Innovation is not serendipitous, there is a logic behind any innovation effort.

The purpose of the book “Digital Maturity: Take a Journey of a Thousand Miles from Functioning to Delight” is to envision the future of the business, articulate the very characteristics of digital organizations; reimagine the interdisciplinary and hyperconnected digital ecosystem; fine-tune processes and structures of the digital business; develop the best and next practices to charter the digital paradigm shift seamlessly; leverage information & technology as the linchpin of the digitalization; take a holistic approach to measure digitization effort; avoid pitfalls and barriers on the way; and make a leap from doing digital to being digital effortlessly. 

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. 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.

Innovative Inference

Inference & Innovation Due to the fact that innovating in today’s digital world has become increasingly complex in nature. Often, organizations can no longer rely on a single individual or team to drive innovation. Innovation is not serendipitous, there is a logic behind any innovation effort. Digital innovation management is a system that can be fine-tuned in a structured way to improve its success rate.

Interdisciplinary Inference Due to the occurrence of increased economic integration, information permeation, technology underpinnings, the black and white boundaries continue to diminish in the 21st century. It’s important to deal with the nonlinear, multi-logical situation in today's digital dynamic, and understand the logic behind business scenes. Business logic today is often nonlinear or even paradoxical characterized by the movement of information, people, and businesses with the mixed structures, hyper diversity, volatility, unpredictability, and increased flux. Business management today needs to be interdisciplinary, informative, and innovative.

Unconventional Understanding The digital dynamic is where the continuous disruptions often led by emerging technologies threaten to tear down silo mentality, outdated concepts, legacy systems and practices just as it generates new opportunities. Nowadays business leaders and professionals feel more comfortable with the digital new normal - chaos, uncertainty, and ambiguity. They should break down conventional thinking boxes, improve sound judgment and discernment skills. Practicing unconventional thinking takes a certain mental, psychological and conditional chemistry to break away from thoughts that others have thought about and deepen their understanding of either existing or emerging issues. It takes courage, but it is a necessary step to take initiatives to spark creativity and make true progress either individually or collectively.

Innovative Inference "Intelligence" is from Latin word “intellego” -Inter-lego: Bind together, read between the lines, or connect the dots. Creativity is an innate thought process to connect the dots and generate innate ideas. Logic is a thinking process in which a result is derived from a thought. To untangle unprecedented complexity, we reach a stage to assess logic of everything: thoughts, language, actions. More specifically, logic, intelligence, and creativity, how do they interplay

Innovative Initiatives Digital organizations are in the middle of a sea change. The definition of innovation is simple - to gain benefit by doing something different. Innovation is not “nice to have,” but “must-have” differentiate business competency, to gain a competitive advantage in the face of fierce competition and continuous disruptions often led by emerging technologies.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #7500th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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Unusual

We live in the world with a variety of cultures and dynamic changes, creativity is a flow, an abstract, an imagination, and an association, or simply the connection of the unusual dots to come up with novel ideas or alternative solutions.

"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 “Unusual” (ii) quotes in “Digital Master.”




We are stronger through diversity and become ultra-modern through inclusiveness. It allows us to perceive things via unusual angles, connect unusual dots, and explore many “unusual options.

In a collective setting, it’s critical to encourage free thinking and experimenting, have the right dose of creative tension and “unusual capabilities” to discover more hotspots of innovation, unify the best of the best, and build the culture of creativity.

We live in the world with a variety of cultures and dynamic changes, creativity is a flow, an abstract, an imagination, and an association, or simply the connection of the unusual dots to come up with novel ideas or alternative solutions.

Connective minds are in demand because of its unusual capability and capacity to see how things can be both connected or disconnected to create completely new forms, systems, and ideas for solving either existing problems or emerging problems and overcoming common challenges.

Creative cognition is a divergent thought process which would promote connectivity through the development of new synapses for sparking fresh ideas. It could also involve the convergent processes to make unusual combinations of ideas or insight to scale up innovation and solve bigger problems.

When an unusual thing strikes, almost all join together to deal with it as the purpose is clearly understood and accepted to solve problems smoothly.

Creative problem solving is about trying something “unusual”- the thing that has never been done before. Connections can be spelled out. Analogies can be noted. Chains of thought that can lead to those inspirations can be told as stories.

The point is: How to provide those “unusual options” and how to help people make better choices? So the abundance of information and emerging technologies provide the opportunity to re-imagine the new possibilities, think of a new way to do things, and it gets really creative on how they orchestrate and implement transformative changes.

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Innovation Initiation

The good or bad innovation would depend on the business’s attitude to drive innovation and its aptitude to manage innovation. 

