“Inference” Quotes of “Digital Master” Nov. 2020

The core skills of critical thinking include analysis of argumentation, both explicit and implicit reasoning, the ability for examining inference via analyzing, evaluating, and producing coherent argumentation.

"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 “Inference” quotes in “Digital Master.”

From a logical perspective, Critical Think is the skill for analyzing, synthesizing, evaluating, and producing coherent argumentation by examining inference

intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. Intuition is more receptive, global, holistic.

The general inference derived by people who have competence in interpreting this is that a little knowledge makes people believe they are more expert than they really are. This can lead to errors in judgment and wrong decisions.

The core skills of critical thinking include analysis of argumentation, both explicit and implicit reasoning, the ability for examining inference via analyzing, evaluating, and producing coherent argumentation.

The greater the knowledge of the systems in which one lives, a correct inference to be made from the use of common sense. The effectiveness of common sense, and thus the ability to use this knowledge in a functional way, is directly proportional to the degree of familiarity with the environment in which it operates.

Advanced social analytics can help the organization collect feedback, analyze context and quickly draw an inference from unstructured social media or enterprise data and convert them into actionable customer insight.

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Insight Upon Change Obstacles

Change cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished, it has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the company in a systematic way. 

Change is the new normal with increasing speed. There are two types of change: proactive and reactive. Proactive implies anticipation of changes via predictive or pre planning change scenarios. Reactive is adaptive to change that has already occurred or is underway. Many changes, especially business transformation are difficult, you have to remove roadblocks, overcome change obstacles, get out of the “comfort zones,” and manage change in a structural way.

Underestimated learning/change curves: The change curve which is a model of the states that people who are to change will go through, is applicable to everyone even those who planned and conceived the vision. Having change curve awareness means how much change capabilities are really required for the change effort you are kicking off. There are both psychological curves and knowledge/ skill/capacity/methodological curves for changes. Technically it’s the first step that goes through during change when in actuality they are the steps that come before change can take place. Having a learning curve awareness also means to understand how change capabilities are underpinned by people, processes, and technology, and how much change capabilities are really required for change efforts you are kicking off. The answer would be to promote the positives to try to capture those on the periphery.

Change curves exist because these days it is pretty tough to get attention as there is so much going on. Change can no longer just a one-time initiative or spontaneous effort, it should be the ongoing business capability with both hardcore elements such as resource/skills and the soft touches such as communication. Each person has their own change curve and as a change agent, you learn that you need management to sponsor and reinforce the change. In the corporate level, being more in sync with people, which in the end, does not prevent change managers from having a process for securing and accelerating the implementation of the change effort.

Ineffective processes & tools: Silo or inflexible processes stifle changes. To manage a smooth change continuum, organizations have to be holistic and forethoughtful to deal with strategic change such as digitalization and become nimbler about handling tactical changes such as updating technologies, optimizing processes, and making continuous change deliveries. At the organizational level, change management shouldn’t be just about taking a few random business initiatives, it’s an ongoing business capability with multi-stepped processes that include both change resolution and change management disciplines and practices.

Ineffective processes & tools decelerate change, it’s important to understand how change capabilities are underpinned by change processes, people, and technology. Engaging around change is a far deeper, more difficult process. It includes listening and understanding the realities that people face as much as it does to conveying information. The dynamic Change Management process must be open to new insights and adaptable to the emerging events. It requires much more effective collaboration and optimized processes for minimizing cost, time and risk whilst maximizing scalable solutions. In practice, accomplish change by identifying the pain points through unique well-developed processes. It involves connecting with people at an emotional as well as a rational level and working out the best way to meet multiple needs within a change process. Outline change implementation process with assignments, dates, and deliverable.

Lack of breadth space between change initiatives: Many change efforts fail due to change inertia or change fatigue. To dig deeper, there is lack of leadership effectiveness such as having trouble prioritizing initiatives, or lack of breadth spaces between change initiatives. When a change initiative is completed, often the team walks away without sum-up or checking to see if it adds value or evaluating if additional work is required. The lack of recognition of change impacts individuals and businesses’ willingness to extend themselves again for the next change. Change is not for its own sake, it has to create value and accelerate performance.

The human element of change entails a people-centric approach to change management style. It’s imperative to awaken the changing consciousness of the people. Leadership reflection, organizational super consciousness and employee engagement are all crucial to the change continuum. Without taking a breath to look back, plowing on to the next big thing before completely embedding the change into business as usual or running multiple simultaneous changes can leave a workforce reeling and exhausted. In fact successful change management is critical to improve the organizational maturity from functioning to delight.

Cultural, structural, or systemic obstacles: Many people resist changes because of uncertainty, fear of taking them outside their comfort zone. Collectively, it’s important to understand the psychology behind change and overcome cultural barriers. In the organizational setting, to embrace change requires the change of mindset at every level and gain a good understanding that things cannot stay the same. It’s also critical to motivate people to acquire relevant knowledge, develop changeability, and then truly make change happen, engage people in the design of change solutions so that issues can be surfaced and addressed early. walk through “look, listen, question, understand, plan, test and collaborate,” scenario and take advantage of the latest technology trend such as enterprise social platforms or other collaboration tools that provide a more effective way in cross-functional communication and cross-project collaboration. Planned change, tuning organizational structures & systems and participative management are central to success.

