The Monthly “Leadership Master” Book Tuning: Innovative Leadership Apr. 2018

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

                   Innovative Leadership

Three Styles of Innovation Leaders The leadership in any organization must have the ability to guide, inspire, innovate, and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals. Innovative leadership is essentially anchored on the leader's overall multifaceted resourcefulness and multidimensional competencies to formulate creative alternatives or unconventional solutions to resolve problems, to show versatility and flexibility in response to unpredictable or unanticipated business circumstances. Here are three styles of innovation leaders.

Three Elements in Innovative Leadership? Creativity is the most wanted skill for digital professionals today, and innovative leadership is also in strong demand to bridge cognitive gaps, amplify collective creativity, inspire the culture of learning, and accelerate digital transformation. What are the top traits in innovative leadership, and how to cultivate more world-class innovative leaders?

Three Perspectives about Visionary Leadership Leadership is about setting directions, making positive influences and inspire innovation. At its core, leadership is the journey for problem-solving. Visionary leaders are always the rare breed and in strong demand. Because leadership vision is like the light tower to guide the organization to the uncharted water and blurred digital territories. In fact, vision is one of the most critical digital leadership traits to lead today's business with "VUCA" characteristics. There are a lot of misunderstanding about vision and being a visionary, here are three perspectives of clarity.

How to Spot your Innovators? Creativity is an essential building block for innovation in business. And innovation is the light every business is pursuing. Everyone possesses a certain level of creativity, but how does creativity manifest itself in the workplace? What's the best work environment to stimulate creativity? And how can digital leaders spot their true innovators and improve innovation success rate?

CIOs as “Chief Innovation Officer”: Three Management in Innovation Management? The definition of innovation is simple, it is about transforming novel idea and achieving its business value. It is about gaining benefit by doing something different. Innovations in the digital era are coming at seemingly much fast space, with changes and potential disruptions, and therefore, innovation management also becomes more complex and dynamic. Here are three management disciplines in innovation management.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with about 4600+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way to human progression.

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The Digital Board’s Digital Inquiries

The digital boards ask tough questions, collect invaluable feedback, update digital principles for harnessing communication and enforcing governance effectiveness.

The digital era is hyperconnected, volatile, complex, uncertain and ambiguous. It is the digital paradigm shift. Adopting a different paradigm is like changing the glasses and new possibilities might emerge. The corporate board plays an important role in overseeing digital strategy, advising executive teams and monitoring performance. To run a high performance and high mature digital organization, it is important to bridge the multitude of leadership and management gaps and creating the momentum for speeding up changes. Here is a set of the digital board’s digital inquiries.

Is executive management of the company top-notch? Fundamentally, leadership is about the future and change. At its heart, leadership practice is a problem-solving process. Digital is the journey to reach a state of delight. To check up quality, performance, and influence of the business management team, the board should ask themselves as well as executives: What’re the most critical elements in digital leadership? Is the leadership team world-class or just locally fit? Do you have a homogenous or heterogeneous team setting? Can executives think deeper or just speak louder? Do leadership team just follow the rules to keep the wheel spinning, or break down the old rules if necessary to make the real difference? Can they both lead and manage? Is leadership more strategic or tactical? Top notch digital leaders have to be able to infect and encourage with their vision and generate conviction and enthusiasm for the missions of the company. They are visionary, innovators, also good communicators, good facilitators, good listeners, and good collaborators. The leader is a problem-solver, enjoy understanding the complexity and guide people through it; finding common ground and initiating dialogues. At the hyper-connected digital era, to break down stereotypical biases or any types of bias, learning agility, cognitive difference, continuous delivery, expert power, and dynamic digital footprint become the significant part of developing the inclusive digital leadership model. Collectively, a top-notch leadership team has complementary mindsets, skills, and capabilities to solve the problem creatively and lead the organization on the path of advancement, growth, and maturity.