The digital era upon us is about innovation. The purpose of Innovation Management is to prepare everything to maximize the transformation of an idea to achieve its business value through well-prepared processes and structures. In reality, business transformation makes a lot of people nervous because it means they have to move out of their comfort zone, which causes innovation inertia. 

To dig deeper, silo, outdated concepts, “we always do things like that” mentality, knowledge limitations, erc, are all the causes of innovation inertia. So how to initiate innovation efforts and how to overcome challenges?

Initiate innovation efforts with well-aligned structure and process: Even though the emerging digital technologies blur functional, industrial, or geographical territories, many traditional organizations are still managed through overly restricted hierarchical management discipline which encourages silo and “rewards” compliance, but discourages “thinking differently.” Conventional wisdom or silo mentality causes innovation inertia. Silos will always exist. Isolation of teams limits creativity, duplication of efforts results in wasting valuable resources. So these companies suffer from innovation inertia and business stagnation. It is important to note that within the organizations, nowadays innovation is rarely an individual action; rather it is a team effort, often across multiple organizational silos, you need to manage innovation in a structural way via a good alignment of innovators, the disruptive technologies, and rigorous, but not rigid processes.

To manage innovation structurally, it’s important to broaden the audience, or expand the collective insight to overcome challenges, digitally connect key resources and assets in their vicinity and context because good ideas are multi-dimensional, they take roots in unsuspected places and they evolve with time and by unexpected connections. By doing that, you can break down silos and build resource-rich innovation hubs and clusters across the business ecosystem. Initiate innovation efforts with well-aligned structure and process. And if you keep perfecting them while communicating the results to the rest of your organization via clarified language, sooner or later, structure and process will become the culture to catalyze innovation.

Being risk intelligent takes courage, but it is a necessary step to manage innovation and make true progress: Innovation comes with the foresight to envision a need that others overlook or ignore and a willingness to forge ahead to satisfy visions, in spite of a risk of failure. People tend to be "risk averse." Practicing innovative thinking takes a certain mental, psychological and conditional chemistry to break away from thoughts that others have thought about or conventional wisdom. Innovation, especially breakthrough innovation is inherently risky because it is new and different. In practice, people tend to be "risk-averse," fear of disruption, the existence of chaos, fear is one of the causes of innovation inertia.

The psychology behind innovation is resilience - being willing to face risks, and overcoming the fear and inertia associated with such risks. Innovation is the most needed change. At the heart of innovation, much of what needs to happen is just change management. With every "change," the risk is involved. The positive attitude to drive innovation efforts is to take the calculated risk and be cautious about obstacles or pitfalls of change, inspire a good innovation initiative, and avoid a bad innovation pitfall.

Levels and ways of inertia manifestation could be a criterion for measuring organizational health and innovation maturity: Corporate culture is the collective mind, attitude, and behavior. The culture of innovation inertia is the collective resistance mindsets. Behavior is a manifestation of attitude, attitude results from the thoughts and mind. More often culture inertia is the very reason to stifle the business innovation. The spirit of business comes from the top, leaders need to constantly ask themselves if their minds are open and professional, and if their attitudes and actions display these values.

The good or bad innovation would depend on the business’s attitude to drive innovation and its aptitude to manage innovation. Employee engagement and mass collaboration in the innovation process increases participation. In reality, there’re always some constraints for businesses to explore the new opportunities or deploy the new ideas. A resistance mind can be cracked and the success rate of innovation can be improved if you apply the right mind, systematic methodology and take the effective approach. Innovative leaders need to find creative ways to tackle innovation potential lying in an enterprise and to provide the necessary tools to drive innovation and define the right set of measures to evaluate innovation initiatives.

The digital organization encourages “self-generated” engagement, innovation, self adaptation, and self-renewal. To overcome inertia, spark creativity and initiate innovation, the digital business life cycle could be viewed as resulting in emergent means of shaping a vision reflecting the objectives and soul of the company, and harnessing outside in people-centricity.

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Innovator

Being innovative is a state of openness where you set aside what you think you know.

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

Here is the monthly tuning of digital leadership to celebrate #7500 blog posting.

 

          Innovator

Innovative Interdisciplinarity With exponential growth of data and information only clicks away, the border of knowledge domains is blurred and the scope of knowledge is expanded in the continual base. It requires fundamentally different mindsets and interdisciplinarity to run contemporary businesses and modern society which are dynamic systems with the very characteristics of hyper connectivity and interdependence.

Innovator An innovator has an obligation to his/her vision, to be forward thinking; and convince others to take the risks that true innovation requires. An innovator has an obligation to challenge the status quo, for social, humanity and commercial betterment.