Sometimes dealing with structural issues is not always the answer and as such, a constant change is probably not dealing with the real issues in the first place which could also be either HR, culture related or political related. Effective leadership - whether artistic or administrative- involves creativity. There is understandably tension sometimes between the creative and the administrative. Many change efforts need creative people, who can think outside the box, and key stakeholders in parts of the process as well - in order to get an external viewpoint. To make change happening not only on the structural surface, but really ensure the culture is harmonized and the right people are in the right position to take the right tasks, and organization as a whole is optimal than the sum of pieces.

Inadequate measurement system: Measuring change is difficult because the thing you try to measure keeps change. Change indeed is difficult to measure unless all parties involved in the change take ownership of the change and see why and what the change is about. Too many folks measure the journey. If at some intermediate stage, change management measures something that is not congruent with the final outcome, then dysfunctional behavior arises, potentially diminishing the end-to-end change performance. The KPI for change management is to measure the overall outcome, and the cultural adoption of these goals is part of that measure.

There are numerous points-of-view and reference points of varying stakeholders who all have a different view on "change." They must define the “why and what” the change outputs will look like. Well defining the right set of measurements is an important step to managing change effectively. To make change sustain, it is important to manage end-to-end performance, measures will be the appropriate ones. To manage end-to-end change performance, it requires the necessity to establish clear, understandable and easily calculable metrics, ensure people are working on the right things and producing multifaceted business values, and measure things matter to make sure that the value of change will be realized and delivered smoothly. Ultimately, the success of the change program is measured by results that are important values to the organization.

Change cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished, it has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the company in a systematic way. The purpose of building change management capability and accelerating radical digitalization is to make a significant difference in achieving people delight and high performing business results.

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The Monthly Digital Framework Summary: Interwoven Competency Frameworks Nov. 2020

Frameworks add value as they are implementations of the patterns to avoid having to reinvent the wheel all the time.

The digital frameworks add value as they are implementations of the patterns to avoid having to reinvent the wheel, it helps the organization embed a digital culture into the very fabric of the business, explore digital in a structural way and laser focus on the most important things to get business digital ready.

Interwoven Competency Frameworks 

Innovation Framework Innovation is not serendipity. Working in an innovation garden not only takes passion but also needs the process and hard work. A systematic innovation approach is to depict innovation as a system, rather than a traditional process. Innovation performance depends on the alignment of its various components (people, process, resources, actions, controls, measurement, etc.). Though there's no single structure that will work in every organization, the comprehensive innovation framework with all important enterprise components is the great tool to intensify innovation with focus and manage innovation in a structural way.

Intelligent Problem-Solving Framework Running a business is fundamentally an iterative problem-solving continuum. Due to fast-paced change, the exponential growth of information and continuous digital disruptions, the problems facing business also turn to be over-complex and difficult to solve. You need to have deep insight, take a holistic approach to complex problem-solving and build a comprehensive framework for both defining the right problems and solving them effectively. Otherwise, the temporary fix will cause you to reconsider the problem statement soon after. Here, we introduce a comprehensive digital problem-solving framework with "AISDE" components.

Capability Framework A business capability is an acquired and organized ability within a company to achieve certain business values, and it takes hard work to put in place and it takes time and effort to build sophisticated organizational capabilities and core business competency. Often unique business capabilities cannot be transferred because of the degree of organizational learning and organization that goes with it. A set of business capabilities directly decides the overall organizational competencies. Forward-looking organizations develop a business-specific capability and readiness framework with all important pillars to enable business strategy execution and unlock organizational performance.

Business Optimization Framework An architectural optimization framework is a collection of knowledge composed of different groups of information and knowledge. The framework is also a playground within which you structure, build and perform your work such as culture, practices, knowledge, know-how; design and plan the future enterprise for helping the organization make a transition from the current state to the future state

GRC Frameworks "The digital frameworks add value as they are implementations of the patterns to avoid having to reinvent the wheel, it helps the organization embed a digital culture into the very fabric of the business, explore digital in a structural way and laser focus on the most important things to get business digital ready.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #7300th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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“Understanding” (viii) Quotes of “Digital Master” Nov, 2020

Modern businesses are dynamic systems, the component parts of a system can best be understood in the context of relationships with each other and with other systems, rather than in isolation.

"Digital Master” is the 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, advises 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 “Understanding” quotes (viii) in “Digital Master.’

Too often people may take the easy path, think, and work at a superficial level rather than spend the time to understand what is going on underneath.

Understand different perspectives without pushing toward the one that you think is the truth. The more complex the situation is, the more different approaches and role gaming is needed to reach for understanding.

The deep problem that reveals is to understand what are the evolutionary pathways implied by the mind switches and how we can leverage Systems Thinking to understand and solve crucial problems.

Contextual intelligence is crucial in making sound decisions, especially at the strategic level. Because you need to have a big picture thinking to understand the interconnectivity of the parts and the whole, leverage multiple variables via analysis and synthesis, in order to make better and objective decisions.

Bright digital leaders and professionals are skeptical about the conventional understanding of issues so that they examine everything before accepting it for the real truth or advising it to others. They need to leverage critical thinking to understand which factors contribute to uncertainty and how to manage them effectively.

Modern businesses are dynamic systems, the component parts of a system can best be understood in the context of relationships with each other and with other systems, rather than in isolation.

