Which Factors should a Strategy for Change Contain?

A strategy for "change" should focus on betterment.

The speed of change is accelerated, Either individuals or organizations spend significant time and resource to deal with the big changes such as radical digital transformation or small changes such as daily betterment. What’s the strategy behind the change, and which qualities or factors should such a strategy for change contain?

Vision: A strategy for change calls for a clear vision of the future and a roadmap for how we can get there. Change is not for its own sake, focus on the business purpose behind it. The change platform approach should focus more on establishing the right enduring organizational values and capabilities to enable continuous improvement. A change in the fundamental way you look at what you are doing is needed. Why are you trying to make changes? What are you going to do with it? Who are you going to help with it?

Planning: A strategy for "change" should focus on betterment. Change for the sake of change doesn't help anyone. The most  important factor for positive change is flexibility in planning. Theoretical solutions will encounter problems in the real world. Those who plan the solutions need to also be capable of implementing them. Only this coordination between the plan and implementation can succeed. It needs to be done in real-time. And the problem solving / crisis resolution must be handled in real time by as many involved parties as possible.

Emotional charge: World-changing-acts need to be delivered together with a positive emotional charge. The emotional charge keeps the memory of the act alive for a longer period. The receivers of the act that please them, respond intuitively in a similar fashion. The pleasing act also slightly changes the receivers’ perception of others in a positive light...Change is the one constant in life. Some changes should be resisted, and some should be embraced. The purpose of all changes is to make the improvement. At the individual level, we must bring in a transformation in our personality to fix higher or noble ideal like self- realization and pursue it with determination, perseverance, and steadfastness until that idea is achieved. At organizational or societal level, change means to make collective human progress with the focus on social and community responsibility with an emphasis on advancement, innovation, and sustainability.

Process: Processes underpin organization’s change capability. Hence, pay attention to the processes under the surface, in order to be aware of them, as an organization. Change is a constant. Platforms support constants. Change is not an event. Events can be managed top down. Change can be supported top down, but change cannot be fully managed or controlled top down, it has to be proactively made bottom up. including planners in the implementation phase is a valid process improvement. It can make them aware of potential crossroads they previously hadn't foreseen, and it can involve them in crafting a solution to the new problem. This way, the plan can be altered on a daily basis, according to individual problems in each community. Most large-scale plans fail because the planners do not envision the problems. Change is happening all the time, the management just has to acknowledge and appreciate that.

Creativity: Creativity today asks for a new mindset. Real change and creativity are deprogramming old mindsets, letting go of "the voices from the past," reprogramming our minds with new values, norms, and attitudes; establishing a new blueprint for how we want to create our future reality. This is a task for visionary or entrepreneur-minded leaders to convey and make an impact. Finding ways to satisfy key players also takes a lot of creativity, each one has a different agenda and rarely is it centered on what's best for the organization. Creativity is a key to satisfying these agendas and achieving the benefits of the change.

Change is inevitable, and change is a strategic imperative. Taking the time to know who you are and what you like and the big WHY about the changes. Collectively, if we are to become a healthier race of humans we have to deal with change in every area of our life and each of us is the only one that can say what it is right for us. Reformation, refinement or evolution of the individual through self-realization is the most ideal aim for the betterment of Humanity.

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CIO's Digital Agenda I

Digital is all about flow - Data flow, information flow, and mind flow.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1+ million page views with about 2300+ 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. Here is the CIO’s Digital Agenda I with  a set of featured “Future of CIO” Blogs.

CIO’s Digital Agenda I

1.  Do you have Enterprise-Wide Data/Information Strategy? Data is lifeblood in modern businesses today, however, from industry survey; a very real gap exists with just over one-third of respondents having an enterprise-wide information management strategy in place currently. What’s holding these organizations back from building out an enterprise-wide information management strategy? What’s needed to close the gap? Also keep in mind, data/information strategy needs to be the key element of the IT strategy, which is also an integral component of the overall corporate strategy.

