Future of CIO

Monday, September 11, 2017

The Monthly “Performance Master’ Book Tuning: Five Big “What”s in Performance Management Sep. 2017

11:23 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Managing performance means understanding results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to ensure it happens.

Corporate Performance Management is a management control from strategy till shop floor. "If you can't measure, you can't manage," legendary management guru Peter Drucker once asserted. He was right. Managing performance means understanding results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to ensure it happens. It takes multifaceted approaches from multidimensional perspectives. Here are five “What”s of Performance Management.

Five Big “What”s in Performance Management

What’re on your Digital Transformation Scoreboard Forward-looking organizations are on the journey of digital transformation. How would you calculate the digital maturity score of your organization? Which management metrics should you apply to measure the progress of changes? Proactive or reactive? On the track or too slow? Healthy or sick? The balanced scorecard is a strategy performance management tool that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. So, what is on your digital transformation scoreboard?

What are the Characteristics of a Robust Performance Management System (PMS)? Although almost all organizations understand how crucial their people factors are for the ultimate business success. Still, many of them treat their talent as cost and resource only, their performance management is process driven and out of date to assess, motivate and measure staff performance objectively.

What do Change Leaders/Managers actually Deliver? People change for a reason; they must have a reason to want to adopt the change. The question to be asked is why are you wanting the change? What do you expect to gain from adopting the change? That is where the change originator defines their deliverables and benefits, in real measurable, quantifiable terms. But what is “Change Management” and how can you define its value? What do change leaders/managers actually deliver?

What’s the First Step in Building a Great Performance Dashboard A performance dashboard is a useful tool to improve management effectiveness and efficiency, But what’s the simple first step enables you to implement useful Performance Dashboards, that ‘ideally’ from day one delivers high-quality performance management information?

What are Key Practical Steps to Improve IT Performance? How to achieve IT efficiency, effectiveness, and agility is the goal every CIO wants to pursue, however, It is not easy because it requires changing the culture and getting the buy-in of the IT resources. Also, in reality, problem is that quite often productivity metrics are nearly nonexistent in organizations for most of IT functions and monitoring is not an easy task. Though the situation varies, still, there are a couple of key steps can be shared in improving IT performance across vertical sectors.

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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The "Performance Master" Book Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 1 Introduction

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The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 4 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 5 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Conclusion

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection I

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection II

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection III

Three “G” Factors in Innovators

11:17 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Part of creating an innovative workplace involves paying attention to employee wellbeing and building innovativeness as a collective mentality.

Creativity is an innate ability to create naval ideas. Creativity is, by nature, unique to each person. Being innovative is a state of mind. There is no template which you can apply and suddenly have a creative workforce. It must be done slowly, experimentally, patiently, and individually. Either for individuals or businesses, creativity is a long-term endeavor. It must be cultivated. The best way to foster creativity is to help people communicate in a way that instills confidence, not fear; rejuvenate passion, not routine; inspire thinking differently, not “command and control.” Here are three “G” factors in innovators.

Guts Feeling: Intuition is often called gut-feeling; because it seems to have got to do something with the gut. In many of the ancient cultures,, there is such concept of the fourth brain. It says that the brain not only sits in the head, but there is one part at the solar plexus. That's where intuitions come. There is interconnectivity between intuition and creativity. Many think that creativity or “thinking-out-of-the-box” is about being creative with gut-feeling. Intuition or being intuitive is when you have a gut feeling about something. It is when there isn’t an exact answer to the puzzle because you don’t have all the pieces. But the creatives know how to put things together and magically solve them either consciously or subconsciously. The conscious ego is just a small part of the human psyche, most of the psyche consists of the collective unconsciousness and it is from which that creativity stems. In many circumstances, being creative means to getting out of the normal consciousness and see that the “other way.” This is often the role of the unconscious, the compensation for the prevailing conscious attitude.

Gap-minding: Creative people think differently to mind cognitive gap. The varying research shows that the heterogeneous team with the cognitive difference is more innovative than the homogeneous group setting. Creative people are both problem finders and problem solvers. It is also important to apply the creativity in a recursive way to the creative process for both problem identification and problem-solving. Gap minding is important to stimulate creativity, as good ideas are multidimensional, they often take root in unsuspected placed, and they evolve with time and by unexpected connections. Being is the state of flow is what creative people would like to achieve because it is a seamless, effortless, and fluid state to be productive, imaginable, and fulfilling. Being curious to ask thought-provoking questions stimulates creativity and minds the gap as well, always challenge your own thinking by asking questions which often lead to discovering situations others do not see at first. Being innovative is to discover alternative solutions, study the choices and select the best possible implementable way for solving either old or emergent business problems.