Innovator-scoreboard Innovation is about transforming novel ideas into business values. Innovation score means an attempt to measure innovation; so the factors included in any scoring system will depend on what you are looking to evaluate (individual vs. organization? potential vs. past performance?), this is usually done through innovation indicators. What’re the pros and cons of measuring innovation and score innovators?

Innovativeness? Being innovative is a state of openness where you set aside what you think you know. You keep being curious with a beginner’s mind, you step out of your logical thinking minds to create something new; or more often, you blend different types of thinking processes to see things differently. There are many traits to be an innovator, here are three “B” elements for being innovative.

Innovator’s Initiative For many, innovation is serendipity, and innovators are the crazy one, indeed, innovators are among us and within us, it relates to leadership, empathy, idealism, process understanding, communication skills, cultural understanding, and definitely - understanding in what is wrong with the status quo. Can you see yourself in the innovator’s profile?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 7500+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.

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Unique

The leading organizations with unique competency have the better capacity to adapt, differentiate themselves from competitors, take risks to innovate in order to achieve their strategic goals effortlessly

"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 “Unique” quotes in “Digital Master.”


Being unique means to be authentic. Being authentic is defined as being real or genuine.

Either individually or collectively, leveraging the unique strength and building professional competencies for adapting to unpredictable and riding above the learning curve is critical to achieving high performance.

It’s critical to set up priorities, divest non-core capabilities, free up resources that can be used to and deepen core business capabilities in order to stretch the unique strength of the organization and build the sustainable business advantage for the long run.

Creative people are constantly looking for innovative, unique improvements even when things are going well. They are able to work through the barriers and put ideas into place. They can build on the ideas/insights of others to come up with “outside the box” solutions.

Every CIO is unique, every leader is also unique, the leadership roles such as CIO need to share the unique point of view, to break down conventional wisdom and lead their organization up toward the next growth cycle and catalyze business transformation.

Digital CIOs should have unique mindsets, skill sets, and even a unique title, become the top business leader to lead digital transformation smoothly.

IT is uniquely positioned to observe underlying business processes and organizational structures across the enterprise, as well as integrate all crucial business elements such as people, process, and technology into differentiated organizational competencies.

IT needs to be unique, innovative, and influential, and help businesses to accelerate performance and maximize potential not only for today but for the future.

The leading organizations with unique competency have the better capacity to adapt, differentiate themselves from competitors, take risks to innovate in order to achieve their strategic goals effortlessly.

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Influence

 To lead more effectively, business leaders must shift their mindset to get digital ready. They must accelerate their thinking to solve over-complex business problems and target the goals with growth. 

Due to the scarcity of information and static settings in the industrial age, many people are used to living in their “comfort zone” with a static mindset based on a very limited thinking box they shaped quite a long time ago. However, with high velocity and abundant knowledge, forward-looking individuals and companies need to reinvent themselves to improve their core competencies and drive transformative change. Successful companies can rejuvenate a high performance culture through psychological footprint and behavioral DNA, catalyze innovation and make significant influence.

Instill common vision, purpose, passion, and a sense of urgency to act: The range of emerging digital technologies fosters a deeper sense of vision and connections to changes. Change starts with a "sense of urgency" which can only come from top management. Forethoughtful leaders are able to clarify vision, instill purpose, provide clear directions, deprogram old mindsets, let go of “the voices from the past,” stand by their word and motivate, reprogram people's minds with new thinking, attitudes; and establish a new digital blueprint for how you want to create the future collaboratively. Vision is crucial to sustaining passion, passion enables determination and creativity. In fact, passion aligned with strategy, focus, capabilities, talent, and meaningful work is a destination for both individuals and businesses.

The "fundamental reason for being" is the purpose of the organization. If the vision isn't connected to the purpose, people will lack direction, lack enthusiasm, lack passion. Vision guides us through, passion lifts us up. Following the passion requires a good sense of judgment that you are on a right path to the vision you set and the goals you set. Everyone needs to believe in these goals and agree that they are worthwhile. Passion following a good positive chain of thoughts followed by positive actions often brings good results.

Shift, mold, and reframe old paradigms into new ones: With rapid change, the world or the business ecosystem are converting from the mechanistic paradigm to the systems paradigm that requires starting with new system oriented beliefs and thought processes. Those who look through the lens of the previous era see their own reality very differently from those who use the lens that the new era has crafted. The organizations that have hit the heights of success in the digital world aren’t those that have determinedly followed the old models and “we always do things like that” mentality, but the ones that can shift, mold, and reframe old paradigms into new ones.

