CIOs as "Chief Instrument Officer": Three Aspects to Run IT with Digital Balance

CIOs need to lead the department with the balanced mindset, activities, and speed so that every level of the organization has great working relationships with the IT teams.

Organizations large and small are heading to digital transformation; IT has been pushed out of its comfort zone as back office and become a frontrunner in such a business transformation. Thus, IT cannot just keep “We always do things like that” mentality, and explore the new possibilities. IT has to strike the right balance of achieving operational excellence from the transactional perspective and making a leap of digitalization from the transformational lens. Here are three aspects to run IT with digital balance.

The balance of “old experience” and “new way to do things”: With the fast speed of changes and overwhelming growth of information; with on-demand service model and emergent digital technology trend, the vendors offering cloud and hosted solutions that business can utilize directly with almost no IT support, IT should feel a competitive pressure, and IT has to speed up to adapt to changes relentlessly. CIOs need to take business problems, find solutions for them, increase value propositions, simplify operations and be better partners with the rest of the organizations. More importantly, IT has to strike the right balance of “old experience,” and ”new way to do things,” develop the next practices, not just get stuck at the best practices, some of which have outdated at the digital age. The digital new normal drives IT to run more like the business because IT can no longer feel like it has a monopoly on delivering services to the business, it has to become the strategic business partner and the business solution provider with continuous delivery, focusing on integration, rather than re-inventing the wheel all the time. The new way to run IT is to encourage “out-of-the-box” thinking, develop transformative business solutions as the catalyst that drives changes in their organization.

The balance of “learning and doing”: Traditional IT organizations often keep their hands full and are overloaded by fixing immediate technique issues. With rapid business changes and continuous digital disruptions, the pervasiveness of an organization's digitization journey increases, the emergence of potential opportunities for exploiting digitization is likely to follow a non-linear pattern or exponential speed. Besides keeping the lights on as always, IT has to learn the “new trick” for digitizing their businesses and delighting their customers, optimizing their organizational structure, and integrating their business processes. Because the rigid organizational structure stifles innovation, and in many large legacy organizations, there are layers upon layers of bureaucracy ensuring that digital practices will go nowhere. Thus, IT is in the unique position to leverage digital technologies and social platforms for providing a flexible way for employees to learn, share, and collaborate. And the digital tools and apps make learning informal, but more cost-effective and interactive, with the very goals to groom future leaders and foster employee engagement and development.

The balance of stability and change: Change becomes the new normal, however, change is never for its own sake. IT should follow the “balance” principle which means you need to keep the business running forward with steadfast speed, and you have to “rock the boat” accordingly. The digital organization is complex, organizations "become complex," not for their own amusement, they do it to respond to environments more proactively. There are many shades of corporate complexity, some are desired, such as design or connectivity, others are not. The goal of the change is to improve the business competency as well as unlock its performance. Running a “balanced IT” means to strike the balance via managing two separate, but coherent delivery modes, one focuses on the fundamental management responsibility to support business and serve internal customers; but also drive changes by leveraging the pairs of seemly opposite forces: Opportunity vs. risk, logic vs. creativity, analysis vs. synthesis; centralized vs. decentralized control, stability vs. dynamic.

Modern CIOs as digital leaders should rethink how things are done in organizations. The 'reach and range' flexibility that now exists removes barriers that have existed in the past. It is important to run a “balanced IT” for improving IT manageability, reputation, adaptation, and being “novel in finding solutions.” The priority for CIOs is to genuinely position IT as an integral and inseparable part of the business. CIOs need to lead the department with the balanced mindset, activities, and speed so that every level of the organization has great working relationships with the IT teams. IT is the business.  

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The Golden Circle of Innovation Management

Today, at the hyperconnected business ecosystem, innovation can happen anywhere, anytime, expands both horizontally and vertically.

The definition of innovation is simple, to gain benefit by doing something different. Innovation is most wanted changes. In order to survive and thrive in today’s digital environment with the fast pace of changes, innovation is “must have,” not “nice to have” differentiated business capability in running a business today.  Like Change Management, Innovation Management should follow the 'Golden Circle,' starting with the WHY - to clarify the vision and motivation of innovation management, then address the HOW? - the logical scenario and processes are taken to manage innovation, and then WHAT - the quantitative and qualitative business results achieved via innovation at the end.

