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

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

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

Saturday, April 30, 2016

Three Core Competencies in Global Mindset

11:22 PM  Pearl Zhu  1 comment

At the age of digitalization, ‘being who you really are as a global leader’ is more critical than ever.

The business world has become hyperconnected and interdependent. Global leaders of the future sense, feel, read, imagine, and intuit possibilities on the journey of digital transformation. Global leaders articulate strategic visions, interactive designs, and navigating directions where networks of management informally communicate the possibility of generative behavior changes in structure, patterns, and processes.

With unprecedented digital technology advances, the knowledge brainstorming is happening in real-time with people and plays spontaneous networks of human and business operational concerns. Organizations not only need good managers to take care of today’s business; but also have to grow the world-class leaders with a global mindset to leapfrog their companies for long-term prosperity. What are the core competencies in a global mindset?
Self-awareness: At the age of digitalization, ‘being who you really are as a global leader’ is more critical than ever, being authentic is a sort of prerequisite of global leadership because your digital footprint is omnipresent, the working life is converging with personal life, you have to be real and true to yourself and others. This will translate and distill into believability throughout your entire organization and beyond. Being authentic means to be original, positive, progressive, courageous, conscious, creative and curious, and to adopt mindsets of critical thinking, challenging convention, maximizing diversity and being willing to experiment, as a basis for then being able to think differently, independently, and globally. You will be seen as a digital professional and leader who can be trusted not just by your coworkers but also by your customers or clients. Global leadership is shifting toward grooming historic digital leadership skills embodying effective communication in networks of global conversations that inspire creativity in diverse domains of expertise.
Inquisitiveness: The diversity of thoughts, character, cognitive difference, skills, style, and generation account for the majority of our difference for today's digital workforce. Global leaders are inquisitive to ask many good questions. The good question is usually open and thought-provoking. The good question brings a multifaceted perspective with cultural intelligence. People are gregarious by nature, they tend to organize themselves and it gives rise to a collective set of attitudes, beliefs, educational systems, notions of time and space, society structures, ways of doing business, etc. These items are the elements of a culture (regional, national, continental, age, ethnic background, religious beliefs, the list goes on and on). Hence, global leadership certainly has to take into account cultural intelligence and how that affects things: how you interact with one another, how you manage, and what’s your thinking process and how you make a decision; from cognitive intelligence about others - as well as themselves! A global leader needs to be able to facilitate and orchestrate these differences, values, cultures, and gain a profound understanding of the business ecosystem.

Adaptability: Global leaders manage people across functional and broad geographic boundaries. In one way 'global leadership' is synonymous with leading virtual teams across the globe. They must be comfortable leading remote teams, multiplexing tasks, and time zones, communicating, and collaborating in a way that keeps everyone focused and connected in spite of the distances. While there are many components of global leadership, one of the most important ones is the ability to adapt, model and influence change. We live in a world where change is the norm and if we don't embrace it, accept it, roll with it, or make it happen, we're not going to be successful. The adaptable global leaders are good at shifting from one leadership style to another, but keep the leadership substance on checking; they are good at identifying and articulating paradigm shifts, setting trend, not fad; and they are good at molding leaders that go out and promote changes in people's mindsets and paradigms and make influence through vision and insight.
Cultivating digital leaders with the global mind is not just simply a horizontal expansion of management responsibility, look around to find out how to bring leaders closer to integrity and authenticity. They are crucial for global leadership. They bring courage, which is lacking so much so often, they bring determination to make things happen, they bring inspiration when you trust what you feel to decide what to do, and they bring the capability to lead the hyperconnected world effectively.

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Three Qualities of Change Leaders

11:18 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Leadership is about change!

 Fundamentally leadership is about change and influencing people to change. Leadership is moving you and others, and evolving into what is needed next. The speed of change is accelerating, Change Leadership becomes a more critical capacity to influence others through inspiration, motivated by a passion, birthed by a conviction of a sense of purpose of why you were created. Leadership is all about the ability to take initiative and the ability to influence with or without authority. It is the power of example that frees people to do willingly and well that needs to be done. What are important qualities in change leadership?


