Transformation with Purpose

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence it is to act with yesterday’s logic”      Peter Drucker

 “Change is the only constant”, in today’s dynamic economy, the biggest challenge facing the organization is changing, from incremental change to radical transformation,  the most thriving organizations are those most adapt to changes.  However, it’s rocky road to change,  according to statistics from many reputable consulting companies, about 70% of change management effort failed, the root cause may vary, we would like to brainstorm the systematic approach and well-planned scenario to manage the change scientifically (though change may be more art than science), intent to framework the change-capable organization.

1. Change Purpose:  To explore the purpose for change could help establish a sense of urgency to gain the advocate support. Here are some main drivers to organizational transformation in 21st century:

Overcome Complexity –Complexity may come from M&A, decades of business process redundancy or legacy technology, complexity brings up hidden cost and inefficiency,  it may be the crucial reason to kill operational effectiveness and competency for a long run,  such as legacy airlines, just experienced the “Lost Decade” due to the complexity of business, beyond other factors such as high fuel or climate changes., etc.

Digitization –  Digitalization is the emerging technology trend every organization has to catch the wave on, it’s the disruptive innovation which decides your survival at the digital era, how to enhance your organization's digital footprint, it's a strategic imperative to take the digital transformation 

Globalization – The world has been interconnected, interdependent than ever, developed world and emerging economy have to interactive with each other more closely, globalization 2.0 does not just mean the Western organizations offshore the jobs to the Eastern, it’s more about collaborating with the responsibility, brainstorming the creative idea together, to build up the open, decentralized organization with purpose on innovation & sustainability across the globe.

Customer-Centricity – of creating customer is the organization’s main purpose to exist, then to build up the customer-centric culture will make the organization stronger, cohesive and engaged, instead of evaluating operation via inside-out standpoint, the customer-centric manifest may help boost business intelligence via outside-in perspective.

Cloud Computing -Cloud transformation can not be treated as IT transformation only, well, there's no IT transformation, only business transformation (another good CIO debate), by embracing Cloud culture and solutions, the organization could expedite the innovation process, to build up the agile,  instant-on cloud enterprise.   

2. Change Strategy:

Change strategy is an emergent strategy via continuous learning.  One size doesn’t fit it all. Though we could try to standardize the changing scenario,  every organization has its own operational uniqueness and process characteristic, change strategy including such as setting strategic goals (short term win & long term objectives) via situational analysis, scenario analysis, and impact assessment need be communicated and orchestrated clearly.

3. Change Culture:

Culture is what has been said, or the thought of the world, if we could really change the culture, we could change the world. Don’t let culture eat strategy for breakfast. Change culture is the attitude, encourage the risk-taking, do not punish the failure, to inspire the team collegiality and support.

4. Change Network:

Change communication should be two-way trust: both from top-down such as executive’s elevator change pitch, more importantly through front-line employee’s commitment. Empower change agents, evangelists via the right change incentives, but also need to build the organization-wide change network to seek constructive opinion, consistent engagement, and continuous improvement.

5. Change Technology

The latest technology such as enterprise 2.0 collaboration/communication tools  provide the powerful change platform, would make the change more streamlined and seamless, better engaged with all necessary parties via extended organizational boundary such as employees, partners, customers.,etc.

Plus, BI, BPM, and EA, these modern enterprise technologies are also the valuable tools to manage the invisible change via the scientific process and KPI & metrics.

6. Change Roadmap

Every transformation needs a roadmap or a change management agenda to build up the competency center, sharpen the strategy,  communicate the buy-in, empower the team, and manage the quick win, to realize the long-term result through the iterative approach.

7. Change Metrics

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, change is no exception, the balanced change scoreboard helps keep track of process and capture the insight via top defined KPIs, measure the quality over quantity to state-of-the-art models, design the change process to execute via metrics and standards, to manage the transformation with tangible discipline.

Read More

Unite the BI to Perceive the Future

When it Comes to Important Business Decisions, Should You Trust Your Gut or Follow the Numbers?

Deloitte Debates

Many leadership teams rely mainly on their collective wisdom to drive smart business decisions. Others claim they can achieve more reliable outcomes by primarily using data-driven, science-based predictive analytics. Who’s on the right path?

Here are some thoughts about the future of BI and DSS :

“Only Paranoid Survive”, today’s hyper competitive, globalized economic environment push  forward-thinking organization to framework the BI infrastructure, embedded analytics into corporation culture, streamline the decision management scenario, reinvent the capability enabled, decision driven enterprise.