2. What are the Strategic Conversation between CIO and Other CXOs all About? IT is no longer running as an isolated function or back office utility, nowadays, IT has to add more business value and delight both internal and end customers. Hence, CIO needs to talk about business with other C-Level more often, but not about IT. This is the major issue in companies. IT is a way to innovate business and improve processes, but it's not a solution if CIO doesn't understand business areas. CIOs must be adding value to the business and it is essential in decisions businesses ever make. However, as CIOs, how should you interpret IT aspects as a business issues to the CXOs? How do you avoid the details of any IT decision and still convince the CXO it is the good strategy to make or best action to take?

3. What are CIOs’ Top Challenges: Due to the changing nature of technologies, CIOs seem to be always at the “hot seat” in the face of increasing business demand, talent shortage, budget limitation or numerous critics from businesses. Now, information is permeating into every corner of business, what technology is expected to do has changed significantly over recent years, although every company has its own circumstances, overall speaking, what are the common challenges facing today’s IT organizations, how can CIOs leverage resources to stay focus, and continually improve IT agility and maturity, to become an integral part of business?

4.  How to Manage Business Requirements for IT Initiatives? IT is business, every IT initiative needs to have a well-defined business requirement and well-supported business sponsors. What are the most effective vehicles for understanding business requirements? What are the effective ways to ensure that non-IT stakeholders are engaged and performing their appropriate roles? Talking to business partners is clearly essential, but are informal discussions sufficient? How does IT get the right executive sponsorship and commitment, who should they be, and perhaps more importantly, what are the roles that they must play?

5.How to Set Guiding Principles for an IT Organization? Principles are statements of values. Things that define why one make a decision one way or another. These core decision values guide the behavior of individuals within an organization. Thus, guiding principles need to be defined as core decision values, "why we make decisions the way we do."

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 the 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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Dynamic Capability as Resource

Dynamic Capability is the ability to reconfigure your organization in the way that has the effect of increasing its "variety."

The dynamic capabilities' are defined as: "the firm's ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments." With the increasing speed of changes and unprecedented uncertainty, dynamic capabilities thus reflect an organization's ability to adapt to changes, build new capability, and achieve innovative forms of competitive advantage given path dependencies and market positions. Do 'Dynamic Capabilities' (DCs) qualify as a business resource? Is DC a firm-specific asset that is difficult if not impossible to imitate?

Organizational Capabilities have outcomes; they collaborate with each other and are enabled by processes: They include resources (manpower and maybe raw materials), processes, technology (systems) required and human capital (talent potential as asset and capital, not just as resources), identify those companies that consistently deliver best shareholder returns do so by focusing hard on the customer and re-designing their operations from the customer back into the operation. The maturity of a business capability would be based on the ability for the capability to deliver on customer needs or to achieve the desired capability outcome, as the digital era is the age of customers.

It's worth noting that being able to delineate between what is a 'resource' and what is a 'capability' is essential to be able to think about strategy in a nuanced and precise way. Without such nuance and precision, the strategy concept is a muddle, one that we see most of the time in organizations and hear about in conversations with the officers and employees who staff them. The psychological and organizational factors get in the way of understanding the critical dimension of true 'digital strategy' that is about disrupting the conventional ways of creating value within established markets. The other building blocks are processes for coordination and integration, guided learning and reconfiguration, and paths (strategy) to vision. Business resources include technological, financial, reputational, market structure and institutional capitals and assets.

#1. Financial capital: Funds from investors and lenders. Examples: borrowing capacity, liquidity, ability to raise equity capital, and sustainable growth rate.

#2. Physical capital: The physical endowments a firm requires. Examples: productive capacity, investment service, dedication to maintenance, the flexibility of fixed assets, technological commitment, access to suppliers.

#3. Human capital: Resources of the individuals who comprise the firm (knowledge, education, training, insights, etc.). Examples: education, training, knowledge, employee commitment, leadership ability, trust, experience.

