The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 10/11/2019

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 6100+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight of digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

The Transcendence of Information Management Besides people, information is the most invaluable asset in businesses today. Not only is information interesting economic goods, but the value is also difficult to determine, it could be utilitarian, intrinsic, extrinsic, hedonistic, social, practical epistemic, etc. Managing information and the information position of an organization is what ought to be called Information Management. The tricky bit with information is that, depending on the level of granularity and aggregation, you can use it for multiple purposes. The transcendence of Information Management into various business management accelerates business performance and unlocks business potential.

The Monthly “Digitizing Boardroom” Book Tuning: The Corporate Board’s Mindset, Skillset, Toolset Oct. 2019 Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in 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 are the multiple perspectives of shaping a strategic boardroom.

Learning Insight from Aribian Proverbs: How to Avoid the Trap of Being a “FOOL” We live in a world with exponential growth of information and abundant knowledge, learning is not the things you are “done” only in your youth, it has to become a lifestyle, and develop it as a great habit; collectively, as the culture thing. Learning is a lifelong experience, it should make our mind more open to embrace new possibilities and creative to solve problems in alternative ways. Here are a few pieces of insight from Aribian Proverbs on “how to stay foolish, but not being a fool.”

Three Clarifications Enable Smooth Digital Transformation Digital transformation is the radical change and a tough journey with many obstacles on the way. Riding ahead of the change curve takes both principles and practices, strategy and discipline. Digital transformation can impact the core, businesses today must dynamically develop, enable and sustain the changeability of an enterprise. A highly changeable organization is the company that can align all critical business elements seamlessly, quickly and safely assess all of the consequences of a possible change and devise effective plans to provide a combination approach to go digital. Here are three clarifications help the business drive digital transformation smoothly.

The Monthly “Digital Maturity” Book Tuning: Build Strong Pillars to Shape High Mature Digital Organization Oct, 2019 Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. The digitalization flattens the organizational hierarchy and blurs the functional, organizational and geographical borders in the business ecosystem. It is like a gigantic puzzle with many misplaced pieces, you have to put them all in the right places to discover the real meaning and unleash its full potential. You cannot make a true digital paradigm shift without an in-depth understanding of the digital interconnectivity and embracing the multitude of digital maturity.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking about 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.

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The Best “Viability” Quotes of “Digital Master” Oct. 2019

Digital organizations are “playing to win,” not just trying not to lose. They aren't sacrificing the long-term viability of the business management portfolio for short-term rewards.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Viability” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 If the organization understands itself in relation to its context, it should be able to determine whether it requires changing something to become viable.

2 The digital organization of the future is designed openly for anyone with ideas on how human organizations ought to be contrived in the face of challenges and strategic imperatives of the 21st century. - fluid, viable, always on, interconnected and hyper-competitive.

3 Viability is one of the very characteristics of the digital organization to keep business thriving for the long term.

4 Digital organizations are “playing to win,” not just trying not to lose. They aren't sacrificing the long-term viability of the business management portfolio for short-term rewards.

5 Businesses today need to have both interdisciplinary knowledge and in-depth understanding of the organizational hyperconnectivity and interdependence in order to optimize organizational structures, improve business strategic responsiveness and fine-tune a viable digital organization.

6 The viable digital businesses are solid enough to give some sort of forms and meaning and open enough to its environment allowing the movement of information, ideas, and people in and out.

7 A viable digital organization can deliver impressive business outcomes and improve its performance by taking continuous digital practices to improve manageability and develop business competencies.

8 The digital organization as a complex and dynamic system needs to be elaborated in a well-organized effort, take a structural approach to develop differentiated business competencies and build a creative workforce to maintain viability.

9 The emergence of potential opportunities and risks for exploring digital is likely to follow a nonlinear pattern with exponential speed. It’s strategic imperative to design a viable digital organization for enjoying a powerful tailwind to improve business performance and speed.

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How to Make Strategic IT Workforce Planning

The scientific and dynamic IT workforce planning is important to focus on achieving strategic goals, motivate employees to achieve more, encourage growth mindset, and build high performance teams.

Workforce management is an important process which underpins the organization’s collective human capability and differentiated business competency. With fast-paced changes, hyper-diversity, exponential growth of information, and fierce competitions, the workforce planning and management has to become highly analytical and systematic.


Although it does not mean that you treat people as "objects," it does mean that whatever workforce management programs you run needs to be smoothly aligned with the business’s strategic goals and improve the overall organizational performance and maturity. Here are three-step strategic IT workforce planning scenario:

Start by identifying the strategic goals of the IT organization (especially those affected by trends): The strategic organizational goal must comport a vision for a better state. It is a matter of figuring out "where are you now," and "where you want to be." In general, a goal is hard to articulate. IT leaders must consider the business relevant factors in order to create effective strategic planning, goal-setting, and make the seamless alignment.

