The Best “Inflection Point” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2019

 Inflection point is the moment when the way business is being conducted changes more radically, it creates new opportunities for businesses that adept at executing.

"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 “Inflection Point” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 A strategic inflection point is a time in the life cycle of a business when its fundamentals (Talent skills, process, and technologies) are about to change.

2 Inflection is a bend, fold, a curve, a turn, a twist; such change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights, or a risk to hit the uncertainty. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end.

3 Inflection point is the moment when the way business is being conducted changes more radically, it creates new opportunities for businesses that adept at executing and operation.

4 Inflection point is the moment to be ‘paranoid’-as it’s the act of inflecting or the state of being inflected.

5 Change reaches the inflection point when change leaders master both the psychological and technical processes behind changes.

6 Change reaches the inflection point when the disruption allows for "new" energy to flow and bring with it something that would not be born without it

7 When reaching the inflection point of change, organizations can stretch out in every business dimension for driving the full-fledged digital transformation with all essential dimensions to adapt to the new world of business.

8 When IT becomes more people centric to delight customers, engage employees and evolve business partners, it is reaching the inflection point for digital transformation.

9 When the organization has put a stronger emphasis on empowering people, the source of knowledge, innovation, business adaptation, and people-centricity, it is reaching the inflection point to achieve the next level of organizational maturity.

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Follow IT Leadership Principles to Run Strategic IT

In its best form, leadership is about creating a powerful future that is compelling in the present.

Digital businesses are becoming complex and uncertain, to survive and thrive, IT plays a linchpin to integrate all important business elements into a set of differentiated business competencies. To transform IT from a cost center to a strategic business partner, modern CIOs should follow a set of well-defined principles to lead through influence, not through brute forces.

CIOs need to be great visionary first and good communicator second: Digital CIOs are business leaders first, and IT managers the second. They are able envision the emerging technology trends, identify and blend the ways that information technology can assist and shape the future of business by lining all digital components together to enforce business value creation. They have the right mix of hard competencies such as leadership vision, mentorship and management skills as well as soft communication and delegation skills to make leadership influence across the company and even the industry. To keep IT relevant as a strategic partner, IT leaders today have to to not only articulate their vision but also communicate it in various forms to different audiences, such as board directors, investors, C-level executives, business partners, or IT staff, etc. Because different stakeholders of the business have different concerns about IT for meeting their specific needs, thus, CIOs should be flexible and adjust the lingo to suit the audience, drop technical jargon and use common business language, to ensure all parties involved are at the same page of change and strategy implementation.

CIOs need to leverage Systems Thinking to make effective decisions in IT management: Systems Thinking is about understanding the interconnectivity between parts and the whole. In Systems Thinking, typically processes fall within the system. IT shouldn’t be an isolated support function, but an integral part of the digital business which is a living system. IT is in the unique position to oversee the underlying business functions and processes, Systems Thinking helps IT leaders discover the interconnectivity and interdependence of the digital business ecosystem. CIOs with Systems Intelligence have both a bigger picture perspective and technical understanding for making effective decisions in IT management. They are able to articulate clear messages on how IT can bridge the gap between the current state and the future state of the business by integrating all critical business components into differentiated business competencies. Systems Thinking applies at both the level of technology artifacts in the resource category and IT effect at the enterprise level across all business functions for driving changes in a structural way.

CIOs shouldn’t classify creativity and logic as two completely different disciplines, IT management is both art and science: IT continues to grow in importance both for achieving operational excellence and building business competitive advantage. Thus, IT management is part science, part art, often creative, always professional and occasionally magic. Thus, IT leaders should be creative enough to dream bigger and realistic enough to make a dream come true. They are adventurous to experiment with new things, but also logical enough to solve problems systematically and demonstrate the experience of delivering value on time and on budget. The emerging digital technologies and IT consumerization provides IT leaders the opportunity to think of a new way to do things. It forces IT leaders to be proactive and get really creative in how they architect and implement change, to ensuring IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next.

CIOs should follow the “balance” principle to run IT in transformational mode and transactional mode accordingly: “Transactional" refers to operational activities to keep the lights on. "Transformational" means redesigning existing transactions to something new, being innovative, creative and also introducing completely new transactions with a strategy that serves the organization well. It requires IT leader being both strategic and hands on. It is crucial to delivering the mundane to accomplish the strategic vision. It also means you need to keep the business running forward with steadfast speed and know when to “rock the boat” accordingly. From a problem-solving perspective, the transactional ability of IT helps to accomplish the daily tasks for solving tactical issues; while the transformational IT capability is the ability to work across business disciplines to solve complex, often strategic problems with contextual understanding and long term perspectives.