Gratefulness: Innovation has the full emotional cycle behind it. Be dissatisfied with the status quo, but be grateful for great ideas shared or precious feedback offered. Creativity is a lonely trip and innovation is a thorny journey, with many bumps and curves, pitfalls and roadblocks on the way. Thus, be grateful for those who can truly understand you, empower yourself with the ability to deliver constructive feedback. Creatives often have open mind and heart, be grateful for divergent thoughts, and focus on what’s been told contextually and objectively. Be grateful for the abundance of thoughts, in order to encourage collective creativity because the team needs to go divergent to explore the space and spur fresh ideas. Even be grateful with some framework or rules which are not for suppressing creativity, but to help stay focused, and create value through it. Be grateful for knowledge sharing and insight uncovering, or anything happens that can deepen your understanding of the issues, accumulate interdisciplinary knowledge or connect wider dots.

Part of creating an innovative workplace involves paying attention to employee wellbeing and building innovativeness as a collective mentality, to generate positive emotions and reduce unnecessary organizational pressures. Either you are an idea person or an innovation implementation person, an innovation translator or a conductor, strengthen your creative strength, and unlock the collective creativity via working together synergistically to achieve a shared vision.

Three Pillars in Digital Transformation

11:13 PM Pearl Zhu 1 comment

It is important in helping business leaders define the vision, discover the blind spots, identify unknowns, build strong pillars.

Digital transformation is a long journey with many bumps and curves on the way. The digital transformation means that companies need to infuse digital into every aspect of the business, expand to every dimension of the organization, shape the enterprise-wide digital capabilities and overall ecosystem which include people, processes, and technology.

Here are three pillars of digital transformation.

IT pillar: IT pillar is not just about technology only, in fact, information management becomes more critical to keep the business flow, enable business growth, and respond to changes. Thus, the role of digital CIO is to identify and blend the ways that information and technology can assist and shape the business by linking all digital aspects together to enhance cross-functional communication and collaboration. With the abundance of information, IT can abstract the customer insight and business foresight, and provide businesses with the ability to apply real-time insight across the organization in ways never possible before. IT needs to be telling the business about opportunities and possibilities and that means IT needs to really understand the goals of the business and synchronize with business goals. With these insights, organizations acquire the ability to reshape products, services, and customer engagement. IT as the strong pillar of the digital transformation means that IT should help their company achieve its business goals in any way possible, and even make the impossible possible. Traditional IT organizations are often perceived as static and too heavyweight. There are too many large-scale transformational programs based on the introduction of new technology either run for years with little progress towards the original goals or hailed as a tremendous success only to never be accepted into the Line of Business departments. IT has to speed up, IT as the digital pillar is actually more powerful, but lightweight. IT is a business “solutionary” to understand how the organization works and then give solutions that will increase the functionality to lower cost and, if applicable, increase output. This means a higher profit.

People Pillar: People are always the most important asset and capital investment in any organization before, today, and in the future. Neither an individual's career path or the business's growth life cycle is linear nowadays. Thus, the capabilities to adapt to unpredictable, ride above the learning curve are critical to making continuous improvement and the seamless digital transformation. Today's digital workforce is changing significantly with the characteristics of multi-generation, multicultural, and multi-devicing. Thus, digital talent management needs to reflect such a digital paradigm shift. Organizations and their people learn through their interactions with the dynamic business environment. They observe, act, and take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, make inferences about those consequences, and draw implications for future action. To build a powerful people pillar of the digital transformation, there are some of the issues where must be aware of the integration of a single talent capability into an integrated enterprise people management capability across all enterprises, to amplify the collective capability and improve differentiated business competency. So, businesses must be alert to the digital dynamic environment, adapt their workforce planning and talent development strategies to ensure their digital workforce is engaged, innovative, and transformative.