Business leaders and managers do not just provide answers, more importantly, they should evoke more questions to deepen their understanding, and they should facilitate collective feedback and embrace multiple answers to the questions.

It’s important to step outside of the system and adopt different perspectives to gain an in-depth understanding of interrelationships rather than isolated things, understanding patterns of changes rather than static snapshots, get to know the external changing connected environment or the entire business ecosystem.

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Innovate Holistic GRC

The context for corporate governance includes a wide range of circumstances and capabilities which are subject to constant organizational variability. 

The purpose of the GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) is to improve business performance through the creation of value to stakeholders. GRC discipline is more crucial in today's digital dynamic. One of the problems with views in the enterprise either via management or governance lens today is that they are not holistic. The lack of GRC awareness and holism creates blind spots uncovered, and gaps unfilled. 

In a high mature organization, governance must be viewed and assessed at the enterprise level, developing innovative governance practices and achieving governance holism. Business leaders should keep asking themselves and others: What is the "spirit" in today's governance body? And what are the perspectives for the future of governance?

Good governance must create good performance, especially for the long run business growth: As business leaders today can’t predict every turn or curve that the organization will face. There is a myriad of information, conflicts, and change inertia in the modern business environment. One of the important goals of GRC discipline is to improve the corporate decision-making effectiveness and consistency. Good corporate governance creates a good decision-making system and good controlling system, which can assure the corporations’ operation under the correct directions and behaviors correctly. However, governance is not just about controlling or compliance, it’s about achieving high performance. Using the traditional ways of working in the silos and through overly rigid processes simply won't have enough time to produce the input for the decision-makers. A holistic GRC approach with a set of innovative practices can harness data-based communication, enforce accountability, improve prioritization, and optimize resource usage, etc.

There’s a correlation between corporate governance and business performance. There is a consensus that governance not only should but must influence to manage the level of performance of all the members of the company. Thus, holistic GRC approaches enforce accountability at different levels of the organization. The company with open-minded leadership and culture of innovation can build a safe environment for achieving risk intelligence and governance maturity as accountability involves shared ownership, empathetic communication, risk-taking attitude, professional capability, and necessary resources to succeed. Corporate governance indicates a relationship with the board, shareholders, management and stakeholders. If all these parties would perform to the vision and mission of the organization, it would increase the performance significantly. By implementing effective GRC programs, corporations can deliver immediate benefits to the entire organization.

Integrate GRC to make complex things less complex and improve business maturity: The governance rules include, but not limited to improving the functioning and transparency of the company, its business strategy implementation, and management performance. The value proposition of good GRC and brand should be integrated within and across operations not siloed off in a box and improve the success rate of business innovation. The GRC can be evaluated not only from the financial perspective but also from the involvement and signs being displayed inside the organization, from innovation, people (employees, customers, partners, etc.), and multidimensional value perspectives. High mature GRC disciplines focus on reliable service/solution delivery, vertical accountability, horizontal communication & collaboration, cost optimization, availability of talents, scalability of operations, or culture cohesiveness, etc.

GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) is not a single process, but a collection of processes and other governance mechanisms, such as roles. The governance structure specifies the distribution of rights and responsibilities among different participants in the corporation. You cannot automate all aspects of GRC, there are people and various CSFs in it. To innovate and implement holistic GRC, embed the GRC mechanism in the key business processes; think big and small, think agile, think incremental, and most of all, think about how GRC can be delegated and even automated when possible, but also develop the best and next practices to drive business change and business value the most, and adapt to the digital new normal. If your organizations are less regulated, you can leverage GRC to facilitate discussion of common risks and opportunity issues across the enterprise and avoid duplicating effort for risk remediation.

Champion of corporate culture, ethics, and responsibility: There are different views of business evolution. The most commonly useful view includes influencers, drivers, business models, and initiatives for change, etc. The greatest risk for organizations today will be a real business/reputation issue that is not being properly identified or managed. So a holistic GRC needs to move more and more to be the hub and harbinger of culture and values, specifies the rules and procedures for making decisions in corporate affairs, and enforces good policies to improve the functioning and transparency of the company. For every corporation which should work effectively and run innovatively, you need strong GRC disciplines that help executives and management perform a risk analysis, harness connectivity (communication, coordination, and control), raise visibility and awareness for many things that are captured at the different levels of the organization.

The fabric of "value system" and "credibility" differentiates an organization from others. Corporate GRC discipline can fulfill its purpose as a high-level corporate enabler by providing a structured view and communication bridge between shareholders/investors and top business leaders such as corporate directors. Culture and the legacy are that the organization writes about itself through the times of decisions, dynamics, and challenges. The cultural competency arises in the manifestation of the company culture both internally and in the final analysis in the market environment. Corporate culture will, therefore, have an impact on the type of services or products finally created. Extrinsic reflection of culture is your business brand. It’s important to instill GRC philosophy in organizational culture, embed GRC mechanisms in the key business processes, and enforce GRC practices at daily business activities. Focus on proactive planning and process optimization for collaboration, accountability, and integration.

There are varying degrees of understanding of the scope of corporate governance such as governance framework, principle, structure, process, mechanism, practice, and metrics, etc. The context for corporate governance includes a wide range of circumstances and capabilities which are subject to constant organizational variability. You do not implement GRC, you earn it through repeated practices, and you innovate it through the next practices. That is something very valuable. If organizations have true governance, the corporate strategy would be able to deal with the conflicting priorities and provide greater clarity. Holistic GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) plays a more important role in running an effective organization, harnessing innovation and achieving a high level of organizational maturity.