IT is a unique leverage to create business synergy, unlock performance, and unleash digital potential: The digital organization is a dynamic business system concentrated on the cultural system, moral system, social system, IT system, other functional system and the holistic digital ecosystem. More and more organizations realize that they have to renew themselves periodically to cope with change effectively and take adaptive management discipline. IT is an effective leverage to streamline information flow and allow people across the business ecosystem to share knowledge and work collaboratively for solving problems and achieving strategic business goals. It all requires profound leadership and cohesive ITmanagement practices. IT leaders need to have multidisciplinary knowledge and in-depth understanding of the business in order to lead change effortlessly. If you don't understand the business, you can't deliver relevant results except using slow or clumsy processes. If you don't know the architecture, you can't easily decide whether a business request maps to your technical capabilities and agility can result in chaos.

In its best form, leadership is about creating a powerful future that is compelling in the present. CIO is not the status quo, but the position power does help IT leaders amplify their leadership influence in the hierarchical business environment. The top CIOs today are able to enforce a set of well-defined IT management principles, utilize the best talents, capabilities, and resources of their people and organization to run strategic IT and produce meaningful and valuable long-term results.

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The Monthly “100 Creativity Ingredients” Book Tuning: Unleash People’s Creative Potential Sep. 2019

 To build a highly innovative organization, it’s important to make sure that your company has a steady flow of fresh ideas floating in the innovation pipeline and create synergy for innovation management.

All humans are born with raw creativity ability. Creativity has many dimensions, with multi-faceted truth and myth, manifold knowledge and multidimensional insight. Creativity is the wings of our mind and the tempo of our heartbeat. Creativity is a constructive disruption, not so bad addiction, and a sensational phenomenon. The purpose of “100 Creativity Ingredients - Everyone’s Playbook to Unlock Creativity “is to classify, scrutinize, articulate, and share insight about one hundred special creativity ingredients, to paint the picture with them, to add colors on them, to embed the music into them, and to make the story via them, in order to unleash our collective creativity potential.

             Unleash People’s Creative Potential 

How to Unlock the People’s Creative Potential In recent years, creativity has become a very highly valued skill, and many think it is the #1 wanted professional capability in the digital era. Creativity is innate with many special ingredients; and creativity can be developed if the conditions are right and there is love, inspiration, encouragement, and permission, Creative people combine existing possibilities to reach more often unexpected solutions. Creativity can be abundant. Creativity is a long-term endeavor. It must be unlocked to maximize its potential.

Ideaphoria: How to Build a Highly Innovative Organization with Constant Creativity Flow  Companies have always had the flow of information, flow of ideas, a flow sufficient for the needs of the company at that time. The point is that, with increasing pace of change, what has happened is that the flow from "before" is perhaps no longer sufficient to address the business challenges of today and future. Ideas are crucial to business innovation, and innovation is critical to the business’s survival and thriving. To build a highly innovative organization, it’s important to make sure that your company has a steady flow of fresh ideas floating in the innovation pipeline and create synergy for innovation management.

How to Build a Creative Workforce and Workplace? People are the most invaluable asset in business, at the age of digital, it is even more true than ever. Talented employees are treated as human capital needs to be well invested to unleash the boundless potential, not just human resources counted as a cost. HR shall also transform itself from an administration function and gatekeeper to change agent, capital investor, and innovator in order to build a creative digital working environment and catalyze the organizational level of digital transformation. However, how do you, as leaders, involve all people in creative thinking and actions? And how can you help improve the harvest of the creative seeds?

Three Practices to Build Creative Workplaces and Workforce People are always the most important business asset and investment, but also one of the weakest links in organizations. The important perspective of digital transformation is to put people at the center of the business, and to both engage employees and delight customers. One of the key determinants of whether an organization can move to new digital structures is the development level of the people, build a creative workplace and innovative workforce.

Enforcing Creativity in the Digital Organization Many forward-looking organizations are shifting from the industrial silo mode to interconnected innovation mode. Innovation is a systematic process to transform novel ideas for achieving its business value. Everyone possesses a certain level of creativity. But collectively, how does creativity manifest itself in the workplace? What's the best work environment for creativity? And how to put people at the center of business? Here is the creativity triangle with three vertices in the digital organization.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6000th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The Best “Digital Fluency” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2019

 Digital fluency does not mean you only master one language, but multiple; only be skillful in one domain, but interdisciplinarity; not just see things from a single dimension but through different angles.

"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 “Digital Fluency” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Being digital fluent in contextual intelligence aids us in understanding what’s relevant and what’s not.

2 Digital fluency is the business capability to skillfully manage information lifecycle, to create fresh content enlightening customers; to gain contextual intelligence for solving complex problems; and more importantly to be fluent in innovation management for catalyzing business growth.

3 Digital fluency does not mean you only master one language, but multiple; only be skillful in one domain, but interdisciplinarity; not just see things from a single dimension but through different angles.

4 In the digital era, we will be confronting a number of high-complex problems in the hyper-connected world, the business solutions will require an integration of different sets of knowledge and digital fluency across multiple disciplines.

