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

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

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

Saturday, June 3, 2023

Initiatives

Contemporary management is a hybrid discipline with mixed management styles.
The rate of change has accelerated, hybrid reality is a flexible blend of the physical and virtual world. It indicates that business leaders must learn how to strike a balance between managing the top prioritized business problems today and predicting the uncertain issues of tomorrow.

 In a hybrid digital workplace, with hybrid generations of workforce, business management embraces hybrid views, fine-tunes hybrid processes and structures, encourages cross-boundary collaboration by mixing both virtual and physical interactions, inspiring broader conversations within its business ecosystem to reach total inclusion.

It’s important to embrace the hybrid view with dimensions such as scientific, artistic, philosophical, socio-cultural perspectives: Business leaders today not just reactively look through and respond to the business ecosystem, but take a wide look around at what's going on outside; take a deep look at what's going on inside. Their hybrid perspective is the synthetic view of ‘looking forward,” and “looking behind,” “looking beyond,” and “looking around.” Let people view an idea from different perspectives, and set certain rules to stay focused on managing innovation efficiently.

Global leaders and professionals have to look into an unknown future and attempt to define the landscape with its opportunities and risks. A hybrid view shapes a more objective look. Too often, looking at the past inhibits forward progress. If you focus too long, too much on the past, you lose sight of the future, creating obstacles on your path ahead. For every thorny or emergent problem, take alternative paths, push for multiple solutions, take the time to look at every situation from multiple points of view, provide guidance about what core to preserve and what future to stimulate the business progress toward.

It’s crucial for organizations have to keep discovering the “hybrid truth & solutions”
: Nowadays, the reality of business is a hybrid nature of organization, strike the multitude of balances, mix the virtual social platform with the physical functional structure to enforce cross-functional collaboration and dot-connecting innovation in order to achieve a state of dynamic equilibrium. If you look at business in a different way and think in terms of systems rather than processes, systems must have some sort of structured way of working with hybrid structures and processes in order to survive.

Business System always has a certain structure. People move processes. Social computing technologies enable the more seamless virtual platform, to enhance the physical organization structure. Corporate processes are hybrid when processes are interwoven via collaboration platforms and tools. Therefore to some extent; all corporate processes are unstructured and unpredictable, you need to structure creative processes by setting certain rules. If you don't have structure effectively you have chaos. And chaos can only allow survival for a short time before things break down.

It’s imperative for organizations to take a hybrid approach for enhancing business management: There are both hard and soft business success factors. Organizational leaders should set fair principles, engage talent with free thinking, balance standardization and creativity, stability and changes; mix different organizational elements appropriately, build well-rounded capabilities, run up all important stages for reaching a high level of organizational maturity.

The business needs to take a hybrid approach to strive for applying good practice - good for specific situations and specific set of issues that need to be dealt with thoughtfully. A hybrid approach isn't always necessary for quality but a well thought out and tailored one always is. It is critical to define the most compelling and unique approach to addressing the needs; analyze the benefits per costs of that approach, and quantify why the chosen approach is better than the competition.

We live in a hybrid world with all sorts of hybrid solutions! Contemporary management is a hybrid discipline with mixed management styles for managing everything that is necessary to empower workforce sharing thoughts and ideas, engage customers and partners to voice out the concerns and feedback, encourage the broader conversations and interactions with its business ecosystem and social value chain to produce high performance results holistically.

Innatelogic

The predictive “cause and effect” in system dynamics can include nonlinear cause and effect models, and develop nonlinear business problem-solving scenarios.
Business logic comprises business rules that express business policy and workflows. The degree of understanding has a positive correlation with the degree of uncertainty and unpredictability. Causation, correlation, and non-linearity are all crucial to deepen understanding of problems in order to solve them effectively. 

The better you can understand the interrelationships of issues and interactions of different situations, the more comprehensive solutions will emerge, without causing further problems.

A correlation between two variables does not necessarily imply that one causes the other: Organizations and societies are complex, it’s critical to understand relationships between possible causes or interrelationships between different problems. (Depth + Breadth) of Understanding = Probability for complex problem-solving.

Observe deeper about the root causes, ask questions about each independent variable, and the samples you collect. Only after extensive observation, can you gather adequate data, and only after studying critical variables, can you understand correlation between them, clarify the logic of cause-effect, in order to generate better solutions.

