Initiatives

Forward-thinking organizations have to take an iterative approach in prioritizing and managing business initiatives.

Business is nowadays complex, uncertainty of outcomes or occurrences is inherent in numerous business endeavors. Any business initiatives should be viewed as an "opportunity" for solving problems.

 To manage business initiatives successfully, assess well-defined goals; quality information and logical scenarios are needed to achieve high performance results.

It’s critical to take top-down, structural business initiatives for building long-term organizational advantages: For systematic innovation or strategic initiatives, top-down approach is beneficial when the organization maintains coherence while allowing autonomy and managing a right balance between exploration and exploitation. Senior business leaders must think hard and make tough decisions on time, make sure that the business moves in the right direction.

To avoid obsolescence and take proactive management discipline, change needs to be inspired from top-down, as the top leadership team’s commitment will reassure those who have doubts, understand psychology behind change, keep the “big picture” in mind, and identify what generates the most value for the company, to reach high horizon of business growth. So strategic business initiatives need to be sponsored from the top; but change cannot be fully managed or controlled top down, it has to be proactively made bottom up to produce tangible results.

It’s imperative to build a people centric organization by initiating more outside-in customizing solutions: To keep business competitive and build a strong brand, forethoughtful companies perceive problems from the outside-in customers’ perspective, take initiatives to produce customized solutions. The customer, including prospects, should be studied and gain insight upon. Using a more inductive approach as to what the customer wants to accomplish "next" by making logical inquiries: Does your business solutions make logical sense to customers, make them feel special? What’s the customer’s impression on your brand? Do you reward loyal customers or push them away? Etc.

Taking initiatives for improving customer satisfaction is about tailoring their needs and solving their problems smoothly. Be it people-centric services, products, or solutions, improvement and achieving the right balance in any truly customer-centric organization requires all team members to believe that things can be improved. The difficult challenge is not just launching a successful team, but maintaining their motivation and focus, aligning resources and talent seamlessly to improve business efficiency, effectiveness, and customer satisfaction.

Initiate innovative business initiatives, advocate diversification, improve differentiated competency: Innovation is neither an isolated process nor just the latest technology, but a structural system capable of delivering organization-wide capabilities. The focal point of initiative management is based on the future trend, the interconnectivity of subsystems; and based on what the system requires for its long-term sustenance. When there is an intentional innovation strategy in place to not only increase awareness but to link the power of diversification to key initiatives and team effectiveness, it will make a significant difference.

The objective of innovation portfolio management is to provide visibility of business initiatives management that are supporting the company's strategic objectives and assess opportunities to realign resources and investments as appropriate. At the macroeconomic level, clustering is becoming more and more important for creating a creative atmosphere. Innovation ecosystems should fully cover a wide enough direction so that companies can operate within ecosystems for delivering tailored solutions to customers continually.

Forward-thinking organizations have to take an iterative approach in prioritizing and managing business initiatives, building intelligence and innovation into the essence of business. They need to apply effective principles, technologies, tools or methodologies to change efforts for really adding value to corporate growth in the long term.

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Initiativesofriskintelligence

Organizations should tailor their principle, methodology and approach to manage various business risks effectively, and keep the organization intact by ensuring sustainability.

Enterprises of the future are increasingly exhibiting the “VUCA” characteristics in various shades and intensity. Any company that fervently wants to be innovative must be willing to face risks and deal with risks effectively. Risk management is very useful for building a solid business reputation. It should be handled and prioritized in such a way that it’s inherent in the way that it doesn't negatively impact flexibility to produce premium solutions.

Risk management needs to lift up from risk control to risk intelligence: Change is the new normal, business transformation is the journey of continuous delivery and improvement. So risk management needs to be managed holistically, identifying the potential business growth opportunities timely. There should be a many-to-many relationship with the risks and the controls. One control will be linked to many risks. And one risk will be linked to many controls. Organizational leaders and professionals need to shift from “risk control” mindset to “risk intelligent” mind, spot risk management blind spots, and improve business risk intelligence.

It’s always important to apply critical thinking to identify potential risks; leverage system understanding to see the interdependence of business reality, capturing opportunities in risks and becoming risk-intelligence in the business dynamic effectively.

Risk management needs to enforce -risk model analysis- risk synthesis continuum: It’s critical to implement business initiatives steadily by optimizing the value of information while minimizing risks. Risk analysis is only part of the risk management problem-defining and solving scenario. Risk model synthesis focuses on answering the “why” and “what for” questions of risk management, to figure out the relevance of the past and present for the future desired transformation or outcome.

Every synthesis is built upon the results of a preceding analysis, and every analysis requires a subsequent synthesis in order to verify and correct its results. Risk management capability model synthesis is the right combination of capability integration and innovation. It’s difficult to duplicate, as there are organizational learning and cultural ingredients in it.