The digital world is multidimensional and physically, chemically, biologically, cognologically, linguistically, technologically evolving. These dimensions interact and mutually influence each other expressing that interaction as an emergence of a new worldview very different from the previous era - the era of the industrial society. Thus, predicting and shaping human behavior is hard and there are always going to be errors so expectation setting is of paramount importance. The systematic views of the world are more balanced and it is sensitive to the emergent factors, improve communication, collaboration, cooperation, and accelerate digital paradigm shift.

Mold leaders with advanced mindset and exemplary behavior: To lead more effectively, business leaders must shift their mindset to get digital ready. They must accelerate their thinking to solve over-complex business problems and target the goals with growth. Digital leaders today must apply multidimensional thinking either to make fair judgments or sound decisions. They should also leverage collective mindsets to brainstorm new ideas or co-develop knowledge; develop the digital pipeline for leadership development and talent management, leverage the latest digital tools and platforms for idea generation, updating their management practices, with the goal to improve business performance and unleash collective potential.

Culture is a display of collective behavior. It is influenced and shaped by the interaction between employees, management, and their environment. Not only should business leaders exemplify behavior, but also should they transmit energy to the variety of people, giving them a new sense of confidence and purpose in achieving a well-framed vision with positive perspectives. The result is a set of norms and values that determine how people will behave and relate to one another in a particular setting.

The business world we live in is in the digital paradigm shift, the change from a “multinational” organization that adapts the operations of each country or regional unit for local needs to a seamless “global” firm with standardized and horizontally integrated technologies and processes. The biggest challenge with any large-scale transformation program is – do the senior leaders truly understand the time and impact on the organization, can they make significant influence; -do people genuinely look within their own hearts and minds to learn about the barriers, and be able to overcome them to make a leap, collaboratively, can they achieve high performance result effortlessly.

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Innovation-Indicator

Innovation is not serendipity, it’s a managed process of transforming novel ideas to achieve their business value in a tangible way.

Corporate Performance Management is a management control from strategy to the shop floor. "If you can't measure, you can't manage," legendary management guru Peter Drucker once asserted. Managing performance means understanding results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to ensure it happens. 

It takes multifaceted approaches from multidimensional perspectives to unlock digital performance and catalyze change.

  

    Innovation Indicator 

Innovation-Indicator As the saying goes, “You can only manage what you measure.” Digital Organizations are like organic systems that keep evolving. The performance of the total “system” is independent of the performance of any one of the functions and depends more on how the functions relate to each other, the “space” between functions. In fact, the very goal of running a high performance business is to ensure the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces.

Innovation-Measurement Innovation is not serendipity, it’s a managed process of transforming novel ideas to achieve their business value. You can only manage what you measure. Innovation is a management process which needs to be measured for making continuous improvement. Given the dynamic nature of digital organization and the complex mix of its resources and business factors, a well-defined set of innovation performance metrics need to be considered in better measures of innovation success such as revenue sustainability, customer satisfaction, knowledge accumulation, brand reputation or price elasticity, etc.

Innovation-Metrics Innovation is about making differentiation. Forward-looking companies will spend more resources on innovation investment and take a scientific approach to decode innovation serendipity. Innovation as a management process needs to be measured for making continuous improvement in order to reap the fruit for gaining long term advantage. Innovation measurement is challenging, it takes innovation to measure innovation performance.

Innovation-KPI For many businesses, creativity is the mystery and innovation is a serendipity. In fact, innovation is how to transform novel ideas and achieve its business value. Due to the hyper-complexity of modern businesses, innovation is also about reducing the unnecessary business complexity to tackle the complexities of business dynamics. It can be managed in a structural way. If you can only manage what you measure, how to measure innovation effectively?

Innovation-Maturity For many organizations, innovations are still serendipitous. However, serendipity can be planned into an innovation project. Serendipity is not a lucky accident, and it can be planned and worked upon. It has a lot of determination and divine providence for those who believe in that. Serendipity will always play some part in the innovation effort, but innovation is both art and science, Innovation Management is a scientific management discipline, how do you assess innovation management maturity, though?

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #7500 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.



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The "Performance Master" Book Conclusion

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection I

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection II

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection III

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Useful

 

"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 Useful” quotes in “Digital Master.”

We live in the digital era with knowledge abundance. Knowledge fuels imagination. Knowledge architecture is a useful tool to develop the design competency of the business.

Business Architecture is a useful tool to gather inter-related data and facts, analyze and frame the right problems, if needed, break down the large problem to smaller pieces, in order to solve problems effectively.

Each pattern is useful to address some specific problem. What could be in a stronger relationship to us than something that solves a problem to us? Sometimes tie the patterns together so you can navigate among them for figuring out better solutions to complex problems.