5 An organization with digital fluency means to break down silos, create the information savvy environment that encourages the utilization and the flow of information and knowledge.

6 Innovation fluency means that organizations today have a better ability for connecting dots across functional, industrial, geographical, or generational boundaries.

7 At the high maturity level, companies need to embed digital into the very fabric of the business, explore digital in a structural way, to avoid digital traps for achieving digital fluency.

8 Running a digital organization with information fluency means that the business has the rich flow of information, information has the right quality; information is applied properly, and information has been refined into business insight or customer foresight with the aim of solving tough business problems and improving organizational responsiveness and performance intellectually.

9 A leading digital organization with innovation fluency can handle innovation streams for different goals and different time frames and manage a balanced portfolio including both radical innovation and incremental innovation, hard innovation and soft innovation.

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From Enterprise Risk Management to Enterprise Opportunity Management

 When a company embarks on a growth strategy, the risk curve will always be greater than a business as usual approaches.

We live in an era, full of uncertainty, velocity, complexity, and ambiguity. The result is higher risks of conflict and inertia. Thus, organizations must have solid risk management disciplines, make objective assessments, develop a high-effective management framework, provide backup options, and make the transition from risk mitigation to risk intelligence - the accumulation of enough resources to thrive by capturing opportunities in it and adapting to the uncertainty and changes smoothly.


Make an objective risk/opportunity assessment: The major source of limitation in any risk management is because of the risk of the unknown. The age-proven SWOT analysis (Strengths Weaknesses, Opportunities, Treats) is a very common process to help determine where the risks and opportunities are, and where value can be created in the organization rather than just protecting it. It’s a great tool that helps managers ask the right questions, answer them systematically, and understand them in context. In practice, try to identify all possible risks, the organization perhaps ends up in a huge list that may not be practical to assess. What is done is then some low risks are ignored by accepting them. The other pitfall is that the risk management system is detached from the real management of the business. Embed risk identification and assessment in operational processes and multiple management disciplines. It’s important to look at Trust in Humans, Trust in Processes. Trust in Technology. Besides identifying risks, spotting opportunities as well. There is possibly different scenario in which the identification of negative risks unearths an opportunity. This is all a matter of perspective. It requires the stakeholders to open their perspectives or framing on what they are observing. Every opportunity has risks in it, and every risk perhaps also has opportunities in it.

Develop an effective risk management model: In business, every day is a risk, but when a company embarks on a growth strategy, the risk curve will always be greater than a business as usual approaches. As long as risks have been identified and agreed with stakeholders as per business needs, then you can take place a risk models which effectively predict, optimize, and consider a continual and sustainable approach with multi-faceted perspectives, and specific threshold for justifying opportunities and business outcome. Too few business enterprises have appropriately aligned or devoted sufficient resources to their risk management efforts, and they should be or need to be appropriately integrated, with decent reporting structuring and streamlined processes. Assuming that in any risk management program, all the known and potential risks would have been covered and managed, and over a period of time, the enterprise risk management would be making continuous improvement based on the feedback from the risk management process and what would be left is what is unknown. Therefore, it’s important to develop an effective risk management model for integrating all crucial elements such as processes, technologies, tools, talent, communication, culture, etc. to model, manage, and measure risks, and manage opportunities systematically as well.

From risk control to risk intelligence: Statistically, more than three fourths of today's business value is based on their ability to embrace complexity, understand the future, opportunities, decide which one to go after and which one they will not go. Thus, the risk management needs to lift up from risk control to risk intelligence which can identify the potential business growth opportunities. Often, risk and reward are proportional from innovation management perspective. The revenue leaders cross-industrial sectors are the best practitioner for risk intelligence. Breakthrough innovation usually has much higher ROI but with much greater risk. Thus, as part of implementing an enterprise risk management system, companies should put in place a risk appetite system that goes beyond high level statements. Once the risks have been prioritized, you can then look to mitigate the most important risks to bring them within appetite. The enterprise risk management has to be expanded into enterprise opportunity management. GRC practices need to be converged into cohesive management disciplines, and well integrated into the key components of business strategy.

High mature digital organizations establish a set of well defined GRC principles, develop an effective risk management framework, have intelligence-led risk management mechanism embedded into both mindsets and process, harness a risk-awareness culture and a healthy risk appetite, and take a holistic approach to manage risks and opportunities, for improving both top-line business growth and bottom line compliance, to reach the next level of organizational maturity.

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The Monthly “Digital Fit” Book Tuning: The Characteristics of Digital Fit Organization Sep. 2019

Organizations have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving the full-fledged digital transformation.

The purpose of “Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit“ is to share insight about multidimensional enterprise fit from digital characteristics, organizational structure, change, knowledge, and talent perspectives; evoke critical and paradoxical thinking about digital “fit vs. misfit,” spark healthy debates on how to define and develop true digital fit, and build a fitting working environment to inspire creativity and accelerate digital transformation.