IT-enabled business capability mapping allow you to first understand the strategic business goals, your customers and what they value. It’s also important to align IT functional goals with the strategic goals of the entire company and from there, determine the various IT team’s goals to meet the strategic goals of the IT organization. IT management needs to make sure having a goal that has the business purpose first, as well as getting people evolved. An ambitious goal-setting is a driving factor, stretches up the team and boosts employees’ morality, also defines the timeline, resources, and benefits clearly.

Then, assess the responsibilities and skills required to achieve strategic IT goals: IT management has to make an objective assessment of IT strengths and weaknesses, IT team strengths and weaknesses, as well as the responsibilities and skills required to achieve strategic goals. Strategic workforce planning and management today is far more than just putting a ‘strategic’ label on the term. It’s an entirely new approach that uses information technology tools and resources often weren’t available in the past.

However, in practice, there are some pitfalls in IT workforce planning and management. For example, sometimes, they hire only for immediate need, not pay enough attention to the long-term business perspective. Other times, they look too narrowly at a specific problem to solve, partly because that is the way funding is allocated, lack of a broader view of dynamic IT workforce planning and strategy goals for the long term. The strategic workforce planning requires the collaboration among executives, talent managers and information professionals, access to and better understanding of data and analytics, apply advanced IT solutions to integrate disparate planning sources and gain a comprehensive knowledge of the organization.

Finally, define who you need to have those responsibilities and skills – talent: The digital workforce has a multitude of varieties. In reality, people are always the weakest link in organizations for either strategy management or change management. To keep IT relevant and transform IT from a support center to a strategic business partner, IT talent today often needs to have both technical skills and business acumen for making sustainable IT-business relationship and solving complex business problems effectively.

IT needs both strategic generalists with business insight and dedicated specialists with technical excellence. Thus, when assessing talent, the dynamic and balanced approaches are needed to understand individual talent, team strength, as well as how to put the right people with the right capabilities to access the right information for solving the right problems. It is critical to select people with growth mindset and learning skills, evaluate both individual and team performance on how effectively they can improve the quality of products/services, solve problems creatively, explore their skill/capability/potential, and improve their learning agility to bring IT to the next level of maturity.

There is no doubt that IT plays a critical role in creating business advantage. The scientific and dynamic IT workforce planning is important to focus on achieving strategic goals, motivate employees to achieve more, encourage growth mindset, build high performance teams, and create synergy for driving IT to reach the next level of organizational maturity.

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The Monthly “IT Innovation” Book Tuning: Pursuing IT Innovation Multidimensionally Oct. 2019

Innovation is an exploration, production, adoption, assimilation, exploration, and exploitation of value-added novelty in business, economic and social spheres.

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

        Pursuing IT Innovation Multidimensionally 

Accelerate IT Driven Innovation via Three lenses A Many IT organizations are still struggling to keep it relevant and moving up its maturity from a cost center to a revenue generator; from a support function to a business partner. Innovative organizations today have to explore the full spectrum of innovations and deploy a range of different management, technology, process, and structural solutions. An innovation happens when you change the game; you bring a different twist to what is currently established and perceived. How to accelerate IT-driven innovation via different lenses?

Experiment with Digital Innovation Externally Innovation is a systematic way of applying creativity in real life and business. In general, innovation is a discipline for markets change and shift, and for each company attempting to deal with these changes, there is a different path to follow. An innovation ecosystem should fully cover wide enough directions. It can involve bringing in ideas from outside, the diverse communities to drive features and understand the value-in-use of products/services, and take a structural approach to experiment digital innovation externally.

The CIO as “Chief Innovation Officer”: Explore Digital Innovation Internally The emerging digital era opens the new chapter of innovation, Innovation is an exploration, production, adoption, assimilation, exploration, and exploitation of value-added novelty in business, economic and social spheres. Digital organizations starve for creativity and relentlessly pursue innovation. Innovation is a journey and is therefore not possible to pre-describe how it will work out. Organizations need to take a structural approach to manage digital innovation. Here are five aspects of how organizations can explore digital innovation internally.

Explore a Unique Path to Innovate IT Many companies are at the tipping point for the digital transformation journey, more and more businesses empower their IT to lead changes and catalyze business growth. Due to the overwhelming growth of information and disruptive nature of technologies, IT is at the crossroad, either ride the learning curve and explore a unique path to build differentiated competency, or just keep the lights on only, react to the business’s requests and become irrelevant. Some high-performing IT organizations have moved up its maturity to become the innovation hub and game changer in their companies, how can they make it?