As correlation analysis could trigger a chain of associations, so figure out interrelationships of people and things:
Associate all related data to capture insight, associate business processes with enterprise architecture; associate information with people and process; associate change with visions and purpose; associate business strategy, and decision management; associate talent with growing opportunities.

For every complex situation, you see it in another context, or you might see the influences of another domain colliding with the expected domain. Clarify the organization’s vision and incentive appreciation. From correlation analysis to insight abstracting, think holistically and figure out better solutions synthetically.

It is easy and even tempting to come to premature conclusions based upon the preliminary appearance of a correlation: Every initiative is to solve problems large or small, identify the root causes, and solve it thoroughly. You may get the correlation but if you fail to find the causation, your initiatives fail. If you begin with a question, there's usually an idea of what plan of action you will take depending on the answer. The problems usually have many causes and can be very complex, you can't figure out the exact cause and effect so the solutions are vague.

Always feel humble to accumulate fresh knowledge, collect feedback selectively. Work on discovering unexpected nuggets only when there are no big questions needing answers. The unexpected nuggets too often have taken a lot of effort just to get the attention they merit because decision makers or action takers are usually too focused on current objectives to grasp the value of an unexpected nugget. Set your own principles and practices for doing correlation analysis effectively.

To deal with unprecedented uncertainty and complexity, data based cause-effect analysis provides partial fact, but even critically, follows a more humanistic and holistic approach. The predictive “cause and effect” in system dynamics can include nonlinear cause and effect models, and develop nonlinear business problem-solving scenarios.

Innovativeinitiatives

To awaken innovation in the well-established organization, business leaders and professionals should think as an intrapreneur and act as a startup manager.
Digital is the age of innovation. And innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. 

The purpose of the book “Unpuzzling Innovation - Mastering Innovation Management in a Structural Way“ is to demystify innovation puzzles in a structural way.



Innovative Initiatives

Innovation We live in a dynamic environment with information exponentiality and “VUCA” reality. Problems turn out to be more complex and interdependent. Problem-solving is about seeing a problem and actually finding a solution to that problem; an innovative problem-solving scenario is actually a process of deduction to derive a solution drawing from knowledge, experience, and out-of-the-box creativity for achieving customer delight.

Innovative In the real world, due to hyper complexity and unprecedented uncertainty, problem-solving in the majority of organizations today is woefully inadequate, most people usually never question what is exactly the problem because "it's the way things should be." Often, events and patterns are observed on the surface, and then the action is taken to fix the symptom, but that is too early, and perhaps cause further problems later on.

Innovative The business or societal progress is made via a healthy cycle of problem framing and problem-solving continuum. Keep in mind, problem-solving is about understanding a problem, discovering the root cause, and actually finding a solution to that problem. A well-established scorecard for problem-solving makes an objective assessment of problem-solvers as well as measuring problem-solving progress both qualitatively and quantitatively.

InnovationPeople are complex, business is complex, and society is complex today. More often than not, those existing or emergent problems are also complex. Problem-solving today has a very wide scope, intricate factors, more often than not, lack of knowledge and scarcity of insight leads to poor problem-solving for the long run. Thus, Solving complex business problems requires accelerated digital mindsets, continuous learning, leveraging multidisciplinary knowledge and insight, taking an end-to-end response, a structural and an iterative approach.

Innovative Problem-solving today has a very wide scope, intricate factors and multitude of perspectives. The main emphasis is in doing better pre-work, such as defining the situation and the "success criteria," taking consideration of the range of options, rather than the traditional "jump to solution" problem-solving method. The good scenario for problem-solving goes between flexibility and hard processes, with the ultimate goal to get higher than expected results.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 10 million page views with about 11000+ blog postings 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 to human progression.



"Unpuzzling Innovation" Amazon Order Link

"Unpuzzling Innovation" B&N Order Link

"Unpuzzling Innovation" iBook Order Link

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Slideshare Presentation

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 1 Innovation Classification

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 2 Innovation Principles

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 3 Digital Innovators

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 4 Connecting Innovation Dots

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 5 Digital Innovation Best & Next Practices

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 6 Innovation Paradox

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 7 Innovation Gaps and Pitfalls

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 8 Innovation Measurement

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Conclusion Mastering Innovation in a Structural Way

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Quotes Collection I

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Quotes Collection II

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Quotes Collection III

Illuminate"not-only"

The world is still full of -uncovered truths, unsolved puzzles, not only fresh ideas are- in demand, but the challenge and willingness to try, the fresh insight to explore…

Our world is diverse,

not only because -

we look differently,

but because -

we think differently;

the reality is multifaceted,

not only what our eyes are-

still blinking at,

but also looking around,

looking above,

looking deeper,

understand surroundings,

profoundly..