WHY: Innovation is never for its sake, innovation is coming up with something of value by applying it to a product or process, to either delight customers or engage employees. In the pre-planning stage for innovation scenario, innovation leaders or managers have to keep asking themselves:  Are the innovations you are trying to promote actually relevant to the business now, or in the future, or at all?  Is it cost savings, efficiency, better go to market strategy, improved in supporting new business, etc. Is it an incremental innovation, evolutionary innovation, or breakthrough innovation? Is it a strategic imperative or could it be the distraction for the business to implement its strategy?  Innovation is a buzzword that can easily be misused unless you have a clear goal on what you want to get out of it, and the big WHY about innovation helps to clarify the noble business purpose behind innovation initiatives. Focusing on customer needs should be an easier path to bear the innovation fruit. For every innovation initiative, you should work closely with customers to articulate their important concerns; define the most compelling and unique approach to addressing their needs; analyze the benefits per costs of that approach, and quantify why the chosen approach is better than the competition and alternatives.

HOW: At the business level, innovation is a process and management discipline, and innovation is a critical component of the business strategy. The know-how part of innovation helps to clarify the significant detail about innovation management and the technical component of the innovation management mechanism. Applying discipline to innovation is to figure out how to manage innovation in a structural way. The problem is that many organizations do not set the right conditions for the innovation strategy to occur within, something along the lines of the right people with the right mindset in the right roles doing the right work with the right interdependence. Generally speaking, innovation actions, processes, and tools can be taught to employees, but creativity, originality, insight, ingenuity, etc., can't be taught, they need to be discovered by talented people on their own, with the personalized “know-how” approach.

WHAT: What value can be delivered via innovation initiatives and how to measure it is another great question to clarify innovation value in a quantitative way. All innovation initiatives, hopefully, are started to achieve some business result directly or indirectly. Normally organizations look for KPIs measuring business results generated by innovation efforts. You choose those KPIs by deciding which are seen as critical to making progress in order to deliver more innovations. The innovation indicators vary depending on who is doing the measuring, and how they are measuring, it is contextual. Some factors that could be used to measure innovation score within a company could be resources invested (human and financial), employees motivation, number of initiatives being launched, process KPIs, and organizational innovative culture readiness, or employees’ innovation index, etc.

Today, at the hyperconnected business ecosystem, innovation can happen anywhere, anytime, expands both horizontally and vertically. There are many ‘flavors’ of innovations. Innovation is a crucial component of your strategy and differentiated business advantage. It is always important to gain an in-depth understanding of the golden circle of innovation management, improve its success rate, and achieve high-performance business results.

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Accelerate Digital Transformation via both Hard and Soft Forces

Businesses have to address collective thinking, attitude, balance both the hard and soft elements, enterprise behaviors and move to an outcome-focused, outside-in organization.

Organizations large or small are on their digital transformation journey, although there is no one size fits all solutions to ensure the change success, it is important to take a systematic approach, strike the right balance of “push” and “pull” from multiple directions, and accelerate digital transformation via both hard and soft way.

The hard force to drive digital transformation: The “hard” issue to stifle organizational change and business performance is that the systems, processes, and technologies many organizations are using to manage the business are becoming inefficient or outdated in this rapidly changing world. Digital transformation is inevitable, and often the emergent digital technologies with a high degree of digital convenience are imposing forces of digital disruptions and change drivers. To accelerate change, it is also important that business management has objectivity and humility to realize that their processes or systems are out of date and they need to keep consolidating, modernizing, integrating, innovating, and optimizing. With the advance of digital technologies and tools, organizations can build integrated enterprise platforms and differentiated business competency with faster speed. The digital convergence of devices and services are creating new business models and revenue source as most companies across industries are being forced to become technology companies and run information businesses.

