated for accuracy, relevance, and timelines to evaluate the digital relevance of IT.

9 Many Performance Management System had been focused on measuring the performance of the employees on the basis of how they have followed the rules or implemented the policies and procedures giving less relevance to the services that have been delivered and how it created relevance and impact to the end-users.

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From “Cost Center” IT to “Value-Added” IT Transformation

Forward-looking organizations see what IT is driving the business transformation regardless of the industry segment they play in.

With the increasing pace of changes and overloading information, many companies are reaching the inflection point of digital transformation. IT plays a critical role in such a digital paradigm shift. Forward-looking IT organizations are practicing entrepreneurship and running IT as a purposeful software startup to make continuous deliveries.

Visionary IT leaders need to learn how to advocate for "departmental immersion" and other strategies to help IT become more integrated and aware of the organization as a whole for improving the overall organizational maturity.


Develop IT as the “brain” of the digital organization: IT is business, nowadays, the forward-looking organizations across the vertical sectors claim they are in the information business. Different functions of the company leverage the data to solve their problems in different ways. IT stands out as a value-added function by managing information effectively and efficiently. IT is responsible for the information agenda and provides accurate information and applications to store and allow the modeling of information to solve business problems. Digital IT organizations with highly cognitive connectivity play a crucial role in building a high-responsive, high intelligent, and high-mature digital business.

IT is the information provider of the entire company;, departments such as marketing, finance, HR, and business are responsible for applying the information to their businesses with the aim of generating revenue growth, motivating employees, and improving customer experience and engagement. Running IT as a business means IT understands what’s the customers’ true needs, helps to solve their problems, but also transforms itself from a cost center into a value center.

IT needs to know how to promote its products and services besides building good products and solutions: IT cannot be seen as a value creator unless IT management clearly understands what their organization does for a living. Every new technology adopted must facilitate the business but also bring down the incremental cost of growth and the time to market. To reinvent IT from a cost center to value-added, IT management needs to know how to promote IT as a trustful business partner with tangible performance data, work out how they affect the business growth and improve organizational maturity via some business output measures, such as “Sales win percentage,” “Margin Contribution,” or “Yield on investment,” and build a solid brand.

  IT can digitize the touchpoints of the customer experience and transform from an inside-out support function to an outside-in customer-centric IT. What is required is having an IT-enabled capability strategy that integrates technologies across the entire enterprise, including how best to source them. Also, make sure that the external customers who purchase products or services have a great experience relating to any IT systems that impact them.

Provisioning future business capabilities: In a traditional setting, IT’s main focus is to develop and maintain internal systems. From a strategic perspective, IT is the value-added delivery that makes the organization different and competitive. IT is, in fact, the strategic competency of the business. Every competitive business has a unique set of key capabilities to achieve its business goals and reach a high level of performance. IT plays a threshold competency role in building core business competency. IT competencies directly impact how it helps the business gain competitive advantages and capture upcoming trends to compete for the future.

The narratives within strategic business cases reflect multifaceted business value pathways, respond to mandates by external parties; upgrade existing technologies; make business process improvements; tune organizational structures, sharpen business capabilities while reducing the cost to market without the sacrifice of strategic goals,  gain a competitive advantage; and, generating options for provisioning future business capabilities. Leveraging unique IT knowledge and capability to build business competency is crucial for the business's long-term growth and maturity.

Forward-looking organizations see what IT is driving the business transformation regardless of the industry segment they play in. IT has to move from providing largely back-office support to become the prime facilitator, differentiator, and value creator of the high mature digital business. IT has to step into businesses with knowledge and confidence as a strategic business partner.

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The Monthly “Digital Gaps” Book Tuning: Gap-Minding Practices Jan. 2020

To run a thriving business, it is critical to identify and close the multitude of business gaps and build organizational competency to reach the business vision and achieve strategic business goals.

"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 stepwise approach to make a leap of digital transformation.

             Gap-Minding Practices 

How to Close Motivation Gap Motivation is not only about the feeling, but a combination of several emotions also describes the trajectory of behavior. All motivation is a form of consciousness. It gives you the energy to do everything that you must do. Motivation is the "cognitive momentum" that comes from consistently applying the habits congruent with the achievement of the goal. You are motivated to move away from something because it is painful and also move towards something which is inspiring.

How to Close Communication Gaps? Communication is the key to improve leadership effectiveness and modern management efficiency. However, communication is not just the soft discipline, it’s both an art and science. For example, there are communication gaps between management and employees, there’s “lost in translation” syndrome in cross-functional conversations, there are all sorts of miscommunication at the different levels of the organization, how to close communication gaps and overcome such challenges?