Changeability pillar: Digital is all about changes, and change is multifaceted with increasing speed and velocity. Change is no longer just a couple of random business initiatives, it has to become an ongoing business capability. Thus, changeability is the crucial pillar that keeps the business dynamic, energetic, and adaptive. The process, technology, capability tuning. etc, are all tactics to get the organization there; but it all starts with the realization that "we can't stay the same." It takes a logical scenario to manage the change lifecycle and build changeability step-wisely. It is important to assess the current state of changeability with key elements such as people, process, and technology; change shouldn’t be for its own sake, it is also important to develop the business justification about changes and determine demand and estimated pipeline. It is a strategic imperative to define the target change management capability via identifying the change gaps, sourcing the mix set of skills, identifying change agents, and tuning the business process to deliver the desired changeability.

Consider the digital organization as the self-organized but interlaced and hyper-connected ecosystem, and humans are vehicles of natural and cultural solutions. It is important in helping business leaders define the vision, discover the blind spots, identify unknowns, build strong pillars, and then consciously manage the business performance and accelerate digital transformation effectively.

The Monthly Foresight: Envision the Future with Digital Readiness Sep. 2017

11:33 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

The best vision is insight, the most-wanted vision is foresight.

The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, creativity is the most wanted trait for digital leaders and professionals today, and innovation is the light every organization is pursuing. Which themes shall you set to advocate digital transformation? What are your practices for building a hyper connected and ever-evolving digital business ecosystem?

Envision the Future with Digital Readiness

How to close the vision gaps? The best vision is insight, the most-wanted vision is foresight. Being a visionary is a character or perspective. Leadership is about the future and change, innovation and progress. Leadership vision is not just about zooming in but also stepping into the future proactively. The vision thing is, in fact, the precious leadership trait to bridge the industrial age and the digital era; the local and global, the business reality and the future of the organization. A clear vision will enable digital leaders today to lead businesses toward the uncharted water or blurred digital territories confidently. So, how to close the vision gaps and make a leap of digital transformation?

Digital Boards with Vision Inquiries The contemporary corporate board as the top leadership team plays a directorial role in envisioning the future of the business and overseeing corporate strategy. Because leadership is about future and change. Vision is not the “Nice to have,” but “Must have” quality for top leaders in order to direct the organization toward the uncharted water or blurred territories in today’s “VUCA” digital dynamic. Vision is basically a qualitative statement defining the "perception" of the organization, and the effective board provides the guidance about what core to preserve and what future to stimulate progress toward?

Vision is Not Mirage “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.

Three Perspectives on Visionary Leadership ? Leadership is about setting directions, making positive influences and inspire innovation. At its core, leadership is the journey for problem-solving. Visionary leaders are always the rare breed and in strong demand. Because leadership vision is like the light tower to guide the organization to the uncharted water and blurred digital territories. In fact, vision is one of the most critical digital leadership traits to lead today's business with "VUCA" characteristics. There are a lot of misunderstanding about vision and being a visionary, here are three perspectives of clarity.

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.?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with about #3900th 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 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 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.

The “V” Factors in Innovators

11:30 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Vision keeps us focused, the variety of thoughts helps us engaged; the versatility of talent helps us connect dots seamlessly.

Creativity is the high level of thinking and innovativeness is about connecting the dots. What fuels creativity? It is a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Individually, people have curiosities, desire to learn and keep an inquisitive mind, let the imagination soar; collectively, innovation cannot happen without diverse thoughts or interdisciplinary dots connections. Here are three “V” factors in innovators.

Vision: Innovators are at their very heart visionaries. The foundation for innovation has to be grounded in the “vision.” Innovation comes with foresight to envision a need that others overlook or ignore and a willingness to forge ahead to satisfy visions, in spite of a risk of failure. It is self-imposed by trying to make our “visions” reality. Innovation has to be linked to “hope” and seeking justice or "truth." Not giving up on hope means to have a positive mentality and an optimistic attitude. Discovering the "truth" requires the analysis and discernment to understand multiple opinions and emotions which in many cases are among differing views and distorted facts, the inner and outer self is the struggle between what we know as reality and what we feel like our connection to the eco-environment. Just as we find energy is released from one steady-state to another, we find innovation from our outer realities attempts to change to the steady-state of our inner self. This energy is called innovation. Visionaries have the determination, dedication, motivation, and passion to make the vision into reality. Visionaries could also mean the ability to think outside the box, to think creatively, to be innovative both inside and outside the organization.