The efforts on managing risk holistically or in a more integrated fashion are critical for the long run: Integration is the cure to silos. It’s important to develop an effective risk management model for integrating all crucial elements such as processes, technologies, tools, talent, communication, culture, etc. It’s always important to collect information and feedback, to model, manage, measure risks, and manage opportunities systematically. Integration of corporate risk management into organizational culture is a crucial aspect of running a risk intelligence organization.

As long as risks have been identified and agreed with stakeholders as per business needs, then you can take place risk models which effectively predict, optimize, a continual and sustainable approach and specific threshold for justifying opportunities and business outcome. For leading organizations, enterprise risk management is already an integral compe­tency, providing the company a holistic process for connecting the right dots on risk management across the orga­nizations, put them in the right place, glue or lubricate them to ensure that they become a holistic entity rather than a sum of parts.

Uncertainty and ambiguity are the key challenges for business management today. Organizational risks directly impact business reliability on a daily basis, etc. Organizations should tailor their principle, methodology and approach to manage various business risks effectively, and keep the organization intact by ensuring sustainability. Assuming that in any risk management program, all the known and potential risks would have been covered and managed, and over a period of time, you are able to manage uncertainty and improve risk intelligence effectively.

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Illustratebeginning

There is - a beginning point, in every meaningful movement, working scenario, life journey...

Life is -

like a jigsaw puzzle;

there are-

so many pieces,

with blended colors,

varying shapes, sizes.


In the beginning,

you feel confused,

pondering how to -

get started;

calm down,

search around,

isn’t an exciting adventure to-

unfold the future,

gradually?


Change is-

intensive, inevitable;

good beginning is -

often half way of-

success;

with abundant information,

absorbing knowledge is-

only the beginning of-

learning;

identification of -

the novel is -

just the beginning of-

radical changes,

the heavy lifting starts as -

you reach -

the inflection point to -

accelerate -

the speed of change,

multidimensionally.

On the journey of-

discovering self,

discovering surrounding,

discovering the world;

there is-

the degree of -

freedom unknown;

can you keep-

a “beginner’s mindset,”

practice -

out-of-the-box thinking;

be adventurous to -

take a detour for -

making new discoveries,

enjoying emerging opportunities,

 connecting wider dots,

appreciating the full color of -

differences, enthusiastically?

Problem-solving is-

complex, nowadays;

in the beginning,

you make a one-dimensional,

linear accumulation;

you have to -

think critically when-

beginning to-

focus on-

delineate factors,

associated with -

the problem;

go through -

multi-dimensional exploration,

later-on.

to solve it,

structurally.


There is -

a beginning point,

in every meaningful movement,

working scenario,

life journey;

can you always make -

a good beginning, 

to thrive in -

the era of -

openness,

learning,

inquisitiveness,

universal happiness,

collective wisdom?

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Initiatebodsrealtimeinnovation

“Real-time” corporate board leadership is not always on, but about practicing information savvy decision-making and enhancing “on-time, on-schedule, on-value” leadership influence consistently.

The power of information is to empower the business with real-time insight across the organization in ways never possible before. This is more imperative when uncertainty, velocity, complexity, and ambiguity are major hindrances to decision-making. Real-time organizations mean high-responsiveness with speed, developing more participative models that better support the quantum leap in speed we are experiencing. 

The corporate boards as a senior leadership role needs to spend significant time on focusing on the “big picture,” making both strategic decisions and sound judgments, almost real time, in order to run a real-time digital organization.

Real-time executive scoreboard view: Organizations could miss the opportunity if they solely focus on quantifiable benefits or short-term business profit. As the power of information is to empower the business with real-time insight across the organization in ways never possible before. Highly effective corporate board directors make sound judgments based on proficient knowledge, in-depth understanding, and multidimensional intelligence. Forward-looking BoDs leverage executive scoreboard to oversee performance and enforce real-time GRC intelligence.

Real time business analytics is not the end of statistics; there are dangers that may befall executives in situations where analytics is construed to be an end in itself rather than a means to an end. In order to oversee strategy management and monitor performance effectively, real-time information relative to those goals while giving executives including BoDs a scorecard view of organizational performance, as well as their own performance throughout the quarter/year based on those goals, allow them to make collective decisions, take corrective actions to get back on course when deviations occur.

Real-time innovation: The digital era upon us is about innovation. Running a real-time digital organization starts with providing real-time information management solutions to unpuzzle innovation. In reality, many corporate boards are often stuck with a view of the rear mirror mindset, looking at the past quarter results. That is simply not enough. It’s important for BoDs to spend more time on innovation oversight and long term business growth.

In the boardroom, real time communication or collaboration is all about real-time sharing, transparency, active listening, two-way trust in the wisdom of the team, and cultivating the culture of real-time innovation and performance. It involves the creation of interactive multi-channel communication and sharing processes to generate awareness about the new digital reality and accelerate innovation performance.