The soft force to catalyze digital transformation: The hard technological forces continually push the organization to reach the tipping point of digitalization. However, if you only take the visible business factors such as process or technology alone as an element of the strategy execution, you may miss the point and head to the troubles, or things will be slow down again after adoption. Because digital transformation has to be expanded in every dimension and permeating into underlying organizational structure and functions. Therefore, soft forces such as leadership, communication, or culture will become the key factors for the success of changes. Organizations also have to tailor their management styles to make these soft business elements well mixed into organizational competency. Interrelational management processes are developed to help reduce tensions, frictions, and business conflicts that arise; interactive business management processes are developed to help communicate objects and concepts with clarity. Change Management is considered as a “soft” management discipline because there is no hard formula to manage changes and change itself keep changing. People have no problem with change! They have problems with uncertainty, risk, and fear. Thus, it is important to build the digital workforce and workplace that change is encouraged, creativity is inspired, and the soft forces to changes are fine-tuned to catalyze digital transformation.

The hard forces of digitization are disruptive and push the organization to adapt to the dynamic environment. But the soft business elements can truly touch the mind and heart, and make change sustainable. To accelerate to the speed of changes, businesses have to address collective thinking, attitude, balance both the hard and soft elements, enterprise behaviors and move to an outcome-focused, outside-in organization.

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 9/8/2017

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking, brainstorming, innovating and sharing.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with 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. Here is the weekly insight about digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

  The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 9/8/2017

• CIOs as Digital Leaders: How to Build a Digital-Ready IT Roadmap IT plays a pivotal role in leading a digital transformation in their organizations because often technology is the disruptive force behind digital innovation and information is the gold mine every forward-thinking organization is digging in. To stay competitive, companies must go beyond just experimenting with some digital technologies and commit to transforming themselves into a fully digital business powerhouse. Therefore, strategic IT leaders have to take the time to build a comprehensive IT roadmap which shows the stepwise transition plan and define more than one way of achieving the goals. It is the set of investments, programs, and schedules that take you from the current state to the target state of the business. For each approach, estimate costs, resources required, timelines, risks involved, and trends.

• The Monthly “Digitizing Boardroom -The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital-Ready Board” Book Tuning: The Digital Fit Boardroom Sep. 2017  Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses toward the right direction and achieve expected business results. 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 Monthly “Unpuzzling Innovation” Book Tuning: The Key Traits in Innovators Sep. 2017: 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."

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

• Envision Digital Workplace and Workforce with Quotes to Celebrate the Labor Day 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.

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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Three “E” Traits in Innovators

Innovative organizations create the environment for providing time, space, and freedom to create, inspire creativity, appreciate originality.

We are all born to be creative, innovativeness is the state of mind. And creativity is most wanted professional quality today. Creativity is both nature and nurtured, you can no longer afford to just talk about creativity and innovation; you must do it and practice it. From innovation management perspective, you have to walk the talk and shape the working environment to inspire the purpose, recognize your innovators, and unleash the genius of your employees. Here are three “E” traits in innovators.

Emotion: There is a new energy that gets created in teams engaged in the innovation, both at an individual and a group level. There is an emotion cycle in an innovation management life cycle! For example, the certain level of conflict or dissatisfaction can spark innovation, participating in innovation leads to self-awareness, self-driven, and self-actualization. Tenacity helps to follow your dream; patience relates to tolerance of risk;, trust helps to build a collaborative team to innovate, and happiness can make innovation more fun etc, they are all positive emotional ingredients to trigger innovation. There is an emotional cycle in an innovation scenario. There is no single emotional impact associated with innovation, it's a whole spectrum of emotion - be passionate to solve problems, be curious to ask questions, be patient to overcome the change; be empathetic to understand the other’s point of view; and be exhilarated to grow and think better ways to do things. Emotions keep people engaging in the thorny journey of innovation, makes people believe they can bring in a lot more to their work than they thought they were capable of.

Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship is often defined as risk taking, and being innovative. The heart of entrepreneurship is about changes because digital means the faster pace of changes. Though motives of entrepreneurs are different, generally speaking, entrepreneurs are driven by doing things more creatively and wish to make great achievement as well. Digital is the age of options, it provides the opportunity for people to think the new way to do things, so it forces digital professionals to be equipped with an entrepreneur’s mindset, to expand their thinking boxes, and get really creative on solving the emergent or old problems in new ways, and figure out which of them makes sense to challenge and then using creativity tools (exploring, divergence, convergence) to arrive at a useful new box. From innovation management perspective, Corporate Entrepreneurship has been recognized as a potentially viable means for promoting and sustaining organizational performance, renewal and corporate competitiveness. The new businesses require innovation, innovation requires fresh ideas, and fresh ideas require Mavericks. Corporate Entrepreneurship is embodying risk taking, proactiveness and radical changes.

Eureka: The ‘Eureka’ moment refers to that joyous exciting moment when what was perplexing and contradictory suddenly falls into place. The eureka moment is that when a valid idea generalization emerges. Creativity happens in both unconscious and conscious level. On a bigger scale, there is the thought that we are creating our experience moment to moment, bringing our reality into existence as we go. When we explore the mental process of acquiring new knowledge through thoughts, experiences, and senses. The actual “thinking” is a conscious or nonconscious effort to reorganize your memories (meanings) and integrate newly acquired knowledge (new meanings) into fresh insight. The conscious effort employs and tries to expand one’s attention span to stay focused on the wide range of meanings (memories) in order to reconcile them into a coherent whole. Innovators do not just reactively wait for the Eureka moment, but proactively practicing creative thinking, discover easy solutions to complex problems, and awaken to exploit the hidden resources that everyone has within her/himself, to be able to get the most out of themselves and those around them.

Innovators are among us. Innovative organizations create the environment for providing time, space, and freedom to create, inspire creativity, appreciate originality. Organizations no matter large or small, all face the unprecedented change, uncertainty, velocity, and accelerated business dynamic, innovation becomes the key differentiator to survive and thrive.

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CIOs as the Digital Visionary: Vision is Not Mirage

Digital leaders have to live and be the vision.

The business world today is dynamic, complex, always on and interdependent, with a high degree of unpredictability. Thus, visionary digital leaders are in demand. A vision re-conceptualizes the future, connects the previously unconnected dream. Vision is not a mirage, vision is to zoom into the future as if it were closer; vision sparks the imagination and opens the mind to new concepts and ideas. It is a clear choice among future scenarios that advocates future trends and promotes certain behaviors. Vision is not a mirage, vision is a future state of being.

Vision perceives where you want to go, and strategy describes how to get there: A clarified vision articulates the destination the organization intends to get and informs the Change Agenda and requires leadership. A vision is an integral part of any company’s strategy. As you cannot plan your strategy if you do not know what your vision for the company is. Vision makes you feel passionate about what is going to happen - the opportunities. Vision is a future state of being, it is a clear choice among future scenarios that promote certain behavior. Vision is critical for today’s digital leaders because organizations nowadays have to step into the uncharted water and blurred business territories due to continuous disruptions and ever-changing business dynamic. Digital leaders need to observe, perceive, and pay attention to the myriad of internal, external, national, or global forces that define and influence the way they do business these days. Unfortunately, many business managers today lose focus of the vision and get stuck at the “keeping the lights on,” and only take care of the immediate problems mentality. Being an effective leader means giving people confidence on where to go and how to get there, supporting them and also stretching them to live to their full potential, both individually and collectively. Vision is not a mirage because digital leaders must empower people to contribute ideas and operate in their giftedness, it is crucial to make a vision as a reality.

Vision is required at any given stage of an organization’s lifespan: Vision is not static, vision can be adjusted with the emergent business property and digital dynamic. Without continuous envisioning of a better future, organizations will become short-sighted, static, and even irrelevant. A vision needs to adapt over time since the world and our competitive environment doesn't stay still. But, the current vision needs to be the principal guide to high-level decision-making and resource allocation. Digital leaders should set the tone to “baking in” the vision into the DNA (culture) and drive change proactively, but also in business structure and processes, to provide for coherence to the organization in order to build up confidence for all stakeholders involved. To realize the vision, vision must be translated into the forward-thinking mindset and personal behavior from leaders to the rest of the organization. Hence, vision is a living thing, it allows leaders to steer their organization in the right direction,  inspire people to think forward and dream bigger, and motivate the team to take action to fulfill the vision and make it the reality.