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The Monthly Keyword Summary: Unconventional Nov. 2020

 

From one generation to the next, the substance of leadership does not change, it’s about the future, change, and influence. However, digital leadership trends will continue to emerge. 

Here is a set of featured blogs to dig into the “keywords” of the 21st century to brainstorm the future of digital leadership and business transformation.

     

Unconventional 

Outliers The digital era is volatile, complex, uncertain and ambiguous. Business leaders have to understand what it means within their organization, but much more importantly, they have to understand the external changing connected business environment as well as the emerging digital ecosystem. Digital leaders nowadays are expected to constantly propose new ideas and challenge the status quo. Sometimes organizations go stale and need the so-called "shot in the arm" of someone who can think differently, see things from the different angles; read between the lines, tell the fresh stories. An outlier’s story, should you listen to?

Visionary Leadership is about setting directions, making positive influences and inspiring 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 misunderstandings about vision and being a visionary, here are three perspectives of clarity.

Uniqueness Digital is the age of innovation and options. Nowadays, knowledge is only a click away, and digital convenience makes an impact on every aspect of individual life and business management. The world becomes more diverse, dynamic, but also hyper-connected than ever, the stereotypical perceptions or the reductionistic management discipline have to shift for fitting the ever-changing digital era we live in. Digital professionals today must become comfortable with being who they are and be “different.” Every person is unique, no two snowflakes are the same. Compete with uniqueness is more effective than competing for everything. Being real is much more important than being perfect; but what does “real” mean? To what standard, are we being genuine? Daring to start to find an answer to this question enables anybody to lead oneself and possibly others, or simply ask yourself: Are you comfortable to be “Different”?

Conventional vs. Unconventional Wisdom Rational wisdom is the usual meaning of the term 'wisdom' - it means accumulative wisdom that grows with age - or 'learning from past experience.' People do have their own beliefs and practices, which one can call as Conventional Mind. And one has the right to live with the same. With age one tends to become risk-averse, so they have a tendency to stick to conventional wisdom. Unconventional wisdom often means fresh insight or “out-of-the-box” thinking, so conventional wisdom or unconventional wisdom, which is true wisdom?

Unconventional CIOs Digitalization is driving hyperconnectivity and unpredictability, demanding more rapid deployment that can quickly adapt to the changes and adjust to the new market conditions. Digital power is the combination of the power of knowledge, the power of information and technology, the power of people, and the power of creativity. Traditional IT in the industrial age is often blamed as the controller and change laggard, but nowadays, all leading companies across the vertical sectors declare they are in the information management business, IT needs to become the linchpin of the digitalization and innovation engine of the business. To be creative, you must do something different, creativity is all about change. CIOs should take bold leadership, practice unconventional thinking and run innovative IT to get digital ready.

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 #7300 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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“Finish” Quotes of “Digital Master” Nov. 2020

"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 “Finish” quotes in “Digital Master.”

Business capability provides a differentiation and the ability to do things and finish tasks in a consistent manner.

Cross-pollination is great, but also makes the team accountable, gives people ownership and responsibility in what they do, with the ultimate goal of implementing the best ideas to deliver business value. They need to be able to handle all the value-adding steps in the whole flow of work, start-to-finish.

Usually, in the workplace, some managers put up a barrier of being judgmental. Without leaving an open mind, and allowing the individual to finish their message, they would have taken a stand.

People are able to take an immersive digital scenario for problem-solving in the whole flow of work, start-to-finish, idea-to-cash, and create an interactive environment with customers as well so that you can reverse engineer from customer feedback to a creative product/service.

What’re the fresh perspectives of organizational design (OD) by taking advantage of digital technologies? Where is the dividing line between OD and process? Should there be a handoff from process to OD, and where should that occur? Or should they work together from start to finish, which rarely occurs?

IT and the business must be partners, speak the same language, must be able to finish each other’s sentences and feel like members of the same team, and also have complementary skills and capabilities to improve business effectiveness and achieve better business results via seamless communication, relentless collaboration and continuous innovation.

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Illustrate Innovation via Inquiries

 Although almost all serious digital leaders and professionals today understand the importance of asking the right questions, they are not afraid to challenge the status quo and they have the unlimited curiosity to ask questions.

The digital environment is full of uncertainty, velocity, complexity, ambiguity, fierce competitions, and continuous disruptions. And the digital era upon us is about innovation. Making logical inquiries and applying an interdisciplinary approach to manage innovation could be at the tipping point for the digital paradigm shift. Asking questions tells us that we are still curious, still willing to learn, with the beginner's mindset. Inquisitiveness is one of the characteristics of effective leaders in the digital era of information abundance and fast pace of changes to manage innovation effectively.

Dare a little to ask "Why" or "Why not," is a critical step to spur creativity: Either individually or collectively, being innovative means you need to get used to stepping outside the old box to unfamiliar territory, discover and explore your own path to solve problems in alternative ways. Creative leaders and professionals not only ask deep “WHY”s to diagnose the root cause of problems but also ask open-ended questions such as “WHY NOT” or “What If” to spur creativity. Innovation requires thinking beyond, altering or changing the frame of reference to create previously unconsidered solutions. So leaders have to be open-minded, refuse to be bound by constraints and limitations, show flexibility, break down outdated rules, and present resilience.