Real-time decision-making scenarios: The increasingly virtual and dispersed nature of organizations and emerging collaboration technologies make cross boundary communications more convenient and effective. Real-time data is often used for navigation or tracking. There is no delay in the timeliness of the information provided. Time is a critical factor in decision-making scenarios, as you can’t afford to defer critical decisions until such time that all facts and information are available.

Technically, real data analytics provides fast data exploration, collects and analyzes business management data in real time, develops query and analysis capabilities; enable users to share and collaborate on information almost at the real time. the BoDs shouldn’t just digest the information provided by the management only, they need to proactively search for quality information via varying sources, harnesses fact-based communication and ensures the corporate board’s decision effectiveness and leadership maturity. Information-based analytics needs to become the mainstream culture theme. Thus, real time decision making in the boardroom sets the right tones for embedding analysis into decision-making, and varying management processes. This is where organizations can really differentiate themselves from their competitors by improving its agility, for building business advantage.

With overwhelming growth of information and continuous business disruptions, today’s digital organization simply just can’t stand still. Corporate board directors need to guide the senior management team through effective questioning, coaching, advising, to help influence and shape the business of the future deliberately. “Real-time” corporate board leadership is not always on, but about practicing information savvy decision-making and enhancing “on-time, on-schedule, on-value” leadership influence consistently.

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Initiativesforbridginggaps

Digital enlarges the thinking and capability gaps because different organizations, functions, and individuals evolve with varying speed.

“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 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 Bridging 

Initiate Gap-Minding Practices for Shaping an Innovative Organization Nowadays, businesses are steadily moving into the digital era with the very characteristics of hyper-connectivity and interdependence. The path to building an innovative organization won’t be straight or flat, there’s bumps or curves, roadblocks and pitfalls on the way.

Innovateleadershipviagapminding Leadership is an influence. Effective leadership differs by level, the type of organization, the stage of organizational evolution, the mindset of stakeholders, and collective competency. Leadership is about the future and change, innovation, and collective progress, which are all based on a clear vision and profound insight.

Identify, Analyze, Fill Skill GapsBusiness environment today is dynamic and uncertain, with exponential growth of information and increasing pace of changes. The challenge is about applying digital management philosophy, building differentiated capabilities, tuning flexible structures, and developing the best and next practices in running a holistic and high-performing digital organization.

Initiate Gap Closing for Problem-Solving We are living in the era with “VUCA” new normal, the problems become more complicated in this ever-complex world. Problem-solving is about seeing a problem and actually finding a premium solution to that problem. Often people are busy fixing symptoms while the real problems continue coming back. In fact, ineffective problem-solving is, unfortunately, pervasive and caused by quite a few factors.

Uncertainty Management to Fill Opportunity Gap The emerging digital era has many dimensions and demonstrates very characteristics such as options, sharing, empathy, and personalization. To deal with the new normal, knowledge is no doubt important but more than that is complete awareness of what is happening in the business context. Once you do that, you use your ability to classify the elements and know their linkage.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 10 million page views with about #10000th 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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Illuminateauthenticity

It takes the time to learn to feel confident, to be different, to be proud of who we are, authentically.

Due to the exponential growth of information and frequent disruptions, authenticity is not only a leadership quality but a digital professional trait. To move forward from a knowledge economy to a creative economy, keep recirculating imagination and recycling knowledge. 

Authentic leaders have courage to think, decide and act independently; authentic professionals can release positive energy to influence the surroundings.

Authenticity comes from self-awareness, value proposition, and fair judgment: Being authentic is defined as being real or genuine. Real thinking occurs when you are authentic, look for internal understanding in order to find a way to contribute something of value, that is an expression of your understanding based on your personal understanding and experience.

When you are authentic, you are more comfortable to express your opinion, share your perception, bring diverse viewpoints to the table, appreciate those visionary or pathfinder leaders or professionals who can come up with fresh perspectives and envision the trend that others overlook or ignore, and be willing to forge ahead to satisfy the vision.

Being authentic enables individuals to uncover hidden talent and release creative energy: When people are inspired to discover who they are, their inner talent is empowered to grow into who they want to be, they are often on a unique path to shape a growth mindset and develop their creativity. It requires you to live an authentic life, inspire others and get inspired by bigger pictures to solve problems and achieve more.

Everyone is unique, the mind of every individual is different; the actual mental understanding and subsequent manifestations in action will be different for each individual, so authenticity catalyzes creativity, accelerates professional competency development, and generates creative value.

Being "authentic" first and foremost, ensures that your thoughts, voices and actions are in synchronization: The information exponential era upon us makes things so transparent, being consistent means being true to that in every aspect: thinking, saying and doing. If this standard is internalized, then it should guide behavior, set standards and cultivate a culture of authenticity.

.Authenticity is revealed via consistency, integrity; consistency enhances professionalism and builds trust, makes sound judgment. Business professionals are able to think and act authentically to enhance accountability, increase integrity, build a compelling team with complementary mindsets and skills to achieve high performance. The mindset-attitude-behavior consistency conveys authenticity and improves professional maturity.