                  

The Characteristics of Digital Fit Organization 

The Characteristics of “Digital Fit” Organization The digital organization has the very characteristics of velocity, complexity, hyper-connectivity, interdependence, and diversification, etc. It’s a living thing which needs to keep evolving and strike the delicate balance of growth and stability. Different organizations perhaps set varying criteria to evaluate “digital fit.” Here are five characteristics of digital fit organization.

Three Aspects of Organizational Digital Fit The digital business dynamic is full of uncertainty, velocity, complexity, ambiguity, information overloading, fierce competitions, and continuous disruptions, etc. The companies today have to move fast; the functional, geographical, organizational, and even industrial border are blurred, marketing, finance, technology, leadership, and talent are all intertwined. It’s important to work out a smooth strategy and business transformation by assessing the digital fit of the organization objectively and utilizing collective knowledge and experience to build competitive business advantage.

Three "A"ttributes of High-Mature Digital Organizations With the exponential growth of information and increasing pace of changes, the world keeps on turning, spinning, and innovating around you, and there will be new technologies, new perspectives, new approaches, new tools, new people that will have an impact on your team and your organization almost every day. What are important attributes and characteristics of high-mature digital organizations, and how to develop unique business competency to groom more digital masters?

Three Fitting Characteristics to Make the Business Stand out as a Digital Master With rapid changes and exponential growth of information, companies large or small are brainstorming the digital ways to think and experiment the better way to solve either old business issues or emergent problems, delight customers, improve employees’ engagement, increase productivity, and inspire creativity across the enterprise ecosystem. Organizations have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving the full-fledged digital transformation. So, what are fitting characteristics to make the business stand out as a digital leader and reach a high level of business maturity?

The New Book “Digital Fit - Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit” Chapter 1 Introduction: The Characteristics of Digital Fit Digital organizations are increasingly exhibiting digital characteristics in various shades and intensity. They are hyper-connected and over-complex, with well-mixed physical workplace and virtual team setting. Like people, every organization has its own personality and digital fit characteristics, how do you define organizational fit, in order to build innovative and high-performing teams and transform the whole organization into the digital master?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6000+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The Best “Principle” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2019

The most basic principle is that every system is a construct of the mind. 

"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 “Principle” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Principles are general rules and guidelines, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about fulfilling its mission.

2 Enterprise principles provide a basis for decision-making throughout an enterprise and inform how the organization sets about fulfilling its mission.

3 Principles are statements of belief that reflect the values, culture and real-world concerns of the organization.

4 Principles allow many people to individually make their own decisions to run in the same direction to meet the same objectives in a rapid manner.

5 A well-defined set of digital priciples are not for limiting innovation, but for setting the frame of relevance and guide through changes and digital transformation.

6 The Principles need to be deeply embedded into the fabric of corporate culture. Corporate principles are time and change tolerant statements about how an organization will behave.

7 As principles provide a guideline of harmonizing decision-making across a distributed organization. In particular, they are a key element in a successful architecture governance strategy.

8 The principle is philosophy, based on your business value and strategy, 3P: Principle, Purpose, and Progress are inter-related with each other, as the principle is a positive guideline, helps the business make progress and fulfill the purpose.

9 The most basic principle is that every system is a construct of the mind. This automatically leads to the 2nd principle: Every system has an inside and an outside, created by the one defining the system.

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Apply Gestalt Principles to Design a Self-Adaptive Digital Organization

Gestalt theories, psychology, and principles provide an invaluable angle for the management to understand perceptions & cognitions, business patterns or interconnectivity, etc.

Gestalt psychology or gestaltism is interpreted in psychology as a "pattern" or "configuration." Gestalt Principles describe how the human eye perceives visual elements. it’s known as the "Law of Simplicity," which states that every stimulus is perceived in its most simple form. Gestalt theories followed the basic principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. From a business management perspective, how to apply Gestalt principles to design a self-adaptive and learning digital organization by discovering patterns and understanding the intrinsic interconnectivity between parts and whole,

Come up with meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world: Variety, complexity, diversification, nonlinearity, and interdependence, etc, are the very characteristics of the digital era. Gestalt psychology tries to understand the laws of our ability to acquire meaningful perceptions in an apparently chaotic world, to discover useful patterns and detect signals, to manage order from chaos. In the world with high velocity and uncertainty, there is known known, known unknown, and unknown unknown, it’s no surprise that once a while, the chaos swallows the order in a moment, and the digital seems to go wild. Be paranoid to think forward, but don't panic. The creative mind continues to discover useful patterns and understand the underlying configurations, apply Gestalt principles to come up with meaningful perceptions from the seemingly chaotic circumstances, and actively seek out fresh ideas wherever you can discover them. If you look at patterns, you will find that they are containers for articulating relationships. You can navigate from patterns to patterns to learn about a problem space, peel back the layers to figure out the root causes and solve the problem systematically.