How does IT handle investigations of innovative business solutions?IT plays a critical role in building business competency. IT has itself transformed to create a new competitive advantage via building new products, new services and delivering tailored business solutions. But many of today’s C-suites are unaware of what is technologically possible now or in the future. Digital is the age of options, it provides the opportunity to think the new way to do things, so it forces IT leaders to get really creative on how they architect and implement change, and how IT handles investigation of innovative business solutions, to change the business’s perception, reinvent its tarnished reputation and improve the overall business 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 minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 6100+ blogs posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The Best “Core Competency” Quotes of “Digital Master” Oct. 2019

Business professionals or organizations not only need to have “me too” type competitive necessity but also keep developing core competency based on multilayered and integral capabilities.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Core Competency” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 A core competency is a harmonization of multiple capabilities such that it permeates the entire organization with a focus, and in alignment with the resource-based view. It is at the same time valuable, rare, and difficult to imitate.

2 The business management should make an assessment, to ensure they not only have “me too” type competitive necessity but also keep developing core competency based on multilayered and integral business capabilities.

3 It is important to encourage communication and involvement in core competency development at the organizational, or even at the digital ecosystem scope.

4 It is also important to set up priorities, divest non-core capabilities, free up resources that can be used to deepen core capabilities in order to build sustainable business competency for the long run.

5 A core competency is a deep proficiency that enables a company to deliver unique value to customers. The organization's long-term success is based on a set of differentiated capabilities and its core competency.

6 Core Competencies are those that are well institutionalized in the organization and have been demonstrated by it in many instances or across multiple businesses.

7 The organization's long-term success is based on a set of differentiated capabilities and its core competency.

8 It has become necessary to develop strategic core competencies for digital professionals, talent competency is the digital lenses through which people managers can assess talent in more strategic, analytical and creative way.

9 Different organizations have different strengths, capacities, and capabilities; thus, they need to take their unique path at their own pace to go digital, stretch their strength and build a cohesive set of core competencies.

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Develop Organizational Learning Framework

Organizational learning is enabling employees to constantly learn so that the organization does not only "earn enough from today, but thrive in the future.”
The digital era upon us is about the abundance of information, rapid change, and shortened knowledge cycle. Either being a digital professional or running a digital organization, if you fail to be aware and climb the learning curve, you will get static and lag behind. Without learning, you cannot unleash collect human potential, and thus, the full digital potential of the business.

Thus, organizational leaders should make an objective assessment of their organization’s learning maturity and develop a highly effective learning framework with all important components to build the organizational learning competency.

Learning strategy: Learning at the organizational level is strategic because it impacts the firm’s long term surviving and thriving. Thus, learning strategy is an integral part of the business strategy which enables top management to identify crucial learning related issues, set guidelines, prioritize, and take action to solve well-defined problems.

A learning strategy is the organization's competitive learning "logic" manifested through organizational cultures and actions. Often, the organizational learning issues such as learning inertia or learning curve awareness, etc, are caused by close mindset, bureaucratic management style or “we always do things like that” static and stale culture, etc. A good learning strategy can help the business diagnose the common learning disability issues, make an objective assessment of learning curve, set guidelines for collective learning, and build learning agility of the organization.

Learning methodology: Meta-cognition or meta-learning is about learning how to learn. At the core of all learning needs to be a deep understanding of systemic thinking and the psychology of how people learn. We live in the era with exponential growth of information and abundant knowledge, meta-learning is a vital element of developing independent learning and building a learning mature organization.

The point of learning is to gather the details around the subject under scrutiny and then and only then, can you be selective, for example, be selective about the sources you are going to take information from. Discover how and where to find valuable information, not just the information itself. You select what you learn, but also learn what to ignore. From learning management perspective, by supporting staff to learn how to learn, critically examine their thinking and reflect thoroughly on what behaviors helped them learn, they will become more competitive and better problem solvers.

Knowledge management: There is false information, knowledge becomes outdated sooner than you think. Thus, knowledge cannot be managed like other hard assets. Knowledge Management is the management with knowledge as a focus. Organizations have to take proactive attitude to manage knowledge asset and involves assigning responsibilities for knowledge and streamlining knowledge flow, to make sure the smooth knowledge transfer to either solve problems or spur innovation.

The maturity level of Knowledge Management depends on how high and how fast the organization can climb “Knowledge Pyramid” (Data-Information-Knowledge-Insight -Wisdom) or Learning Hierarchy” (Learn-Share-Relearn-Create) smoothly. You need to not only assimilate the existing knowledge, more importantly, the knowledge is shared with others who can then try them out and hopefully improve them. You also have to keep updating knowledge, create new knowledge and become a true knowledge value creator.

Learning culture: "To learn constantly so we continually improve." Adapting learning and continuous improvement culture involve gathering data, analysis, defining areas to be improved and a measurement scale for making continuous improvement. Organizations are learning through individuals and teams because organizations and their teams are made up by human beings. The organizational “learning logic” is acquired through a learning process involving discourse within the context of an organization's learning culture. Culture is about values and behaviors, you can't just rely on processes. To create a culture of learning means having pro-learning mindsets, particularly from top-down and there is a high level of trust within the upper rankings of the management team to advocate learning.