Exploring emerging opportunities or pursuing possibilities is the hallmark of digital innovation. A clear vision and a handy innovation roadmap could help to “keep the ends in mind,” and take the journey with faster speed. It starts with an innovation strategy defining "what does the organization innovate" or "where should it innovate." Innovative leaders navigate their management journey through continuous asking: “Who, Who not, Where, Where not, What, What not, When, When not, Why, Why not, How, and How not.” The goal is to break down “we always do things like that” mentality and discover innovative ways to do things. More specifically, they ask: Do we really need innovation, who will be held responsible for implementing innovation, what will be the cost, time, risk, and ROI etc. By clarifying important ingredients of innovation and tuning the robust processes, systems, and tools, the organization can generate winning concepts for innovation management on a consistent basis,

What’s the emotional cycle behind innovation? Environment either encourages or discourages innovation, the ease or difficulties inherent in surviving. There is creative tension and the full emotion cycle behind innovation. The foundation for innovation has to be grounded in one’s “vision;” and discover "truth." The leaders need to ask around: What is triggering your emotions for doing innovation? What about trust? Or what about happiness? What about the right innovation climate? Your personal climate, your team climate or your organizational climate? Asking the right questions helps to validate how thorough and deep your team's thinking is on a particular issue as well as the psychology behind innovation. Look at people and people's activities, come to think of some possession or experiences which will make them related, send meaning to their life, or the meaning of their work, etc, ask great questions to get their feedback, make them see real value in terms of the investment they are ready to shell out for possession or experience of the same.

We seem to all be seeking what human emotions drive us to create or innovate. Every rational thought is linked to emotions and creates a feeling. The kind of emotions within a person that triggers an innovation process can be numerous and most likely will be a combination of emotions! You need conflict to stimulate ideas, passion to pursue the “art of possible.” Innovation, implies a wish to make something, or everything, as perfect as possible. That, in itself, seems to lead to a wish for understanding the wholeness and trigger the combination of emotions to harness creativity. To spark creativity, your digital workforce with heterogeneous team-setting includes all sorts of thinkers-creative thinker, critical thinker, systems thinker, holistic thinker, etc. They would complement each other’s thought processes for bringing up various perspectives and amplify the collective human capabilities. The leader simply coaches the team along the way, including asking more questions as necessary.

How can innovation continue to drive the progress of the human race? Environment either encourages or discourages innovation, the ease or difficulties inherent in surviving: Too easy? Too difficult? What elements did past civilizations possess that added to innovation? Innovation for the sake of innovating is exhaustive because what would be the purpose? The practical application of creativity is essentially about problem-solving at various levels, and to solve a problem innovatively involves breaking down silos and breaking through conventional wisdom, to drive evolutionary or breakthrough innovation. It's always about the questions, particularly to get people to come up with their own answers to solve problems or overcome common human challenges collaboratively. By doing so, you've led them to easily buy-in on the direction to follow.

There are many ingredients In innovation management. It is important to involve not only putting different pieces together but also blending them in such a way that generates novel ideas and stimulates innovation. You could consider all innovations hybridized in that sense and evolve ecosystem perspectives. The goal is to manage a healthy innovation portfolio with hybrid types of innovations, shepherd them through several phases of development, know when to move forward and when to return to an earlier phase. Innovation leaders lead by inquiries to improve innovation success rate. They gain in-depth understanding by asking the right questions and open for varying answers. They not only ask the right questions but rather absorb information forecast potentials; risks/benefits; mitigation and compare and contrast options, facts, ideas against logic and creativity.

Although almost all serious digital leaders and professionals today understand the importance of asking the right questions, they are not afraid to challenge the status quo and they have the unlimited curiosity to ask questions. It takes both courage and humility for them to ask questions, and it takes both insight and wisdom to ask the right questions. With the right innovation appetite, attitude, and aptitude, the organization is on the right track of developing innovation as a business-wide unique competency.

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The Monthly Connecting Dots: Innovation & Inclusiveness Nov. 2020

Digital workplace is all about people-centricity, empathy, innovation, agility and high-level business maturity. Digital organizations are always on, inter-dependent and hyper connected, people are always the most important asset in any organization before, today, and future.  In an ideal digital workplace, the organizational structure is solid enough to keep people or things in order; but fluid enough to keep information and ideas flow.

                Innovation & Inclusiveness

 

Innovation vs. Inclusiveness Creativity is innate with many special ingredients; creativity can be developed if the conditions are right and there is inspiration, inclusiveness, encouragement, and abundance of knowledge. Innovation is then the management discipline to transform those novel ideas and achieve their business value. Many think there is no innovation without inclusiveness. The most advanced societies are diverse mixtures of peoples that can spark creativity and amplify innovation. So, how to involve people with different talent in creative thinking and actions? And how can you help to improve the harvest of the creative seed and accelerate the advancement of the society?

Balance Upon Potential and Performance Organizations today need both performance and potential. Performance keeps your business running, churning numbers, etc, whereas potential looks at an employee that can bring your company to the next level, and the collective human potential in the organization is the greatest thing the organization should ever invest in because it is the driving force to catalyze the business growth and build the unique organizational advantage the competitors cannot beat. So, how to understand both potential and performance at the deeper level, bridge the gap to unleash the collective potential and accelerate business performance to the next level?