The mind forms a “whole” with self-organizing tendencies: The central principle of Gestalt psychology addresses that the human mind considers objects in their entirety before, or in parallel with the perception of their individual parts; suggesting the whole other than the sum of its parts. Digital organizations are people-centric living systems with the tendency to be self-organizing for improving adaptability and self-renewal. From the economic and organizational point of view, people follow Gestalt principle to perceive the “whole,” are able to adapt themselves and their organization through a collaborative and peer to peer approach. Self-organization will occur naturally and most of the time without, or in spite of, external direction. Teams naturally gravitate towards self-organization, if not interfered with. The two fundamental system elements -structure and behavior co-working in every organism in nature and in every system designed by humans. The behavior points out the relations (actions/reactions) between the system and the environment; and the organizational structure points out the impacts (changes/ transformation) of environment condition on the business system. Digital organizations and their people must learn through their interactions with the business environment and make an adaptation for the future actions.

The part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole: The fundamental "formula" of Gestalt theory could be expressed as "there are whole, the behavior of which is not determined by that of the individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole.” The digital paradigm is associated with deep ecology. Consider the nature and organizations as self-organized but interlaced system which have their own purpose, and the processes are determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. In reality, the problems of many traditional organizations are silo functions, incoherent processes, overly rigid hierarchy, fractal structure, or bureaucratic management style. Thus, to design a self-adaptive digital organization, the management needs to apply Gestalt principles to understand cohesive relationship between parts and the whole, to fine tune the fundamental business elements such as process, structure, technology, culture, capability, etc, and to ensure that the digital organization can strike the delicate balance between solid and flow, standardization and flexibility, and to improve business responsiveness and coherence.

Gestalt theories, psychology, and principles provide an invaluable angle for the management to understand perceptions & cognitions, business patterns or interconnectivity, etc. The digital organization of the future should be designed openly for unleashing collective human potential based on the comprehensive understanding of how human organizations ought to be contrived in the face of challenges and strategic imperatives of the 21st century, with the goal to unlock performance and drive progress.

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The Monthly “IT Innovation” Book Tuning: Running IT as a “Center of Possibility” Sep. 2019

With the overwhelming growth of information and often technology-led digital disruptions, Information & Technology becomes the most time-intense piece for solving innovation puzzles.

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

 

Running IT as a “Center of Possibility”  

Running IT as the “Center of Possibility” IT continues to grow in importance to organizations, both operationally and as a competitive advantage. To keep IT relevant, IT management shouldn't just practice some transactional activities or act as a controller only. It has to explore both the art and science of digital management discipline, run IT organization as the “center of possibility,” to accelerate its performance and unlock business potential.

Running Bold IT to Pursue Innovation Opportunities In forward-thinking companies across the vertical sectors, IT is transforming from a reactive support center and business enabler to a proactive change agent and the business revenue creator. The expectations for CIOs have also grown multifold, they are expected to be visionaries and path-finders to pursue business innovation opportunities, opening new revenue stream and leverage IT to build competitive advantage of the business.

The Art and Science of IT Management With the overwhelming growth of information and pervasive technology, to keep IT relevant, IT management shouldn’t just practice some transactional activities or act as a business controller only. IT management has to explore both the art and science of digital management discipline, run IT as the “Center of Possibility,” accelerate its performance and unlock its full potential.

The New Book “100 IT Charms” Introduction Chapter V: IT as the “Center of Possibility” With the overwhelming growth of information and often technology-led digital disruptions, Information & Technology becomes the most time-intense piece for solving innovation puzzles. Innovation happens at the intersection of business and IT, you have to manage it strategically and systematically in order to achieve a consistent business results. IT is no longer just the mechanical or monolithic hardware pieces to keep the business spinning or the mechanism for realizing a vision described by other C-level executives; it’s the innovation engine to run a digital organization.

The Digital CIO as “Choice Generator” The unprecedented digital convenience brought by powerful technologies changes the way we think, live, and work. Embracing digital is inevitable as that is now part of the business venture. The digital era upon us is the era of options, empathy, personalization, and sharing. IT is the linchpin to run a high-performance digital organization. Today’s digital CIOs need to become the “Choice Generator,” envision the emerging technological trends, refine information to capture business foresight and customer insight, imagine the new possibilities and alternative ways to do things, and drive the digital transformation proactively.

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 6000+ blogs posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The Full Moon to Celebrate the "Mid-autumn Festival"

Tonight’s full moon is unique and ubiquitous, like a silver river flow above.

The Moon is blinking to us, we whisper to the Moon;

Once again, the Moon is at its full, like a shining lantern hanging in the sky.