Digital leaders can utilize their time effectively and include employees development as part of ongoing learning on the work assignment. The culture of learning fosters openness, information sharing, critical and independent thinking and professionalism. Learning should help to open, not close one’s mind, inspire critical thinking & independent thinking, recognize opportunities, update knowledge, and build new capabilities and skills all the time.

Learning platforms and practices: The business can unleash its potential by riding the learning curves to get into actions in creative, positive, and productive ways. The emergence of enterprise interactive platforms and collaboration tools provide new ways to learn, share and collaborate via direct applications at the corporate level. To improve their learning capacity, digital organizations and their people must learn through their interactions with the business environment, then, they apply their learning, act, observe the consequences of their actions, make continuous improvement. 

There are all sorts of digital learning styles practices such as: Adaptive learning - learn to fast respond to changes; generative learning - enhance capability to create; social learning - learning happens through networking on social learning platform, just name a few. People focus on the learning opportunities offered by assignment, rather than on the status quo that goes with them. A focus on learning and development reduces attrition and has great quantitative ROIs.

To create the new requires not just one skill, but many, not just old experiences, but new perspectives. Learning becomes a knowledge builder and change catalyst. Organizational learning is enabling employees to constantly learn so that the organization does not only "earn enough from today, but thrive in the future.” The point is to take a holistic approach, not just a few isolated practices, ride learning curve and build learning agility as a dynamic business capability.

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The Monthly “Digitizing Boardroom” Book Tuning: The Corporate Board’s Mindset, Skillset, Toolset Oct. 2019

The modern corporate board as one of the most important leadership pillars in the business, plays an important role to inspire, innovate, improve, interact, interpret, influence, exemplify, and orchestrate changes. 

Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in 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 are the multiple perspectives of shaping a strategic boardroom.

                 The Corporate Board’s Mindset, Skillset, Toolset  

Three Thinking Pillars in Building Digital Boardroom The board of directors is the top leadership role for overseeing strategies and steering their organization in the right direction. Leadership is the adventure to explore unknown, have confidence and insight for steering the right path for their organizations to reach the destination. Building strong thinking pillars help business leaders broaden their perspectives of the dynamic digital ecosystem, deepen their understanding of the interconnected nature of the business, with the ultimate goal to direct the business in the right direction.

What’s Inside the BoD’s Tool Box Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and velocity of the digital era, the directorship in any organization becomes more critical and challenging. The purpose of the governing body, or board of directors, is to direct the organization in the right direction, practice governance discipline, and monitor its performance. Corporate governance is to make sure that management is doing its job properly. The corporate board needs to shift from reactive to active and proactive mode for adapting to the dynamic business environment with continuous disruptions. To improve the directorship effectiveness, what’re supposed to be inside the board of directors’ toolbox to enforce its governance discipline?

Three Perspectives of Shaping Up the Digital Ready Boardroom Digital era is volatile, complex, uncertain and ambiguous, organizations today are hyper-connected and interdependent. However, many say that the multitude of gaps, such as thinking, knowledge, innovation, strategy execution, etc., are enlarged because different industries, organizations, functions, and individuals evolve change with varying speed. The modern corporate board as one of the most important leadership pillars in the business, plays an important role to inspire, innovate, improve, interact, interpret, influence, exemplify, and orchestrate change and digitalization. Here are three perspectives to shape up the digital ready boardroom.

Can BoDs bring The Pairs of Fresh Eyes to the Boardroom Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -velocity, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the digital era, organizations no matter large or small, all face the unprecedented change and constant disruptions. The purpose of the board of directors is to direct the organization in the right direction and monitor its performance. The directorship in any organization becomes more critical and challenging for guiding the business through the uncharted water and steering it in the right decision. Corporate governance is to challenge the management and make sure that management is doing its job properly. Can BoDs bring the pairs of fresh eyes for leading change smoothly?

The Digital Board with Global Competency Global competency is the ability to understand and act on issues of global significance or solve complex problems which have a global impact. Collectively, at the board level, global competency represents the global leadership, mindset, knowledge, insight, expertise, attitudes, skills, and behaviors necessary to thrive in today's hyper-connected and interdependent world.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 6100+ 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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The Best “Discernment” Quotes of “Digital Master” Oct. 2019

Many times people make a poor judgment, not because of ignorance, but because of the lack of insight and discernment.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Discernment” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 The verb ‘discern’ simply means to detect with the senses. Discernment speaks more to using both perception ( experience or intuition) and research/analysis to make the best decision.

2 An aspect goes into discernment is that there is a sensitivity of the body that can give us feedback on all kinds of situations. Having discernment can free us from the fear of being wrong.

3 Judgment occurs at a conscious level while discernment can sometimes occur at a subconscious level as well. The subconscious stuff is far more valuable because it taps into an "inner knowing."

4 Many times people make a poor judgment, not because of ignorance, but because of the lack of insight and discernment.

5 Discernment means the ability to judge well. It’s more important than ever to have strong discernment and sound judgement to make effective decisions and bring wisdom to the workplace.