Knowledge & Competence? With the exponential growth of information and a dynamic business environment, today’s digital professionals are innovative workers, hard workers, knowledge workers, and intelligent workers who are exploring, innovating, and evolving bringing new digital paradigms. Knowledge professionals are intellectually curious, with a strong desire to learn and expand their horizons. Here is a set of knowledge professionals’ digital competencies.

Yield Value from Talent Management People are the most invaluable asset, and Talent Management is always one of the most important disciplines to manage the business. There are quite a few terms that have been used. From personnel management to Human Resource Management to Human Capital Management of today. Whatever you use to refer to the people in the organization, there is an investment that is needed in order to achieve the business goal and this investment has various perspectives - one being the human perspective. So organizations need to see this as a critical aspect of growth and invest in their people, thereby taking the debate away from the term of reference to the reality of what it should be.

Fairness & Professionalism Fairness means to be unprejudiced, equitable, impartial, objective, dispassionately examining, and open-minded. Fairness is both digital leadership and professional quality and a culture characteristic to improve professionalism and digital maturity. People are much purposeful, creative and productive under a positive and fair working environment. Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s fairness?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #7300th 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 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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“Upgrade” Quotes of “Digital Master” Nov. 2020

Primarily the word 'Legacy' is in mindsets. Ideally you start "doing something" from day one. Use current tools & techniques & platforms, document what you're doing, and upgrade incrementally as part of your maintenance plan.

"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 “Upgrade” quotes in “Digital Master.”

The digital paradigm shift has many dimensions, it is not a single dimensional technological upgrade, companies need to embed digital into the very fabric of the business and explore digital management practices in a structural way.

Primarily the word 'Legacy' is in mindsets. Ideally you start "doing something" from day one. Use current tools & techniques & platforms, document what you're doing, and upgrade incrementally as part of your maintenance plan.

Visionary IT leaders need to learn how to advocate for "departmental immersion" and other strategies to help IT become more integrated & upgraded and aware of the organization as a whole for improving the overall organizational maturity.

The narratives within strategic business cases reflect multifaceted business value pathways, respond to mandates by external parties; upgrade existing technologies; make business process improvements; tune organizational structures, sharpen business capabilities while reducing the cost to market without the sacrifice of strategic goals.

To win and field the best team and drive successful change, who do you evaluate, develop, mentor, upgrade, and have succession planning programs? How to remove impediments and accelerate IT performance and progression?

Either for implementing a new software tool or upgrading the business system, the powerful digital technology tools not only help to digitize the touch point of users, but also provide digital invaluable information in real time to making effective decisions and improving productivity.

Digital is not a one-dimensional technology upgrade only, it is a multi-dimensional business expansion. A well-balanced scorecard measuring key strategic performance indicators provide the management team both a data-based story and a holistic picture on how to fix critical issues and make a leap of digitalization.

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Insight Upon Capability

 In today’s business dynamic, business leaders today need to identify the capability gaps for strategy management; look ahead and be proactively looking for opportunities to improve.

"Capability" is a useful composite concept that is fairly specific in its bounds. A business capability consists of people, process, technology, resource, and assets. There are multiple perspectives of organizational capabilities, and there are all sorts of capabilities. Both threshold capability and distinctive capabilities are abilities that organizations have and are closely related to competencies. Organizational capabilities have business outcomes; they collaborate with each other and are enabled by processes to integrate into differentiated business competency for successful strategy management.

Core competency is a combination and harmonization of multiple capabilities with a focus: An organization would need to ask whether they need necessary capabilities at the base level to sustain the business, competitive level to stay competitive in the business or at differentiating level to be the key differentiator for the business. A business capability is core because it offers a competitive advantage in delivering better products/services/processes to customers than competitors, and it supports the strategic direction of the organization. It’s important to have an in-depth understanding of what capabilities are important to develop core competency. So the business management should make an assessment, develop both necessary and unique capabilities; and each of these capabilities may be combined in different fashions to yield multiple competencies based on multilayered and integral business capabilities.

It takes time and effort to build high mature organizational capabilities and core business competencies. Discover the business strength that can be transformed into a core capability if it aligns with the strategic direction. The organization’s core competency is based on the set of differentiated and cohesive capabilities and how fast and effective they can be built upon. Capability optimization may evolve and move between categories based on the technology evolution, information refinement, business driver, business model evolution etc, move from base or competitive level to differentiated level. This happens when an organization decides to differentiate by taking an existing capability to the next level. In today's multi-sourcing and on-demand service delivery model, the core capability does not have to be completely delivered by the company itself; the key point is the speed of delivery and overall business maturity.

Capability coherence is the decisive factor for the success of strategy implementation: Business capabilities are different from the mere sum of individual abilities and skills of its members. Business processes underpin business capabilities; and culture nurtures capability coherence. Capability coherence is a decisive factor for strategy management. To achieve capability coherence, choose how to improve the capability based on your enterprise strengths for investing in the best of breed capability and integrate them into cohesive and differentiated business competency.