Most system outcomes can be achieved with only some or a few parts. It is useful and normal to start with a set of outcomes and then model the system that does or could produce them. Also, it is useful to define the system then look for or at its outcomes.

A model is developed to help you with something - answer a question to some degree of precision that is useful or let the complexity shine through with a certain degree of insight.

A better solution that crosses all industries is to keep peeling back the layers by applying architecture or other useful tools to discover the real cause and address it.

There are different approaches to patterns that are suited to different people. Learn a growing set of patterns so you can select one when it is useful.

The data is as useful as much relevant information can be derived from it. Reliability, accuracy, integrity -these are attributes/properties of data. And these are the characteristics to shape the quality of data.

Useful decision-making occurs when the decision results are different from the input data, which is why effective information is measured as a divergence.

IT Architecture is also a useful tool to visualize strategic perspectives and focus on building IT enabled business solutions in anticipating complex problem-solving.

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Unbiased

It is a continuously changing world with “VUCA” new normal, problems facing individuals or organizations become more complex than ever. So no one can afford to stick to old ways of problem-solving. It’s important to overcome the variety of bias, deepen the level of understanding. If you only intend to fix symptoms, the real issues become bigger and bigger. 

To make things worse, fixing the wrong cause of a problem is creating more gaps, wasting time and energy, generating “irrational thoughts and illogical solutions.”

Observation bias: Observation should always be the first, and one of the most critical steps in any change, innovation, and problem-solving scenario. To frame the right problem, problem solvers should gain sufficient knowledge and unique insight to observe deeper and see around the corner-observe the situation, observe people, observe how things get done or the conventional way to solve problems-is the process over-complicated, or does bureaucracy block the way, etc. By observation, you recognize the pattern; by observation, you connect the things. The "observation" phase is all about the 'sensors' that you can deploy.

Be careful, our minds usually work this way - bad things are "dangerous" and need to be noticed, but good things are "as they should be." We notice good things only when something bad has happened; we tend to take good things in stride. But often, this is simply observational bias. To observe objectively, staying a novice of some sort, keep fresh eyes, with the beginner's mind. Cognitive science confirms that what you see depends very much on your goals and on what you concentrate on given the limited amount of working memory available. Then try to deal with the very things you've been observing because it will bring much more insights when you try to fiddle with it. By understanding observation bias, you can pay more attention to good things, why they function so well, and prevent rather than fix problems only.

Perception bias: We experience the world based on our perception. No two people's realities will be totally identical at a given time. Our perception is an interpretation based on our conditioning, beliefs, insight, or surroundings, etc, leading us to judge others, all of which may be positive or negative, depending on our perception. Believe it or not, the same problem perhaps means different things to different people because they perceive things differently. Perception is an interpretation based on our own conditioning, cognitions, surroundings, or experiences, leading us to make judgments. Thus, it’s important to overcome bias caused by prepositioned perceptions in order to identify root causes of complex problems or frame the right problem to solve.

People’s perception reflects who they are and which lens they apply to make the judgment of others. Understanding perception bias is important because our perception is always flawed - it is not absolutely true, but it is what we believe to be true. There are all sorts of misperception symptoms such as preconceived ideas about how things should happen, silo mentality, stereotypical thinking, etc. Perception gaps will cause the blind spots when either defining the real problem or solving it smoothly.

Common sense bias: All the implicit knowledge of a particular social and cultural environment belongs to common sense. Common Sense is specific to the knowledge needed and shared with a specific social group. A common sense in a local group is perhaps totally odd in a global environment. Learning common sense requires restructuring brain tissues to first think logically, and with accurate predicting of consequences. Have common sense to make the right decision as there’s collective insight in it, but have the courage to challenge it if it turns out to be out of date conventional wisdom.

To overcome “common sense” bias, on one hand, use common sense to make better and faster decisions; on the other hand, have courage to challenge it if it turns out to be just out of date conventional wisdom. Common sense helps in many situations, but its validity will depend on the degree of familiarity you have with the issue at hand and personal involvement. Critical thinking is important to validate common sense, and keep in mind, common sense is neither absolute truth nor nonsense, make sense of it, but don’t follow it blindly.

Why things are the way they are matters more when you work from the “problem solving” paradigm. To overcome a variety of bias, fixing many of today’s nonlinear complex problems is a collaborative effort. It’s important to get to the heart of the matter by bridging cognitive gaps, enforcing multidimensional thinking, and applying interdisciplinary knowledge to frame the right problems and solve them without causing more problems.

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Interdictive-Intelligence

Risks are simply potential problems. Preventing the problem is more superior to fixing issues.