There is a mix of old & new;

known & unknown,

not only -

ask great questions,

but become part of -

solutions to-

things bigger than -

each one of us could believe..


Daily busyness makes -

people exhausted, confusing;

not only work hard,

but smart,

know what to -

focus on;

what to ignore;

change is not only for -

surviving,

but for thriving…

make you shine,

even on a rainy day,

make a transformation, impactfully.


The world is still full of -

uncovered truths,

unsolved puzzles,

not only fresh ideas are-

in demand,

but the challenge and willingness to try,

the fresh insight to explore;

the atmosphere in which -

ideas can flow, frictionlessly,

the mindset out of-

fear, mediocre,

the team out of homogeneity,

conventional wisdom…


Modern society is -

intrigued with-

perplexed problems,

not only fixing symptoms,

but taking a step further,

pondering value-added alternatives;

creating an innovation garden,

in the global scope,

not only takes-

vision & passion,

but also needs -

landscaping, hard working,

perspirationally.

Illuminatesometimes

Sometimes, you are cheerful for - what you achieve; Sometimes, you are sad about -what you lost; happiness is personal, but also universal, sometimes, bigger than yourself.

S
ometimes,

you are the light -

part of- the solution;

sometimes,

you are the shadow -

part of the problem;

sometimes,

shaping the right questions is-

more important than -

providing -

single-minded answers..



Sometimes,

you move fast;

sometimes,

you lag behind;

sometimes,

good and fast doesn't always go-

together, so easily..


Sometimes your way is -

not the best way…

Sometimes, 

people are too rushed-up,

they jump to the “how” ;

but the circumstance has -

changed, already;

sometimes,

a little push helps to-

smash down -

the old box,

break through-

the limit.

but, pick the right things to-

push through;

push yourselves -

out of -

the comfort zone, impactfully.


Sometimes,

all a person needs is to-

be reminded,

they do in fact,

hold the power to-

change within-

themselves, introspectively,

to keep thinking fresh,

move forward, rapidly.



Sometimes, you are strong, with -

common beliefs;

sometimes you should break down-

silo mentality;

ignore conventional wisdom,

challenge traditions,

keep focusing on -

doing things right,

forethoughtfully.


Sometimes, you have to -

take risks,

make a leap;

sometimes,

you need to take a step back for -

understanding things, holistically;

sometimes,

you gain “lessons learned” from the past;

Sometimes, 

looking at-

 the past inhibits-

forward progress, completely..

If you focus too long,

too much on the past,

you will not be prepared to-

react when potential obstacles enter -

your path ahead, unexpectedly.


Sometimes,

you are cheerful for -

what you achieve;

sometimes,

you are sad about -

what you lost;

happiness is personal,

but also universal,

sometimes,

bigger than yourself.

Illuminateseasons

Four seasons of -changes allows us to- imagines many possibilities, act what we thought of; when our vision is engaged, our passion flows, our impulse to -acting is high..

Change is-

like the four seasons,

it is something happening-

every so often,

not always under-

our control,

but we all experience -

such natural themes, refreshingly.


From wax & wane of moonlight-

to ebb and flow of-

ocean tide;

if winter hibernates-

part of the world;

spring wakes up-

latent energy, earth-wide;

summer speeds up-

the pace of nature,

stretch up to live to -

our full potential, intensively;

autumn enriches -

natural spirit, abundantly;

four seasons has-

its own time frame,

rhyming tempo,

it’s the dance between -

nature and us, immersively.


There is time to sow,

time to reap;

time to -

recharges our energy,

four seasons of -

changes allows us to-

imagines numerous possibilities,

act what we thought of;

when our vision is engaged,

our passion flows,

our impulse to -

acting is high;

shall we enjoy-

a changing voyage to-

discover -

the new landscape,

be a part of scenery,

inspirationally.


Illuminatestagnation

There are -many causes of stagnation; there are -numerous roadblocks to changes; are you able to-shape game-changing mindsets, well-rounded capabilities; renew energy, ride ahead of - learning curves, to overcome stagnation, speed up impressively?