One of the beauties of working with capabilities is that it keeps you from being dragged into all the detail of the processes involved too early, allowing you to prioritize and focus on the “bigger picture,” and “keeping the end in mind” - enabling strategy implementation. As nowadays strategy management is an iterative continuum. Digital organizations have to adapt to the continuous changes via building dynamic capabilities and developing organizational advantage. The pitfall is that the part of the strategic capabilities of an enterprise perhaps causes silo or some degree of duplication of capabilities because of different naming and labeling. So organizational capability management identifies, models, develops, integrates, and optimizes a set of cohesive capabilities to achieve business goals at both strategic and operational level.

Business capability is synthetic in nature, embedding agility in processes and focusing on building the long-term organizational competency: In order to capture the potential value of their business investments, the executive teams must have a clear understanding of the link between capabilities and business strategies. They need to identify capability gaps in the context of future need, or capability dependency, and be sufficiently aware of the "general condition" of the various capabilities to provide input into a qualitative capability assessment and development. Capabilities may include dependencies, one is part of another or depends on another. It’s important to gain insight into the condition and relationship/dependency of capabilities and focus on building the long-term organizational competency.

Put some thoughts on resiliency or reuse in capability design to avoid reinventing wheels. Business capability is synthetic in nature, so capability mapping also includes capability dependency identification, and capability building could embed agility into processes to ensure capability portfolio coherence and accelerate capability delivery cycle. Loose coupling makes it possible to change the component of capability without affecting the entire system, as long as the structure and interface are kept stable. Build the dynamic business capabilities via those existing building blocks or recombining those existing capabilities into dynamic business competencies.

In today’s business dynamic, business leaders today need to identify the capability gaps for strategy management; look ahead and be proactively looking for opportunities to improve; also compare your set of capabilities with competitors' to ensure that you are developing differentiated capabilities to gain unique business competency, transform business models, optimize operational processes, and improve customer experiences to reach high-level business maturity.

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Insight of the Week 11/13-11/19 “Future of CIO” Nov. 2020

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 7300+ 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 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 Monthly “Boardroom” Book Tuning: Inspire Board Leadership & Changeability Nov. 2020 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 with digital acumen.

Insight Upon Firmitas of Enterprise The exponential growth of information, high velocity, fierce competition and continuous disruptions are the business reality today. To keep relevant, organizations have to move up its maturity from functioning to firm to delight. There are many factors that influence and have an impact on the digital firmitas such as organizational structure, people, technology, roles and responsibilities, processes and information systems, business relationships, etc., and these factors are interrelated. Organizations need to take a systematic approach, investigate different paths, shape solid forms, and drive changes at steadfast paces.

Information Intensive Innovation Excellence Organizations across the industrial sectors are faced with exponential growth of information, high velocity, fierce competition, and continuous disruptions. It’s important to do data investigation or any attempt at understanding the business context, refined business insight based on reliable information and advanced analysis. The goal is to improve decision effectiveness, harness innovation and achieve high performance.

Innovation & Value-added Ecosystem As businesses get more cut-throat in the hyper-connected digital environment, innovation is the “must have” business differentiator. Innovation often happens at the intersections of people and systems. In fact, business and economic environment play an important role in sparking creativity and catalyzing innovation.

The Monthly “Digital Gaps” Book Tuning: Identify Gaps for Competency Building Nov. 2020 "Digital Gaps -Bridging Multiple Gaps to Run Cohesive Business” is a guidebook to help digital leaders and professionals today identify, analyze, and mind multiple gaps with multidisciplinary insight and holistic understanding. Today’s digital organization simply just can’t stand still., bridging the gap of opportunity between where you are and want to become is a welcomed challenge, it is important to identify and strengthen the weakest link and take a stepwise approach to make a leap of digital transformation.

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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“Unconditional” Quotes of “Digital Master” Nov. 2020

No blind trust or trust too little. Trust, but verify. There is no returning to the days when organizations expected and received—unconditional loyalty. Communicate, delegate, trust and hold accountable. 

"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 unconditional” quotes in “Digital Master.”

Abundance is an unlimited pool of goodness that we are born with; however, sometimes we forget that it is a natural part of us. Abundance is unconditional love.

"Executive management buy-in, "executive management's unconditional collaboration" plus leadership and management discipline & practices, are all critical to improve strategic management success, as well as allow the organization to measure, serve, deliver, innovate, and ultimately excel in returns.

No blind trust or trust too little. Trust, but verify. There is no returning to the days when organizations expected and received—unconditional loyalty. Communicate, delegate, trust and hold accountable.

No matter if you are a digital leader or a digital professional, it is your "job" to expect positive intent simultaneously with unconditional positive regard for each other; even in the face of disagreements, ignoring or temper tantrums.

What is love though? Does love come from the heart or the mind first? Is love inside-out or outside-in? Which color is love, is it black & white or is it colorful? Is love more emotional or logical? Is love conditional or unconditional, personal or universal?

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Insight Upon Governance

 Governance cannot be completely automated, it’s a multifunctional system to steer the business in the right direction at the steadfast pace.

Governance is to frame business management, it should orchestrate change, do it with trust and flexibility. It’s about how well an organization is being run and if set upright, it should effectively oversee the achievement of the business strategy. How to enforce organizational governance discipline depends on the nature, scale, and complexity of the organization, as well as understanding its risks and conducting. Governance is neither linear nor single dimensional nowadays, it should be understood via multidimensional lens and get enforced holistically.