Has the firm reached the next round of growth cycle or missed an inflection point of digitalization? Leading digital companies can stretch out in every business dimension for driving the full-fledged digital transformation with all essential dimensions (people, culture, organizational structure, process) to adapt to the new world of the business. A strategic inflection point is a time in the lifecycle of a business when its fundamentals (people, process, technologies, cultures) are about to change. There is a learning curve behind them. In order to make effective changes, you have to know the underneath structure and processes of your business, because they underpin the digital capabilities of the organization. Otherwise, companies may begin a decline from its previous good performance. Digital organizations arise and reach the next cycle of growth when the scale of the interrelations, interactions, or interrelational interactions amplifies the collective capability to achieve more values for the organization. Perhaps organizations will miss the inflection point of digitalization when the processes are overly rigid, the structure is strictly hierarchical, and people have change inertia and overall lack of differentiated business competency. In practice, a mature organization is one that can quickly and safely assess all of the consequences of a possible change and devise effective plans to provide a combination approach for having both sense of urgency and overcoming change curve, to achieve and sustain those changes - and to do them continuously.

Is the company’s portfolio too complex? Or is the cost structure too high? Complexity has increased exponentially and has become part of digital new normal. There are unknown interactions and very high inner dynamics in complexity. The board oversees strategy, they should also scrutinize further by asking tough questions. Business portfolio rationalization is an activity more critical than ever because economic cycles are getting shorter, and decision cycles are getting short. The size and mix of the business portfolio depend on the business situation, strategic objectives and severity of external challenges or changes. In fact, many organizations have little insight into their overall health of portfolio, cost structures and who is consuming the assets. They have no idea where they are spending their money on and often assume it is mainly being spent on items which are actually much lower on the list. Managing digital portfolio should be integrated with the annual strategic planning process and financial investment model. Generally, all businesses should have a handful of "bets" in the breakthrough category. In order to make the portfolio executable, an organization needs to make sure enough resources are available to deliver projects and programs, also manage the interdependencies of the project accordingly. Moreover, a gap analysis, skills assessment, efficiency study, workflow analysis, and knowledge of trends and models that work best to meet the business goals are needed before new schemes and designs are created and agreed upon across the business.

The digital boards ask tough questions, collect invaluable feedback, update digital principles for harnessing communication and enforcing governance effectiveness. The challenge is how you move the ‘needle’ forward, and really mind the digital gap to accelerate your organization’s digital transformation.

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The Best Practices to Shape the Digital Fitness of IT

Running IT takes an interdisciplinary approach and keeping IT fit is a systematic approach.

Information and technology nowadays make the impact on every aspect of the business, IT can no longer just be about numbers and algorithms; it has an opportunity to be a significant catalyst for business growth and a tool for encouraging questing and connecting the innovation dots. In the face of vast areas of uncertainty and unprecedented complexity, it is important for IT leaders to address both the tactical practices of getting the work done and the soft business factors associated with the digital paradigm shift that must take place within the organization at all levels in order to keep digital fit and go digital systematically.

Shape IT “cognitive fitness”: We live in an era of abundance of information. Managing information and knowledge becomes more critical than ever in the digital era. However, either at the individual or business level, people often cannot digest the overwhelmed information smoothly and the organization cannot take advantage of information seamlessly. Thus, IT plays a crucial role in processing and refining information to create business value from it. Information is the gold when it has been used to make an informed management decision to develop the right product, enter a new market, exploit a new channel or have the information to be able to conduct day to day operations which have an output value etc. Besides people, information is the most invaluable asset to businesses today. The static and siloed information/knowledge approach is too slow to adapt to the changes and dealing with exponential information growth. To shape “cognitive fitness” of the company, you have to know how to swim more effortlessly in the sea of information, deal with it intellectually, different information is required at different points in decisions and operational delivery chain. IT should help the organization harness and understand the information to capture the real-time business insight, provide ways to better recognize and act on that information for gaining competitive advantage. This requires a holistic look at the entire knowledge environment and identifies how the information management initiative aligns with the company or business unit objectives, to improve communication, collaboration, and overall organizational maturity.