#4. Organizational capital: Aggregate attributes of those who comprise the company. Examples: loyalty, teamwork, reputation, product innovation, process innovation, speed.

Dynamic Capability is the ability to reconfigure your organization in the way that has the effect of increasing its "variety" - its ability to match variety in the environment where variety is a measure of complexity. Looking at it from a quite different and systemic perspective, Anything that increases the reach, scope, and capability of a resource set is in effect increasing the value of that resource. If you can do twice as much with a given resource, then effectively you have doubled resource, not in its substance, but in its effect. A poor strategy may compromise the effectiveness of dynamic capabilities. A DC might be a resource, but not necessarily so. A DC that is a resource might be a source of competitive advantage, but not necessarily the argument about whether "doing more with less" should be counted as an increase in resource. This blurs the boundary between capability and resource and where you stand on that rather depends on whether you choose to regard resource as "something that is" or as "something that does."

Dynamic business capabilities are more complex in design, with synthetic nature requiring cross-functional collaboration, embedding agility into processes for adapting to the changes. Whether it is a resource or not, DC is not just about “doing more with less,” but more about “doing more with innovation,” with continuous renewal for transformation, and the right set of unique Dynamic Capabilities directly decide the overall organization’s competency, and how well they can make digital transformation, deliver the value to the customers and build long term winning position.

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How to Cultivate a Positive Culture

Strategy guides change and culture is the pathways for the change.

Culture is "the pattern of values and behaviors prevailing in the organization or society." It’s invisible and untouchable. A company's culture helps define what a company is like. What it means to be part of the company, how to act in the company, what others in the company believe and strive for even how others see the company. So what’s your culture “expression”? Overall, do you have a positive or negative culture?

To maintain a healthy culture in corporate environments requires attention to corporate health. Nature and culture are classical opposites or complements. By nature we are "born that way"; by nurture, we learn to become civilized. In one sense, "nature" refers to everything generated or produced. Etymologically, the Latin natura is the source from which all springs forth. For metaphysical naturalists, perhaps also for methodological scientists, nature is all that there is, without contrast class. Humans evolved within nature. To maintain a healthy culture in corporate environments requires attention to corporate health, which includes deep democratizing and inclusivity. Otherwise, there are in-coherent conflicts and dissonance and downfalls. There is an unhealthy organization, striven and driven, by in-fights and conflicts, to create life-sustaining permacultures, which nurture our human nature and fulfill the needs of those within the productive culture and those beyond. so that production and supply harmonize, to develop as integral behaviors.

Culture is a collective mindset and attitude, staying positive is certainly critical as you move through change. There is no growth without change. Change is a part of our daily life yet how we approach it is quite complicated sometimes. After all, we know the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It seems that many humans have an autonomic reaction to environmental change that can range from skepticism to much worse. Is this part of human DNA? As for culture change, the most difficult part is the first step of getting others in the group/team to acknowledge there's a problem - that behaviors and attitudes are negatively affecting business objectives and growth. That involves people being open and honest about ignoring the problem and/or how they are reacting to those unhelpful behaviors and attitudes. A positive culture encourages people to be accountable for not only what they DO, but also what they SAY. Creating accountability in the ever-expanding workplace is a multi-layered and multi-dimensional issue in today’s environment. Accountability is about ownership of an area of responsibility. Ownership creates pride in one’s work and goes a long way towards delivering excellence.

A culture is created and recreated each and every day by all the actions individuals within that culture take. Cultivating a positive culture is easier at the earlier stage of business. So shaping a mission and values at the earliest stages, if you have that ability during the founding phase, is the ideal scenario. Because building an environment from scratch is likely easier to do than changing one that has already been established and values present are accepted as status quo. Changing behaviors that are negatively affecting the company's ability to make a profit is clearly critical, A positive culture can lift a so-so strategy, but a negative culture can sink a good strategy which is indeed linked to Vision and Purpose - and only if one is positive, so is the other. Does that make change impossible - no. It just means you need to keep that in mind as you navigate and strategize any changes you want to make in organizations. To change a culture you need to change those actions, and change enough of them to cause a shift in the culture. Organizationally that is why culture change is so hard. And often when people talk about the need for culture change they are really talking about the need for climate change (not the weather but the atmosphere in a company). Strategy guides change and culture is the pathways for the change.