The moon is watching us, we are chasing around the moon,

The moon is so close by, the moon is so far away…



The moon is lucid and charming, we imagine the moon,

Blue moon, yellow moon, purple moon, orange moon, translucent moon. ..



The moon talk to us, we listen to the moon;

The full and wax of the moon implies the vicissitude of life;

The simple and sophisticated of the moon reflect the variety of the world.

High and low, up and down, bright and dim, large and small, solid and flow, deep and shallow..

The moonlight is pouring towards us, and we are melted with the moon.



Tonight’s full moon is unique and ubiquitous, like a silver river flow above;

it’s so real and unimaginable; original and contemporary;

elegant and thought-provoking.

The moon is watching us, and we’re amazed by the moon...

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Take a Mixed Change Management Approach to Go Digital

Change unfolds into a wider multi-dimensionally systemic business continuum, to improve business fluidity and people-centricity.

Due to the “VUCA” digital new normal, today’s business is often operational in crisis and conflict environments. It requires the organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves and become highly adaptive, flexible, and responsive. Digital transformation is radical change, communication has to flow via all different directions and organizational hierarchy.  It’s critical to take mixed top-down, bottom-up, inside-out, outside-in, middle-out, and cross-functional system wide approaches to go digital in a multidimensional way.

Top-down: Top down approach usually results in holistic thinking and planning. Digital transformation is the large scale of changes. It’s like a gigantic puzzle with many misplaced pieces. It takes strategic thinking to perceive the big picture with a clear business vision, objectives, and value streams and shape the top-down oversight. Without the inclusion of a “top down” framework, there is no consensus on which pieces to look for, which pieces are more critical, and how to come up with a holistic solution, In fact, the top down leadership guidance and executive sponsorship is critical for Change Management success. Change needs to be inspired from top-down, as the top leadership team’s commitment will reassure those who have doubts, make sure that the business moves in the right direction and the strategy time horizon. Top-down change approach is beneficial when the organization maintains coherence while allowing autonomy and managing a right balance between exploration and exploitation.

Bottom-up: With emerging digital technologies, many organizations cross vertical sectors are breaking down the overly rigid hierarchy, moving towards open structures and more freedom to those who are linked with the front line. Bottom up approach to change is important because people fell more engaged in providing feedback, taking initiatives to identify problems and solve them. It’s about leveraging collective knowledge and creativity to develop the business change climate and drive change success. If people don’t feel that they are valued, it’s often difficult to bring around changes and sustain changes later on. Make sure business processes and people are integrated to ensure a consistent ability to deliver change results. In practice, the right mix of bottom-up and top-down change management practices are crucial to both embed change into business DNA and integrate change management into strategy management for driving the long term business transformation success.

Inside-out: When a business becomes so complicated with outdated rules or overly rigid processes or procedures, people get frustrated and annoyed by not being able to accomplish work easily, “Inside-Out” approach to change can be understood as a search for simpler concepts and methodologies to improve operational targets and process goals. If looking at it from a business management perspective, it requires some kind of rethinking and reinventing corporate processes, re-tuning the organizational structures, and recombining the differentiated business competency. It’s important to keep trimming wastes and redundancy, set priorities to bring transparency and ensure the business continually moves up to the next level of organizational maturity.

Outside-in: Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for operating a high mature digital organization. The outside-in approach to change is about focusing on customer perceptions and experiences, with the goal to transform the company's culture and be dedicated to creating value for their customers. The customer's experience is about how they encounter, observe, or undergo a company's events or stages. Companies lay out an outside-in digital transformation journey which is helpful, positive, and sharing experiences with customers, and evolve the ecosystem for changing and innovating.

System-wide: Digital organizations are hyperconnected, interdependent, always-on and people-centric. The key elements in Change Management include vision, values, cultures, goals, processes, and measurement, etc. To change an organizational system, you must understand the concept of the true meaning of the nonlinear organizational dynamic. Without a system-wide perspective, a single-dimensional change approach perhaps leads to silo or unwanted complication. Radical change often needs to restructure the root of the company such as values, beliefs, and objectives, It's critical to account for cross-cutting concerns, putting a puzzle together requires trying different pieces, being flexible and willing to put a piece aside to find another more appropriate piece. Thus, it’s important to communicate within the spiral of conscious awareness and apply systems thinking and interdisciplinary approach to manage changes in a structural way.

Change unfolds into a wider multi-dimensionally systemic business continuum, to improve business fluidity and people-centricity. It’s important to take a mixed approach to go digital, make proactive change within the expanded digital ecosystem, and improve business maturity from functioning to firm to delight.

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 9/13/2019

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 6000+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight of digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Master Disruptive Innovation in a Structural Way Innovation is the core activity of human evolution of changing the environment to reach high performance and expediting collective human progress. Disruptive innovation is a radical new approach that leaves competitions behind in some way. It is disruptive and will change your organization in many fields. Innovation should eventually result in business benefits - be it tangible or intangible.