Leverage creativity: Besides technical or analytical side of IT, CIOs have to maximize what you can accomplish through creative leverage of your talent pool and build business competency. IT is like the fertilizer to make innovation happen, not through serendipity, but through scientific management. CIOs with technology awareness understand how to capture the digital technology trend and well apply the right technology to the business with an innovative solution to keep digital fit. Quick-fixing the handy issues is necessary to build a good IT reputation. But to reinvent IT as the trustful business partner, IT management needs to be in the continuous tuning mode through modernization, integration, and innovation. A CIO’s vision should be attainable subject to current times and its ability to adapt to changing times, connect the wider dots for innovating and help the business gain a competitive advantage for the long term. The business objective of IT shouldn’t only work on the initiatives which you have staff, it’s important to ride learning curves, provide the right kind of incentives to inspire creativity and amplify innovation effect. CIOs need to be open-minded for figuring out better ways to solve problems and keep an eye open for signs of things you don’t know about and make the necessary strategic adjustment for adapting to the ever-changing business dynamic.

Substantiate ROI: To keep the digital fit, define how you will measure IT success in meeting the business purpose and vision. CIOs need to keep a measure and periodicity at which the measure is reviewed against setting targets. Ensure that these measures are quantitative, and implement whatever mechanisms you need to be able to gather the data. IT metrics has to evolve from being a cost center to becoming a revenue generator. The only way to do this is to show a clear link to top executives between IT efficiency and productivity/ top-line revenues. Contextually, the measurement method is to persuade management about the progress of strategy execution. Senior managers need to own process within their area with the CIO office facilitating the end to end business process mapping, assisting in defining appropriate owners and handoff points across the business. Continually accelerating changes and unlocking performance in IT consumption and production requires faster responses and better performance metrics. It’s dangerous to impose metrics just because the focus on what’s measurable is manageable. The measures should motivate teams to achieve more, not to distract management from the ultimate business goals. Performance metrics drive priorities and behaviors, therefore, performance indicator setting should focus on achieving the ultimate goals of business as a whole. This is an important step to building IT reputation as a strategic business partner.

Running IT takes an interdisciplinary approach and keeping IT fit is a systematic approach. The reality is that business leaders need digital acumen as much as financial acumen, psychological knowledge as well as business insight and technology knowledge, doing its best to see that the application of IT brings the best business results. IT is the business.

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The Popular Quotes of “Digital Master” Book Series

A living organization is flexible, responsive, and resilient

"Digital Master” is the series of guidebooks (23+ books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, advises on how to run a digital IT organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide the insight about Change Management. It also instructs digital workforce on how to shape game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future.

1 Digital is the age of customer and digitalization is a constant game changer for the organization.

2 The sociological organization is alive, holistic, vibrant, energetic, responsive, fluid, creative, and innovative.

3 A hybrid nature of organization strikes the right balance between “virtual world” and human connections.

4 An intelligent organization is not about the “cleverness” of one analytics team but the insightful nature of entire business.

5 A living organization is flexible, responsive, and resilient.

6 Holistic management style enforces business agility.

7 Complexity is perhaps neither a problem nor the enemy; there are both opportunities and risks in it.

8 Mindset is probably the most complicated “thing” on the planet.

9 Strategic mind is the right mindset to shape digital vision.

10 An innovative mind allows the “creative flow” to pen up for information abundance.

11Digital creates the new demand and dimension for global leadership mindset.

12 It is interesting to know how to read the lines and it is important to listen your inner voice and decide.

13 Strategy is about living a holistic, integrative, and transdisciplinary perspective.

14 Digital strategy is like a GPS to navigate through your digitalization journey.

15 The real strategic differentiation is to create unique value, look forward and shine through.

16 Digital mobility is more about how to orchestrate underlining information and knowledge mobility that empowers mind flow and talent growth.

17 Strategy is about putting a great team together to give you a multifaceted picture zooming into business’s future.

18 As an emergent digital strategy, there are both optimistic perspective and brutal truth about data analysis.

19 Digital age of business and world shall move up from apathy to sympathy to empathy.

20 IT is a holistic “digital brain” or organization.

21 Strategy is for making progress, and progress is in simplicity.

22 Innovation is more often composed of the full spectrum of light.

23 Innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and therefore there are many ways to build innovation into corporate strategy.