Variety: Creativity is about connecting wider dots interdisciplinarily. The essence of innovation is made of trying new combinations of known things or a variety of thoughts. Thus, it is important to respect the diversified point of view, move energy to a higher level by offering a clear vision of what is possible. As we bring more people into the dialog, we increase the probability of those various assumptions surfacing as each person filters different things. Focusing on digital variety will force you to confront new ideas. Creative tension is important to switch on the “innovative mode” of the business environment. Because focusing on diversity will force you to confront new ideas, new materials and possibly embrace a new concept that you may have never imagined. Each human being is an “innovative being” by definition as you won't find two humans that are exactly the same. We are all new combinations of the known. The digital variety and workforce diversity are no long wallflowers for decoration, but a switch to turn on the creativity light bulb. Since innovation is fundamentally about breaking assumptions, having more assumptions uncovered will lead to greater innovation. It's the essence of evolution.

Versatility: Creativity is about connecting unusual dots, having the breadth and depth of knowledge enables such dots connecting. Having enriched knowledge or versatile talent is foundational to create more fresh ideas in today’s sophisticated digital world, although knowledge shouldn’t confine our imagination. Still, versatility is not always equal to how many hobbies you have or how many activities you participate, to just keep your hands busy. Sometimes, the opposite is true, because creativity is often spurred via solitude. And sometimes, spreading time on doing too many things even turns to be a distraction from developing creativity or building the strength based on the innate talent. Thus, it is important to be learning agile, keep accumulating knowledge, but also fuel with passion about what you are doing, do not limit your imagination. Creativity is more as a capability than as a skill. Because skills can be trained via instilling knowledge, but often capability needs to take time, inner drive, and situations to develop, it is both nature and nurtured.

Creativity is the sophisticated thinking process and innovation is a thorny journey. Vision keeps us focused, the variety of thoughts helps us engaged; the versatility of talent helps us connect dots seamlessly. Digital means flow, there is more flow of creative ideas, the better opportunities to reap the benefit from innovation management. The creative environment is an incubator for innovation.

Making innovation happen starts with a mindset, build risk-taking culture, and keep the business process as simple and flexible as possible,

Running a “Superglue” Digital IT

11:24 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

IT is the superglue to integrate the business as a whole and the linchpin for connecting the wider dots to stimulate innovation.

Traditional IT organizations often run as the isolated back-office function to keep the lights on, and traditional IT management practices sometimes enforce silos with the controller’s mentality. However, with the increasing pace of changes and information flow, IT shouldn’t be the silo function only. The CIO needs to know how to play a bridge between what businesses understand and what technology understands. At the dawn of the digital era, CIOs should become the strategic top executive who understands business strategy, processes, the latest technologies, motivate IT teams and master of business communication. They would make sure the two worlds - business and IT meet to ensure an optimal performing business. IT needs to be the superglue of the hyper-connected digital organization and the backbone of the interdependent and always-on digital business in which employees at all levels are inspired and allowed to commit their best.

IT as the digital interpreter for the business: The IT-business gap is enlarged when the two parties speak different languages and set different priorities. The business digital transformation is not just about adopting the latest technological gadgets, it has to expand to the different dimensions and permeate into underneath functions and processes of the organization. IT is in a unique position to oversee changes and gain in-depth, technique know-how understanding. Thus, compared to other functions, IT is more fit to become the digital interpreter for the company without “lost in translation.” The purpose to run IT with digital fluency is to mind the gap between business and IT, leverage the latest digital technologies to craft frictionless business culture, fine-tune business processes to bridge silos. The intimate business-IT partnership is the ultimate status to strengthen IT and deliver a better fit, and right-on solutions. Running a super-glue IT can help to streamline information and knowledge flow and build the information savvy business environment. In the past, IT has categorized, prioritized, and designed solutions, bug fixes, enhancements; now with digital style, you need to work with other business leaders to co- make the decisions and provide the pieces of advice for the business to innovate. IT has to become an integral part of the business. The dynamic digital organizations need to get away from letting things fall through and start creating “integrated wholes” by utilizing the correct processes to solve complexities, running a superglue digital IT for ultimately bridging the chasm between the business and IT.