Being authentic is defined as being real or genuine. It takes the time to learn to feel confident, to be different, to be proud of who we are, that's the digital fit to be authentic and forward-looking. When we are authentic, keep our minds flowing, release positive energy, we can share fresh insight, lead innovatively and work professionally.

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Illustratephilosophyvsscience

Science always needs- philosophy as - a guidance; philosophy can be expanded- into subject science, explorationally...

Philosophy is

the foundation upon which-

science has been built,

continues to -

put forth questions,

move science,

onward and upward,

fluently;

science is -

grounded in philosophy;

philosophy is -

condensed soft science.



Philosophy is to -

contemplate -

“why” behind -

natural, human phenomenon;

abstractly;

Science is to -

discover cause-effect of -

common topics,

objectively.

Science always needs-

philosophy as -

a guidance;

philosophy can be expanded-

into subject science,

explorationally;

if there were -

no critical philosophy to -

add to -

brainstorming,

science will be-

in the loose ground,

empirically.

Science without -

philosophy is lame,

philosophy without -

science is empty;

they are -

not only -

compatible,

in many ways,

but need one another to-

advance-

global world,

continually.

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Illustratehardworking

You cannot wait for - something to happen, keep inquisitive, learning agile, balancing "thinking & doing" to reach the state of - hardworking and effortlessness, ultimately.

In the age of -

rapid change,

information abundance,

working hard should go-

hand in hand with -

working smarter.

Hardworking shouldn’t be-

thought of -

as being -

exhausted, overwork only;

but about -

dedication, prioritizing,

iterative learning-thinking-working cycle on-

a rhythm of -

sustained delivery,

diligently.

Hardworking is about-

shaping -fitting mindset

proactive attitude,

professional discipline.

keep your hands,

on the wheel,

eyes opening,

ears to the ground,

channel your energy into-

what is expected of you,

cooperatively.

We are at -

intersection of -

knowledge & creative economy;

being able to -

engage in -

constant innovations is -

very hard work;

including -

deep understanding,

observation, inquiries,

unusual connections,

hardworking.

You cannot wait for -

something to happen,

keep inquisitive,

learning agile,

balancing "thinking & doing" to

reach the state of -

hardworking and effortlessness,

ultimately.

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Illustrateconfidencevsarrogance

The right dose of- ego is tied to- self-esteem, balance, agility; confident people with -“beginner’s mindset,” keep absorbing -fresh knowledge; share unique insight; eager to -update their viewpoint, constantly. make changes, progressively.

Confidence is about -

having the right dose of -

ego to show -

self-respect,

self-worth,

self-esteem,

self-actualization;

arrogance implies -

overdose of ego-

egotism.

Arrogant people do not -

follow golden rules,

despise -

constructive criticism;

wear “shadow thinking” with-

negative emotions,

overflowingly.

Too much ego has-

one thinking -

too much of-

oneself-minimizing,

marginalizing-

the perspectives of others,

with bias;

being perceived as arrogance,

ungracefully.


Confident people have -

the right dose of ego;

respect -

various viewpoints,

appreciate talent, knowledge,

wisdom, humbly;

listen, respect, respond,

proactively;

make sound judgment,

discernfully.

The right dose of-

ego is tied to-

self-esteem, balance, agility;

confident people with -

“beginner’s mindset,”

keep absorbing -

fresh knowledge;

share unique insight;

eager to -

update their viewpoint,

constantly.

make changes,

progressively.

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Illustrate”justright”

Can you-communicate-Just Right? set criteria to -discern -“Right vs. right,” objectively? Are you able to- do the right thing, and do it right, consistently?

The world is-

full of -

old & new;

truth & myth,

brightness & darkness,

people debate -

what is right,

what is wrong,

all the time.

Can you-

communicate-

Just Right?

set criteria to -

discern -

“Right vs. right,”

objectively?

Are you able to-

do the right thing,

do it right,

consistently?


Every problem has-

clue in it;

every intelligence has -

complexity in it;

should you -

manage complexity to-

convey “just right” simplicity?

Do you know -

in which circumstance,

simplicity is -

"just right"?

The right mindset is-

utmost quality for -

being a right fit;

Are you able to-

identify the right people,

put them-

in the right position to-

solve the right problems,

just right?

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Illustratevisionvsstrategy

 Visions inspire; strategies compel..

Vision is -

your point,

on the horizon;

strategy is how -

you will get there,

smoothly.

Vision is -

where you want to go;

who you want to be;

strategy is -

which route you take to-

reach your destination,

successfully.




A vision is how-

you see the future,

unfolding,

forethoughtfully;

a strategy is a way,

you will carry -

yourself out,

to make your vision-

a reality.


As circumstances are -

changing, rapidly;

an unclear vision leads to -

defective strategy.

vision comes first,

strategy is-

a pipe ending in-

fulfillment of-

your vision,

dynamically.

