Monday, March 20, 2017

The Monthly CIO Debates Collection: March, 2017

Debating is not for stimulating conflicts, but for brainstorming better ways to do things.


Modern CIOs face many challenges, it is not sufficient to only keep the lights on. Regardless of which industry or the nature of organization you are in, being a digital leader will need to master the art of creating unique, differentiating value from piles of commoditized technologies and take advantage of the emergent digital trends as well. Digital CIOs need to have multiple personas, “Chief Innovation Officer,” “Chief Insight Officer,” “Chief Improvement Officer,” “Chief Information Officer,” and here, we discuss CIOs as “Chief Inquisitive Officer,” with a set of Q&As to lead the digital transformation.


  • Make a Leap of IT Digital Transformation via Healthy Debating? Due to the exponential growth of information and disruptive nature of digital technologies, IT is at the crossroad: Should IT continue to be run as an “isolated function,” just keep the lights on, and gradually become irrelevant? Or should IT reinvent itself to become the change agent of the business? It is the time to reimagine IT via inspiring critical and creative thinking and spurring healthy debating. Because debating is a type of critical thinking activity. Critical thinking is a basic form of organized thought specifically used to frame the right questions, identify the real problems, and discover better ways to do things.


  • Are you Running IT Organization as a “Magic” or a Trendsetter? IT plays a critical role in modern businesses today, however, most business leaders and professionals lack the in-depth understanding of IT organizations, often time, the “magic” thinking of IT is one of the root causes to divide business and IT and create gaps for the digital transformation. In practice, digital IT organization needs to become an integral part of the high mature digital company, to gain competitive advantage or differentiated capability for the business’s growth. To improve IT maturity, CIOs should ask themselves: Are you running IT organization as a “Magic,” or a “trendsetter”?


  • How to Set Right Priorities for IT Digital transformation Digital disruption is frequent and unstructured, businesses just have to get used to the new normal and learn how to deal with them proactively. Obviously, there is no one size fits all solution, and "boil the ocean" approaches seldom deliver expected results. So how to take a structural approach in dealing with digital disruptions, and what’s the logical scenario to manage digital transformation seamlessly?  


  • Is your Organization in the Progress, Plateau or Stagnation of Digital Transformation? Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology both horizontally and vertically. However, businesses evolve changes at a different speed because they are at the different stage of the business lifecycle, as well as they are in the different level of business maturity. Hence, in order to lead change effectively, business leaders should do the check-up continuously: Is your organization in the progress, plateau or stagnation of digital transformation? And how to create the momentum and lead change more effortlessly?


  • As CIOs: Which IT Management Dilemmas Do you Encounter? Technology is pervasive, business initiatives, changes, and transformation today nearly always involve some form of technology implementation or information analysis; IT touches both hard business processes and soft human behaviors. However, managing a highly effective IT is not an easy job, IT leaders have to overcome many change management roadblocks and deal with quite a few of IT management dilemmas in transforming from a cost center to value creator, from a support function to a strategic business partner; from a back office to an innovation front yard.

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