6 As you learn to go beyond patterns, the discovery of how to use discernment allows you to choose your steps that are aligned with your inner, core self, and leverage data-based analytics in order to make sound judgments.

7 It’s more important than ever to have strong discernment and sound judgement to make effective decisions and bring wisdom to the workplace.

8 Discernment requires the ability to be the witness in situations, to have an inner knowing that allows for discernment, to develop better sensing tools and then to act from the greater dimension of knowledge, understanding, and awareness.

9 Having discernment is not equal to being judgmental, which has the aspect of something being right or wrong. It is more about being free to understand things more comprehensively with contextual intelligence.

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Three Clarifications Enable Smooth Digital Transformation

The purpose of going digital is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of achieving high performing business result and unlocking the full business potential.

Digital transformation is the radical change and a tough journey with many obstacles on the way. Riding ahead of the change curve takes both principles and practices, strategy and discipline. Digital transformation can impact the core, businesses today must dynamically develop, enable and sustain the changeability of an enterprise. A highly changeable organization is the company that can align all critical business elements seamlessly, quickly and safely assess all of the consequences of a possible change and devise effective plans to provide a combination approach to go digital. Here are three clarifications help the business drive digital transformation smoothly.

Vision and strategic goal clarification: Change is not for its own sake, every change needs to have a noble business purpose and a well-set change agenda. This is particularly critical for the large scale digital transformation which has to expand in every direction of the business. You have to determine why you are doing it; what are strategic goals behind change and objectives you are trying to reach. Vision and strategic goals need to be clarified and have to be accessible, understandable, and made relevant to all levels of the organization.

More specifically, it’s about translating the company vision into broadly defined strategic goals and objectives which are achievable components to focus on reaching the future state of the business. Leaders should actively make decisions that are in concert with the clarified vision and strategic goals by applying “SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) principles. The relevant goal classification for digital transformation helps the leadership team keep a pulse on progress and enable the execution team understanding what needs to be done by setting the right priority, and evolving the emerging business properties with speed, to steer the business in the right direction without getting lost.

Communication clarification: Digital communication is sophisticated, but it’s the coordination mechanism to inspire, motivate, persuade, negotiate, and clarify, to make progressive change possible and allow a group of people to function as a cohesive team to achieve more. Communication clarity directly impacts on the change effectiveness and the speed of digital transformation. In practice, miscommunication is a common pitfall which is often caused by misinformation or perception gaps because people have a different knowledge base and cognitive understanding to articulate things.

Communication bottleneck and the primary impediments to collaboration is a dissonance between upper and middle management or middle management and front line employees. To clarify communication, pay attention to context, context, and style. The great communicators can communicate objectively with strong logic, clarity, and understanding.

The strategic communication of digital transformation initiated by top digital leaders are not the one-way street, but multidimensional paths from top-down to bottom up; from inside out to outside-in, etc. The effective and clarified communication can fortify cross-functional coordination by strengthening weak links and bridging gaps. It embraces clarity, creativity, context, cascade, consistency, to enforce trust and accountability, streamline knowledge flow, enforce accountability, and achieve digital synchronization.

Role/responsibility clarification: The most important factor for positive change is flexibility in planning, decide to be prepared for the inevitable change, clarify the roles and responsibilities, and take actions at the steadfast pace. 

People need to be the center of change. Role and responsibility clarification is critical; you need to determine what's best for each position based on what it will contribute to your overall goals, then go get it. Who is initiating the change? Who is accountable for the quality and the cost of transformation? Who is providing change adoption strategy? Who is accountable for change in capabilities at the core? Who leads the execution of change? Who is accountable for achieving change objectives? Etc, Nowadays, change is an ongoing business capability, pay attention to role clarification and the human dynamics of personalities and human behavior, to ensure the right people with the right capabilities being put in the right position to make changes happen and sustain. 

Select the best for change agent role who has the right mindset, the right sense of duty, the right set of values, collaborative ways of working, the right approach to achieve the business results. Organizational change is the team effort, shared responsibility or collective accountability involves shared ownership, can be harnessed by motivating people to achieve the “art of the possible,” and build a culture of learning, trust, and professionalism.

The purpose of going digital is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of achieving high performing business result and unlocking the full business potential. It’s critical to clarify vision, goals, strategy and environment, master in communication, sharing and leading, put a stronger emphasis on empowering people, build a strategic roadmap, explore the source of knowledge, improve business adaptations and enforce people-centricity.

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The Monthly “100 Digital Pitfalls” Book Tuning: The Organizational Fragility and Vulnerability Oct. 2019

 The inevitable range, breadth, depth, and pace of uncontrollable factors acting on any organizations mean identifying business vulnerability and constant fine-tuning is essential to improve business adaptability, performance, and maturity.