Corporate governance is a guidance system for achievement of planned strategic business objectives: Corporate governance is where resources are allocated to turn the strategy into a reality. Among executives in the company, if using the word "governance" in conversations, the mental model that they refer to includes the process for developing a strategy and creating plans to execute on it. In fact, corporate governance is part of strategic planning because if it isn't, strategic planning becomes a synonym for wishful thinking. In practice, GRC can be used to raise visibility and awareness for many things that are captured at the different levels of the organizational hierarchy, and bring them in front of the leadership team to oversee strategy management.

A set of good principles or policies guide the strategy management of the business. Implementing policy is a management activity, and monitoring policy compliance is a governance activity. The distinction between these activities is essential to understanding the difference between management structures & processes and governance structures & processes. The Corporate Governance rules and principles need to be followed to improve the functioning and transparency of the company, its business strategy, and management performance. Governance experts should push for boards to operate with and share a mandatory policy governance system. The strong senior leadership can enforce governance principles and practices, to ensure ROI is really going to achieve; control and explore business goals and objectives accordingly.

Corporate governance is a decision system to accelerate performance and manage risks: It is important to emphasize that governance is fundamentally about having a systematic approach to making decisions within the corporate entity. Good corporate governance enables a good decision-making system and a good controlling system. It can assure the corporation’s operation under the correct directions and behaviors correctly. So good governance can create good performance and manage risks effectively, especially in the long run. The companies which have good performance must have good governance structure and behavior as well. The governance structure can’t impact performance directly; it must be through the governance behavior.

Corporate governance has a great impact on corporate performance, not through governance structure directly, but through good governance behavior. The governance structure specifies the distribution of rights and responsibilities among different participants in the corporation. Statistically, the organizations with greater governance discipline usually results in significant better performance than their competitors, and they are doing better in well-embedding risk management into key business processes seamlessly.

Corporate governance is a facilitation system to harness collaboration: Corporate governance discipline can fulfill its purpose as a high-level corporate enabler by providing a structured communication bridge between shareholders/investors and top business leaders such as corporate directors. A good governance standard provides a common corporate "language," and work instructions to decide and take actions for either grasping opportunities or managing risks. Corporate governance helps to manage collaborative business results and best practices that view the organizational objectives holistically with the correct strategy lenses/focus.

Corporate governance is a facilitation system to harness collaboration. The chronic poor governance madness needs to stop, corporate Boards need to deal with the poor governance and eliminate all the bureaucratic regulations that deal with the symptoms, not the root cause. It will only be when the internal and external emphasis shifts from regulatory and compliance governance to identifying, reporting and developing the behavioral governance, so accountability comes from managers at the core, and the business performance is accelerated via the accountability of management and cohesiveness of business capabilities.

Governance is the structure and process of authority, responsibility, and accountability in an organization. Because without effective GRC discipline, the business will face significant risk for surviving, and opportunities which it creates cannot be properly transferred into multidimensional business value. On the other side, do not have your future strategy constrained by the current corporate governance or the corporate governance weakened by too much creativity. Governance cannot be completely automated, it is a fundamentally human activity. It’s a multifunctional system to steer the business in the right direction at the steadfast pace.

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The Monthly “Leadership Master” Book Tuning: Unconventional Leadership. Nov. 2020

 Under a complex digital environment with “VUCA” new normal, we need to look at each situation individually and ask what leadership model is required, will it be emergent, will it self-organize, or will it be data-driven, etc.

Leadership is complex yet simple: Complex in that there are so many traits and characteristics that are considered when evaluating a leader. Simplicity in that the substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about the future and change; direction and dedication; influence and innovation. The purpose of the book: Leadership Master - Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity is to convey the vision of digital leadership, share the insight about leadership maturity, and summarize five emergent digital leadership trends Here is the monthly tuning of digital leadership.

         Unconventional Leadership

Nine Aspects in Creative Leadership Creative leadership is the ability to inspire, to create, and to maintain the social and psychological conditions and the environment in which everyone is able to: (a) reach his or her highest potential; and, (b) contribute "leadership" in areas of his or her unique competencies.

Develop Future-Proof Leadership The rule of thumb about leadership is for ADVANCEMENT. Advancement is about forward-thinking, progress, improvement, fresh insight, modernization, or innovation while the opposite of advancement is primitivity, outdated concept or knowledge, lagging, backward, etc. When following “ADVANCE” principles, leaders become more mature; people are becoming more progressive; the life or the business reaches up to the next level of maturity, and the society as a whole is advancing to the next stage of prosperity.

Interdisciplinary CIO Leadership The role of the CIO continues to evolve rapidly in the midst of the information growth and the accelerating changes in technology. The top CIOs today must have unique business insight and a high level of influence on business changes and digital transformation. They should practice expert power and interdisciplinary management disciplines all the time in order to become a trusted business partner.

Lead boldly with Unconventional Wisdom Within abundant information and emergent digital technologies, IT is a key component of the innovative business mindset to reimagine “what is possible,” to unleash business potentials and transform the company to high performance and highly innovative business. CIOs as “Chief Innovation Officer”: How can you inspire and empower your employees and mentor them with unconventional wisdom to unlock creativity and harness innovation?

Compelling Digital Leadership Models Under a complex digital environment with “VUCA” new normal, we need to look at each situation individually and ask what leadership model is required, will it be emergent, will it self-organize, or will it be data-driven, etc. When the leadership model is symbiotic or empathetic, only then do things fall into place.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 7300+ 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.

Read More