24 The term “innovation process” implies openness to innovative ideas.

25 An innovation ecosystem is a systematic innovation methodological environment or a sort of innovation philosophy.

Digital Master refers to those high-performing, highly innovative and high-mature (less than 15%) digital organizations; they have both clear digital vision and well-crafted digital strategy; they are courageous to be in the vanguard of digital transformation with a quantum lead. But they also proactively develop more advanced and unique digital capabilities step-by-step and build a digital premium into their very foundation of business, such as digital thinking, culture, agility, intelligence, and structure, and they achieve high performing results through strong digital governance discipline and reach its zenith as the digital world continues to expand and diversify. At the individual level, Digital Masters are those cross-generational digital professionals who are equipped with the advanced digital minds and build a unique set of digital capabilities, climb to the top of Maslow’s Pyramid 2.0.

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Systems Thinking vs. Inclusiveness

Amplify the voice of Systems Thinking and create harmony via the diverse thoughts and perceiving diversity in unity. 
Systems Thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes, and understanding the relationship between the parts and the whole. The relationship is everything. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than isolated things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots,” to perceive diversity in unity. In management practice, Systems Thinking advocates inclusiveness; and inclusiveness enforces Systems Thinking.

Systems Thinking advocates the culture of inclusiveness: Systems Thinking sees connectivity and interdependence. Many human problems are caused by silo thinking or mislabeling. People often like the ones who are similar to themselves, and they tend to be hostile to those who most disturb our beliefs, and in the process preserve the beliefs of the groups with which they associate. In Systems Thinking, the observers who have the problem define the boundaries of the system to improve. That means Systems Thinkers are eager to understand the opposite point of views, and always try to see the two sides of the coin in order to shape a holistic viewpoint. From a development point of view, it is interesting to think about the challenges that come with integrating Systems Thinking into individual behavior, and perhaps most importantly, the influence of social systems that value it or not. Don't judge anything until you can engage with the flow, then look more closely at the mechanisms that are creating the flow. Learn how to shape an objective view without cognitive distortion that results from systemic ignorance or neglect of the cognitive layer of the whole. Embrace inclusiveness to enforce collective wisdom.

Systems Thinking is about the balance of diverse and converse thinking: Systems Thinking helps to discover the connectivity and common ground from the difference and dig into the paradoxical intelligence between seemly two separate views. And therefore, it embraces diversity and advocates inclusiveness. There is always an argument between “WE” and “THEM.” We create conflicts between our group and other groups that have their own senses of reality that conflict with ours. Thus, disagreements and antagonisms arise between groups. This may lead to our simply ignoring these other groups. Or it can cause us to rationalize our own sense of reality by disempowering. By pre-judging people motives without actually analyzing through questioning or research, we ourselves demonstrate at least non-systemic thinking. To avoid misjudgment or unconscious bias, and avoid making repeated mistakes, it’s important to leverage Systems Thinking to ask why you make those mistakes, why there is the difference, and realign or reorient thinking to build systems thinking mindset and make sound judgments.

Systems Thinkers shape worldviews based on the realization of interconnectedness: Everyone performs systems thinking to some degree, whether they're aware of it or not. 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. To think profoundly and avoid the trap of the superficial thinking, you have to really dig beneath the superficial layer, see around the corner and transcend the interdisciplinary knowledge, to understand others deeply or get to the heart of the matter; unfold systemic relationships, tell stories to others, solicit their feedback, do not fall into linear thought traps or only listen to one side of the story. The misjudgment is often caused by superficial thinking, lack of critical thinking, independent thinking, and Systems Thinking. Critical thinking is an integrated thought process of Systems Thinking, which means making clear, reasoned judgments, making up your own mind, and seeing the beauty of interconnectivity and inclusiveness.

Amplify the voice of Systems Thinking and create harmony via the diverse thoughts and perceiving diversity in unity, to communicate within the spiral of conscious awareness, is a story. Systems Thinking advocate inclusiveness; inclusiveness spark creativity; you can observe a creative result that was beyond the capacity of any one individual. And the collective creativity becomes the business competency.

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The CIO’s Tough Choices for Running High-Performance Digital IT

Nowadays, there is a lot of stuff on the CIOs’ plate, they just need to learn how to spin them skillfully.

Contemporary leaders in modern businesses have to make many tough choices in the growth-maturity journey, either making decisions in strategic planning, talent management or innovation exploration. Forward-looking organizations are at the tipping point to see IT as an asset, capital, and source of competitive advantage. Still, there are quite a lot of tough choices CIOs have to make in order to reinvent the IT brand and run high-performance digital organization.