Visions inspire;

strategies compel;

vision is-

an inspirational end state,

a strategy is a roadmap,

being checked, revised,

constantly;

defining, aligning -

the ideal workload to-

achieve it, structurally.

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Initiateprocessinnovation

Organizations need to improve business fluidity, flexibility, and overall organizational fit by continually tuning underlying structures and processes, to improve business agility and maturity.

In the rapidly evolving businesses and complex digital economic systems, today’s digital business is complex and dynamic. It's important to develop the process of a corporate pulse that identifies where the passion, motivation or commitment of the organization lies, and who embodies it. 

Managing both strategic and operational levels of business goals are challenging for digital leaders and managers, they need to keep optimizing processes for improving organizational effectiveness and maturity.

It’s important to build key sensing processes, listen to customers, and involve them in both idea generation and process implementation, to gain insight and empathy: People-centricity is the core of digitalization. Process is one of the important elements in keeping a business functioning, innovating. The robustness of process means that there is robustness of the business environment, usually enabling innovation, empowering employees, delighting customers, and delivering measurable business results.

Business processes become more dynamic, goal-driven and people-centric for adapting to the changing environment. The total employee/customer experience is typically a complex set or series of interrelated steps, with mechanisms for "sensing" the external customer environment and "sensing" the internal employee environment for making constant adjustment and optimization.

A "business process" evokes the notion of inputs, to manage the known from flowing: No question processes are at the core of business and the competitive advantage. In order to improve business coherence, intelligence, and resilience, it’s also important to do comprehensive process analysis - what is done, what is needed, describe the problem, and what can be done.

An organization with fine-tuned lightweight business processes allows information and idea flow, harnesses cross-functional communication, and mass collaboration, refine them into multifaceted business value, improve business competency and create business synergy.

Robust processes may take out of box thinking, one needs to step outside the process domain to think about robustness: Business processes become more dynamic, goal-driven and people-centric for adapting to the changing environment. The process oriented perspective enables the business management to make system optimization, process streamlining, cost reduction, business lubrication, innovation enhancement, etc. 

So the robustness of process means that there is robustness of loyal users, robustness of engaging employees, robustness of partnership, usually enabling innovation, harnessing changes, and producing measurable business results consistently.

In face of increasing pace of changes and frequent disruptions, organizations today cannot be organized only using the mechanistic paradigm that resulted in bureaucracies. They need to improve business fluidity, flexibility, and overall organizational fit by continually tuning underlying structures and processes, to improve business agility and maturity.

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Innate

It takes - immense amount of time, hard work to- develop talent. Can we evoke- imaginative thoughts, shape innovative mindset, discover, develop - unique competency, continually?

We all have -

some innate strength,

a set of talents;

when people understand -

their raw intelligence,

their gift to -

the world,

they can be-

themselves,

in the truest sense,

authentically.


People need to-

live a fulfilling life,

self-reflect -

who they are,

ponder deeper about-

who they want to be;

they don’t need to -

compare themselves to-

anyone else.

but be themselves,

coherently.


Hidden talent is-

like seeds,

full of potential,

latent energy;

are we able to -

articulate what-

constitutes “talent”

clearly;

what is innate,

what is learned?

What can be trained,

what cannot,

objectively?

When we match -

people’s innate talent to-

make accomplishment,

the learning curve isn't -

so steep to -

scare them away. 

It takes -

immense amount of time,

 hard work to-

develop talent,

diligently.

Can we evoke-

imaginative thoughts,

shape innovative mindset,

discover, develop -

unique competency,

continually?

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Initiateinnovativeinfluence

For global citizens who live in today's knowledge economy, the good time comes if you are a relentless learner, a persuasive communicator, a knowledge expert or an advanced influencer.

Influence is the cognitive ability to understand; communication skill to inspire and persuade, or “can do'' attitude to motivate. Regardless of which stage you are at the professional growth cycle, forethoughtful leaders or professionals should continue to learn, innovate or coach to deepen their influence.

Influence is made via envisioning, inspiring, bridging, encouraging others toward your vision by communicating in depth and breadth: Leadership is an influence, insight and inspiration are mutually reinforced with each other to deepen leadership influence. Inspirational leaders or professionals make an influence by connecting the mind or touching the heart. We are at the most creative status when we get inspired, inspiration is a feeling that is more transient; it awakens us to new possibilities by allowing us to transcend the ordinary experiences, personal limitations to something bigger, exciting, more purposeful. To make a positive influence is to overcome psychological vulnerability, instill optimistic energy, share thoughts and exemplify attitude and behavior.

In order to influence others in a constructive way, people present differentiated competency, build solid character that displays high levels of ethics, responsibility, integrity, and empathy. When people can't formulate their insight with accuracy and they can't communicate that insight effectively and objectively, they often lack the power of influence. Everyone has a voice and every voice carries weight. There are things you can do to increase the likelihood of inspiration occurring. From a leadership perspective, influence can be used to define a good leader who has a vision and influence to motivate a team of people moving forward step-wisely.