Vision: Leadership is driven by a vision. In a business sense, the speed of change and continuous disruption in today’s business environment has shifted exponentially beyond the capabilities of many businesses to change solely through continuous improvement and evolutionary change. Simple "Change" may involve dictated behavioral modification that is not natural and does not fit with the person's normal mode of behavior, values, and beliefs. The vision for long-term transformation is required for the change to be effective and lasting. The transformation is required to provide the vision and focus on what the organization needs to look like alongside the impetus and sense of urgency. Change leadership concerns the driving forces, visions, and processes that fuel large-scale transformation.  

Decision effectiveness: Change the game is a mindset, transformational leaders can provide the direction as vision, mission, strategy, as well as leadership skills like decision-making, delegation, and monitoring. Change or transformational leaders are the responsible top executives in the organization, where change has to be implemented. Keep in mind good leaders or managers make tough decisions. The decision effectiveness would directly impact on the speed of change and how people would adapt to changes. The change leader’s role affects most through strategic decisions, congruent behaviors, continuous endorsement of the change and regular communication to keep the momentum. Change leader is a key role that should always be part of the team. It represents the political will to go for the change. In almost every case, if this role was not functioning, change failed or was at least delayed in a very costly way.  If the end state is desirable, it is highly probable tough decisions will need to be made.

Simplification: Change is to simplify things, not the other way around. Change is simply a shift from the “Old Way - Chaos - New Way.” People often do not look for a simple way rather they will rely on some popular models developed by a change guru. Having a model is great but without the buy-in from the individuals that are impacted, change won’t happen. Practically, do not make change process overly rigid or overly complicated, Change Management needs to be changed when necessary. Be flexible- change will always involve failures as well as success. Reinforce success but don't punish failures. Remember change management is a gradual process. All too often, the management heard the phrases "but we have done it this way for 20 years" or "that's it then jobs will be next," such reaction is driven by fear but can be eliminated by simple and regular communication face to face. Follow the simplicity principle, the right leaders know what they want, give clear directions, bring cohesive process, and stand by their word and motivate.
   
Change Management has a very wide scope and is a relatively new area of expertise. Great change leaders have the vision to motivate, wisdom to make good decisions, and the ability to lead change effortlessly. Business will be more successful when they realize that one of their greatest strengths will be their change capability. That being said, it requires a plan and strategy as well and most importantly the strong change leaders and managers for execution. Change isn't always in our control, but it is amazing how much control we have in adapting to it. It's also given leaders confidence because you know you are able to positively adapt to any given situation accepting, embracing, and lead changes.



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Friday, April 29, 2016

The Monthly CIO Debates Collection How to Set Priority Right to Run a Digital IT Apr. 2016

11:25 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Debating is not for stimulating conflicts, but for brainstorming better ways to do things.
Due to the changing nature of technology, IT leadership role also continues to involve & shift the focus, to move up the maturity level. More and more CIOs are requested to take more responsibility and many CIOs present the breadth of leadership competency. The proactive IT debates help IT leaders to brainstorm innovative and better ways to do things, and improve management capabilities. Here are the monthly CIO debates collections for Apr. 2016.

How to Set Priority Right to Run a Digital IT Apr. 2016

  • What are CIO’s Top Priorities? Nowadays, information is the lifeblood of business, and technology is the big brain of the organization, there are so many things in CIO’s agenda, IT is always in overload mode, and CIOs seem to be at hot seat. Therefore, in order to run IT more effectively and efficiently, how shall CIOs prioritize the projects, and what shall be put on the top of CIO’s agenda?
  • Can Money Buy Innovation? It is very important to recognize that innovation is an essential factor for a company success. Organizations need both: out of the box and in the box/core innovation; both breakthrough innovation and incremental and evolutionary innovation, how to accomplish this balance is a crucial issue for organizations. From innovation management perspective, what’re the resources and key success factors to lead innovation success, can money buy innovation?


  • How Should CIO respond to endless internal customer demand for IT solutions? Modern IT needs to both take care of internal customers by meeting their needs, and to delight end customer by optimizing digital touch points; it has to both map out the strategic projects, but also to keep the light on. How should CIO prioritize the limited time and resources to ascend IT maturity, and how should CIO respond to endless internal customer demand for IT solutions? Most of IT organizations fall into the following three types of mentality.
  • IT Transformation Debate: Shall IT Lead or Follow? More often than not, technology is the catalyst for driving business change and digital transformation, however, in most of the companies, IT is still perceived as an order taker and support function, and most of IT organizations get stuck at the lower level of maturity for functional alignment or enabler. So IT is at a crossroad: Shall IT lead or follow? Should IT leadership rock the boat or just keep it afloat? And how to run digital IT with high speed and agility?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.2 million page views with 2500+ 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. 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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Digital Valley Book Tuning:IV Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Systems Thinking Wisdom