Vision statements are really what you see at the moment, and may change over time as you grow and learn: In order for a vision statement to be of value, everything in a company ought to flow to and from the vision statement.  If a vision statement exists only on paper, it is useless.

Make vision clear and meaningful so that the organization you are leading know where it’s headed. Vision Statement is a very brief summary to provide guidance about what core to preserve and what future to stimulate progress toward. It must guide people’s decision-making and action. Essentially, the goal of business management is to make the vision into reality. A leader's vision is coherent with his/her organization's vision. With a clear vision, an organization is able to evolve, adapt and innovate, without fear of changes; with a clear strategy, an organization is prepared to effectively and efficiently absorb and accept changes in all its forms. As the vision is the perception of a destination of the journey you want to embark on, but you would need the knowledge to implement, this journey roadmap is "strategy." And the vision statement helps to clarify and adjust the vision accordingly.

Vision is crucial for both individuals and organizations today. Because none of us are stagnant, we are continually discovering who we are and "who" we want our company to be. Digital leaders have to live and be the vision. It follows the wonderful quote, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world." It is important for creating and sustaining the vision and applying it to focus and steer your organization. Vision is neither the mirage nor just a statement, you have to step into it, live with it, and sustain it in every day’s activities and in the way of change and business transformation.

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innatefittingboard

The directorship in any organization must have the ability to guide, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goal.

Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses toward the right direction and achieve expected business results. 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.

Here is the Monthly “Digitizing Boardroom -The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital-Ready Board” Book Tuning: The Digital Fit Boardroom

                  The Digital Fit Boardroom

• The Best-in-Class Digital Board Corporate board as the top leadership team plays a significant role in business advising, leadership exemplarity, policy setting, and governance practices. How to build a best-in-class digital board? Is there any way for shareholders and key stakeholders to evaluate board leadership effectiveness?

• Running a Digital Ready Board Due to the increasing velocity and variety of changes in the digital era, organizations today have to live up with the business dynamic which is uncertain, ambiguous, complex and flux. The board in a high-level leadership position plays a crucial role in business advising and monitoring, as well as setting key digital tones in organizational culture styles and leadership quintessential. Running a digital ready Board is not an overnight sensation, but a well-planning journey and continuous improvement.

• A Digital Savvy Board Organizations today have to live up with the business dynamic which is uncertain, ambiguous, complex and flux. The board in a high-level leadership position plays a crucial role in business advising and monitoring, as well as setting key digital tones in organizational culture style and leadership quintessential. With more and more organizations are on the journey of digital transformation, what are important perspectives to build a digital savvy board?

• A Dynamic Board with Digital Fit BoDs? As always, the spirit comes from the top, leadership is a key success factor for any organization's success. With many organizations and the society as a whole reach the inflection point of digital transformation, modern corporate boards as a top governance body play a crucial role in setting business culture tones and driving organizations’ digital transformation. Due to the complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and volatility of digital age, the directorship in any organization must have the ability to guide, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goal. But how to identify the digital fit BoDs and how to build a dynamic board to adapt to the rapid changes?

• A Heterogeneous Board: There is no question that businesses need digital leadership in today's boardrooms, with “VUCA” characteristics of business dynamic, overloading information, and globalization as the new normal of business expansion, all of these bring the significant opportunities and responsibilities for the new breed of digital BoDs, and it is crucial to brainstorm on how to build a highly effective board with a heterogeneous viewpoint, and right mixing of Individualism and collectivism nature, to set the tone of directorship with innovation and influence.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with 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.

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book  Quote Collection 3

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book  Quote Collection 2

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book  Quote Collection 1

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 8 A Culture Savvy Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 7 A "Talent Master" Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 6 A "Governance Champion" Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 5 An IT-Friendly Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 4 An Innovative Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 3 A Performance-driven Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 2 A Strategic Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 1 23 Themes of Digital Boardrooms Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Preview

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Introduction, Slideshare Presentatio

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Three Aspects to Run an “Ultra-Modern” IT Organization

Running an “ultra-modern” IT organization starts with the advanced thinking of today’s digital leaders.