Influence is made via asserting, to present ideas via confidence, persuasion and expertise: Every profession and role has its unique influence in the world, influence and persuasion are so closely linked they are probably the same thing. Being persuasive is an important professional quality based on the courage to influence, confidence to assert, knowledge to understand, communication to build trust, wisdom to negotiate. It is important to identify and close the gap between knowledge and insight in order to make long-lasting influence. To be persuasive means to be able to shape other people's views or opinions towards one's own views or perspectives. It allows digital leaders and professionals to pursue their vision, influence others, and apply their skills and expertise to their greatest effect.

With high velocity and hyperconnectivity, people and organizations are becoming more interdependent with each other. Influence is made via negotiating & exchanging, to get others’ see your point of view, make tradeoffs, enforce trust, harness changes, etc. To reach the state of knowledge proficiency and practice expert power to amplify influence, it’s important to build professional competency that requires character, determination, persistence, discipline, dedication and practice in the present and a continuum.

Influence is made via rationalizing, logic and reasoning; data and statistics: With exponential growth of information and abundant knowledge, influence should be made via logic and reasoning; data and statistics; make influence via information based communication. One of the important digital mantras to foster communication is that “let the data do the talking,” to advocate fact-based communication. Build rapport, motivate and inspire others, provide effective feedback, present your ideas or vision via quality information, statistics, and strong logic, persuasively.

The insightful leaders have the ability to influence peers as they undertake a broad range of crucial decisions involving the issues such as strategy, branding, finance, talent management, etc. They should understand how to influence via cognitive intelligence, positive psychology, empathetic communication, etc. They have the ability to reflect, become both creative and critical in enforcing cross boundary communication & collaboration.

For global citizens who live in today's knowledge economy, the good time comes if you are a relentless learner, a persuasive communicator, a knowledge expert or an advanced influencer; the worst time comes if you dislike the change or learning, lack of good judgment, only get lost in the information ocean with a lot of struggling. Keep envisioning, learning, attempting to make influence by uniting or connecting with others, be mindful and get things done in a harmonized way.

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Illustratearticulation

The broader you view, the deeper, you understand, the better you can - uncover linguistic logics, articulate true meanings, clarify the world of - difference, insightfully.

The world is -

the blend of -

diverse thoughts,

dynamic changes,

diluted viewpoints;

communication is-

the bridge between -

thoughts and words

Can you clarify thoughts,

express with words,

persuade others,

articulately?



There are -

gaps, friction, conflicts,

all over the place;

communications are-

the tool to-

lubricate relationships,

build trust,

harmonize difference;

can you express-

the meaning,

contextually;

interpreting issues,

without getting lost-

in translation,

contextually?

The ability of -

cognitive mind is -

the willingness to -

seek out -

fresh knowledge,

gain in-depth understanding,

articulate thoughts with -

strong logic,

in language, clearly;

address ignorance, assumptions

accurately;

interpret, clarify

across a range of -

knowledge,

fluently.


Inspire, motivate, ,

persuade, negotiate,

can you initiate -

empathetic communications,

related to the audience,

articulately?

The broader,

you view,

the deeper,

you understand,

the better you can -

uncover linguistic logics,

articulate true meanings,

clarify the world of -

difference, insightfully.

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Initiateinnovationgrc

The flavor of GRC practices depends on the nature of the business and the level of the organizational maturity.

Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must have the agility to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals. The important characteristics of digitalization are over-complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity.

Hence, GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) becomes more critical than ever. Here's the context; how should GRC programs be approached? Should technology be a driver? Can you achieve any level of GRC without automation? Can you achieve any level of GRC without people? What is the real driver of GRC? Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in the right direction and achieve expected business results. Here are the multiple perspectives of shaping a strategic boardroom with digital acumen.

Initiate Innovation Governance

Initiateinnovationgovernance Innovation is about taking alternative ways to do things. Statistically, innovation management has a considerably low percentage of success rate. There are both learning curves and barriers on the way. Innovation governance should include how to monitor the pulse of innovation including idea generation, prioritization and risk management. It’s important to clarify innovation purposes, strategies, processes, practices, oversee innovation variety and velocity, steer and sustain innovation to manage risks and maximize its business values.

InitiativesofBoDs The business environment becomes so volatile and uncertain, governance is to establish a consensus of what is normal for your organization; manage exceptions as they arise; update your consensus of normal as the organization changes. There’s a correlation between corporate governance and business performance, and there's a clear connection between bad governance and poor performance.

Initiativesofgovernance Organizations across the vertical sectors have different focal points, and they are at the different stages of the business development, growth cycle. Thus, there are different types of governance needed depending on where the piece of work sits on a spectrum.

Innovation In the rapidly evolving businesses and economic systems, innovation is about moving forward. In any business, if you are not moving forward, you’re moving backward.