11:20 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Systems Thinkers shape a worldview based on the realization of interconnectedness.
System Intelligence (SI) and System Thinking (ST) are well be considered emergent properties of the complex adaptive system we call the human mind.  Systems Thinking seeks to observe a system such as the organizations from outside. It encourages the observer to see himself or herself as part of the system, to put it simply, Systems Thinking is to understand the relationship between the parts and the whole, it is an outside-in perspective of  interconnectivity and interdependence within a system or even cross systems. Digital organization today is a hyperconnected and interdependent system, thus, ST becomes a more critical thought process to make effective decisions and solve complex business problems. It is still an only small percentage of the population who are equipped with a “Systems Mind” to applying Systems Intelligence for problems solving or decision making, is it possible for 'anyone' to "think systems"? Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s Systems Thinking ability?


Are you a holistic thinker who can think up a level to abstract the wisdom via in-depth understanding of things? Systems Thinking by definition is a cognitive process (thinking), a profound thinking process to embrace holism and nonlinearity. Systems Thinking is the ability to navigate levels of abstraction or logic as an essential thinking skill for STers. Systems Thinking is a way of understanding complexity; to transposing another term, 'systems,' put an emphasis on 'a way.' It is a descriptive term for an object or an experience. From a personal perspective, there’s observable behavioral change in focus from 'better understanding of solutions' to 'better understanding of problems' in an attempt to address perceived increase in system complexity, a tangible recognition that success is a holistic endeavor that needs collaboration and continuous learning.

Are you a balanced thinker who can see the connection between the parts and the whole? Systems thinking is often equated with balanced thinking. Systems Thinking can also be defined as putting on the foreground relations and on the background the components of these relations. ST has to do with the ability to see the whole, and the relationships between parts within those wholes, and to grasp the complexity - deal with nonlinear questions that have the contingent and flexing answers as the conditions change. Systems Thinking engenders new actions as part of the process of creating cross-disciplined understanding. There is a big increase in a cross-silo, cross-discipline, and continuous exploration. What is powerful about Systems Thinking is that it’s concerned with wholes changes of the scope, thereby engendering new action. Systems Thinking is part of the process of creating understanding and striking the right balance either making the strategy or problem-solving.

What are  inside your ST toolbox? Everyone performs Systems Thinking to some degree, whether they're aware of it or not. Any new thing to acquire is a change. And to be accepted, it needs to fit the mental model of the person, meaning either she or he wants it in the first place, and so adapted her/his  mind to accepting it and working enough to bend its mind to fit the new change, or the change is presented in a way that is already acceptable to the person. ST is also a set of tools that you can use - success comes from knowing when to apply which tool and when not to. A possible remedy is by using ST as a high level "philosophy" to create practical methodologies/ packages. It aims at solving a particular class of tasks in particular domains.

Systems Thinkers shape a worldview based on the realization of interconnectedness. Simply a lot of us as humans can and really think systemically, even if we are not aware of this fact or don't use the specific terms by default. There is a significant philosophical difference between different forms of Systems Thinking. The evidence of the evolution of Systems Thinking is more than an interdisciplinary activity, but a transdisciplinary one. Perhaps there is a measure of Systems Intelligence that can signify to what extent any individual is able to apply or understand systems concepts. Apply Systems Thinking to make a better world.


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Three “Aha Moment” of an Innovative IT

11:18 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

IT can become a true innovation engine when it can not only grasp new business opportunities but also discover and grow more innovators to multiply the creativity effect.

IT must be managed in two ways; the utility side of the house where IT constantly drives costs lower; the second being business innovation which is the only way to lift IT from commoditized service to strategic partner; from the cost center to value creator; and from the reactive service provider to the proactive game changer. IT sustenance and business innovation are on every CIO's roadmap, especially in the well-established enterprises. What is the “Aha Moment” of IT to transform itself into an innovation engine and create a new competitive advantage for the organization?