We live in an information-enriched and the technology-empowered world, every day more and more technologies affect the way we think, live, and work. Great opportunities, dangers, and disruptions are around every corner.  However, many IT organizations seem to have a tendency to align with the slow changing parts of the organization, act as a controller, not an enabler. In order to make a leap of digital transformation, IT must become the strategic partner of the business, the trendsetter of the business advancement, and the catalyzer of the digital transformation. Here are three aspects to run an “ultra-modern” IT organization.

Running an “ultra-modern” IT is not just about adopting the latest digital technology: Nowadays, information is permeating into every corner of the organization, IT is making an impact on almost every dimension of the organization. Digital CIOs managing IT and business get an amazing 360-degree view of the business processes and challenges required to integrate all-important organizational element together into differentiated business competency. Adopting the latest technology is an easier part of business modernization scenario, the challenge is to optimize the underlying business functions and advance the business from every dimension. In fact, the most advanced thing in the business or our society is not hard things - neither super-computers nor fancy gadgets, it is the collective mindset that can think forward, creatively and positively. IT has to shift the focus from “T” hardware-driven to “I” - information-centric. Though it seems that the business world is steadily moving from the industrial age to the digital era, many think we are still live in the time with information-rich and insight-poor. Running an “ultra-modern” IT is to manage the information life cycle of the business effectively, to ensure the right people can get the right/updated information to make the right decisions timely. And more fundamentally, running an ultra-modern IT means that IT leaders and staff are equipped with the advanced mindset who can think a few steps further than their business peers, so, IT can truly drive changes instead of reacting to changes. IT should not just empower business users with efficient digital platforms or tools, but enlighten the business with a clear vision and unique insight to make a smooth digital transformation.  

The modern scenario to bridge IT and the business is to break down silos, be fluent with digital dialogue, and enforce cross-functional communication and collaboration: An ultra-modern IT is the bridge for the digital paradigm shift. IT is not just the service provider to work “for the business,” but plays as a strategic partner to work both “on the business,” and “in the business.” Because at the high mature digital organization, what C-level executives really want from IT is a trusted business partner who knows what the business want even before they know themselves. The connection between IT and business lies in using the common digital language to help business cross that bridge to IT. The faster both parties understand that IT is not just technical, but rather business oriented, and then many companies start to have better conversations with each other and what’s more, a better understanding of how it all makes sense. The business needs to know what IT can deliver and enter a dialogue about what best serves the goals of the business and advance the business up to the next level, not just for reaping quick wins, but also for the long-term business prosperity.

The ultra-modern IT organizations can guide through the innovation journey of the business with systems wisdom: The modern IT is not equal to IT modernization, it goes a step further, doing more with innovation. The ultra-modern IT needs to be telling the business about the opportunities and possibilities. The CIO role has never been about just managing the status quo, so the digital shift for IT in some industries is to be innovative with systems of engagement. There are a lot of opportunities to clarify the role of IT in innovation. As an ultra-modern CIO, you need to understand what the organization’s expectation from IT through an innovation lens. The challenging part is that innovation is not only about technology, But Innovation also is not always equal to the latest gadget, it’s about people, process, culture, partnership, manners, etc. IT has to orchestrate all those important ingredients into the unique innovation capability of the business. The optimistic perspective is that the emergent digital technology just makes innovation easier to implement than in the past, more accessible and least costly. Further, as a CIO, If you can innovate across the business, regardless of which function you are involved in, then you can surely change the shape of what you deliver, not just how it's delivered. Highly innovative IT teams with ultra-modern mindset can work with business counterparts more collaboratively in a value-oriented manner to inspire creativity and advance the business to reach the pinnacle of the business growth cycle.

Running an “ultra-modern” IT organization starts with the advanced thinking of today’s digital leaders. When they have the courage to break the outdated rules, break down silos; envision the better future, they are on the right track to lead forward. When CIOs can take the bold move from doing digital to going digital and being digital, they are at the progressive journey to advance their company for unlocking the business potential and reaching the next level of business performance and maturity.