When to be the strategic business leader; when to be an IT manager: There are multiple personas CIOs have to play. The tough choice facing CIOs is not about only picking one identity as either being strategic or tactical, but about WHEN- should act as a strategic leader, when should play as a tactical manager and how to play each role effectively. To improve IT leadership maturity, IT leaders should spend significant time on practicing strategic thinking and gaining business knowledge. To reimagine IT as the business catalyzer, CIOs need to first become the real business leaders to work within IT and across the business scope and seek ways to grow revenues, improve profitability and spur innovation. IT needs to build up the new set of core digital capabilities in transforming itself and business as a whole to get digital ready. The emerging digital technologies make IT more shared, integrated, lightweight, responsive, flexible, reliable, and fast. CIOs will have their intellectual voice heard on the big table by sharing a clear technological vision and outlier’s thinking about IT-enabled business potential. IT leaders need to be a fluent digital interpreter that has a comprehension/synthesis level understanding of the business and provide the valuable insight in the form of revenue from the new unexplored business idea or money saved. Communicate with common business language to bridge the gap between business talks and IT talks. Being a strategic business leader means that CIOs are no longer just order-takers, they co-develop strategy, show constructive dissatisfaction, practice true critical thinking to diagnose the root causes of business problems, not just fix symptoms only, understand the risks and potential bear traps, but be courageous to take calculated risks for exploring the new possibilities for running innovative IT. On the daily working agenda, the CIO role as a tactical IT manager is responsible for making sure that the IT meets the business requirement, and make continuous improvement to achieve operational excellence, build high-performance IT team who can deliver well, and commit time and attention to effective governance, performance checks, and balances. When a CIO is able to position and maintain the IT organization to ensure it addresses both "IT effectiveness" and "IT efficiency," strive to achieve IT agility and maturity, they have earned their stripes.

When to speed up for catching the digital trends, and when to bend over or step back in order to leap forward: Many IT organizations or companies as a whole are at the inflection point of digital transformation. On one side, they need to accelerate performance and drive changes; on the other side, in order to go digital systematically, they have to slow down in a certain way for fine-tuning the underlying structures, functions, or culture. Or put another way, crouch down in order to turn around, bend over in order to make a leap; slow down in order to speed up. IT Engineering practices and disciplines require structural approaches and problem-solving capabilities. Senior IT leaders weigh the risk/reward/ongoing maintenance (labor) equation all the time whether conscious or not, capture opportunity, roll it out and measure the result accordingly. They are systematic and good at calculating the risk, the value of taking risks is tied to the broader importance of staging a venture systematically. Even a highly innovative IT leader has a moment to be mechanical when facing IT management reality such as budget cut, priority changes, resource reallocation, or technology diversion, etc - which force them to be reactive and be more mechanical. Further, being proactive or innovative is not equal to being spontaneous or lack of the plan. If idea creation is more art than science, and then the nature of how the "implementation of the idea has to follow a logical path for the solution. CIOs are in the right position to balance the art and science of innovation which is a crucial management discipline of running digital IT, to be skillful on when to break down the old rules to innovate; and when to set the standard to improve efficiency and manage risks. They should try new technologies when there are clear returns that can't be found in the existing technologies, of course with great care on the potential risks. The dangers are getting too involved in the technologies and losing the sight of the real goals. Technology is not the goal, it is a tool to achieve the goal. CIOs must maintain vision on the goal.