The moment that IT “Smells the business growth Opportunity”: Too often IT is not involved at a goal level but instead at a task level. This creates an environment where the IT folks focus less on the strategic goals and more on the rules and processes that are defined for their department. Nowadays, technology is often the innovation disruptive force, and the information is one of the most invaluable assets in the business. IT is often in the right position to oversee business processes and build business competency, to both recognize growth opportunities as well as diagnose early risks. Every opportunity has the risk in it, and every risk could also have the opportunity in it. IT and the business need to work together in the planning process. This is becoming ever more important, due to the increasing speed of changes and continuous digital disruption. IT needs to play a different role in the situation at hand. What should be focused on is the integration of IT into the business decisions and processes, smell growth opportunity and identify the critical business issues by working closely with a business partner from a long-term perspective, and leverage technology to manage innovation across the enterprise boundary. IT leaders need to identify the issues associated with innovation in an enterprise and actually have developed a unique model and platform for open innovation. Therefore, IT needs to become a business’s innovation engine, rather than just tools.

The moment to “Capture Customer Insight”: Digital is the age of customers. It’s important for IT to be more innovative from an outside-in customer’s lens. Customer inquiries are not just supporting related but can foster new and better ways the application can perform and optimize every touchpoint of customer experience. Focusing on customer needs should be an easier path to grow the innovation fruit. To run an innovative IT, it’s critical to listen, comprehend and understand the people and the business they are part of, before embarking on any new way of thinking to know where you have come from enables you to move to a new place even quicker. If you're going to innovate without knowledge of "evident customer needs," then "the things that you are good at may distract you to build something which can really increase customer value and help business success for the long term. Business information is the very clue to understanding every step of customer purchasing, and technology is digitizing every touchpoint of customer experience. Through catching customer insight and understanding their need, IT can reinvent itself as a customer champ and see it as an opportunity to reboot the IT mentality as the “digital brain” of the business.

The moment to “Spot talented innovators”: Creativity is the #1 wanted skill for the digital workforce, this is particularly true for IT professionals because technology is often the innovation driver and IT professionals are innovation harbingers. The forward-looking organizations always look for innovators, or the talent with leadership potential, who can make a positive influence. Both information and technology are not for its own sake, but to discover the new and better way to do things, it’s the means to the end. The innovators are likely to make a change to the structure for better problem-solving. These are IT talented people who can think differently, always shape the new box of thinking, mind the gap of the traditional way to solve the problems, establish insight into approach and style in different situations. The IT workplace needs to be designed to build a culture of innovation, and help employees at all levels within an organization, from leaders to front-line, understand and develop their creative capacity to solve problems and exploit opportunities in new and innovative ways. There is no global or universal solutions to building innovation and creativity at the organizational level. It’s business leaders’ responsibility to establish an environment with a high-risk tolerance, where people can grow and develop, be curious and creative without fear. It’s about management that can strike the right balance between increasing productivity and encouraging innovation; between setting the standard and let “out-of-box” thinking flow; between risk management and risk tolerance; between discovering the new way to do things and “we always do things like that.” IT can become a true innovation engine when it can not only grasp new business opportunities but also discover and grow more innovators to multiply creativity effect and unleash its innovation potential.

An innovative and value-driven IT needs to understand stakeholders’ expectations and propose an innovative solution portfolio that corresponds to both demand and cost drivers with a focus on business priority, IT develops the professional competencies needed for successful business solution delivery, IT captures organizational knowledge to continuously improve performance, and harness innovation, ultimately improve the organizational level efficiency, effectiveness, agility, and maturity.





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Thursday, April 28, 2016

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 4/29/2016

10:54 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and sharing the new thoughts and ideas.

 The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with 2700+ 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 weekly insight about digital leadership, and Talent Management. 

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO”  4/29/2016
  • Five Mental Characteristics in Systems Thinking to Shape Digital Leadership Systems Thinking (ST) is the ability to navigate levels of abstraction or logic as an essential thinking skill. Most folks follow the conventional way of thinking, it is what they have always been taught and learned to do. But digital leaders need to understand things and circumstances in a more holistic way or think differently in order to clear the vision and navigate the uncharted water to lead digital transformation seamlessly. But how can they leverage Systems Thinking, what are specific mental characteristics in Systems Thinking to shape digital leadership effectiveness?
  • "CIO Master" Book Tuning XVII: IT’s Digital Portfolio:  IT plays a significant role in the business’s digital transformation journey. To reimagine IT potential, reinvent IT management and maximize IT value, it is important to build a balanced IT digital portfolio with a set of differentiated capabilities to enable business growth and improve IT and overall organizational operational excellence. Generally speaking, a capability is an ability that an organization, person, or system possesses. Capabilities are typically expressed in general and high-level terms and typically require a combination of people, processes, and technology to achieve. Digital Capability Portfolio management is essential to successful strategy management. So What’s in an IT digital portfolio?