There is no standing still. Innovation is one of the most differentiated business capabilities to create unique value by producing great products/services to solve problems alternatively. Innovation management overall has a very low success rate. Innovation success depends on many factors such as talent, process, resource, etc. Strong governance encourages creativity and enhances innovation disciplines.


Initiatives of governance We can't and won't be able to predict or manage every turn or twist of the business. It’s about setting up governance initiatives in an organization for identifying common risks which various stakeholders have to deal with in the organization. It’s important to provide invaluable views, rules, methods, and address the different aspects of governance. Governance is neither linear nor single dimensional nowadays, and it should be assessed in an enterprise more holistically.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with 10000+ blog postings 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.



The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Slideshare Presentation


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The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Introduction


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter 1 Introduction: The Digital Board's Composition Inquiries


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter II Introduction: The Digital Board's Digital Inquiries


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As": Chapter III Introduction: The Digital Board's Strategy Inquiries


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter IV Introduction: The Digital Board's IT Inquiries


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter V Introduction: The Digital Board's Leadership Inquiries

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Initiativesofambidexterity

Building an evolving ambidextrous organization is to ensure that the business is complex enough to act intelligently and nimble enough for driving changes promptly.

When jumping into the diverse, ambiguous, and dynamic “VUCA” digital new normal, business leaders need to envision and focus forward; judge the upcoming curves and obstacles on the path to go digital with unpredictable outcomes. 

An ambidextrous organization can strike the right balance of harnessing innovation and improving efficiency by separating the exploitation of the existing methods and technologies from the exploration of disruptive innovation. Business leaders are open to, conscious of, and feel empowered to act upon change dynamics and improve organizational agility and maturity.

It’s about balancing physical organizational hierarchy and virtual cross functional interaction, developing a hybrid structure to improve business ambidexterity: Digital organizations are like the living system which has a dynamic nature and hybrid structure, with significant growth potential. Every business is a system which exists in an expanded business ecosystem. Either within the system or between the systems, certain levels of structure exist, otherwise, the interactions between organizational systems become chaotic and the system will start to break down. A hybrid organizational structure and process management can bring greater awareness of the intricacies and the systemic value of organizational processes, technologies, people dynamics, resource allocation, etc.

As the pervasiveness of an organization’s digitization journey increases, running an ambidextrous organization requires the balance of leadership & management; “old experiences” and “new ways to do things,” with the “listening and telling, “ “learning and doing” iterative continuum. Companies today must take the hybrid digital management practices to enable the seamless collaboration by mixing both virtual platform and physical interactions, encouraging broader conversations and interactions within its business ecosystem, increasing business agility and flexibility.

It’s about enhancing an iterative change and problem-solving continuum: The organizational boundaries are blurred nowadays, in order to overcome change fricion and improve organizational changeability, the hierarchy must balance the freedoms, responsibilities of the functional subsystems, total business system and enforce vertical accountability. So many companies pursue the “hybrid truth”- stability & dynamism by managing two separative, but coherent delivery modes. One focuses on the operational management responsibility for supporting; the other drives transformative changes boldly.

Digital is all about the rapid changes, blurred territories, expanded business horizons. The highly responsive digital organizations have to be solid enough to give some sort of meaning and open enough to its environment and respond to changes dynamically. Organizational leaders should motivate people to be well prepared, understand the learning curves, shape the macro-view which is mainly to know what to do, and micro-view which is mainly to know how to do it, improve business agility, truly make change happen, and solve real problems effectively.

It’s about building an inclusive workforce following the set of good principles and playing by the updated rules: It’s the hybrid, extended modern working environment, Organizations use social platforms, collaboration, sentimental analytics tools to communicate, learn, grow, engage diverse and intellect minds in brainstorming and co-solving problems, encourage the broader conversation and interaction with its business ecosystem and social value chain, developing human capital in terms of capacity building, strength enhancement.

Employee engagement and empowerment are important to build workforce competency. Today’s digital workforce has to continue learning and keep updating their skills and build their professional competency to proactively adapt to changes. The emerging digital computing technology enables the more seamless virtual platform, empower workforce to brainstorm thoughts and ideas, engage customers and partners to share feedback, enforce cross-functional collaboration and dot-connecting innovation.

It’s important to strike the right balance, deal with management paradox effectively: With “VUCA” new normal, there are many concepts that seem to be opposite, indeed, they are complementary to keep the world balanced such as creativity and process, personalization and standardization, etc. The paradox is the result of two opposing truths existing side by side, which can be both right. The best practice to deal with paradoxes is to understand complex situations and solve problems innovatively. It means balancing powerful, often paradoxical, priorities while delivering meaningful and invaluable results.

Operation is inside-the-box, and innovation is outside-the-box. Hence, organizations indeed need both, and in fact, cannot really exist without healthy leverage of both. The greater the efficiency of an organization, the greater the need is for creativity to maintain high performance in the long run. The best practice to deal with management paradoxes is to strike the right balance, no silo thinking, but take a holistic management discipline to manage the digital continuum with the nature of paradox innovatively.