How to Identify and Close Business Capability Gaps The capability is the ability to do something. A capability is an ability that an organization, person, or system possesses for either problem solving or making a certain achievement. The corporate capability is the collective ability to implement strategy, innovation and make changes. The organization’s capabilities can be categorized into both competitive necessity and competitive uniqueness. Therefore, to run a thriving business, it is critical to identify and close business capability gaps and build organizational competency to reach the business vision and achieve strategic business goals.

How to Close Perception Gaps? Perception is one's interpretation of reality. It is as we see, observe and experience as defined by our mental "band-pass filters.”Perception is one's interpretation of reality, so it is very subjective and varies from person to person. When we are “mindful,” we not only see but also perceive; we not only live but also experience; this will have an effect on others and how we interact with the surrounding. But what are the gaps between perception and reality? How to overcome bias caused by prepositioned perceptions, how to close those perception-based gaps and make a positive impact on your surroundings?

Gap Minding Leadership Practices in Digital Boardroom Digitalization makes the business flatter and the world smaller because of its nature of hyper-connectivity and interdependence. Competition at the leading edge of business is also becoming fiercer at the age of digitalization and globalization. Thus, successful companies need to grow and innovation is no longer "nice to have," but must have business competency. The corporate board plays a critical role in setting policies for innovation and exemplifying leadership influence.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6300th 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 “Brainstorming” Quotes of “Digital Master” Jan, 2020

The key to brainstorming is not to evaluate your ideas; brainstorming activates creativity which can be transformed into innovation.

"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 “Brainstorming” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Brainstorming is a creativity technique by which a group of people can come up with multiple solutions to solve the problem creatively.

2 Brainstorming can be made much more powerful with knowledge. There are "Stimulus Mining" areas that can help to fill the mind with information and then, individuals can start to explore from a much stronger point of view and create fresh ideas.

3 One of the problems with brainstorming in an organizational context is that everyone thinks it is easy! The most effective brainstorming is focused on a clear and targeted objective.

4 The idea of brainstorming or the crucible of confrontation can be useful, but in order to "guide" the participants through the stages of it, you still need a structured process for unstructured thinking. otherwise, things such as personal dynamics, seniority, grade, etc will limit its potential.

5 Brainstorming to stimulate digital mining is an important step to leverage information and collective wisdom to envision the future of business, make strategic planning, take a structural approach and run a modern digital organization.

6 It’s important to create a space for open dialogue and design brainstorming, developing a common understanding of business model innovation effort, creating the necessity and motivation for it, as well as getting the management buy-in.

7 The construct of a design-driven innovation game allows the open-minded brainstorming for shaping digital business models.

8 The key to brainstorming is not to evaluate your ideas; brainstorming activates creativity which can be transformed into innovation.

9 From doing digital to being digital needs to take a lot of brainstorming, thought-out planning, and structural actions.

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Apply Multidimensional Thought Processes to Problem-Solving Scenario

Multidimensional thinking is important to understand, frame, and solve today’s multilayer, interdependent, and over-complex business problem and directly impacts the intellectual sophistication of problem-solving capability.

With the overwhelming growth of information and an unprecedented level of uncertainty, there is known unknown and unknown unknown. Many problems become so complex, fact-finding and prototyping are crucial steps in discovering premium solutions. Digital leaders and professionals must keep their minds open, enhance interdisciplinary understanding of the problem, and take the step-wise approach to solve them smoothly.

Apply critical thinking to problem-solving: Critical Thinking is an important skill to make logical reasoning for digging into the root causes of problems and understanding the problem from different perspectives by asking: What is the problem? Why? What seems to be the constraints? Which factors or aspects of the problem seem most critical? What are the enablers? Where is the weakest link or the strongest constraint? Can you apply the Theory of Constraints? Etc. Be skeptical about the conventional understanding of issues so that you examine everything before accepting it for the real truth or advising it to others. You think critically when you begin to focus and delineate the factors associated with the problem.

In the real world, problem-solving in the majority of organizations today is woefully inadequate, people lacking the real critical thinking usually never question what is exactly the problem because "it's the way things should be." Often, events and patterns are observed on the surface, and then the action is taken to fix the symptom, but that is too early. As a result, trying to fix the wrong cause of a problem will waste time and resources, increase anxiety, and reward mediocrity, even create more problems later on.

 It’s a strategic imperative to leverage critical thinking for determining why problems happened; how problems escalated; which areas of the organization were affected; as well as why the problem started. You will need to take a few steps back trying to get the real picture of what happened based on facts and figure out the best next move toward solving the problem smoothly.

Apply holistic thinking to problem-solving: The digital era upon us means information flow, hyper-connectivity, and interdependence. Holistic thinking concerns the whole system in question, enables understanding “patterns of change” which is important for dynamic problem-solving, and continues pondering: What is the problem? Is that the right problem? Has the problem been fixed permanently? Does the solution cause any side effects, or cause more serious issues later on? Who are the real problem-solvers? What are methodologies and practices to solve problems holistically (observable input-process-output result) of the whole? Etc.