W
e live in-

a constantly changing world;

if you get stuck,

you are lagging behind;

repetitively doing -

something without -

making improvement is-

a stagnation.

resistance to -

change gets you stagnated,

unsurprisingly;

complacency stagnates you-

to move up, progressively;

If you stick to-

the comfort zone for -

too long,

you lose-

the “mojo” to-

move forward,

enthusiastically;

negative conflicts,

competitions diminishes -

the brightness of -

true talent,

stagnating entire human society,

unfortunately.




There are -

hard barriers,

soft pitfalls behind -

stagnation;

hoarding knowledge without -

updating it is -

stagnation;

being compliant without -

making achievement is -

a stagnation;

following outdated rules,

conventional wisdom is-

a stagnation;

fixing symptoms without -

digging into the true cause is-

a stagnation…

exhaustion,

change fatigue make passion-

fade away,

block energy,

stagnate people to

make progress,

constantly.





There are -

many causes of stagnation;

there are -

numerous roadblocks to changes;

are you able to-

shape game-changing mindsets,

well-rounded capabilities;

renew energy,,

ride ahead of -

learning curves,

to overcome stagnation,

speed up impressively?


Friday, June 2, 2023

Initiatives

Rapid change, diversification, hyper-connectivity, nonlinearity, and interdependence, etc, are the very characteristics of the digital era.
Organizations across industrial sectors face hyper-competition and shortened business development cycles. To avoid fast obsolescence and gain long term business advantage, insightful business leaders can perceive the trend of business evolution, look uphill and look deeply into the future, have a very clear understanding of their organizational strengths and weaknesses, enforce the sequence and cycle of business growth and development.


Organizational coherent state which is supported between the spins and waves of components seems to be the key business property to emphasize: Running a successful business is a journey; you have a clear destination, but you need to pick the varying processes/practices/tools to get there. Important business components should be reviewed regularly, refined regularly and are transparent across the organization, bringing into alignment of most of the key parts of the business.

Not all processes and improvements are equal because each touch-point does not always have the same effect. Select the right component leverage to adjust. For instance, Process Management is to manage the known from the flows. Strong business processes have a better chance to produce better outcomes. Every part of the process is interlinked and the smallest touchpoint will have an effect on a major touchpoint further up or down the line, and therefore, will have an overall effect on the “whole” processes to produce better results.

Important bits & bytes of information can make a significant impact on business changes: Information is the crucial ingredient of business management. There is no way and not necessary to absorb every bit & byte of information flowing to you, you need to be informative, but selective. Thus, more attention needs to be placed on the conditions that allow information/knowledge to flow, connect dots to create new ideas, and generate business value.

Information comes from the analysis of that data, technology allows for capture, manipulation, and presentation of information. With emerging lightweight digital technologies and frameworks, the highly effective digital organization has a higher level of responsiveness because information can flow to the right people to allow them to make the right decisions at the right time to bring better results and improve business agility.

It’s crucial to proactively develop the resource-rich innovation hubs and clusters across enterprise ecosystems for enabling idea flow and business growth: The traditional organizations can become more innovative if they can consciously break down silo mentality and the bureaucratic management style. For many organizations, ecosystems have evolved without much attention or planning. Innovations simply benefit from being developed in and subsequently commercialized in a more open ecosystem. Companies across the vertical sectors can benefit from open innovation by fully engaging with their partners or customers.

There is more flow of creative ideas, the more is happening to expedite business growth. Companies need to proactively evolve and develop a vibrant innovation ecosystem in which businesses can thrive and reach the next level of innovation maturity. Digital hyper-connectivity can foster innovation through broader scope collaboration and create synergy for achieving innovation success. Innovation collaboration teams embrace multiple disciplines and understand how systems work, develop the cross-ecosystem innovation clusters that enable idea flow, and create synergy for idea management. This yields competitive advantage.

Rapid change, diversification, hyper-connectivity, nonlinearity, and interdependence, etc, are the very characteristics of the digital era. Organizations are at the different vertical sectors and stages of business transformation. They should meet their business needs and take a logical approach to build their organizational innovation strength, investigate different paths to business growth, shape solid forms, and drive changes at steadfast paces, to achieve the long-term business results in a consistent way.

Initiatives

Clearly define a set of business principles and differentiated business capability; initiate multidirectional business exploration to get the organization digital ready.
In face of unprecedented uncertainty and high velocity, it’s important to deepen the level of understanding of complex issues via analyzing and synthesizing information, top business leaders need to envision the future of the business, continue doing consolidation, integration, optimization, keep the business synchronized to ensure that every part of the organization operates in harmony.