As the pervasiveness of digitization journey increases, building an evolving ambidextrous organization is to ensure that the business is complex enough to act intelligently and nimble enough for driving changes promptly. Companies today must take the hybrid management practices to harness cross-functional communication and collaboration, increase business flexibility, and take all necessary actions without procrastination to improve, innovate, and strike the right balance of accelerating performance today and unlocking performance of tomorrow.

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Illustratebrightness

People like-brightness, fear darkness, because-brightness reminds us of -sunshine, love, optimism..

The world is -

the mix of -

truth & myth,

yin & yang,

“being bright” -

is the view of-

looking for -

the best,

coming with -

a positive mentality,

impressive appearance,

influential competency.


Can you think of -

the bright side,

come up with -

brighter ideas,

all the time?

Are you part of -

natural scene to brighten-

the surroundings,

brilliantly?

People like-

brightness,

fear darkness,

because-

brightness reminds us of -

sunshine, love, optimism;

bright people are-

inclusive, confident,

influential with-

positive mentality,

strong character,

delightful personality,

 to attract -

the best of the best.

like magnet. 

Professional brightness has-

traits of-

value judgment,

intellectual curiosity,

mindfulness,

universal love..

focus on -

growth;

presents wisdom,

to overcome shadows,

in people’s minds,

soothe pains,

in their hearts.

Isn’t brightness-

enlightening our world,

unbelievably?

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InitiativesofBoDs

 The purpose of running a digital corporate board is to direct the organization in the right direction.

The business environment becomes so volatile and uncertain, governance is to establish a consensus of what is normal for your organization; manage exceptions as they arise; update your consensus of normal as the organization changes. There’s a correlation between corporate governance and business performance, and there's a clear connection between bad governance and poor performance. 

Corporate boards play a significant role in governance enhancement and performance monitoring. Organizations need to evaluate its corporate board effectiveness, continue to check whether their governance model is out of date, and how to develop the best and next practices for improving governance maturity.

The most powerful tool of a Board of Director is the capacity to ask good questions for verifying, clarifying, and improving governance effectiveness: Strong governance at the corporate level requires thinking, asking questions, and collecting quality information. That is not the act of rubber stamping! Every corporate board decision is particular to the objectives, circumstances and corporate board dynamics. Asking good and pertinent questions is critical for governing changes so the directors would have to be able to quickly assess any numbers and facts they are given, against applicable benchmarks and detect relevant hints for further questioning or confirmation.

Many times governance fails because the wrong people were making decisions in the wrong way. To improve decision effectiveness and governance disciplines, BoDs need to catch the deep insight into how things work by analyzing the aggregates. Insight BoDs enforce a strong governance system which defines how decisions are made: when, by whom, and how, ensuring individual decisions and behaviors comply with collective values, strategic business goals and objectives.

Initiate step-wise governance by assessing prioritization-strategy, risk-monitoring approach: If a corporate board is to fulfill its fiduciary responsibilities to its stakeholders, it needs to spend time on strategy oversight, risk enhancement, performance monitoring. To improve corporate board effectiveness, the key point is to prepare crucial issues, collect information and feedback, better to invest the time up front to address concerns and achieve a workable agreement. An information savvy board agenda should be focused on the performance progress toward the goals, targets, schedules., etc, of the value maximization and business performance acceleration.

Corporate boards need to understand how to delegate, which means articulate what is delegated and then monitor, not micromanage what is delegated. The governance system is hierarchically defined by a purpose, and enforced by intelligent business processes. A well set up governance system would have the corporate board involved in developing, setting and monitoring the companies' strategic planning, orchestrating strategy development across the enterprise to achieve high performance results consistently.

Innovation governance on the board level needs to advocate, steer, and sustain innovation: Innovation is a differentiated business competency. Over governance perhaps stifles innovation. Under-governance increases risk of innovation management. Thus, corporate boards need to deal with the poor governance and eliminate all the bureaucratic regulations that might cause business stagnation. Improving GRC disciplines involve updating rules, optimizing processes, developing, and scaling up new governance practices. This ensures that innovations will be supported by all stakeholders and overseen by corporate boards.

Leadership and accountability must go hand in hand. The corporate board plays a significant role in taking ultimate accountability to shareholders for the performance and conformance of the organization. It’s important to enforce effective innovation governance by tiering innovations and the innovative culture to the organization's strategy; assessing innovation investment return on investment, enhancing open door listening, harnessing transparency, enforcing accountability, and monitoring performance accordingly.

The purpose of running a digital corporate board is to direct the organization in the right direction. The corporate BoD’s plays a significant role in leadership exemplarity and practices for overseeing information/innovation/strategy management agenda, improving its differentiated value across the company, enforcing GRC disciplines and monitoring its performance continuously.

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