Welcome to our blog, the digital brainyard to fine tune "Digital Master," innovate leadership, and reimagine the future of IT.

The magic “I” of CIO sparks many imaginations: Chief information officer, chief infrastructure officer , Chief Integration Officer, chief International officer, Chief Inspiration Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Influence Office etc. The future of CIO is entrepreneur driven, situation oriented, value-added,she or he will take many paradoxical roles: both as business strategist and technology visionary,talent master and effective communicator,savvy business enabler and relentless cost cutter, and transform the business into "Digital Master"!

The future of CIO is digital strategist, global thought leader, and talent master: leading IT to enlighten the customers; enable business success via influence.

Monday, September 4, 2017

The Monthly “CIO Master” Book Tuning: The Digital Ready CIOs Sep, 2017

10:02 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

The nimble digital technologies and abundance of information change how we think, live, and run always-on and always connected digital businesses today.
Compare to the other executive positions, the CIO role continues to be shaken up, refined, reinvented and re-energized. The magic “I” of the CIO title sparks many imaginations and modern CIOs need to wear different hats and play multiple roles. Here is a set of blogs to brainstorm digital CIOs’ multitude of digital leadership.

          

  The Digital Ready CIOs 
How Can CIOs Earn Their Stripe as Transformative Digital Leaders? With fierce competition and overwhelming growth of information, IT plays a critical role in building the business competency. Thus, the expectations for CIO have grown multifold, and they are expected to be visionary and change agent for business strategy and growth. There are different types of organizations at the different cycles in their maturity, the requirements of Chief Information Officer are also vast and varied. In practice, how should IT leaders shift their role from the tactical manager to the strategic business executive? And how can CIO earn their stripe as transformative digital leaders?
Digital IT Leadership Brainstorming: The “Paranoid” CIOs are Not Weak  The nimble digital technologies and abundance of information change how we think, live, and run always-on and always connected digital businesses today. The world is becoming smaller every day and as the consequence, every successful business has to sooner or later go beyond borders. It brings both significant opportunities and unprecedented risks for running the advanced digital organization. Thus, the CIO has become the critical link to run the successful business. IT leaders need to bridge the chasm between “the old’ way to do things and the new way to think and prioritize how to run a high-performing IT. CIOs have to spin many plates at the same time, should they be paranoid, and are paranoid CIOs perceived as weak??


CIOs as Digital Masters: How to “Right the Wrongs” in Digital Paradigm Shift? IT plays a significant role in the digital transformation of the business because information is the lifeblood of the digital organization and technologies are the disruptive force of digital innovation. The IT department provides guidance, direction, and business solutions in the application and adoption of information technology solutions in enablement of business objectives and catalyzing business growth! CIOs as IT leaders need to be able to recognize the struggles of the company by understanding the business beyond IT. The digital journey is perhaps not always going so smoothly, there are bumps and curves, roadblocks and pitfalls on the way. CIOs as digital masters: Can you predict what could go wrong, and how to “right the wrongs” in the digital paradigm shift.


CIOs as “Chief Initiative Officer”: How to Take Initiatives on Change, Innovation, and Digital Transformation: The magic “I” in the CIO’s titles implies so many things: “Chief Information Officer,” “Chief Innovation Officer,” “Chief Improvement Officer,” “Chief Influence Officer,” "Chief Insight Officer," etc. In practice, the CIO role should transform from a reactive IT manager to a proactive digital leader; from a controller to a change agent Thus, the CIO as “Chief Initiative Officer” has become necessary or even imperative to manage strategic digital alignment and orchestration from concept to post-implementation of all initiatives from the C-level to the front lines, focus on changes and innovation. CIOs are also quite eager and enthusiastic to drive challenging transformation initiatives, to reinvent IT as the information hub and the business growth engine.
CIOs as Chief Insight Officers: Three Critical Steps to Move UP IT Maturity: Digitalization disrupts not only the business boundary but also the industry boundary. Today’s digital organization is more as an organic living thing thriving at the expanded business ecosystem. Never before has IT and business been so closely tied together, never before has technology moved more quickly and missteps have larger trajectory impacts on every aspect of the business. IT has to move up its maturity from a reactive support function to a strategic business partner and even a digital game change. More specifically, here is the three level of IT maturity?

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with about #3900 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.



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Innovating Digital Workplace with Quotes to Celebrate the Labor Day II

9:58 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Develop talent for tomorrow, rather than just hire for yesterday.