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Five “S” Traits in Innovators

Create and nurture a creative working environment in your organization where humility is appreciated, curiosity is encouraged, and creative thinking is rewarded.

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.

Subconsciousness: As we know some of historical “AHA” moments for significant inventing and innovating happened when people took some repetitive tasks or random activities. Why? Because sometimes, the subconscious thinking is far more powerful and magical than conscious thinking.  During the repetitive activities, the subconscious capacity can sometimes produce creative ideas for disparate tasks, to be interactively creative within a task is to suppress any automation or disembodiment, to become immersive with it. Sometimes, the more mindless the activities you took, the higher probability of subconscious disruption happened. In practice, the process of 'preloading' the subconscious capacity with a task (requiring a creative solution) and then deliberately distracting the conscious mind is quite common in creative industries.

Simplicity: Innovation is often to make things more intuitive and easy to use. As Einstein wisely put: “Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” By nature, innovators often enjoy simplicity, though they also have the complexity mindset to come out creative ideas, because creativity is the high level of thinking via integrating multiple thinking processes. Progress is in simplification, which often follows complexity. When pioneering and solving problems, initial solutions are often more complex than required, and then adoption and progress come with simplification. The available digital technology today just makes innovation easier to do now than in the past, less costly, more easily accessible. Unfortunately, in most of the organizations, innovation is still a serendipity, lack of both invisible cultures to spark creativity and the underlying processes/mechanisms to manage innovation.   

Social collaboration: Social media and platform make the world smaller, now the people located in the different continent can brainstorm ideas and co-create new knowledge seamlessly. Creativity is about connecting the dots, it is excellent to bring social media to this realm, to urge a sense of connection via virtual "conversations" beyond the confines of a blighted neighborhood. Collaboration is a fundamental part of what ultimately fueled the inspiration, imagination and innovating. Through social collaboration, consider starting new conversations that galvanize inspiration and gain traction on a powerful theme of renewal and growth. There is always a noble goal behind innovation, identifying shared goals is a crucial collaboration success factor. From innovation management perspective, part of the innovation capability coherence comes through the sense of ownership, which is different from managers "owning" their people. Social collaboration not only propels innovation, and it’s the heart, soul, and DNA of innovation. As you do, and you improve when you reflect and rectify what you have done.

Self-confidence: Self-confidence is something you build your creative ability. Innovators have a ridiculous amount of self-confidence. Being innovative is a state of mind, confidence allows creativity expansion to full potentials. Innovation is more often than not, a thorny journey, and many times you also have to be willing to fail a lot and be very persistent. If you're not sure of yourself, you won't be able to convince others to follow your leadership and vision. With confidence, you feel free to express, enter, engage fully the creative process, and rectify your steps along the way. There is the clear line between confidence and arrogance. Being confident means you understand your own limitation and you are comfortable to be a unique, and an imperfect human being. Through such self-reflection, you know that when you were born you were not a finished artwork, and all your life it keeps on going like that: This is self-actualizing. And through that, you do and create, and you keep on reinventing yourself and staying in the learning and creative mode.

Self-motivation: We are all complex beings with highs and lows and all these feelings are “worthy” of being expressed. There is the full spectrum of emotions behind innovation. Self-motivation is a significant component in the expression of creativity. While we each have the enormous creative capacity, our willingness to express and exercise it becomes more complicated and challenging. Thus, self-motivation keep you participating and moving forward. If you consider being creative as a way of thinking, of expression, of seeing things differently., etc, and then it happens every day, multiple times a day.  If someone has the desire to be curious and involved in a situation, their innate creativity will push them along to a limited extent. Creativity is innate. If the conditions are right and there is love, support, encouragement, and permission, creativity can be abundant.

To a gifted creative talent, being creative is something that they are, whether they're consciously being creative or not. Depends on what you consider creativity and being creative. All humans are naturally creative, making innovation happen starts with a mindset. Create and nurture a creative working environment in your organization where humility is appreciated, curiosity is encouraged, and creative thinking is rewarded, build a risk-taking culture, and let your innovators shine.

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