The opposite of holistic thinking is silo thinking which is the root cause of many business problems today. Overly restrict boundary setting will cause silo thinking and create obstacles to effective problem-solving. The digital nature of hyper-connectivity and interdependence makes it inevitable to break down large problems into smaller pieces and solve them efficiently. Holistic thinking helps to understand the interdependence of issues, integrates diverse viewpoints into holistic perspectives without enlarging cognitive gaps and causing too many side effects, offers a better and more accurate understanding of the overall situation and problems, and hence, better defining the problems and subsequently solving them and in what sequence.

Apply Systems Thinking to problem-solving: Systems Thinking is about understanding the interconnectivity between parts and whole. Systematic problem-solvers should ask themselves and others: How are all of the components in the system related? What are the components? How do they affect (enable/constrain) each other? How strong is each individual effect? How to measure the outcome of problem-solving systematically. Etc. There is also a philosophical connection between wholeness and partness. "Partness" means all things are linked together in the cosmos through their interdependent relationships. Always remember that problems exist not in isolation, but as an interacting system of problems. A systematic problem solver is able to peel back the layers to discover the root cause by asking “WHYs,” or take other system analyses to discover the real cause and address it, as well as understand the interdependence of problems.

In today’s hyper-connected and interdependent business world, solving problems really matter could mean that there is the opportunity you can take care of a chain of problems, not just an individual problem. Systems Thinking provides insight into emergent issues, both the positive emergent issues required and the negative emergent issues that come about, particularly due to the combination of parts and the interactions within the system and between the system and its environment. For those who are trying to solve problems, they may find the problems evolving as they try different solutions. Systematic problem-solvers encompass the ability to address the systems, processes, emerging properties, and human elements to improve problem-solving effectiveness and maturity.

We are living in a complex world with continuous changes and disruptions, which makes it impossible to have complete knowledge and understanding of many issues. There is as much critical thinking, strategic thinking and system thinking that go into problem identification as well as solution discovery. Multidimensional thinking is important to understand, frame, and solve today’s multilayer, interdependent, and over-complex business problem and directly impacts the intellectual sophistication of problem-solving capability.

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“Understanding the Multitude of Business Effect” Summary Jan. 2020

 It is important to understand the multitude of business effects digital leaders might need to deal with, and take the logical steps for reaching the next stage of digital management fluency.

With the increasing pace of changes and the cutting-throat competitions, to effectively respond to the digital dynamics, either individually or collectively, it is important to understand the multitude of business effects digital leaders might need to deal with, as well as numerous pitfalls the management should pay more attention to, and take the logical steps for reaching the next stage of digital management fluency.

           Understanding the Multitude of Business Effect

Understanding The Multitude of Business Effects to Accelerate Changes Businesses today need nothing less than a paradigm shift in their thinking about the fundamentals of how organizations work to build an authentic culture and an engaging workforce, It is the transformation that is reshaping our thinking and recasting the way we view ourselves, the systems of which we are the part of the environments. It is important to understand the multitude of business effects digital leaders might need to deal with, as well as numerous pitfalls the management should pay more attention to, and take the logical steps for reaching the next stage of digital management fluency.

Digital Master Tuning: The Pygmalion effect The idea behind the Pygmalion effect is that increasing the reader's expectation of the follower's performance will result in better follower performance. The Golem effect is the opposite, so low expectations beget low performance. As a person/leader, how do you think your expectations of people affect their performance? How to leverage the Pygmalion effect in growing more Digital Master in your organization?

Anti-Digital Mindset: Group Thinking and Abilene Paradox Group Thinking or peer pressure is a term first used in 1972 by social psychologist Irving Janis that refers to a psychological phenomenon in which people strive for consensus within a group. In many cases, people will set aside their own personal beliefs or adopt the opinion of the rest of the group. In an Abilene paradox, a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of many or all of the individuals in the group. You can see it at work when nobody wants to admit that the project is doomed, so they keep working on it, even though each person on the team knows it is futile. Why is it human nature to go along with what we believe the rest of the group wants to do without taking the time to actually check out if we are all taking a trip to Abilene?

Understanding Three Business Effects and Paradoxes for Improving Management Effectiveness Either at the individual level or organizational level, people experience, grow, fail and learn, from their own experiences or others' failure lessons. There are many interesting effects in the respective field of the study. From a business management perspective, which “effects” should you understand in order to achieve management effectiveness and efficiency?