Digital CIOs need to know when to lead from the front to inspire and share; and when to lead behind to observe and coordinate: Leading companies empower their IT leaders to lead change and digitalization. CIOs are dynamic leadership role that needs to continually practice, experience, learn and adjust. There is the time they should stand out to inspire and motivate, share the vision and articulate strategy; tell success stories or share lesson learned; there is also the time that CIOs should lead behind, to pull resources or talent in the right direction, make a deep observation or give others opportunities to shine. They are not only self-motivated but also motivate teams to cultivate change capabilities and cultivate the culture of learning and innovation. A high mature CIO is bright enough to be visible; but humble enough to listen to others and show respect. To keep the fountain of creativity flow, empowerment, empathy, and enablement are all crucial for executives to lead effectively. The idea that the IT organization is overlooked as an innovation driver and is being bypassed by business units comes at an odd time when you consider the robust new technology prospects and pervasive information influence. The biggest source of innovation within a company is built on culture - the collective attitude, the focus should be on the capability of innovative thinkers to contribute to particular professional practices in specific contexts. The front side of IT should be intuitive and user-friendly, but the back side of IT is complex and technical, but not less important. The CIO plays a significant role in envisioning the art of possible at the front but also pulling all resources and critical business elements together for running a high performance and collaborative digital organization.

Nowadays, there is a lot of stuff on the CIOs’ plate, they just need to learn how to spin them skillfully. Every CIO is unique, every leader is also unique, they have to figure out their own way to make the tough choice or take the different path of leadership, to break down the old IT thinking and lead their organization up toward the next growth cycle and catalyze business transformation.

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The Monthly Insight of “Digital Quality” Apr. 2018

Quality is not just the specific task of one single business department or function, it is one of the management disciplines which needs to be taken in a systematic way. 

Organizational excellence is achieved via delivering qualified products or services and continuously improving business performance. Quality is defined by a number of factors such as efficiency, effectiveness, flexibility, innovation, or maturity, as a degree of quality is in everything people do and experience. How to fill quality gaps to improve digital performance, unleash digital potential and move up to the next level of maturity?

          

                      Filling Quality Gaps to Improve Digital Maturity

The Quality Gaps in Running a High-Mature Digital Organization Quality is defined by a number of factors, such as performance, manageability, operability, reusability, reliability, availability, etc. Many say quality attracts quality, and to effectively lead an organization into good practices to focus on quality attributes takes work and a level of credibility within the organization. In reality, many organizations still operate and get stuck at the lower level of maturity due to the quality management gaps. Quality is not just the specific task of one single business department or function, it is one of the management disciplines which needs to be taken in a systematic way. The quality gaps are varying, how to identify and close them and improve the overall business effectiveness and maturity?

The Digital Readiness of Organizations? We are in a time of tremendous change, the dawn of the digital age, the path to the next level of digital maturity, also in the era of confusion and information overload. Most organizations have a mix of old and new, physical and virtual, order and chaos, the old way and the new way to do things, etc. Therefore, evaluating the digital readiness of the business is important to allow room for adjustments and keeping the organization dynamic and informative, in order to manage a high mature business.

CIOs as "Chief Inspection Officer": Three Aspects of IT Management Quality Check? Organizational excellence is achieved by delivering qualified products or services and continuously improving business performance. Quality is defined by a number of factors such as efficiency, effectiveness, flexibility, innovation, or maturity, as a degree of quality is in everything people do and experience. IT management quality directly impacts the entire business’s quality, competency and resilience, surviving and thriving capability. Hence, CIOs should do the periodic IT management quality check which includes to make an objective assessment of IT effectiveness, efficiency, speed, scalability, flexibility, resilience, etc, to ensure its performance and maturity, and the overall digital fitness of IT organization.

Three Qualities of Change Leaders: 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?

The New Book “12 CIO Personas” Introduction: Chapter VII The CIO as “Chief Inspection Officer”? IT plays a significant role in digitalization, as more often technology is a major digital disruptor and information is the lifeblood of the digital organization. The purpose of digitalization is to embed digital technology into key business processes, to improve the business capability and compete for the future. CIOs as “Chief Inspection Officer,” should do the periodic IT management quality check to ensure its effectiveness, efficiency, performance, and maturity.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2+million page views with about #4600+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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Accelerating Digital By Taking a Strategic Pathway

 if you are not different, you are a commodity. This is the foundation on which brands are built.

The shift to digital paradigm cuts across sectors, geographies and leadership roles, the digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves and reimagine the “art of possible.” Still, for most organizations, from doing digital to going digital and being digital is the bumpy road. There are numerous barriers and pitfalls on the way, how to take a strategic pathway for enabling digital flow and accelerating performance?