The core of culture has to do with the way people are treated. For example, a positive culture requires respect, responsibility, self-discipline, autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Contrast that with a typical corporate culture, which is bureaucracy, silo, centered around control, distrust, external discipline, dependence, and hierarchy. Changing culture is just like to change personality, it is hard, but it’s changeable.

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 10/29/2015

Leadership without influence, is just like the air without oxygen!

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1 million page views with about #2300+ 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. Here is the weekly insight of the “Future of CIO” blog.

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” Blog 10/29/2015

• Employee Engagement Strategy: Does it Work: Statistically, less than one-third of employees feel engaged in the work, what’re the root causes to the low employee engagement, and what’s your strategy (that actually works) to do something about it? At the age of digital, businesses today need nothing less than a paradigm shift in their thinking about the fundamentals of how organizations work to build an engaging workforce.

• Three “V”s in Running Digital IT: IT provides competitive leverage to business’ long-term growth: Because more often, technology is the cause to innovation disruption and information is the lifeblood of business; How to run a digital IT which understands stakeholders’ expectations and propose a service/solution portfolio that correspond to both demand and cost drivers with a focus on business priority, and develops the professional competencies needed for successful business solution delivery? There is an “alphabetic soup” in running a digital IT which must lead in reaching high-level performance and maturity; besides triple “I”s - Information, Innovation, and Integration, triple “A”s - Automation, Analysis, and Agility, triple “C”s - Change, Collaboration, and Cloudification, triple “P”s - Principle, Process, and Performance, triple “E”s Enablement, Exploration, and Effectiveness & Efficiency. Here we introduce triple “V”s in running a high-performing and high mature digital IT.

• How to Shape a Strategist’s Mindset: A common definition of strategy is the choices made by a firm on where and how it chooses to compete and cooperate in order to achieve its goals and objectives and strive to fulfill its mission. "Strategy" should be in the DNA of anyone who is a member of the leadership team of an organization, but, as we know, that doesn't make it so, unfortunately. What’s the effective way to study and craft strategy, and how to shape a strategic mindset?

• Three Missing Elements to Fail Talent Analytics  People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses, but most of HR organizations only play the supporting role as an administrative function; talent analytics becomes the very tool to help HR in their digital transformation journey. However, some pivotal organizations who adopt talent analytics earlier than others do not achieve the expected result, what’re the missing elements, or the pitfalls in doing talent analytics, and how to learn from others’ failures?

• What do Positive Policies Look Like: Generally speaking, the policy is a set of principles for decision making or guidelines to drive behaviors. A policy is implemented via a protocol, process or practice, etc. When having positive policies, what do they look like, and how do they affect organizational performance and maturity? What do positive policies look like in action- they look like making the right things easy to do by everyone and the wrong things hard to do by everyone.

• Can you Move Out of your "Comfort Zone"? Change is the new normal. Change is situational. It happens when something starts or stops, or when something that used to happen in one way starts happening in another. But acceptance of change is transitional, and “moving out of your comfort zone" can be used in all levels and as a starting point for change. It might sound like a cliche, the trick is understanding that moving out of a comfort zone leads to the creation of a new comfort zone which in turn will require you to move out "of" it again. This continuous moving "out" of your comfort zone is complemented by the cycle of self-development. There is a classic fable about a lion and a gazelle to analogize such a "surviving and thriving cycles": The lion wakes up and starts running otherwise it will not catch lunch. The gazelle does the same but, in this case, to avoid becoming lunch. Either way, you have to move to survive. This principle can be applied in a physical sense as well. The human body is designed for motion and physical effort.