The Corporate Board’s Mentorship Competency Coaching or mentoring is going to be increasingly important now because the "command & control" style of management is gradually losing its steam in the digital era of abundant knowledge and hyperconnected business normality. The mentor style board directors play a critical role in developing next-generation leaders and help the current leadership stay attuned to the realities of their industry and business ecosystem.

The Monthly “CIO Master” Book Tuning: Strategic IT Leadership Sep. 2019 Compared to the other executive positions, the CIO role continues to be shaken up, refined, reinvented and reenergized. The magic “I” of the CIO title sparks many imaginations and modern CIOs need to wear different hats and play multiple roles. Here are a set of blogs for CIOs to practice strategic leadership and reinvent IT to get digital ready.

Three Aspects of Preventing problems Due to fast-paced change, the exponential growth of information and continuous digital disruptions, opportunities and risks co-exist. Forward-looking organizations should manage them well and adapt to digital new normal for creating a winning digital dynamic. Risks are simply potential problems. Preventing the problem is more superior to fixing issues. It is supposed to be one of the main principles for problem management.

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

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking about the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The Best “Mentorship” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2019

Mentorship is about guiding, advising, interpreting, and influencing: This is radically different from the command-and-control style of leadership.

"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 “Mentorship” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Mentorship motivates people by allowing them to learn by giving them the time and the confidence to work out for themselves what needs to be done in certain situations.

2 Great leaders should be ideal mentors, If the leaders are not willing to mentor the next generation of leaders, it will lead to reduced competitiveness and effectiveness and suboptimal business results.

3 By mentoring you are showing that you value others, and in order to add value to others, you need to hold people in high regard, not only for who they are but for the potential that lies inside of them.

4 Mentorship is about guiding, advising, interpreting, and influencing: This is radically different from the command-and-control style of leadership.

5 Learning, coaching, and practicing leadership are the iterative continuum that is improved by constant learning and practice.

6 A well established and functioning mentoring process is invaluable for an organization to develop its next-generation leaders and for the current leadership to stay attuned to the realities of their ecosystem

7 Mentorship inspires the culture of learning. There should be a balance between the organization and the individual where the responsibility for learning is concerned

8 Mentoring and talent development can be well embedded in organizational innovation management lifecycle, it's the practice based on mutual interest and encourages close collaboration.

9 Mentorship is both art & science, it inspires the culture of learning, build the effective leadership team, improve agility in the organization,

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Three Fatal Mistakes Cause the Business Mighty Fall

Digital leaders must ensure the business having a clear vision, well-defined business goals and gain the contextual understanding of the inter-connectivity of both visible and invisible business success factors.

Due to the “VUCA” business new normal, the digital organization and its business ecosystem today become hyper-connected and interdependent. It’s important for the management to understand the business as a complex adaptive system with different functions, structures, layers, and teams. Every organization today sooner or later will step into the uncharted water or blurred territories, it is also critical to avoid these fatal mistakes or hidden pitfalls, which cause the business mighty fall, in order to lead the company forward at steadfast paces.

Confuse means with ends: With high velocity and unprecedented level of uncertainty, the business management today needs to see the whole picture, determine what the future needs to look like and what digital transformation must look like. The wrong end can lead to catastrophic business setback. More often than not, organizations have to adjust their directions accordingly in order to adapt to frequent changes promptly. In reality, many companies focus on transactional level of activities, keep the business spinning but going nowhere. The stagnation will further make the business irrelevant gradually and lose its competitive advantage. If some companies thought they are playing with fancy technology gadgets, thus, they are riding the tide of digitalization, perhaps they also confuse means with ends. Keep in mind, information technology is the means to an end, not the end. Information is the gold when it has been used to make an informed management decision to develop the right products, services, or business models, enter a new market, or explore a new digital channel, etc. Technology is the savior if it can improve customer satisfaction, empower employees to change or catalyze innovation. When the organizations can focus on problem-solving, they are able to dig into underlying business processes and pain areas, bring out customer-tailored and technology-driven solutions, and devote more attention to what organizations really care about. Digital transformation is not just about technology, it has to expand into every direction of the business for unlocking business performance and improving the organizational maturity.

Put the wrong people in the position to solve wrong problems: As always, people are the most invaluable business asset and capital, but often the weakest link for business transformation. Putting the right people with the right capability to solve the right problem is simply the biggest challenge facing businesses and our society today. And it’s much easier to say than doing because it involves multiple intelligence judgment and assessment processes to evaluate people and problems in an objective way. In today’s VUCA new normal, complex problem solving takes interdisciplinary understanding or integral professional competencies to both frame the right problems and solve them in the right way. When organizations make talent assessments only based on linear logic or conventional talent management methodology, more often or not, they miss the point and put the wrong people to solve wrong problems or even create more problems. Cognitively, often people are both the cause and the center of the problem. Diagnosing the problem from the mindset level is a critical step for digging into the root causes of many problems today. Thus, the assessment should start at the mindset level, quality counts, dynamic counts, and learning agility counts. Select the right people who possess the advanced mind with multidimensional intelligence, proficient knowledge, nonlinear skills and unique problem-solving competencies to move the business forward and accelerate digital transformation.