Digital makes a significant impact on how we think, live, and work. There is a mix of old and new, physical and virtual, order and chaos. We are in a time of tremendous change, the dawn of the digital age, the path to the next level of digital maturity, also in the era of confusion and information overload. Therefore, it’s critical to identify, understand, and avoid pitfalls, discover strategic and predictive pathways to change, increase confidence, position a brand and leverage resources to make the digital paradigm shift effortlessly.

The purpose of “100 Digital Pitfalls: How to Overcome Pitfalls on the Path of Going Digital” is to throw some light on how to identify, understand, and overcome common pitfalls on the digital journey, dig underneath the surface, and take a holistic approach to integrate both hard and soft elements for improving the long-term organizational competency and reaching the high-level of business maturity. Slideshare Presentation

            The Organizational Fragility and Vulnerability  

The Organizational Fragility Caused by Imbalance The black and white boundaries continue to diminish in the 21st century due to the occurrence of increased economic integration, hyperconnected and interdependent nature of digital organization. Ad hoc business change is doomed to fail. The digital transformation is radical change, with all sorts of ups and downs, bumps and curves. It brings both opportunities for business growth and risks as pitfalls. From a business management perspective, the imbalance of any sort will cause change fatigue, decision ineffectiveness or business fragility, To lead change smoothly, how to identify problems and fix them smoothly?

Three Causes to Organizational Fragile The world is constantly changing, and digital is all about flow- information flow, idea flow, and business flow. The organization has different functions, structures, layers, and systems. When the company seems to get stalled, workplace is stale, and the organization turns to be fragile, business management must ask the big "WHY" question, dig into the root causes, and ponder how to fix critical issues to run a dynamic digital organization with the steadfast speed.

Three Causes of Business Vulnerability Digital organizations are organic, complex, informative and hyperconnected. Closer to reality is that change is continuously happening in such a dynamic environment of a company. The inevitable range, breadth, depth, and pace of uncontrollable factors acting on any organizations mean identifying business vulnerability and constant fine-tuning is essential to improve business adaptability, performance, and maturity.

Bureaucracy as a Business Management Pitfall The root of the word "bureaucracy" is: bureau(fr) = desk and kratos(gr) = rules/ power. Generally speaking, bureaucracy is a system based on a hierarchy of authority and division of workforce functioning in a routine manner. Though organizational bureaucracy inherited from the traditional management discipline brings a certain level of business efficiency. It is criticized by the lack of system perspective, with characteristics such as inflexibility, inefficiency, silo, stagnation, unresponsiveness, or lack of creativity, etc. Bureaucracy is correlated with a mechanistic view of the organization and reductionistic management discipline. It is the opposite of systems thinking and one of the big digital management pitfalls.

Three Misguidance Stifles Digitalization Digital means flow and high velocity, closer to reality is that 'change' is continuously happening in such a dynamic environment of a company, with accelerated speed. It indicates that business leaders must learn how to strike a right balance between managing complex issues today and forecasting the uncertain issues of tomorrow, commit to transform themselves into a highly innovative digital business powerhouse. Misguidance will cause business failing and stifle digitalization. To stay competitive, companies must be steered in the right direction, move from “Doing Digital” - experimenting with digital technological tools to “Being Digital” - running a full-fledged digital organization.

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 minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #5800 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The Best “Push & Pull” Quotes of “Digital Master” Oct. 2019

“Push” and “Pull” are the duel forces businesses management must master in order to “run, grow, and transform” their organization at the steadfast speed.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Push & Pull” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Going digital is about how to leverage the “push & pull” business forces to adapt to changes and orchestrate a full-fledged digital transformation.

2 Organizations have to push themselves out of the comfort zone, but also pull all critical business elements to form the unique business competency

3 “Push” and “Pull” are the duel forces businesses management must master in order to “run, grow, and transform” their organization at the steadfast speed.

4 Push talented people to "think in bigger boxes,"also pull the great ideas over to the innovation pipelines and build a strong innovation ecosystem.

5 You are motivated to keep moving forward via a necessary “push,” and inspiration is the “pull” factor for the continuum of motivation.

6 Through all necessary “push & pull,” “bend over,” and “stretch out,” the organization can strike the right balance and achieve the premium state of the business

7 There is the time you need to push forward for reaching the predefined business goals or objectives on time; there is also the time you should pull all necessary resources for creating the business synergy.

8 There are both “push and pull” factors in motivation.There is the time you need to push forward for getting people out of comfort zone; there is also the time you need to pull all necessary resources and have people drive changes at their own pace.

9 For every thorny or emergent problem, push for multiple solutions, take the time to look at every situation from multiple points of view (customer POV, supplier POV, management POV, etc), pull all necessary business resources to develop innovative business solutions.

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The Multifactors in Multi-Thread Innovation Management

Organizations need to fine-tune various key factors, develop and implement a dynamic innovation strategy to accelerate the next cycle of digital innovation management.