• Are You Actively Participated in your Vision: Vision is to zoom in the future as if it were closer. We always measure ourselves in terms of our vision - what we intend to be or to accomplish, and what we leave behind is our action upon those intentions. We contemplate, we reflect, we learn, we act, we perceive, and our vision evolves and leads us - the reason we usually see that what we have accomplished is always less than our potential. The future is based on your visions. Either as an individual or an organization, do you allow them to evolve, and actively participate in it?

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 the 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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Three Aspects to Manage an Emergent Strategy

Strategy Management is about putting a good team together to give you a multifaceted picture. It is for evaluating the long-term, not just the immediate, and building about agility and flexibility.

In today's digital dynamic and unstable business circumstances, the evidence points to strategy emerging rather than being prescribed. The strategy should be formed on the basis of some logical intent - after all, if you have no plan, and success happens, it was an accident! With the increasing speed of changes, you need to be in tune with customer value, and particularly how that value changes or migrates over time, and you need to manage the emergent strategy with agility and flexibility.

The strategy cannot be something that the CXO thinks and develops in isolation. It has to be thought through, shared, and designed by the management team. And then, the strategy needs to be made tangible by defining strategic objectives, which in turn need to be translated into concrete targets. Finally, and this is the hardest but the most important part, you need to have the plan to implement it. You need to come up with concrete actions and initiatives through which the targets will be achieved. Discipline and determination make the rest. Successful strategy implementation requires management support and commitment of every staff member. It must be simply drafted and understood by all. If your front line workers cannot explain your strategy, then there is a problem. Senior leadership must be intimately involved or associated with strategy development and execution. Communication is key.

Successful strategy management is a function of effective and efficient "Strategy Champions" and a "Strong and Reliable Strategy Sponsor."If you are a strategy manager or officer, you are a strategy champion, seek the support of senior executives - Strategy Sponsors to make the impact. The best-laid plans often fall short for one reason or another. Falling short is clearly not an indication of failure nor is it an outright failure. Given that so many factors may appear to throw a plan off track, having the smarts to acknowledge these factors, and then to respond in a decisive manner that still leads to the achievement of the stated objectives or plan is what being flexible is all about. For well-established companies, the specific function is responsible not only for coordination and monitoring but also for designing the strategy and keeping an eye on market dynamics. It definitely has to be a senior leader with authority and influence in the organization. However, most managements/leaders have a definite mindset that blinds their minds from strategies, thus, irrespective of the quality of the strategy, they intend to ignore it and carry out their personal thoughts.

Another major issue with strategy formulation and implementation is the availability of information. The strategy is not created in isolation, valuable and reliable information about the organization must be available for the design of effective strategy. Unfortunately, such valuable information is hidden away from strategy departments which eventually make strategy formulation ineffective. Business leaders today must leverage information in decision making and strategy crafting. It is also crucial to make a risk assessment and constant evaluation of the business environment, otherwise, you may end up having a strategic plan which is oceans apart from reality. The strategy isn't just about making decisions. It is about getting the best information you can, continuously update. It is about uncovering all the options, even the unpalatable ones.

The strategy has to suit your organization, if it is too rigid or prescriptive, it becomes a waste of time. The strategy is also about analyzing the customer's needs from the customer's viewpoint and then creating a deliverable plan to meet and exceed the customer's expectations based on the customer's viewpoint. It is about putting a good team together to give you a multifaceted picture. It is for evaluating the long-term, not just the immediate, and building about agility and flexibility.

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How should GRC Programs be Approached?

 The effective GRC should sustain the transformative change in business with the right order: People, Process, and Technology.

The purpose of the GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) is to improve business performance through the creation of value to shareholders and other stakeholders. Nowadays, businesses have to deal with the unprecedented level of uncertainty and change, hence, GRC becomes more critical than ever. Here's the context; how should GRC programs be approached? Should technology be a driver? What’re the most important GRC strategies?