Ignore measuring something important or measure the wrong things: You can only manage what you measure, mis-measurement and ineffective performance management cause the business mighty fall. From a strategic management perspective, one of the most dangerous pitfalls of performance measurement is when performance system is connected with the motivation system on an operational level, but disconnected from the strategy management. Sometimes, metrics motivate people to game the data, rather than make real achievement; encourage mediocrity, rather than creativity; or the metrics only tell part of the story but ignore the full pictures, etc. Keep in mind, the right metrics are requested in the right context; it’s important to explain to the upper management of why they are requested, to ensure the management buy-in. To avoid varying performance measurement pitfalls, the management needs to clarify which culture you would like to shape and what kind of behavior you should encourage. It’s critical to ensure that digital performance measures are both qualitative and quantitative, correlate to build differentiated business competency and achieve better business outcomes. The effective performance management directly impacts on day-to-day decision-making, business adaptability, and overall organizational maturity.

There is no one size fits all formula to build strategy competency and run a high performance digital business. Digital leaders must ensure the business having a clear vision, well-defined business goals and gain the contextual understanding of the inter-connectivity of both visible and invisible business success factors. Each organization just has to "walk the talk," avoid hidden trap or fatal mistakes and explore their unique way to enforce inter-organizational linkage, and take step-wise actions to improve digital management maturity.

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The Monthly “Digital Hybridity” Book Tuning: The Multitude of Digital Hybridity Sep. 2019

From a management perspective, digital hybridity means how to strike the right balance of change and stability; innovation and standardization; transaction and transformation. 

The purpose of the book “Digital Hybridity: How to Strike the Right Balance for Digital Paradigm Shift” is to shed some light on how to strike the right balance of stability and changes; being transactional to keep spinning and being transformational to leap forward for making a seamless digital paradigm shift. Digital organizations should apply the hybrid management approach, focus on building a diverse, networked, and extended modern working environment in which the powerful digital platforms and computing technologies enable seamless conversations, delayer overly rigid organizational hierarchy, inspire idea sharing and brainstorming, and engage employees and partners to achieve the high-performance result.

The Multitude of Digital Hybridity 

Hybrid Innovation Innovation is a management discipline, just like many key elements in businesses today, such as leadership, culture, process, or technology, etc, HYBRID is the digital fit style for managing innovation. From a portfolio management point of view, companies need both incremental product/service innovations to thrive but also desire large, disruptive innovations for a quantum leap. Managing innovation requires leaders, either formal or informal, to shepherd an idea through several phases of development, knowing when to move forward and when to return to an earlier phase. But more specifically, what is hybrid innovation and how to manage it effectively?

The Hybrid Digital Boardroom With the increasing pace of changes, overwhelming growth of information, and continuous digital disruptions, businesses today need to ride the change waves and catch the rising digital tide timely. Digital organizations today have the hybrid reality with both physical structures and virtual presence, the old way and the new way of doing things. They need to figure out all sorts of hybrid solutions as well. From a management perspective, digital hybridity means how to strike the right balance of change and stability; innovation and standardization; transaction and transformation. From the governance perspective, the digital board needs to adopt a hybrid model and take the holistic discipline with mixed leadership styles for steering the business in the right direction.

The New Book “Digital Hybridity” Conclusion: The Multitude of Digital Hybridity The digitalization flattens the organizational hierarchy and blurs the functional, organizational and geographical borders in the business ecosystem. It is like the gigantic puzzle with many misplaced pieces, you have to put them all in the right places to discover the real meaning and unleash its full potential. You cannot make a true digital paradigm shift without an in-depth understanding of the digital interconnectivity and embracing the multitude of digital hybridity.

The Hybrid Decision-Making Style The digital leaders and professionals spend the significant amount of time in making decisions. However, ineffective decision-making becomes one of the biggest root causes to fail businesses due to "VUCA" characteristics of the digital normality. The poor decision-making can cause the business dysfunction, employee disengagement, or customer dissatisfaction; the short time loss or the long term pain in the organization. The point is that there is no one size fits all formula for all decision making, there are all sorts of decision-making styles depend on the decision maker's cognitive ability, knowledge, insight, or personality. With the increasing pace of change and overwhelming information, can the hybrid style help to improve decision-making maturity?

The Best “Hybridity” Quotes of “Digital Master” Aug. 2019 "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, 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 “Hybridity” quotes in “Digital Master.’

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6000+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. 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.

Read More