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


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

      Interdictive-Intelligence

Interdictive With high velocity and frequent disruptions, you may not be able to foresee specific instances of futures, but you can imagine general classes and positions to define the landscape with its risks and opportunities, take a broad range of perspectives, shape or mitigate what could be occurring. The goal of the business foresight and forecast is about predicting what will happen and step further - what shall you do upon it; the interdictive analytics keeps you alert about what you should avoid doing. Prevention is superior to fixing.

Unfold It’s the beginning of the new year, it’s the time to perceive the future -vision is how you see the future unfolding, a foresight with a proactive understanding of cause and effect, a clear choice among future scenarios that advocates future trends. It sparks the imagination and opens the mind to new concepts and ideas. Business leaders today need to envision the future of business and craft a good enough strategy to sustain their vision and reach the destination smoothly.

Interdictive-prevention 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.

Ind-PRA Predictive Risk Analytics (PRA) intends to predict future events and gain foresight upon the potential business risks: What will happen? How to prevent the risks or what can be done to make business more resilient and well prepared for the possible disruptions. Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) involve metrics that move beyond upper- or lower thresholds or boundaries on plausible events within a business's value chain, that delve into deeper analysis of lead indicators of plausible events. More specifically, PRA and KRI have different focus, they are both valuable in managing corporate risk

Intelligence 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.

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #7500 blog postings. 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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Unconsidered

Innovation requires thinking beyond, altering or changing the frame of reference to create previously unconsidered solutions. 

"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 Unconsidered” quotes in “Digital Master.”

Innovation requires thinking beyond, as opposed to outside the box, altering or changing the frame of reference to create previously unconsidered solutions.

Information Management is a threshold competence to enforce the strategic focus of the business, altering or changing the frame of reference to create previously unconsidered business solutions to either existing problems or emerging issues.

Because running digital IT to enforce the strategic focus and harness business competency requires thinking forward and thoughtful planning, being innovative and experimental to create previously unconsidered solutions, handle unproductivity, and fine-tune the underlying business functions and capabilities to achieve high performance.

Creative leaders and professionals not only ask deep “WHY”s to diagnose the root cause of problems but also ask open-ended questions such as “WHY NOT” or “What If” to spur creativity. Innovation requires thinking beyond, altering or changing the frame of reference to create previously unconsidered solutions.

It’s critical to apply EA or other system tools or framework to understand and manage complexity, recognize patterns, perceive invisible success factors, be able to reframe circumstances, alter or change the frame of reference to create previously unconsidered business solutions and measure performance improvement effortlessly.

Problem-solving with intentional novelty is to apply interdisciplinarity such as art, design, science, and humanity, etc, to develop a previously unconsidered solution which can be sustained in the system of people, to put another way, practice people-centric problem-solving.

Running digital IT requires thinking beyond, altering or changing the frame of reference to create previously unconsidered solutions to customers, make a shift from transactional IT to innovative IT, and run IT as the critical link in digital transformation.

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Interconnectivity

The future of organizational design should be fluid enough to streamline information flow and flexible enough to achieve business autonomy.

The digital organization is like a living system that keeps evolving, often flatter structures will help to improve cross-functional communication, speed up organizational response to changes, enforce business flexibility, inspire bold innovation so that they can respond to the challenges of a more complex, interconnected, and interdependent business world. 

Metaphorically, the highly adaptive digital organization with the following characteristics is just like the chameleon which has a laterally flattened body and its skin changes color for constantly adapting itself to its environment. 

Hyperconnected organization has a flatter structure that comes with greater empowerment and decision-making in the hands of managers and employees: The digital organization has a mix of physical and virtual structures, encourages great autonomy, “self-generated” engagement, self-management, and self-renewal. The goal is to create a workplace in the way people can relate to themselves and to their experience of the environment and others around them. A self-organizing team has all the right skills to make the right architectural and design decisions, has full authority on the practices, processes, tools, engineering methods they would like to use to build the products or services with the faster development cycle.

In a dynamic, hyperconnected and hyper-diverse environment, the digital leader’s role is to empower their people, encourage creativity, autonomy, and mastery. They know the team will deliver the best outcome and give them the freedom to do it on their way. At the company scope, organize a self-managed digital organization to define your circles, roles, and authority through the members of your organization, empower people, nurture trust, and harmonize the working environment. The high degree of the organizational self-management capability reflects its maturity to be disciplined to do the work well and accelerate its performance.

The strength of flatter, networked structures, particularly built upon diversity causes ‘energic friction’ and drives creative tension: Many command-control working environments with overly restrictive hierarchy are silo, static and tedious, there is no energy in the room because people are afraid of being themselves and saying anything which might cause conflicts. In an open, hyperconnected and creative work environment, there is energy between people, meaning they are not afraid to say things that will help the business improve and innovate. Diversity and flat, networked structures enable the rapid coalescing of the complementary knowledge, skills, and resources needed to solve the problem or capitalize upon opportunities as they arise.