Continual GRC Improvement Program - The body who, in theory, should govern measurable processes and control activities based on established tolerance levels - they rely on process and control operator's input. There should never be a compliance failure that is a surprise of different methods to GRC tools, from true GRC intended solutions, customized homegrown issues management solutions that morphed into GRC like platforms, basic Excel-based work, and custom risk assessment solutions that too fulfill many of the needs of a GRC. If your organizations are highly regulated, then your GRC would focus on compliance and audit foremost. If you are less regulated, you can use the GRC to facilitate discussion of common risks and issues across the enterprise and avoid duplicating effort for risk remediation. The latter is where GRC can be used to drive business change and business value the most, as there's less of a requirement to focus exclusively on regulatory and audit findings.

People; processes; technology. A GRC application is just a tool to complement what people already do. Expecting a tool to drive processes that do not exist is a difficult way to approach things. Focus on core competencies of the technology before diving down into detail for individual departments. GRC can be used to raise visibility and awareness for many things that are captured at the working group levels of the organization, and bring them in front of leadership without the audit or regulatory compliance stamp on them. Things can be a business improvement and business drivers including improvements to areas of the business have a direct customer impact. Every business is different with its own set of issues, problems, and concerns regarding its strategic and inherent risks; reliance on platforms or technology only can lead management to a false sense of security and potentially a failure to rely on human intelligence simply because a computer system said something was so.

'Acquisition, development, and management of human talent in the organization' is one of the most important GRC strategies. There is an ongoing problem with highly structured GRC approaches that seem to overlook the very human and social-behavioral factors that underpin real GRC success. It's partly the 'what gets measured gets managed' conundrum and the social/behavioral side is harder to measure. Risk management is an activity we are ALL involved with every day, whether we call it that or not, and the discussions above often touch on issues of engagement, shared commitment, alignment between executive and workforce, etc. Put emphasis on a solution that 'all employees can leverage.' Any solution with that kind of 'reach' is on the right track. Management needs to continue to check: what about the supervision of the staff engaged in processes critical to the strategic risks being audited? Is this adequate or are there issues going unnoticed or glossed-over due to workplace politics, cronyism, or other forms of staff disengagement from what should be hyper-awareness of risk and its impact and consequences on the company they work for?

GRC is and remains the purview of top organization management. While the critical objectives of compliance with policies, and adherence to risk management mandates can and should be tied in with staff performance and development, there is no substitute for human critical thinking when it comes to utilization of tools in organizations’ toolbox developed over time that enhances what we as humans observe, analyze, discuss and resolve on using our own native intelligence. The effective GRC should sustain the transformative change in business with the right order: People, Process, and Technology.

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How to Overcome Data Cleansing Challenge

Good governance is essential to overall Data Management.

Data is the lifeblood of digital organizations. Data Cleansing has always been a challenge. The best data-driven organizations focus relentlessly on keeping their data clean. Cleaning the data is often the most difficult and time-consuming part of data science. So what are the best principles and practices to overcome Data Quality challenge?



Data left unmanaged is a HUGE liability, whether it's multi-structured, semi-structured or fully structured. How to determine if collected data was independent. How to determine if data meets stationary requirements, and what other types of data requirements that might be necessary for various big data tools; to include homogeneity, identically distributed, gaussian/non-gaussian, and sample size requirements. And importantly, you need to know where your data came from and how it was collected. There is a notion that poor quality data is a result of broken business processes, so when you start your investigations, are you considering the scope of the business process, its architectural components and the associated information lifecycle across this, or just the focal point where poor quality data manifests itself? Though Hadoop has provided a platform where now data can be collected more rapidly and looked at. The challenge of cleansing data still remains on hand: Are you collecting good data and are you collecting data wisely? Are you trying to resolve problems much earlier in the ecosystem and then waiting to push it further? Are you following the Data Governance and doing the due diligence?