 In the digital era, what the business needs is not just the faster speed, but a hyper-connected interdependent ecosystem with information-based communication/process synchronization and collaboration harmony.

It becomes easy for the coming generation to adjust to the needs of the changes necessitated with the evolving new thinking, knowledge, and trends: There is nothing scary about the evolving trends in any field of knowledge. The newer thoughts, newer trends, newer knowledge are all that captivates learners with intellectual curiosities to learn and quickly absorb and adopt.

Knowledge basically involves the human factor and capturing the benefit of someone's experience. Apply fresh knowledge to deepen your understanding of people and things; gain fresh insight, and make it available to broader and broader audiences who can benefit from that combined intellectual asset of information and experience.

It is a worthy investment and hidden dimension to explore growth opportunities and improve long term organizational advantage: A holistic perspective helps to both understand issues from different angles and solve them thoroughly. The word "holism" refers to something that transcends an adding or combination of thinking ways, to understand things as the whole, with interconnected parts and interdependent relationships.

In the business environment, being innovative is a state of mind. You have to live it and breathe it every day, otherwise, you would feel stuck. Examine the businesses investment management in the new context, build the new paradigms, capture opportunities, roll it out, improve business competency, and measure the result accordingly.

It’s a management discipline to use resource, time, talent scientifically to to reach a state of dynamic balance:
In the organizational scope, there are different types of resources such as funds, physical assets, people, information, reputation, resources of the individuals who comprise the firm, such as knowledge, education, training, insights, experience, etc. Organizations also slice their time into such as meeting time, productivity time, creative activity time, etc, effective resource/time management and smart actions.

To reach a state of dynamic balance of solid operation and fluid information management; hard processes and soft disciplines, a radically different social and economic structure will be needed and the holistic digital perspective is imperative to improve business maturity.

Enterprises have always been parts of simple or complex ecosystems. In order to function smoothly, an enterprise has to be linked to the many and varied ‘touch points’ between itself and the marketplace environment of which it is a part, clearly define a set of business principles and differentiated business capability; initiate multidirectional business exploration to get the organization digital ready.

Illumination

Isn't a tough journey to- celebrate #11,000 blog postings - to pursue- the digital way of brainstorming, innovating, motivating, story-telling?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 10 million page views with 11,000+ blog postings in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. 

The “Digital Master” book series includes 29 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 innovation leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Initiatives Organizations today are the mix of old and now, hard and soft, visible and invisible components. There are both big picture thinking, and in-depth understanding of knowledge context to do business planning, enhancing great design, and flawless business operation. It's a strategic imperative for scrutinizing the strength and weakness of the business, rationalizing application portfolio, analyzing total value and cost, to improve business agility, performance, and resilience.

Innatequlity Quality is not just the specific task of one business function; it is one of the business management disciplines which needs to be taken in a systematic way. The management processes and systems need to be more dynamic, iterative, integral, and interactive in order to make the timely adjustment for improving the quality of management and overall business maturity

Influence In navigating through “VUCA '' reality, today’s leaders and professionals need to naturally gravitate to an influencer role, create change momentum, when things are unknown, things keep evolving. They must constantly learn, innovate, and practice on a daily basis for developing differentiated professional competency.

Initiativesofreinvention Given the “VUCA” ecosystem dynamic, today’s organizations are often operational in crisis and conflict environments. They have to work proactively to dismantle business bureaucracy, break down silos, overly rigid processes, experiment with different types of organizational structures and frameworks, design for trust, improve agility, and take cross-disciplinary efforts to reinvent the organization for unleashing their full potential.

Initiatives Organizations no matter large or small, all face uncertainty, and frequent disruptions. Different people and organizations have different inner strengths, capacities, and unique strengths. Information can flow frictionlessly and a variety of stakeholders such as employees, vendors, and customers should work cooperatively to generate multilateral business value, lead business growth.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking of new ideas; sharing and innovating. 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.

Innovativeinitiatives

Not only about keeping technical excellence or process efficiency; but also about being able to get all the way around the task and rethink the alternative ways to solve today’s complex problems.
Change is part of reality; predicting and preparing the next level of business transformation is an iterative learning and doing continuum. You're accepting risk for potential reward. To not only survive today but also thrive for the long term, organizations need to keep one eye on today’s performance and the other eye on unlocking business potential.