IT as the spinal cord for the organization: It is not sufficient for IT to be just the service provider or the support center only. Digital IT is like the spinal cord for the organization to integrate various functional capabilities into business competencies and bring out technology-enabled business solutions. IT has to deliver the competitive capability to the business as many businesses will plateau without IT. Hence, IT also plays a crucial role in executing the capability-based strategy, and IT strategy is the sub-component of the business strategy. Running a superglue IT means it has to keep consolidating, modernizing, integrating, and innovating in terms of optimizing inner processes, its interactions with external systems, its components, the specific interactions amongst them. It’s important to follow simplification principles to build “as little as possible,” but maximize outcome.

IT as the customer champion: Digital is the era of people. Many say IT needs to shift from IT-business alignment to IT-customer alignment. IT has the two sets of customers, the internal users who use the services or tools IT provides to improve productivity, efficiency, and performance, and the end customers who count on IT for digitizing the touch point of customer experience or increasing satisfaction. In order for IT to act like the customer champion and be perceived as the superglue between business and customers, IT staff has to become business savvy, technologists aren’t just “IT people,” but business professionals with IT skills, they take an interest in the business, step away from behind the computer monitor and understand the business issues. When IT professionals are equipped with the customer-centric mentality, they can speak the digital dialect fluently, earn the trust and respect as business partners, special things happen, the business performance is improved and customers are delightful.

IT is the superglue to integrate the business as a whole and the linchpin for connecting the wider dots to stimulate innovation. High-performance IT organizations see new information technologies as a means to create value for the organization. They are developing the logical scenario and next practices for leading the organization toward the deep, deep digital reality.

The Monthly “IT Innovation” Book Tuning: Running an Ultra Modern IT via Innovation Sep. 2017

10:54 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

In essence, innovation is the use of something that is new and unique, and you are able to create its business value.

Within abundant information and emergent digital technologies, IT is a key component of holistic business mindset to reimagine “what is possible” - unleashing business potentials and improving business efficiency, effectiveness, agility, and maturity. The art of possible to reinvent IT for the digital age is to deliver the value of information in helping businesses grow, delight customers and doing more with innovation.

Running an Ultra Modern IT via Innovation

CIOs as Chief Innovation Officer: Five Types of Innovators to Accelerate Digital Innovation Innovation is about future, without it, you lose sight of tomorrow. Innovation is an exceptional, exclusive, and realistic idea that separates you from others without a second thought. Do innovators belong to rare breed or they are among us and within us? More often than not, innovation is the teamwork, the different strengths and complementary skills of innovators can develop the business’s innovation capability and capacity, and improve the overall innovation success rate. CIOs as “Chief Innovation Officer,” can you identify innovators and manage innovation effectively?

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

CIOs as Chief Innovation Officer: Take a Stepwise Approach to Manage Innovation? In essence, innovation is the use of something that is new and unique, and you are able to create its business value. Isn't that what innovation is all about: do it better, differentiate yourself from your completion, run, grow and transform the business. For forward-thinking organizations today, innovation is not just nice to have but must have core business capability to compete for the future. Innovation is not just about technology as well, it's about people, culture, partnership, processes, etc. Innovation Management is an overarching management discipline which needs to weave many key business factors into an innovation playbook and take a stepwise approach for achieving its business value.

CIOs as Chief Innovation Officer: Three “DE” Management Effort to Accelerate IT Innovation : Organizations across the vertical sectors, no matter large or small, all face the unprecedented change, uncertainty, velocity, and accelerated business dynamic on the journey of digital transformation. Digital is the age of innovation. Digital innovation has expanded scope with a full spectrum of management disciplines, including both hard innovations such as products/services/business model innovations, as well as soft innovations such as leadership/culture/communication innovation, etc. It is important to note that within the organizations, innovation is rarely an individual action; rather, it is a team effort, often across multiple organizational silos, and it needs to connect the dots across the digital ecosystems.

The Goal-Driven IT Transformation?: The digital world is so technology-driven and information-intensive, organizations rely more and more on information & technology nowadays, IT needs will only expand. Hence, IT must be a business partner within the organization to deliver business-driven results. A digital CIO has to have great leadership traits, understand the business context, oversee business processes, envision the latest technology trends, and motivate IT team to do more with innovation. And most importantly, take a systematic approach to managing the goal-driven IT transformation seamlessly.