 Digital organizations are always on, interdependent and hyperconnected, and people are always the most important asset in any organization before, today, and future. With digital paradigm shift, compared to a traditional industrial workforce, the digital workplace is more open to stimulate creativity; and the digital workforce is a new breed with a multitude of varieties - multi-generations, multi-cultures, and multi-devices. Here is a set of quotes as the “magic hammers” to break down the multitude of career ceilings facing many of talent people today for celebrating the Labor Day.


  • “Every authentic leader needs to mind certain gaps and bridge the cognitive difference.”


  • “A transformation often needs to break down the outdated rules, and a transaction is following the rules.”


  • "Develop talent for tomorrow, rather than just hire for yesterday.”


  • “Organizational democracy will begin to become a fundamental management practice to update the hierarchical command-control systems.”


  • “Creativity is a high level of thinking and intelligence.”


  • “Digital means flow: data flow, information flow, knowledge flow, and mind flow.”


  • “Digital age of business and world shall move up from apathy, to sympathy, to empathy.”


  • “Digital fit” should be first defined as “mind fit,” and then following with attitude fit and behavior fit.”
  • “Digital creates the new demand and dimension for global leadership mind-set.”


  • “Digital leadership must be extremely visionary, mindful, creative, empathetic, generous, conscious, passionate, and humble.”


Digital workplace is more flexible and productive, propelled by technology to affect where we work, how we work and at what time we choose to work. The future of work will remain “imperfect.” Still, empowered by the latest digital technology and omnipresent information, digital business reach becomes global, distance disappears and connectivity increases, the future of work is indeed more fun, purposeful and intelligent.

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Three Aspects to Run a People-Centric Digital Organization

9:53 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Digital organizations are all about information savvy, adaptation, people-centricity, high-performance, and speed.
Digital becomes the very fabric of high-performing businesses, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high-mature digital organizations today. One of the key determinants of whether an organization can move to the digital new normal is the digital maturity of its people. People have to be ready for moving to a fluid structure, hyper-connected & dynamic state and get used to the complex digital ecosystem. Here are three aspects to run a people-centric digital organization.


People-centric Change Management: Digital is all about change with increasing speed. Change Management is about mentoring the human side of the business through profound, unsettling change. At the organizational level, people-centric change capability is different from the mere sum of individual abilities and skills of its members. Because organizational structure, processes or technologies they level all have the impact on the changeability of the organization. Building people-centric changeability is a prerequisite for dynamic digital strategy execution. The change capability of the business is built via alignment of people, process, and technology. People-centric change management capability is built via the top executive generous sponsorship, the middle-management dedicated execution, and the bottom line workers' fully supports. Many people across the organization are either directly involved in contributing to the change effort, or they have the opportunity to participate and choose to hold back but know they had the chance to contribute. If top management truly believes that their personnel is the true measure of their company’s worth, then they’ll hopefully do their utmost to make sure that personnel is educated, accepting and eventually invested in that change themselves.  Develop change capability in those who'll help drive and deliver the change, consider also the capability or ability of those impacted by the change to handle its impacts; their resilience will be massively increased if they are involved, included and educated as to what they should expect. At the high mature digital organizations, change management goes hand in hand with strategy management. And digital transformation is the leapfrogging scenario with accumulated steps of changes.


People-centric innovation: Digital is the era of innovation, innovation is change, but change is not always innovation. Innovation happens at the intersection of people and technology. From the business innovation perspective, innovation is about how to transform novel ideas and achieve its commercial values. Customers should be the center of innovation management and they are the major focus for innovation process and accomplishment. Customers should always be involved, it is not a question of whether the customer is right or not, it is more of whether you are truly and proactively listening to their needs and gaining a deep understanding of the motivational construct of the customer through empathy, and figure out what they will likely want next. People-centric innovation means that you have to involve customers and different stakeholders, listen to their feedback, involve them in both idea generation and process implementation, to gain insight and empathy, to take different propositions and approaches to a problem or a new interpretation, to ultimately solve the innovation puzzles by differences between what is verbalized, what is prioritized and acted out and what is technically feasible.
People-centric information management: Digital means exponential growth of information and the abundance of knowledge. Still, either information or knowledge is the means to achieve business value, not the end itself. To improve its effectiveness and maturity, IT needs to be run as a people-centric organization to enchant customers, empower employees, evolve business partners, invite all sorts of business partners for feedback, and ensure the right people getting the right information at the right time to make the right decisions. The disruption of IT will continue, and IT skill gap is the reality. IT talent needs to have both technical and business skills, it should take a preponderant importance in the coming years to make sustainable IT- business relationship and build a people-centric organization. Digital IT organization has to go a step further from IT-business alignment to IT-business integration and IT-customer alignment.  Digital is the age of people and options, it provides the opportunity to think the new way to do things, run in a very entrepreneur fashion to solve business problems effectively, build the trust relationship between IT and business, so it forces IT leaders to get really creative in running a people-centric IT organization.