There are many BI and analytics applications with all flavors in the market: from descriptive analytics, diagnostic analytics, predictive analytics, to prescriptive analytics, from operational BI , Artificial BI to Social BI, today’s BI solution helps organization overview what happened via historic operational data, quite often a bit outdated , or use customer survey data to predict and optimize the marketing campaign result, though,sometimes those sample data may not completely reflect customer’s point of view.

Today’s BI solution make some milestones, but not perfect yet: many BI projects didn’t bring up the expected result or failed to deliver the ROI due to variety of limitation: poor data management, overly complicated interface, silo divisional solution, BI is just at the turning point: should BI keep as the different breed of animal, or it could be unified into more integrated solution with better customer satisfaction, if so, what should it look like:

·         Outside-in Point of View: today’s BI KPI scoreboard  deliver the inside-out perspective,  the next generation of BI will directly catch customer and partner’s data via multiple channels, to build up the customer-centric organization,  the EDW (enterprise data warehouse) should have the capability to process the full-set of customer data (Big Data), with more advanced information management system such as MDM, data quality and data integration.

·         Self-Service User Interface: many of today’s BI users are data analysts, BI technician, the future of BI should have broader base of self-service users, from executive to front-line employees, the feasible BI tools could become one of the hottest enterprise soft gadgets, search-based, self-service, with persona oriented KPI scoreboard or dashboard, help make the real-time decision from each level.

·         Deliver the Foresight view: Today’s BI intent to catch some insight, the next generation of BI focus on percepting the future, what will be happening, so the organization could well prepare their next step regarding the product or solution development, customer service optimization, new business model creation., etc.

·         Optimize Decision Making Process: the organization with higher level of BI maturity have the advanced analytics embedded into corporation’s DNA, centralized BI infrastructures, it has better integrated decision making process framework and scenario planning.

The next generation of BI may not only have the full-fledged BI capabilities (BI+PA+SI+AI.,etc), it could be more agile, cost-effective, and easy to use, with the right scale and scope, help make the right decision at the right time at every level, to reinvent the instant-on,  intelligent organization

Read More

CIO as Chief Intelligence Officer: Ten CIO Wisdoms

CIOs need to have the quantity of metrics to make the fair judgment, and quality to gain the right vision and insight.

In today’s digitized, interconnected global economy, what kind of wisdoms the modern CIO need cultivate to help their organization thrive in this hyper competitive marketing environment. 

Here is an abstract based on the book "CIO Wisdom."

1. Business Wisdom  

Economic tsunami has created a crisis for IT as the business leader start to question the value of IT investment, so the IT leader may need go back to business basic, communicate via business language, to deliver the business first service and process. Business visionary, change agent, entrepreneur, and value driven leader, those are portrait of new CIO.

2. The Tao Wisdom

The Tao conveys a sense of harmony and the natural order of the world, the Tao of IT leaders focus on business and human nature in relation to IT, use wisdom instead of brute force, create insightful business value via success of IT strategy and implementation.

 3. Talent Wisdom

 Today’s IT leader is also the talent master (actually talent management is top priority at the most effective CIO’s agenda this year), in this regard, IT leadership means “guiding or conducting” via two-way communication, both as coach and listener, the better the team, the more will be accomplished.

Diversity not only adds to the overall health of profession, actually it is sparkling modern IT leadership, collective wisdom via the expanded lenses of diversity are the beauty of humanity.

4.Strategy Wisdom

By nature of job duty, CIO should be the strategic roles with practical approach and technical advances. The most critical factor of strategic planning is creating a common framework of IT fabric and building the capability muscle to enable business integration and innovation, scientific planning scenario such as situational analysis, value chain analysis and assessment are the key success factors to the best IT planning & execution. 

 5. Diplomatic Wisdom

CIO role is also inherently a cross-functional role, if you happen to be cross-industrial or even cross-cultural, it surely be even more value-added with bigger influence, the authentic IT leadership magic ingredients include such as passion, openness, clarity, agility and humility. , etc. IT leader as diplomat need communicate via business terms, simplistic fashion, essential insight, and spark the win-win situation.

The inspiring IT leader should also provide the thought leadership, foster business value, and serve customer in the enlightened way.

6. Governance Wisdom

Governance is to strongly influence, direct, regulate or control the IT practices, the new breed of CIO will have to wear the 3D glasses, to peer through the technology, the business, and the future trends, the best practice of IT governance are walking the talk through vision, best communication, listening, education, well-planned scenario, framework and governance model.

7. Finance Wisdom

It is critical to know the rational behind the finance and budget, since it’s the foundation of project control, change management, and conversation (say CIO vs. CFO’s love & hate relationship).