Innovation differentiates business leaders from laggards. Digital innovation touches broader aspects of organization such as products/services innovation, business model innovation, process innovation, communication innovation, or culture innovation, etc. From an Innovation Management perspective, innovation system includes policy, structure, and program that innovation managers can use to drive innovation systematically. The good or bad innovation would depend on the business’s attitude to nourish a culture of creativity and its aptitude to manage innovation in a structural way. Here are multi-factors in multi-thread innovation management.

Motivation factor: Innovation, especially breakthrough innovation is not for faint hearts. Innovation leaders need to be both inspirational and objective, ask themselves and others: Do we really need innovation, who will be held responsible for implementing innovation, what will be the cost, time, risk, and ROI etc. Motivation is one of the critical factors in keeping the innovation game moving forward. If there’re no inspiring ideas, people’s motivation is reduced. Organizations with a command-control type of management style is often indifferent to external innovations. To manage innovation effectively, it’s important to build a process of a corporate pulse that helps to identify where the pulse/motivation/passion/commitment of the organization lies, and who embodies it.

It’s also important to break down the status quo or “we always do things like that” mentality. You can't build trust or motivate effectively if you don't engage with people. Let people explore where their energy is and then, align the energy to work at hand, and motivate them to think and do things innovatively. Motivational leadership is a means toward reconciling all different factors toward a unifying and driving goals of innovation management.

Strategy factor: Every innovation pursuit has risks in it, and every risk has opportunities in it. Innovation shouldn’t be serendipity. A good innovation strategy enable the business diagnosing critical business problems, developing guidelines, setting priorities, transforming novel ideas to achieve their business value or solving either emerging or existing problems creatively. An innovation strategy frames effective constraints which are not only a facilitator but a requirement to value-driven innovation. It creates a clear line of sight between the enterprise vision and how to build a balanced portfolio with the right mix of breakthrough innovations and incremental innovations.

Digital innovation has broader spectrum, systematically addressing the innovation strategy agenda is forged by seamless alignments. One cannot think in terms of single thread serial actions alone nor can one give undue priority to areas that are covered by the tactical implementation of the innovation strategy only. The multi-thread innovation management involves aligning initiatives, talent, resources, performance with the goals and objectives of good innovation strategies.

Measurement factor: Innovation success is based on both hard elements such as systems or processes and soft factors such as leadership, communication or culture. The success rate of innovation, especially radical innovation, is still very low. Therefore, it’s important to score the company’s innovation capacity, performance, potential, and innovation maturity. Metrics provides feedback and they are part of transparent visual management allowing pulling. 

Often, innovation indicators varying depending on who is doing the measuring, and how they are measuring, unfortunately many innovation indicators are flawed and present limitations. Poor-defined measurement can mislead, create complication, cause confusion, or suck energy. A well-selected set of metrics helps to clarify critical issues such as the revenue generated by innovations launched in a certain time frame; calculate the tangible value created from the multi-threading innovation management, and keep track of innovation performance at both individual and team level, etc.

Innovation is not serendipity, Incremental innovation will keep optimizing the business, and "disruptive" or sustainable innovation will improve customer satisfaction and business brand. Innovation becomes a differentiated business competency for adapting to the “VUCA” digital new normal. Organizations need to fine-tune various key factors, develop and implement a dynamic innovation strategy to accelerate the next cycle of digital innovation management.

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The Monthly “Digital Maturity” Book Tuning: Build Strong Pillars to Shape High Mature Digital Organization Oct, 2019

Companies need to infuse digital into every aspect of the business and expand to every dimension of the organization, 

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. The digitalization flattens the organizational hierarchy and blurs the functional, organizational and geographical borders in the business ecosystem. It is like a gigantic puzzle with many misplaced pieces, you have to put them all in the right places to discover the real meaning and unleash its full potential. You cannot make a true digital paradigm shift without an in-depth understanding of the digital interconnectivity and embracing the multitude of digital maturity.

Build Strong Pillars to Shape Digital Organization 

 Five Pillars of Organizational Maturity Today’s business world is dynamic, volatile, uncertain, and hyper-competitive. Every business is different, they are at varying stages of its business life cycle and different level of organizational maturity. Many companies may be in business for many years but has not matured its management disciplines. But surviving and thriving in today’s business dynamic requires structural flexibility, cross-functional collaboration, inter-relational process to reduce business fricitions and deal with conflicts or disruptions that arise, to shape a people-centric organization from functioning to delight. Here are five pillars of organizational maturity. 

Three Pillars in Digital Transformation Digital transformation is the 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, process, and technology. Here are three pillars of digital


Five Pillars of Digital Innovation? Nowadays, with rapid changes and fierce competitions, innovation is no longer a “nice to have,” but a “must have” competency for long-term business success. Digital is the age of innovation. Highly innovative digital organizations, no matter how large or small, are highly dynamic and flexible, focus on solving problems and unleashing business potential. Innovation is not always equal to the latest gadget, it’s about people, culture, partnership, and manner, to build a highly creative working environment and develop differentiated innovation competency.