Digital organizations are all about information savvy, adaptation, people-centricity, high-performance, and speed. It provides a more intensive and effective working environment enabling the organization to get all the right people with the right capability in the right position to solve the right problems from right angles all at once, and ultimately achieve high-performance business results and maximize the full digital potential of the business.

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Sunday, September 3, 2017

The Monthly “Unpuzzling Innovation” Book Tuning: The Key Traits in Innovators Sep. 2017

10:53 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation.

 Digital is the age of innovation. And innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. Talking of innovation is not new nowadays, everybody, every organization now is talking about innovation. It's been at or near the top of the business or economics agenda for a long time. However, there’re a lot of confusions about innovation and there is no magic sauce to guarantee its success. Back to basic, what is innovation, the more you look into this topic, the more difficult to give a definition of innovation, as it is such a broad topic? One of the good definitions of innovation is: "to transform the novel ideas into commercial success.” In essence, innovation is, "intentional novelty bringing sustainable benefit."

  The Key Traits in Innovators


Five “P” Factors in Digital Innovation Management Innovation can happen everywhere, it is our gift as humans, a great deal of what defines us as humans actually, whether there are new products, services, solutions, new sounds and music, the new way of reading and publishing, new ways of educating future of generations, etc. One of the good definitions of innovation is: "to transform the novel ideas into commercial success.” In essence, innovation is, "intentional novelty bringing sustainable benefit." Different organizations have their own “innovation strength.” The innovation-generating organization depends more heavily on its technological knowledge and market capabilities to develop and commercialize innovations. Here are five “P” traits in digital innovating management.
            
Three "S" Traits in Innovators Innovators are the rare breed, but creativity is within us and innovators are among us. There are many traits in innovators. Innovators whose work continues to move forward and, in turn, is profitable to self and others think differently than those who are traditional thinkers. They see the old problems from different angles and find different solutions. Here are five “S” traits in innovators.


Three “D” Traits in Innovators Being innovative is a state of mind which is more important than doing any type of innovation. Being able to engage in the successful creation of innovations is a very hard work and does include a lot of deep thinking, observation, inquiries, unusual connections, experimenting, skills, abilities and hardworking. Innovativeness is clearly a competency at both individual and corporate level. The question is how to identify innovative traits and build your creativity strength, either at the individual or organizational level. Here are three D-traits in innovators.


Three “T” Traits in Innovators  Innovators are simply those who can think differently and whose work continues to move forward and, in turn, is profitable to self and others. Innovators can see the old or emergent problems from every direction and discover different solutions. Innovators see possibility in the world when most people only see the way that they have been told. Here are three “T” traits in innovators.


Three “F” Factors in Digital Innovation  Digital transformation represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. There is no doubt innovation is becoming more important whereas technology becomes more advanced in the digital era. In fact, the speed of change is expedited, so does the speed of innovation. There are many key factors to lead the success of digital innovations. Here are three “F” factors in digital innovation. ?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with about 3900+ 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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Envision Digital Workplace and Workforce with Quotes to Celebrate the Labor Day

10:49 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

A digital workplace is all about people-centricity, empathy, innovation, agility and high-level business maturity.

 Digital organizations are always on, inter-dependent and hyper connected, people are always the most important asset in any organization before, today, and future. However, compared to a traditional industrial workforce, the digital workplace is more open to stimulate creativity; and the workforce is a new breed with a multitude of varieties - multi-generations, multi-cultures, and multi-devices.
  • A digital workplace is all about people-centricity, empathy, innovation, agility and high-level business maturity.
  • The most effective digital workplace is one where collaboration and sharing are the norms.


  • Building an ideal digital workplace won’t happen overnight, and organizational structure optimization takes planning, experimenting and scaling up.
  • People are always the weakest link in organizations. One of the key determinants of whether an organization can move to new digital structures is the development level of the people.


  • A digital workplace inspires discovery, autonomy, and mastery.
  • The "work is what you accomplish, not where you go" shift is unstoppable, it will lead to greater autonomy and "self-generated" engagement.  
  • The multidimensional digital effects provide impressive advantages in term of the speed of delivery, the quality of information for decision making, and the wisdom of digital workforce.
  • Being a digital professional doesn't just mean the face you post at work or the talk you have in the meeting. It’s more about the consistent image you deliver about being who you are or the mentality you have in or out of working hours. It becomes a life attitude.