The forward looking CIO will manage the budget to leverage the short-term fix with long-term strategy, balance the capital expenditures and operational expenditures, prioritize and reinvent the new chapter of 70/30 budget Ratio (70% of budge going to innovation, 30% to maintenance)

8. Marketing Wisdom

With the era of digitization, sales & marketing savvy CIO will articulate the IT vision and service value, identify the key business differentiator, cost cutting opportunities, optimize the supply chain, and improve the business process and customer services.

The marketing wisdom of IT leadership will lead the success stories in effective communication, customer centricity, governance enhancement and deliver the service excellence.

9. Metric Wisdom

The common adage “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”, analytics and measurement should become the DNA of CIO leadership, CIOs need to have the quantity of metrics to make the fair judgment, and quality to gain the right vision and insight, modern BI solutions may help IT leaders to catch some hinder sight and insight from historical operational data,  the next generation of BI may help see through what will be happening in the future, which is the essential to today’s dynamic.

10. Collective Wisdom

In this “only change itself not change” world, continuous improvement is the supplement vitamin taken at daily bases for both IT leaders and their organization, senior leader could no longer work alone, the social collaboration platform provide the significant opportunities for leaders to take advantage of collective wisdom cross the globe, recruit the best talent without boarder, get opinion cross the angles, and recognize like-minded professionals all over the world.

    

Read More

The Future of IT

The future of IT is more about the intangible information fabric (Cloud, Social, Mobil Computing, analytics) interwoven into your organization.

IT organization is transforming from the infrastructure warehouse into the IT innovation powerhouse, from an application factory into the IT supply chain central hub, from an internal customer’s help desk into business customers (both internal & external) enabled strategic partner, from a back-office cost center to the empowered rainmaker upon the Cloud. What are the trends of the future of IT and how to improve IT effectiveness, agility, and maturity?

Future of IT – Highly innovative and capable: IT is no longer just the tangible hardware boxes (those are heading into the commodity), the future of IT is more about the intangible information fabric (Cloud, Social, Mobil Computing, analytics) interwoven into your organization, IT needs to be transformed from an infrastructure to integration, and then to innovation services, Cloud just creates the right wind to converge the business and technology, though it may take time to mature, the future of IT is an innovation solution provider to help organizations deliver the best-tailored products or solutions to its end customers.

Future of IT -Business value added: The true IT value is hard to derive from support services since measuring productivity can be elusive and difficult to quantify. CIOs should understand the business first, otherwise, it is challenging to link the dot between business and IT. Once you show and demonstrate to the other CxOs that you understand the business, they will respect you and give you authority, power, and influence in executive decision-making. To become value-added CIOs, Cloudification should become a strategic priority since it provides the unprecedented opportunity for IT to become the agile business partner, not only blueprint but also architect the true agile enterprise & networked (extended) organization as well.

Future of IT - Customer -centric: The CIO is not only just the relentless cost cutter, but also the delighted customer evangelist, not only the dedicated IT manager but also the visionary business leader, she or he is the skillful diplomat with an entrepreneurial mindset, to execute the best IT practice both at the tactical level and strategic level.

The next level of IT leader is leading by example and influence, understand nature and use it to her own advantage, lead the organization and the world effortless –to practice the Tao of IT leadership.

Read More

Business First –21st Century’s IT Philosophy

The cloud revolution is spawning a new generation of productivity, collaboration, and mobile/social connectivity applications that some managers see as quick-and-easy solutions to some of their biggest problems. But many CIOs recognize that these types of applications may solve a short-term business problem only to create a long-term IT a headache. Should CIOs clamp down before it’s too late? Or should they welcome these almost-enterprise apps into the fold? Do we still develop the in-house multi-year projects or focus on continuous deliveries?

1. Streamline the process for strategic agility: 

For the large-scale, multi-year planning project, we may not only ask whether any alternatives (such as cloud, partner., etc) solutions available rather than completely in-house building, even if we have to, the best practice is to break it down into a few smaller projects with interim destination and shorter life cycle, it could be tactical in today's dynamic environment.

2. Application Modernization

How to manage the application portfolio wisely via leveraging the value, life cycle, culture and the latest technology. Application Modernization can’t be successful unless when the short-term objectives and quick win nature of AR were transformed into the long term strategic decision for the IT organization, supported with activities to increase the maturity of the IT governance process and skills of the organization as a whole.

3. Cloud Solution

When you talk about business first, the CIO may also concern about the "Shadow IT" or "overly-spoiled internal customers" with overwhelming latest technologies, or the business may purchase their own Cloud base solution without notifying IT, so, how to leverage the budget with customer' requirement or how to embed the radical transparency into the radical transformation could be the other challenge for today's organization.

Read More