Organizations that achieve the seamless alignment, integration, collaboration, and synchronization will outperform their competitors and reach the inflection point for accelerating business speed.

Organizations not only have enriched context, being able to read digital sentiment insightfully, but also set the guidance for creating something new under a set of guidance: Business is complex, global professionals need to become more open-minded, inclusive, and show intellectual curiosity to embrace a variety of perspectives, enjoy diverse people, culture, knowledge, read digital sentiment fluently, lubricate cross-boundary interactions, co-develop change agenda, and overcome common challenges. Ask questions, become part of solutions to things bigger than each one of us; it means, priority matters, it’s critical to know what is important, what to focus on.

Besides hard business components, there are soft success factors. The real impact of making the invisible visible, and then measurable, comes when companies find ways to leverage business sentiment to initiate meaningful dialogues, open communication channels up, down, and across the enterprise, set the guidance for problem-solving or creating something new, keep information flow, and achieve a state of dynamic balance.

Organizations not only have “me too” type competitive necessity but also should build differentiated business competency: Capability management, in essence, consists of a portfolio of capabilities that are used in various combinations to achieve great outcomes. Competitive necessity is to keep the bottom line; focus on meeting customer expectations and delivering what the business asks for; while competitive uniqueness allows the business to achieve the art of the possible, make you shine even on a rainy day.

A clear understanding of what capabilities, services or solutions are supporting your competitive advantage is needed in order to build unique competency. It often takes the linear step for tuning the enterprise machine and ensuring it keeps spinning. On the other hand, the transformational capability can often make a leap for achieving the high -performance business results. It provides the opportunity to think of new ways to do things; it helps the business differentiate itself from competitors.

Not only measure quantity, but also evaluate quality to harness leadership, improve business advantage:
Assessing business performance is both art and science. It is a common practice to evaluate digital fitness in order to maximize it. Choose the right metrics by deciding which are seen as critical to make the progress in delivering high performance results. Metrics are not the end-all solutions to business management, but simply another set of tools and information to be used for producing better business results. What gets measured, gets managed. Not just about the quantitative results which sometimes can mislead the management with a short-term perspective; but also quality assessment of invisible business success factors for long term organizational maturity. Culture and brand are the most important "soft" elements that a company has to assess periodically since they will define how the company interacts with its various stakeholders, whether they can reach the next level of business maturity.

In well-established organizations across the vertical sectors, there are complex business rules, policies, processes, and performance systems that govern how people operate. This probably means that organizations are going to have to get not only the “hard numbers” right but more importantly, how to manage the intangible elements in business from the beginning. Not only from the financial results, but also from the involvement and signs being displayed inside the organization, about what guidance, values, and principles governing. Move the purpose of performance reviews away from "evaluating" the past, to improving success in the future. Shift from an administrative past-driven performance management process to an interactive future-driven performance scenario.

Without continuous envisioning of a better future, organizations will become short-sighted, static, and become irrelevant sooner or later. Digitalization represents the next stage of business maturity, which is not only about technical excellence or process efficiency; but also about being able to get all the way around the task and rethink the alternative ways to solve today’s complex problems, keep the business synchronized to ensure that every part of the organization operates in harmony to take a digital leap.

Information

Information technology is at the unique position to oversee the functionality underlying the entire organization.
In this world of information abundance, Information Management is all about ensuring information robustness, having the right people to have the right information to get work accomplished at the right time. 

To achieve information robustness and knowledge abundance, organizations need to manage data assets to capture business foresight and customer insight through cross-functional communication, collaboration and seamless information technology integration. So information savvy organizations can enable business growth and increase customer satisfaction via achieving their full potential.

Information flow: Information is one of the most invaluable assets of the company. Information flow directly impacts idea flow and business flow. Business management needs to clarify: How the data accesses and flows through the organization storage: where the information resides. How work activities interact with data and use the information, to provide information accessibility and availability, knowledge or services to ensure that the right people can get the right information to make the right decisions in a timely manner.

Information flow streamlines business flow. It is amazing how you can work through arguments and filter through information when you relax your mind and share it with someone. It is always beneficial to communication, interpretation and accuracy of overall results when diverse teams interpret and define- data sources and outcomes constantly.

Information Context: Using data to understand past and present performance, predictive – analyze past performance to predict the future, prescriptive, focused primarily on information optimization. It’s important to understand how the quantitative data is a subset of reality, and that what happened yesterday will not be a perfect image of today or tomorrow, to not feed the illusion of knowing and controlling everything, and do their best to leverage quality information in problem-solving.