The old adage "garbage in garbage out" holds true. First of all, "data" is scattered. Secondly, data is not really ugly... it's just scattered and needs cleansing and improvement. This can be a major challenge at times depending on the size of the data. Collecting data and trying to make sense of it later to meet your needs should not be the approach; understand your data needs, remove redundancy, require referential integrity, ensure synchronization / timing and collect your data more responsibly. When trying to sort through unstructured data, build your data rules to catch possible false positives and use to further understand your data and tighten your data rules. It is important to know your business, know your data. It is best to solve the problem as early on as possible at the source which would be more ideal, but the reality is different. There are many analytical tools that can help solve this, but maybe not at 100% accuracy. It will only improve, but not make it entirely better.

Data governance at the point of impact: Messy internal data is due to a lack of proper data governance, everybody knows that and not a single organization has solved it since the beginning of times. Good governance is as essential as storing raw data and overall data management. Very important to know who where and what is accessing the data and what they are doing to it to make changes. Then, knowing the before and after pictures of the changes are all part of the governance plan. Transformation and sorting are vital in the data world to put things in perspective for business to read between the lines with accuracy and clarity of information that is needed for making an effective decision. Produce the data set in a clean (and often disposable) view of the data. Working to keep all data everywhere clean is impossible given the rate of change and diversity of our relevant data sources and streams. It's not only important to be able to categorize your data but also to be aware of the dangers of dark data with regards to Legal and Regulatory risk, Intelligence risk and Reputation risk. Dark Data as unstructured, uncategorized and potentially unmanaged and untapped data could contain confidential or sensitive information and as such may pose a significant risk to the organization. This Dark Data left unstructured and unmanaged, could be more of a liability to the business than a potential asset. Regarding unmanaged data - this is a very bad thing to collect. For audibility and traceability, it is important to store historical snapshots of the facts, and ensuring "re-constitution of the actual source system for a given point in time."

An enterprise data hub is a powerful new platform. In the future, most enterprise data will land first in an enterprise data hub, and increasingly it will stay there. In the near term, an enterprise data hub delivers unprecedented flexibility to comprehensively and economically analyze and process data in new ways. Organizations that deploy an enterprise data hub alongside their existing infrastructure will continue to manage data:
-raw historical data storage (call it a warehouse, corporate memory, enterprise data hub)
-turning data into information (the business side of making sense of the raw data, adding value and augmenting business systems) this is where the organizations understand the true nature will really begin to see huge value gains if they can ask the right questions.

Many organizations invest heavily in processing the data, with the hopes that people will simply start creating value from it. Usually, this results in large operational and capital expenditures to create a vault of data that rarely gets used. Easy to use systems and automation are revolutionizing the way Big Data is being used. Implementing software to analyze data should make it easier to interpret results and help improve business processes. This can help eliminate the struggles in dealing with too much data! And most importantly, build a strong data governance discipline to overcome data management challenge.

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Do you Actively Participate in your Vision?

Creative expanding cannot happen without vision.

Vision is to zoom in the future as if it were closer. We always measure ourselves in terms of our vision - what we intend to be or to accomplish, and what we leave behind is our action upon those intentions. We contemplate, we reflect, we learn, we act, we perceive, and our vision evolves and leads us - the reason we usually see that what we have accomplished is always less than our potential. The future is based on your visions. Either as an individual or an organization, do you allow them to evolve, and actively participate in it?

The future is based on your visions. If we see disunity, failure, and destruction and focus on them, then we are consigned to that misery for as long as we insist on that vision. On the other hand, if we envision unity, success, and construction then the negatives become the shadows that tell us we must do better and we try and try again. We always measure ourselves in terms of our vision - what we intend to be or to accomplish, and what we leave behind is our action upon those intentions.