Dynamic planning: As the saying goes, plan is nothing, and planning is everything. This is especially true due to the increasing speed of changes and continuous disruptions. A business plan provides direction, diagnose issues, and outlines the preferred course of action. But with today’s business velocity and frequent digital disruptions, if planned in detail as far ahead as the end state, much planning time and effort will be wasted. It is important to evolve emergent property and make the proper adjustment accordingly. Strategic planning deals with horizontal scanning environmental and social monitoring, distributed sensing capability and knowing what to look for, how to set guidelines when to make choices, and it is a natural extension of scenario planning. Digital strategic management is both system and process to deal with dynamic and iterative planning and execution continuum. The frameworks of thoughts, consciousness and maturity assessments apply to strategy, then, now and in the future. Strategic thinking is the system thinking in the new boxes whereas strategic planning and execution within which risk management aligns planning with execution, are the process of strategic management. Strategic thinking and planning mean change and people don't like change. From the business management perspective, establishing the strategic discipline based on critical reasoning will get people to move their thinking from operation to strategy and will get the whole organization to understand the importance of strategy over the operation or, at least, become aware of what is one, what is the other and what is a stake when compromising. Translating strategic intent into meaningful action and making the needed changes stick can be difficult, doing it frequently and at a fast pace, even more so, but worth the effort,

Strategic alignment: It means how to translate strategy into operational activities aligning the organization to create synergies in making strategy everyone’s daily work and a continual process mobilizing change through digital synchronization. The business units determine action items from these goals and these action items become the goals of the departments within each business unit. Strategic alignment and synchronization can catalyze the flow of the right information to the right people at the right time to coordinate and execute strategy, tactics, and risks. And so on, until each individual manager or supervisor has a goal, with action items and opposing metrics. Strategy-execution synchronization can also catalyze the flow of the right information to the right people at the right time to coordinate and execute strategy, tactics, and risks. One of the primary impediments to strategic alignment is a dissonance between upper and middle management and a similar dissonance between middle management and the bottom line. That means to translate strategy into operational terms aligning the organization to create synergies in making strategy everyone’s everyday job and a continual process mobilizing change through digital synchronization. Digital is the age of people, assuming the company has a great product, creating meaningful, relevant, and compelling differentiation in the mind of customers is the challenge. Only by aligning the outside view with the inside view, can you understand the needs of people but also the channels needed to support them. Thus, strategic alignment also means that making a shift from traditional IT-business alignment to IT-customer alignment to understand customers with empathy and capturing the people-centric trend,

Strategic differentiation: Organizations are different, they have different cultures, different structures, they compete in different markets, they have a different scale. Digital businesses are becoming complex and uncertain, to survive and thrive. Every competitive business has a unique set of key capabilities, with often described characteristics such as robustness, flexibility, innovation, speed, comprehensiveness, responsiveness, agility, improvement, sensitivity, optimization, resilience, etc, to achieve its business goals and reach a high level of performance. A core competency is a harmonization of multiple capabilities such that it permeates the entire organization with a focus, and in alignment with the resource-based view. The characteristics of digital business are dynamic, volatile, uncertain, and hypercompetitive. Therefore, it is also critical to build dynamic capabilities to adapt to changes. The dynamic capability will further build the organization’s strengths in core areas and differentiated competency. A coherent company has a deliberately close alignment among the company’s strategic direction, its most distinctive capabilities, and most or all of its products and services, to execute capability-based strategy. Strategic differentiation occurs when all parts of the choir sing their respective parts in harmony to achieve a higher purpose and make a unique impact, the music as a symphony of voice.

Digital transformation is worth its weight because of its high impact on optimizing the business performance, building differentiated business competency, and driving the business’s long-term prosperity. if you are not different, you are a commodity. This is the foundation on which brands are built. This is the strategy that "helps" to protect the brand and products from the low-priced competition. Going digital takes the strategic approach, multifaceted management disciplines and structural procedure to drilling down the critical success factors that underpin each of the higher level performance dimension.

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The Monthly “100 Digital Rules” Book Tuning: Digital Management Rules Apr. 2018

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

The purpose of “100 Digital Rules: Setting Guidelines to Explore Digital New Normal “ is to establish digital principles and update business policies that can be applied holistically and guide the digital transformation systematically. Digital rules are based on a set of fundamental beliefs behind the methodologies and they help to shape mindsets behind behaviors. Digital rules encourage mindfulness, authenticity, creativity, inclusiveness, and discourage static thinking, silo, and bureaucracy, help to accelerate collective human progress.