In these working environments, the diverse viewpoints are welcomed, even if they seem to conflict, but conflicts can be handled wisely. if the working environment with delightful interaction is stimulating and challenging, and then the brain can thrive from new stimuli to generate new ideas. The “energetic friction” caused through the constructive conflict of ideas, values, interests, etc; once resolved leads to co-creating knowledge, of something new leading innovation and growth. This friction provides the organization with positive energy, filter out the negative vibe and maximize the collective human potential.

Flat organizations need horizontal growth to keep employees motivated and encourage cross functional collaboration: Technically, organizational design (structure, policy, etc) must be adaptable, take advantage of the latest digital technology platforms & tools, to break down functional silos, create proper Job rotation, improve people engagement and productivity. Flatter structures help to speed up organizational response to changing markets by breaking down silos and enforcing cross-functional collaboration, driving scalable performance, and enabling potential maximization.

It’s important to develop the process of a corporate pulse that identifies where the pulse/passion/motivation/ commitment of the organization lies, and who embodies it. Let people explore where their energy is and then, align the energy to work at hand, and motivate them to think and do things innovatively, and align their talent and career goal with the strategic goals of the organization. High mature organizations provide the space for people to develop their capabilities, exercise their creativity, and unleash collective potential.

The future of organizational design should be fluid enough to streamline information flow and flexible enough to achieve business autonomy. These organizations can give up command and control to adopt a culture of learning and innovation via flatter structure and removing barriers of communication, providing learning and development opportunities in-house that contributes to high employee engagement. Either individually or collectively, people can gain enriched working experience and build nonlinear professional skills, and ultimately, develop a cohesive capability portfolio, to improve digital proficiency, and orchestrate unique competency of the company.

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Intellectual”fit”

The complementary thoughts can overcome the common challenges facing humankind, but the misunderstanding with each other causes chaos, conflict and even man-made disaster.

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. 

                  

Intellectual Fit

Inspirational It is another new year ahead of us, and it is the time to recharge the energy, open the new chapter of learning, growing and innovating; do the reflection, make the resolution and kick start the New Year with digital fitness.

Innovative People are different, not because we look different, but more crucially, we think differently. The variety of thought makes the world diversified, innovative and sophisticated. The complementary thoughts can overcome the common challenges facing humankind, but the misunderstanding with each other causes chaos, conflict and even man-made disaster. The brain is only an organic computer that creates an energy or operating system called the mind. The mind creates programs called our thoughts. We can change our thoughts just as we can change applications on a computer. Still, what’s the best way to get out-of-date thoughts at industrial age (such as silo, stereotypical, command-control, bias, extreme thinking, etc) out, and equip the brain with the new types of digital thinking (such as holism, balance, creativity, growth, paradox, systems thinking, etc.)

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

Inclusive Tuning the organizational design and structure to achieve a high level of autonomy is the symbol of digital maturity. The majority of organizations are designed to improve functional efficiency in the industrial era. But digital masters move a few steps ahead, focus on shaping changeability, innovation, and people-centricity. However, the digital transformation won’t happen overnight, organizations need to have an in-depth understanding of gains and pains of organizational design and development, follow the digital principles to plan, experiment and scale-up for improving strategic responsiveness and structural flexibility of their business.

Influence Digital transformation is an evolutionary journey which means a renewed understanding of the future of business-what’re the disruptive trends; how your organization catalyzes the progressive changes and how much better you can do to leverage creativity and lead a seamless transformation. Influence competency is based on the leadership substances such as vision and purpose with effective styles such as participation, coaching or delegation. In order to make profound influence, you must demonstrate high levels of cognitive intelligence and various skills (as following), and have strong ethics, responsibility, integrity, and empathy.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #7500+ 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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Unofficial

There are both official structures and unofficial structures in the organization. They can coexist harmoniously. Ideally, the unofficial structure that has emerged over time is the formal structure you should have.

"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 Unofficial” quotes in “Digital Master.”

It is all the unofficial behaviors, language, power networks, communication processes, stories, myths etc. that define “the way we do things around here.” 

Business Architecture as a practical tool helps to frame the organizational structure, establish a formal and enabling organizational structure in line with your desired direction and organizational ambition, also identify the unofficial structures and take them along on the journey of transformative change.

There are both official structures and unofficial structures in the organization. They can coexist harmoniously. Ideally, the unofficial structure that has emerged over time is the formal structure you should have.

The digital balance to human nature will need to have some combinations of structural design and incentives, and going forward, it may well require changing both official and unofficial structures into a hybrid organizational structure that can support an innovation journey in the direction you are heading, rather than where you have been.