  • "Digital Valley" Book Tuning I: How to Apply Creativity Wisdom in Problem Solving?Creativity is expressive, productive, inventive, innovative and emergent. The innovators are simply those who can see what's around, and easily and effortlessly discover a better way to do things. Every one of us has creative strength. Some have strength in “thinking” - generating ideas and options, reframing issues or queries in understanding things via different way; other people excel at “seeing,” or observing - spotting interesting challenges and opportunities, trend surfing or noticing the significant details that others do not; and some others are good at “acting,’ they take thoughts and notions and figure out a place, manage logistic to make the idea a reality. So how to build a highly innovative team or organization, and take a structural approach for applying creativity in problem-solving?
  • CIO Master Tuning: XIV: How to Overcome Three Pitfalls to Accelerate Digital Paradigm Shift  Digital means the increasing speed of changes, hyperconnectivity, and always-on business dynamic. Corporate change can be a simple modification of strategy, a business process improvement or a more radical digital transformation. Either at the individual or organizational level, in the static industrial era, change is often a one-time project; in the Digital Age, change has to become an ongoing capability. But what are barriers you need to overcome in order to manage change more effectively?
  • “CIO Master” Tuning:XV: How to Build a Trustworthy Relation between IT and Business Business Change Management is managing everything that is necessary to get people to adopt new ways of working such as stakeholder management, communications, process or organizational change, training, business readiness and technical change management. etc, also helps to close the gaps between IT and business. Trust is the key, which means IT needs to behave more like an integral part of the business. But how to build a trustworthy culture within IT, between IT and business, and within the organizational scope?


Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and sharing the new thoughts and 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 Questions to Assess a Person’s Vision

10:46 PM  Pearl Zhu  1 comment

A vision is a future state of being.


Vision is about having a positive outlook on the future that is not predicated on the past or present. The vision needs to be a good metaphor - 'the guiding light,' so that people can see themselves and their work reflected in it. It is through identifying the "destination" for all, charting the route for all from their own respective positions toward the destination, and then guiding along the way when some for a time deviate or supporting the ones who are lagging behind. There is also a passionate connection to a vision. When a vision is realized, people live with change. Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s vision?

 Is vision equal to a dream? A vision is larger and more realistic than a dream, it’s a responsibility. Vision is a foresight with a proactive understanding of cause and effect, not reactive 'seeing.' It is a clear choice among future scenarios that promotes certain behavior. Vision is something you see, others don't, and a visionary mind is able to and not afraid to leverage contrarian views to shape a holistic picture. A great vision is one which relates itself to a purpose greater than itself which contributes to the common good. Vision is not a dream. Vision is a motivation act one plans to see happen in the life, businesses and the society we live in. It often takes turns positively or negatively, but it has been and always will be the genesis of uncountable success stories we all know. The "aha" vision is an "entrepreneurial" attribute; the ability to envision a solution to a perceived or not-yet-perceived need. A visionary mind has the ability to think the past, perceive what is now and foresee the future. Maybe it is about shaping an idea that comes with a commitment to push it through via personal dynamics and guts, determination and single-mindedness. The vision if understood in this perspective becomes a reality achievable and a comprehensible dream beyond words.
Is vision a “must have,” or “nice to have” leadership quality? Leaders have to live and be the vision. The top leaders are visionary. If a vision exists only on paper, it is useless. It follows the wonderful quote, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world. A passionate connection to it doesn't mean you will always be excited about it, or "love" it. It means you will be willing to suffer for it as you realize you are responsible for the life-changing effects of its realization - the world is waiting for it. A clear vision is circular, not tunnel-like; multi-dimensional, not single lenses; colorful, not black and white; it should be vivid enough to tell the story and positive enough to overcome barriers; it touches the heart and mind to drive the actions. Digital leaders today need to have a clear vision to zoom into the future and broadened knowledge to zoom out the reality, in order to guide the business through uncharted water or blurring boundaries during the journey of the digital transformation.


