The New Book “Digital Fit - Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit” Chapter 1 Introduction: The Characteristics of Digital Fit ~ Future of CIO

Monday, September 18, 2017

The New Book “Digital Fit - Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit” Chapter 1 Introduction: The Characteristics of Digital Fit

10:50 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Like people, every organization has its own personality and digital fit characteristics.

Digital organizations are increasingly exhibiting digital characteristics in various shades and intensity. They are hyperconnected and over-complex, with well-mixed physical workplace and virtual team setting. Like people, every organization has its own personality and digital fit characteristics, how do you define organizational fit, in order to build innovative and high-performing teams and transform the whole organization into the digital master?

The autonomy of the digital organization: Digital is all about the exponential growth of information and rapid speed of changes. Therefore, today’s digital organizations need to be self-adaptive to the dynamic business environment. Because the business responsiveness and changeability based on self-adaptation are the capabilities to adapt to changes and make conscious business choices seamlessly. And self-adaptation is a phenomenon strictly linked to see learning and knowledge increases if shared and consumed. The new digital paradigm shift is that the organizations are becoming more responsive, holistic, vibrant, self-driving, innovative, and above all enhances and nurtures the living organization. Self-organizing is about empowerment and trust. It’s about building a work atmosphere to encourage creativity, autonomy, and mastery. The high degree of the team’s self-management capability reflects its maturity to be disciplined enough to do the work well in a dynamic and highly innovative environment. In fact, autonomy becomes one of the most critical characteristics for digital organizations to thrive as well as the symbol of achieving high-level digital maturity.

Organizational plasticity as the digital trait: The neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to rewire, connect, and adapt; the business plasticity is the organization’s capability to change, adapt and innovate with speed. Organizational adaptation is the ability to be highly responsive to the fast-changing business environment. From the economic and organizational point of view, the business with high organizational plasticity can keep a clear focus on the end results. Changing, adapting to or mitigation is a practical way for the existing change plan to bring about the goals of tomorrow. Self-adaptation is faster if made with the full involvement of people in organizational change with the consciousness to change. Organizational plasticity is an important digital trait to keep the business competitive and improve its maturity. There is no single path that will raise the plasticity of a company or business functions or individuals. The key is not to choose one path over the other but to tailor your own path, practice more for accelerating change and digital transformation.

Nonlinearity as the characteristic of digital ecosystem: Digital is fluid, digital is also complex. It becomes complex if things do interact, particularly in the case of “nonlinear” interaction. You can’t separate things properly or you cannot predict the actual effect of interactions straightforwardly. The problem with setting all of your boundaries in a linear way or black and white is that others don’t and it can lead to limited learning and tunnel vision. It just turns out that, the business world and human society get more and more complex. In fact, nonlinearity is one of the most significant characteristics of the digital business ecosystem. Therefore, it is important to applying of nonlinear thinking for complex problem-solving. Nonlinear thinking is a type of circular thinking or out-of-the-box thinking, to dig deeper, it is an emerging type of systems thinking to understand the interconnectivity of things. From linear to nonlinear thinking could be evolutionary. Bridging the gaps between linear and nonlinear thinking can significantly help to improve business effectiveness and maturity.