The organizational structure carries inherent business capabilities as to what can be achieved within its frame. There are both official structures and unofficial structures in the organization. The question is whether the official structure and the unofficial structure co-exist antagonistically or harmoniously. 

Limited hierarchy with some “unstructured processes” as the digital normality works best to build a creative environment in which idea generation and implementation are the key elements of long term business prosperity.

To catalyze leadership innovation and improve leadership maturity, it is necessary to identify the unofficial structures and take them along on the journey of innovation and change, and manifest connection, caring, trust-building and influence to accomplish strategic business goals.

 Going forward, it perhaps requires changing both official and unofficial structures into a hybrid organizational structure that can improve strategic flexibility.

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Invaluable

The value of contemporary business is multilateral, the value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like multidimensional collaborative value or collective advantage and multi-layer ROIs.

Organizations across industrial sectors face hyper-competition and continuous disruptions. Running a successful business is about creating value to stakeholders. Business value is multi-faceted, not all business value is directly related to ROI. So it’s interesting to see how business value is in the eye of the beholder. 

To avoid fast obsolescence and gain long term advantage, business management needs to explore different paths for designing new business models, understand business value chain/stream, and take the alternative value creation approach to accelerate performance and unleash business potential.

Design a business model and articulate its value proposition: The goal of business model development is to create value. The essence of a business model is some source of value that represents a competitive advantage. The organizational value propositions should be customer focused and define the ideal business model, distribution, products & services, the brand by segments they want to go after. To perceive the value of the business model and make an objective assessment of an investment, you need to have a very clear idea of the new product/service - its life cycle, the overall "value proposition," where it fits into the overall "product portfolio," the wider competitive landscape and your price/business model. Top management needs to clarify: Do we have common values and a dynamic enterprise business model that takes into account initial customer investments, life cycle of our customers, products, services, economical cycles, market shifts to ensure flexibility and positive results throughout? Can we drive the Enterprise and Business Strategy forward smoothly?

Having a clear understanding of how customer value creation enhances the business model and by extension of profitability. In a literal sense "what value does this investment provide the business," and how to improve ROI. Making the effort at the leadership and portfolio level to qualify and quantify value in terms of both strategic value and tactical value; direct revenue and indirect (mission/vision/values) terms is the first step to crafting high-level strategic intents. It’s also important to build a “behavioral value chain” between the inputs - intermediate steps - outcomes. Or unpack the employee inputs - product quality - customer satisfaction chain to determine what constitutes each of the parts and the strength, and direction of the various links in the chain.

Understand value chain: Through the lens of business capability and its ecosystem perspective, it’s important to understand multidimensional organizational value, the value chain of business, and value chain of the business ecosystem where it competes deeply. The value of the firm goes beyond economic value or shareholder value, to include other forms of value such as employee value, customer value, supplier value, channel partner value, alliance partner value, managerial value, brand value, and societal value, etc. Business managers need to check how balanced and effective the value chain is, and gain customer insight via an in-depth understanding of the business value chain and oversight of key business processes.

The value chain processes produce goods and services and deliver them to the customers. Therefore the value chain process is the flow of activities, which include what managers, employees and applications do. To preserve "business value," you need to have a very clear idea of the life cycle of "product/service" and the overall "value proposition," in which it fits into the overall "product portfolio," the wider competitive landscape and your price/business model. The whole value chain needs to be aligned, engaged, contributing by sharing the value so customers and stakeholders - from suppliers, to factories, employees, shareholders, get their fair share.

Clarify value stream view: With a clear business value stream view, all parties can agree on the common value proposition. Stakeholder maps to Value Stream, triggering stakeholder to stream and participating stakeholders to stages and Process maps to Value Stream Stage. Value streams break into stages. Each stage decomposes into routing maps or can map to a process, process underpins capabilities to deliver products/services and enable value stream stages.

A given capability can enable 0-to-many value stream stage. The value stream to capability mapping identifies the capabilities to be considered as you design your processes and stakeholder mapping identifies the roles required within that stage as input to process role definition. Finally, capability to information mapping provides input to information required by a given set of processes for achieving strategic goals of the business.

Creating new revenue streams and generating business value is a strategic aspect of business’s survival and thriving. Value is tricky though because it's subjective in the eye of the beholder. The value of contemporary business is multilateral, the value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like multidimensional collaborative value or collective advantage and multi-layer ROIs. Business management needs to properly understand all elements or forms of value that are translated to the organization, and how all the pieces and parts of the organization are ultimately impacted, for good or bad, by each new business initiative, in order to run a value added business with high level of maturity.

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