There is a shift from envisaging the internet as a glorified information system to envisaging it as an infrastructure of hyper-connectivity. Practically, to solve complex business problems, multidisciplinarity must be applied within the context of the values of the organization with a healthy cycle of Information management. Take advantage of all information available, unify diversified views, create new knowledge, and build a high performance organization.

Information fluency:
Information is not for its own sake, but for improving problem-solving effectiveness. People are responsible for managing information and creating value through it. In the end, it is not about information, but how to refine information into customer insight and business foresight to pursue business growth opportunities and prevent risks. Also, it is not about technology, but what technology can do when it is enabling and integrating with change/innovation management to come up with strategic differentiation.

How fast you can swim in the information sea depends on how fast and deep you can learn, as digital learning is multidimensional, dynamic, interactive, and integrated. You need to not only assimilate the existing knowledge, but you also have to refine fresh information into the new knowledge, more frequently to replace the out of dated knowledge, build robust, not overly rigid processes to do the meaningful work, develop innovative partnership and intimate customer relationships, and leverage flexibility to unlock performance.

Information technology is at the unique position to oversee the functionality underlying the entire organization. Information Technology Management is the backbone with interdependent processes, efficient technologies, and a set of interdisciplinary management practices for moving the business to a dynamic, iterative, integral, and interactive digital ecosystem.

Initiativesofinnovation

To awaken innovation in the well-established organization, business leaders and professionals should think as an intrapreneur and act as a startup manager.
Digital is the age of innovation. And innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. 

The purpose of the book “Unpuzzling Innovation - Mastering Innovation Management in a Structural Way“ is to demystify innovation puzzles in a structural way.

  


 Initiatives of Innovation

Innovation Digital is the age of innovation, innovation is no longer “nice to have,” but “must have” unique business competency. However, companies have very limited budgets, resources. The realities of corporate life don't allow those companies to spend all their resources on radical innovation.

Innovativeness Nowadays, creativity is the most desired professional quality. The most advanced societies are diverse mixtures of peoples who can spark creativity and develop talent. You cannot wait for some “aha moment” to happen, keep curious, always think profoundly, learn fresh knowledge, and acquire new capabilities. Innovativeness is a state of being quiescent, fluent, transcendental, etc. Being able to engage in the creation of novel ideas or unique insight does include a lot of observations, inquiries, unusual connections, and potential discoveries.

Initiatives Businesses are different, they have different cultures, different structures; they compete in different markets, they have a different strength and scale to achieve organizational purposes. To reinvent business, you need new technology, new processes, new customers, new knowledge, new talent, even a new business model. All that makes them very risky but on the other hand, you will get very great chances and opportunities for radical change and business innovation.

Innovation In today's modern organizations, complexity, diversification, and collaboration are the characteristics of the innovation ecosystem. Innovation is similar to "the sum is larger than its parts." It is the practice through which you grow and evolve something to something great. Organizations are at the different stages of business maturity, they should meet their business needs and take a logical approach to build their organizational innovation strength.

Initiatives All business initiatives should achieve some business result directly or indirectly. The bulk of information, methods, talent and approaches involved speaks in favor of the scientific approach for business initiative management. The unique thoughts, emergent trends, and updated knowledge, etc, are all that captivates professionals with intellectual curiosity to ask insightful questions, make deep observations, spur creativity, and develop differential core competency.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 10 million page views with about 11,000+ blog postings 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 to human progression.



"Unpuzzling Innovation" Amazon Order Link

"Unpuzzling Innovation" B&N Order Link

"Unpuzzling Innovation" iBook Order Link

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Slideshare Presentation

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 1 Innovation Classification

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 2 Innovation Principles

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 3 Digital Innovators

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 4 Connecting Innovation Dots

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 5 Digital Innovation Best & Next Practices

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 6 Innovation Paradox

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 7 Innovation Gaps and Pitfalls

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 8 Innovation Measurement

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Conclusion Mastering Innovation in a Structural Way

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Quotes Collection I

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Quotes Collection II

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Quotes Collection III

Illuminategenerate

One's own experience teaches -more as -it generates emotions, good and bad, serve as -cognitive stimulator for- association, value generation, effectively...