  • Learning is multidimensional, dynamic, interactive and integrated.
  • Employee engagement takes the mind, heart, and hands unification.

Digital workplace is more flexible and productive, propelled by technology to affect where we work, how we work and at what time we choose to work. The future of work will remain “imperfect.” Still, empowered by the latest digital technology and omnipresent information, digital business reach becomes global, distance disappears and connectivity increases, the future of work is indeed more fun, purposeful and intelligent.

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CIOs as “Chief Insight Officer: Why Was IT an Afterthought in Some Organizations?

10:44 PM  Pearl Zhu  1 comment

IT shouldn’t be the afterthought of the business because technology is often the disruptive force.

 More and more IT organizations are transforming from the back end internal support function into front office revenue generator and information hub; from the reactive order taker to the proactive changing agent; from "doing more with less" efficiency-driven to "doing more with innovation" people-centric; and from IT-business alignment to IT-customer alignment and IT-business engagement. However, in many traditional organizations which were stuck at the lower level of maturity, IT is still an afterthought, IT is just a service provider, their strategy execution falls apart because it's too late for a strong technical solution to be implemented in time, and when the problem happened, IT is often blamed by lagging behind the changes. So, what are the root causes of those outdated perceptions? And how can digital CIOs turn around the situation, make IT the integral component of business strategy, and rejuvenate IT to get digital ready?


IT leaders do not have a seat at the big table: IT is the afterthought of strategy management because many CIOs still don’t have the seat at the big table. The importance of the CIO having an active seat at the "C-table" (& board interaction as appropriate) is to build trust, share the technological vision for the business growth, brainstorm the IT role in digital transformation, develop a transparent relationship with peers. Meaningful exchanges and engagement will deliver competitive advantage. A foresightful IT leader can proactively drive changes, rather than being pushed to change. Thus, most forward-thinking organizations today are looking for strategic or transformational CIOs in leading their digital transformation journey. The variety of industry research shows that it is not just Boards, but also the C-suite is hungry for the CIO to step up with their knowledge of the business and proficiency of information management. CIOs need to speak business language. Information and insight are just two of the big reasons for being at the table. Being transformational or being strategic goes beyond skills only, it is about leadership influence, critical thinking, creativity, ethics, global perspective, cultural awareness, communication skills, and continuous improvement trait.
Communication is not clear between the participants in managing changes and implementing strategies: IT often becomes the afterthought if the business management can’t communicate clearly about the business problems need to be solved. IT is developing a different solution than the other department had in mind. Sometimes, it becomes all IT fault for delivering the wrong, even if it was what was requested. To improve communication effectiveness, IT leaders need to communicate with business executives for different reasons via different styles. There is a need for formal communications paths; there must be a level of rapport or trust between executives that can only be built through informal communications. There must also be regular, formal status communications, and informal conversations are critical in making sure that formal communications aren't misinterpreted, and become more productive.  
Non-IT personnel doesn't understand IT: Many business leaders or professionals lack the fundamental understanding of IT, for them, IT is either just the help desk or some fancy gadgets. Part of this “illiteracy” of management, is exactly what drives their own frustrations with IT but an “unwillingness” to acknowledge it. Some IT organizations are still running in the dark with puzzles about value, cost, risks, constraints. IT is an afterthought because other business executives may not feel they are part of it. When asking super busy business executives or personnel learn more about IT, they will definitely ask: "What’s in me?" How can IT help them do their job better, how can their "hard-learned" IT knowledge improve their management effectiveness? Gone are the days where the CIO is given a target and a budget and he/she executes. Nowadays, CIO and other CXOs should stand side by side with the goals of creating new and innovative products.  If IT strategic goals are derived from the business strategic planning process then all key players are more likely to be truly engaged, aligned and accountable, make IT more transparent and mitigate risks thoroughly. Transparency makes IT stronger and better at what it does and being perceived as change/innovation agent. Beyond that, CIOs are top-level officers, they must take the initiative to create their own training path in management and emerging technologies. Then when the CIO is at executive team meetings, he/she can offer those creative ideas that give organizations whatever competitive advantage is possible.


IT shouldn’t be the afterthought of the business because technology is often the disruptive force behind digital innovation and information helps to forecast the emergent business trend and customers’ need. Technology is pervasive, Business Transformation or business initiatives today nearly always involve some forms of technology implementation and information deployment. Though IT is not always the first thought of the business, IT surely needs to be put on the top priority agenda of the business executives and keeps sparkling innovation and catalyzing change in their organization.

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