Five-Pillar Framework to Develop the Platform Business The digital organization is a dynamic system which needs to continue evolving and adapting. It can expand and amplify its influence with the ability to create new business models, run a platform business in a hyperconnected digital ecosystem - treat customers, suppliers, channel partners and industrial participants as active agents who can integrate the modular capabilities exposed in a powerful platform to create new experiences and expand its impact. Here are five essential pillars to build a solid framework for developing a powerful platform business.

The Strong Pillars of the Digital Organization 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 orchestrate a hyper-connected ecosystem which is interwoven with people, process, and technology, and form all important pillars to build a high-performance and high-mature digital organization.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #5900th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 25 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The Best “Reusability” Quotes of “Digital Master” Oct. 2019

Re-usability and simplicity compliment each other to a certain level of granularity within the organization.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Reusability” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Re-usability will bring in required simplicity at an Enterprise level. When it comes to systems level, it becomes more tactical.

2 Re-usability and simplicity compliment each other to a certain level of granularity within the organization.

3 Knows when to reuse and when not to reuse: where it may be bad, where there may be risks, but also where, if appropriately mitigated the reuse could be good.

4 Reuse is about creating simple building blocks that can be applied over and over to minimize design cost and maximize value over the Lifecycle.

5 If we want to build reusable component, we must define all the reuse cases at the design level and build this component based on it, focused on real reusable cases instead of building something in a generic way and hoping that it could be reused later.

6 Architecture needs to play a significant role in orchestrating reusability, agility and flexibility, to craft more cohesive business capabilities, value/cost/risk analysis needs to be done more coherently.

7 Reuse of existing people, processes, locations, systems, services, data, applications and technology will always be considered first in the provision of any service to the Business Rationale.

8 Reuse is useful, but it must be done intelligently. To be effectively used, one must also learn from the past. Not only should we question the applicability of a component for re-use, but we need to capture and analyze the lessons learned from the previous applications of the component.

9 The art of reusability is about architectural design thinking and strategic planning; the science of reusability is related to governance and in-depth analysis & calculation, to achieve business results such as cost effectiveness & productivity, and good for business' long term development.

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Digital Leader as Learning Champion

What keeps leaders successful is the intellectual curiosity and ability to continuously be open to learning and applying these learning as they move forward. 

The rapidly changing business climate makes the digital leaders and professionals today feel like to live in the tropical jungle, facing many attacks, in the danger of getting dismissed. How should they survive and thrive in such a dynamic environment? The spirit comes from the top. Digital leaders today need to be the learning champions who can take initiatives to build a learning organization in which people can learn and develop themselves, build unique competency and encourage mastery.

Shape learning mind: Digital leadership is a mindset that requires commitment from the very top of an organization all the way to the bottom without exception. Digital leadership fitness is based on thinking capacity, learning agility, as well as behavior exemplification. Because often, the radical change requires mind shift, let go of the “voices from the past,” absorb new knowledge and establish a new digital blueprint. Digital leaders must have learning curve awareness, they dare to ask “foolish questions,” be experimental and adventurous, always in the search for new things and new way to learn. Leadership is a character and personal development, you must continue to learn and improve leadership competency.

Improve learning agility: With overwhelming information and abundance of knowledge, one of the true tests of a digital leadership and professionalism is to know when you don't know, cultivate healthy digital attitudes to keep learning, adapt to change with the right speed, and improve leadership and professional skills. The tough part is that often the mindset of the older generation is perhaps more rigid, their “know it all” attitude might stop them from learning new knowledge and adapting to change because they are deep-seated with life experiences and beliefs. Thus, to develop a learning organization, top leaders must become learning champions, to make smooth mind shift, from a static analog mode to a dynamic digital mode, be aware when some of the long-acquired knowledge is no longer applicable in certain situations; be skillful to deal with situations that you have not dealt with before, possess the confidence and experience to be entrepreneurial. They must master the”learn-unlearn-relearn,” cycle smoothly and gain insight on changing circumstances; they must also enforce “learn-share-collaborate” culture, get the staff to be proactive in the changes an organization could possibly face, and build a learning organization effectively.

Nourish learning spirit: The spirit of organizations comes from the top, if the executive teams have a better passion for learning, it will shape the learning organization effortlessly. Great leaders nourish learning by listening, asking questions, dealing with conflict and giving or receiving feedback effectively. They are the learning champions who can provide a high level of leadership and coaching skills to inspire, encourage, and engage their teams to develop trustful relationship, operate effectively for change or innovation to occur. They understand that learning can come from anywhere and are not afraid to let their staff members teach them something new, allow their staff to be successful! Inspires others to be their very best and invests in their success.

What keeps leaders successful is the intellectual curiosity and ability to continuously be open to learning and applying these learning as they move forward. The digital leaders are learning champions who demonstrate inquisitiveness, adaptability, consistency, and empathy to steer change skillfully and master business dynamic effortlessly.

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