Vision comes to those who exercise themselves to understand what they hear, as they listen; to perceive what they see, as they look. The envisioning is the imagination's inner screen lighting up in the context of where the envisioning grows. To envision is the focus coming in contact with the natural deployment, grown from the whole envisioning atmosphere you soak in daily life.The essence of vision is from the personal relatedness development, in its whole simplicity of perceptual connection of the moment. Vision grows for those who learn to see and enter into the experience of simple perceptual connection with the wide open personal completion into the moment's happening. As one develops full participation at the moment, so does the perceptual envisioning dexterity, expanding reception and reach.

The importance of allowing the visions to be creative instead of destructive. Many say creative thinking expands and critical thinking narrows. Too often it is our need to assess things critically that limits the creative possibilities that would emerge. How do we know so quickly what will not work for us? The whole point of critical thinking is to first put aside preconceptions and agendas. That is somewhat difficult, but it is something you should attempt if you really want to understand. The biggest single obstruction is a failure to take any notice whatsoever of the clues, which are often there but seldom stand out. The key is to focus on those that challenge your preconceptions, and not simply move on to more comforting "facts."

Creative expanding cannot happen without vision. We have no choice but to participate in our vision. Being conscious, becoming self-aware, is a choice we actively make in each moment. It is not automatic, and it takes practices to become conscientious in your journey to reach the destination via your vision.

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Agility vs. Quality

Agility should not be translated to sacrificing planning, management guidelines, and quality assurance.
Agile has emerged as major software development and management methodology, it is a set of principles, philosophy, and mindsets to either build software or run a business today. However, from the quality perspective,

Agile is one of those things that's simple in principle but may be very challenging in practice. How can you maintain quality whilst trying to become agiler?

Agility is “the ability of the business to adapt rapidly and cost-efficiently in response to changes in the business environment.” What do you put in place or how would you then structure your business to ensure that the ability of your business to adapt rapidly. The focus is necessary to maintain or improve quality because there can be positive impacts as well as negative needs to be on capabilities. The "people, process, technology" must be defined and maintained to support the quality goal. The right people (those who share the business objective and have the requisite skills to deliver it) using processes that are valid and evolving can adapt and adopt technology that maintains and expands capabilities that support strategies and priorities in accordance with the corporate culture.

Agility is targeted for enhancing business on-demand. Quality is a function of scope, budget, and resources. Agility is a model of performance without sacrificing the basic modularity of the business functions. Thus, the better the management control on delivery, the better the quality and vice versa. This is why the Agile approach involves users early in a process of creating the "things," and uses them continuously to "assure quality." Agility is dependent upon planning the roadmap and executing accordingly. Any misalignment between these factors impacts quality. Agility should not be translated to sacrificing planning, management guidelines or life cycle of processes, projects and/or products. Responsibility is a primary factor in the agile development model. Responsibility is effective because it includes shared responsibility with others; the activities and the group are agile, not only one person, to ensure quality delivery.

AUTOMATION->QUALITY->AGILITY. The ability to deliver a quality product is a matter of clear focus on the things that deliver quality. Remove the obstacles to quality, clearly describe what quality looks like, and practice the activities that produce quality results. The long-term cost of cutting quality will eat your attempts to change rapidly and stifle agility. The ability to change quickly requires the ability to train your staff on changes, the ability to design changes quickly that will work, the ability to implement cost-effective solutions quickly to enable the changes, and the willingness of the team/staff to make changes that may not be comfortable. Also, you need to automate all your quality assurance tasks so you can be agile in your development process. Agility is a must in today's cloud world where the customer expects everything on-demand and cost-effective. No way you can get that doing anything manually and especially quality checks and you can not compromise on that. Start early in your quality checks and automate and be agile.

There's no one size fits all when it comes to methodologies. Every organization and team is unique and has different strengths and needs. Agile takes more disciplines, not less. It is not just the methodology by which the quality software projects can be ensured; but the mindset, the talent, the discipline, the methodology, the process, and the measurement need to be well aligned, in order to improve product quality and customer satisfaction.

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