What does a good vision statement include? A good vision statement either for personal development, business growth, or societal progress, should motivate us continually to "reach beyond our grasp," in pursuit of longer-term goals to be realized through achievement of nearer-term objectives, against which performance can be measured and reported to those who care to know. A vision is never "achieved" in the sense of being "completed" (with nothing more to be done) -- not in any number of years or even lifetimes. A vision statement describes a journey rather than a destination. The steps along the way are described in goal and objective statements made "real" in terms of measurable performance indicators.

Vision is an important trait of digital leadership. Vision inspires you to move forward; vision zooms into the future as if it were closer; and vision makes you feel passion about what is going to happen - the opportunities; vision is the great work through both mind and heart orchestration. Vision" and "innovation" are different but complementary skills. If vision is about the "end" status, then innovation is the means to the end. "Vision" is a destination and 'innovation' is the management process including the better process, tools, cultures, etc., to get you there. The “vision" thing has to go hand in hand with execution and value contribution.

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Running a Highly Responsive IT Beyond Just Fixing Things

10:43 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

A highly responsive IT means a lot of things for the digital transformation: speed, innovation, agility, integration, modernization, optimization, intelligence, value creation, and maturity, etc.

 The majority of IT organizations get stuck at the lower level of maturity, spend most of resource and time to “keep the lights on,” play as reactive maintenance center to fix things. The bottom line IT support is still fundamental, but not sufficient to run a digital IT. Nowadays, uncertainty and ambiguity are key challenges for business leaders today, with increasing speed of changes, IT organizations have to move from a reactive order taker and back-office support function to a proactive strategic partner and highly responsive business catalyst.

The CIO role has never been about just managing the status quo: Digital transformation starts with mind shift, business value has to be driven, indicated and understood at all levels of the organization. The more important thing is to work on the activities and considerations that need to be addressed to enhance the IT-business relationship to help organizations become agiler and proactively adapt to the changes, moving up from efficiency, effectiveness to agility; from functioning to firmness to delight. A large part of the problem for IT transformation is that while there are both long and short-term goals for the business, far too often these goals are in opposition to each other. The tough choice needs to be made: when should you reap the quick win, when shall you focus on long-term growth. Since the rewards are highest for the short term goals being met, the long-term goals tend to suffer, and uncertainty gets blamed rather than managers focused on the short term goals and the associated rewards. IT is in the middle of a sea change, therefore, it is important to realize that there are basic principles and rules that make it work. CIOs must set the principles, guideline, and rules to run a digital IT. IT transformation has to go a step further and involves internalization of the new values and conceptual model so that the newly required behaviors don't require the same kind of effort and vigilance.
A responsive IT needs to be more innovative: IT needs to be able to provide innovative solutions or supply differentiated solutions that contribute to both top line growth and the bottom line success of the organization. IT needs to become the business’s innovation engine, rather than just tools. IT must lead in reaching high-level performance. So the digital shift in some industries is to be innovative with systems of engagement rather than systems of record. In saying that, some industries have been also doing this for some time. The available technology just makes innovation easier to do now than in the past - less costly, more easily accessible, thanks to the "lightweight' digital technologies and mosaic style of the service model. So IT leaders have to continue self-checking: What business value are you helping to create? Which business team members determine the priority of your work? If you don’t receive straightforward, consistent responses – you have a problem with alignment and accountability – most likely across IT and business. Instead of just fixing the things, digital IT should always embrace the new way, the new process and the technology to do things innovatively.

What should be focused on is the integration of IT into the business decisions and processes to be highly responsive: IT involves co-creating business strategy. This will allow IT to shine in both roles –as enabler and driver. IT proactively works as an integral part of the business to capitalize on opportunity via leading the transformation, or IT delivers the best solution to the business problems which meet business’s requirement or tailor customer’s needs. Even the speed of change is increasing, businesses still do have contexts of relative certainty, while simultaneously having contexts reflecting both complexity and chaos. Each of these contexts requires a different management approach. IT should proactively facilitate the business partners to the right solutions and help to implement them with speed. Neither of these is wrong or right and choosing which is best should be dependent solely on the situation at hand. These roles will switch in all departments between leadership and support depending who takes the charge of a given project, and where the company's priorities lie.

A highly responsive IT means a lot of things for the digital transformation: speed, innovation, agility, integration, modernization, optimization, intelligence, value creation, and maturity, etc. It is the way to run a digital IT and an overall digital organization.






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