People 2.0: How to Accelerate Employees to the top of Maslow’s Pyramid 2.0 According to Maslow, once a person has fulfilled a need for one layer, they’ll move up to a higher level. And numerous studies have shown that in the workplace, the revised Maslow pyramid 2.0 is a good practice: if you’re going to motivate your people, besides compensation, fair and consistent talent management should be in place, acceptance, appreciation. and affiliation can attract talent to have sense of belonging, at digital era, and today’s cross-generational, cross-cultural and cross-geographical working dynamic, the new generation of workers also pursue freedom, independence, and autonomy, at highest level, to find meaning, purpose, and mastering of work, so focus on what will matter most to your employees.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 6300+ 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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The Best “Behavior” Quotes of “Digital Master” Jan, 2020

BEHAVIOR as a symptom of ATTITUDE and ATTITUDE is the reflection of your 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 “Behavior” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Behavior is a manifestation of attitude, attitude results from the thoughts and mind.

2 Behavior can be changed either through operational adjustment (small things you do as you are introduced to skills or information) or through transformation (adaptive shifts in thoughts or beliefs that result from looking inward and reflecting).

3 You can certainly change behaviors with the right push, however, bigger changes come with inspiring the mind and challenging winning attitudes.

4 You can't change anyone's attitude or behavior. THEY have to be the ones that change.

5 Behaviors are easiest to change, but attitude brings on lasting effects and can impact more than one negative behavior.

6 BEHAVIOR as a symptom of ATTITUDE and ATTITUDE is the reflection of your MIND.

7 Short-term behavior changes are common under pressure, but it breeds discontent and, in the long run, people revert to their original habits, most of the time.

8 The mindset influences attitude and attitude drives behavior performance. The behavior performance is related to expectations that management has when it comes to an employee's role.

9 The self-adaptive system is a system able to re-configure its own structure and change its own behavior during the execution of its adaptation to environmental changes.

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Performance Management Pitfalls

Performance Management is a holistic management discipline that needs to connect many relevant dots to involve business development, enablement, and enhancement.

Performance management is about how organizations manage performance at both strategic and operational levels to achieve the well-set business goals and objectives. Due to fierce competition and exponential growth of information, Performance Management is critical as new competitive challenges and active market changes underscore the strategic imperative of managing performance more than ever.

The world-class performance management is a must for shaping a world-class digital organization. Here are three performance management pitfalls need to be avoided in order for organizations to not only survive but also thrive in the digital era upon us with “VUCA” new normal.

Performance Management gets "stuck" when business leaders or managers -the people in charge get "stuck": At its core, performance management is about creating a work environment that helps your company meet its business goals and exceed the expectations of shareholders. The spirit comes from the top. Digital leaders must be able to look forward and actively position the business in the right place to take full advantage of opportunities for inspiring a culture of high performance and motivating high achievement.

In practice, most people have come to believe it's easier and safer to adapt to a culture rather than promote or initiate change. You can't drive performance without mutually accepted goals and expectations. Performance Management gets stuck when senior management allows ineffective management practices to become the norm, people at all levels often become complacent and ineffective, slow down the speed of change and stifle innovation.

The lack of accountability keeps companies from reaching their potential: Accountability goes hand in hand with the delegation of authority or power. Company leadership should be emphasizing to all its employees that accountability equals delivering results aligned to strategic goals. The better business management assigns accountability and empowers the individual/team, the better the chances it will be at least accepted. Behaving accountable is the result of culture with values that need to be organized and nurtured. Thus, accountability needs to be well embedded in the organizational culture, to encourage responsible communication, decision-making, and action, with the intention to build on morale and real productivity.

Shared accountability or collective accountability involves shared ownership, empathetic communication, the true measure of accountability is about resilience. It’s important to defining and tracking business benefits delivery and the associated change in mindset and behavior, and the business’s ability to set metrics for the progress along the way. Rewards systems should be put in place and rewards that are tailored to the individual instead of one-size-fits-all. If at some intermediate stage, one measures something that is not congruent with the final outcome, then dysfunctional behavior arises, potentially diminishes the end-to-end performance.

Functional KPIs often encourage dysfunctional "silo" behaviors and lock the overall business performance: Measures or KPI is a strong tool, which can be both rewarding but also causes damage to an organization. Functional metrics sometimes reinforce the boundaries between the "territories." In fact, driving functional KPIs excessively can actually degrade the performance of the entire organization.

One of the pitfalls in performance management is that too often functional performance is acted on the basis of improving one part of an organization at the expense of other parts of the organization. The performance of the total “system” is independent of the performance of any one of the functions and depends more on how the functions relate to each other. At the strategic level, the performance measurement setting should focus on achieving the ultimate goals of the organization as a whole for the long term, not just an individual, one team, or one department performance only.

Performance Management is a holistic management discipline which needs to connect many relevant dots to involve business development, enablement, and enhancement, avoid all sorts of pitfalls, to ensure the individual performance is assessed objectively and the corporate performance is evaluated holistically, and make sure the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces.

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