 

Generate -

a vision with clarity;

tomorrow will be -

at least as good as today,

probably even better;

do not let -

knowledge deter-

our imagination,

keep our minds flowing to-

release positive energy,

generate novelty;

fresh insight, constantly;


Information brings about ideas;

ideas generate-

lots of information;

information potential impacts-

the potentiality of-

global society,

significantly.



Knowledge never completes,

learning never ends;

not knowing -

ourselves as best as -

we could,

how can we -

do any change,

aim for -

generating better future, 

progressively?


One's own experience teaches -

more as -

it generates emotions,

good and bad,

serve as -

cognitive stimulator for-

association, value generation, effectively;

shall we perceive, preserve value,

identify stories behind it;

orchestrate changes to shape it,

influentially?


Future hasn’t been-

fully unfolded yet,

generate, integrate, orchestrate-

next generation of -

global leaders, professionals,

tap into-

their way of -

looking at-

the world,

deal with -

opposing views, concepts,

constraints, competitions,

influence perception into-

a holistic understanding, 

progressive movement

to step into-

 the brighter future,

collaboratively.

Thursday, June 1, 2023

Initiatives

The more effortlessly you can guide, align, integrate, and optimize important business elements such as people, process, and technology, the closer you can accelerate business performance and lift the business up to the new-cycle of business transformation.
Organizational growth exploration is all about planning, investing, designing, operating, consolidating, integrating, securing, modernizing, optimizing, balancing. It is a continuous effort to adapt to the new world of businesses, faster, always on, hyper-connected and fiercely competitive. 

Business management should build a working environment in which the growth minds get encouraged, creative energy flows around, communication is the two-way street to lubricate business interactions. It takes a structural way to integrate both hard and soft business elements to build long-term organizational advantage.

In order to explore the emerging horizon, you have to understand what it means to the business and get to know the ever-changing ecosystem: To survive in the digital era with overwhelming growth of information and frequent disruptions, it is imperative to explore different views, fresh knowledge, and multiple perspectives to gain a holistic understanding of complex problems that may occur and develop a systematic approach to overcome the challenge. Explore the horizon which is high enough to stretch up the business, clear enough to steer the business in the right direction.

If the organization understands itself in relation to its context and unleashes its full potential, it should be able to determine whether it requires changing something to become viable. It's about people being willing to be held accountable, following the good rules for their own benefit. It takes a systematic approach to work across disciplines with contextual understanding to solve complex problems, and make transcendental leap.

Intensity of business transformation needs to be handled at the mindset level, changing underlying values, common beliefs, philosophy and methodology: The business today is not just working within the industry, but also permeating a cross-ecosystem which is interdependent, hyperconnected, and interactive. Organizational change or innovation is complex; there are numerous points-of-view and reference points of varying stakeholders, and they all have a different perspective on how to run a successful business. With high uncertainty and frequent disruptions, the varying stakeholders need to adjust "every day" of the business transformation journey as the current situation and its net value changes rapidly.

The complication of traditional organizations that are caused by over-layering, rigid hierarchies, fractal structure, or skill shortages, etc, could make the business vulnerable. The digital intensity needs to be handled thoughtfully, understanding psychology underneath. In many large-scale business transformations, fear has always been one of the major obstacles to change--fear of failure, fear of loss of control, etc. Make a smooth transition from static mindset to growth mindset, to expand the business transformation horizon and stretch up growth space. Nowadays, organizations depend heavily on their information fluency, technological knowledge and market capabilities to experiment, learn and innovate.

Organizations initiate heterogeneous team setting, embark upon the road of total inclusion
: In face of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of new normal, to predict the future trends and risks, business leaders today must be inclusive, very open to fresh knowledge, desire unique insight, search for unconventional wisdom, recognize merit and ideas, close multitude of gaps and build a complementary team to generate high performance results consistently.

There are plenty more questions one can ask to illustrate the importance of inclusion. The goal of an organization is to find out how you can locate the right candidate for a specific position within an organization. Are you planning to build a homogeneous or heterogeneous team; a complimentary team or a competitive team? What is important is that everyone feels committed to the goals of the team, and are comfortable with “who they are” associated with those goals. People feel comfortable sharing ideas and thoughts because everyone has a different perspective based on their cognitive difference, diverse life experiences, and cultural values.

The leading businesses across the vertical sectors are the ones that can adapt to the digital new normal and manage the proactive business growth continuum. The more effortlessly you can guide, align, integrate, and optimize important business elements such as people, process, and technology, the closer you can accelerate business performance and lift the business up to the new-cycle of business transformation.