             Digital Management Rules

Digital Management Principle: Less is More? Modern businesses become over-complex every day, they also add to such eco-system complexity! If we accept it is complex, somewhat unpredictable or not completely predictable, we have to accept uncertainty. Uncertainty comes with complexity. Simplicity vs complexity is an age-old dilemma even in English Grammar! Logically, simplifying the complicated thing is an optimal and smart choice either for running the business or solving a problem. "Less is more." So, what are the principles to follow in pursuit of just right simplicity?.

Simplicity as a Principle People are complex by nature, but to dwell on complexity is to complicate an implicate order that is naturally simple. Getting to simple is not easy for most people because they rather follow the traditions and set rules and regulations in the society. They don't bother to remove the dust around them or want to question the unknown, or challenge the status quo, out of fear. So how to address complexity, and what's the advantage to set simplicity as a principle and live with it?

The Five Principles to Manage Digital Workforce? People are the most invaluable asset in the business, however, in many organizations, talent management, and performance management are dysfunctional, silo, quantity-driven and short-term focused, lack of holistic approaches to managing performance, innovation, culture, and talent more cohesively. So what are the set of principles to follow in managing today's digital workforce effectively?

Three Principles of Communication Effectiveness? Communication is always important, although it is the means to the end, not the end itself. The end is for problem solving and idea brainstorming. A great communicator doesn’t need to be “the everyone’s cup of tea,” but in order to communicate effectively and avoid the miscommunication symptoms such as “lost in translation,” you have to follow the right set of principles and deliver the messages persuasively and creatively.

Digital CIOs’ Management Practices - Applying 80/20 Rule in IT Management The 80-20 rule is a rule of thumb that states 80% of outcomes can be attributed to 20% of all causes for a given event. In business, the 80-20 principle is often used to point out that 80% of a company's revenue is generated by 20% of its total customers. Therefore, the rule is used to help managers identify and determine which operating factors are most important and should receive the most attention, based on an efficient use of resources. The 80-20 rule is also known as the Pareto Principle, at its core, the 80-20 rule is a statistical distribution of data that says 80% of a specific event can be explained by 20% of the total observations. From there, it was expanded to be applied to the study of management techniques and principles with different facets of business and the economy. It is now used to describe almost any type of output in the real world, from the science of management to the patterns of the physical world. IT management is both art and science. How can Digital CIOs apply 80/20 rule for developing IT management practices to improving IT budgeting efficiency, quality optimization, and project/portfolio success rate?

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with over 4600 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. 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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How to Spot Your Change Champions

Intelligence is tested by changeability, and quality is proved by changeability. 

The increasing speed, velocity, as well as the fast pace of technological advances have clearly impacted the nature and scope of opportunity as well as the risk involved. When you stop changing, you've already lost. A changeable organization is to creating organizations where change is the norm and happens the whole time. Change the game is a mindset, people are always the center of changes. Change Agent has the ability to play the right role and know which to play, and when. To expedite change, "put the right people in the right positions to lead change seamlessly,” needs to become the mantra. But can you spot change champions and empower change agents in order to develop the culture of change and build change as the business competency?

Change leaders: Leadership is about the future and change. The rate of change has accelerated, indicating that business leaders must learn how to strike a balance between managing complex issues today and be forecasting the uncertain issues of tomorrow. Change or transformational leaders are the responsible top executives in the organization, where change has to be implemented. Change or transformational leaders can provide the direction as vision, mission, strategy, as well as leadership skills like delegation, decision-making, and monitoring. Change leadership concerns the driving forces, visions, and processes that fuel large-scale transformation. It represents the political will to go for the change. Change leader is a key role that should always be part of the team. In almost every case, if this role was not functioning, change failed or was at least delayed in a very costly way. Leadership is about change management and also the ability to take initiative. Digital transformation is the large-scale change effort, represents a break from the past, to change the "nature" of something, with a high level of impact and complexity. The right change leaders can clarify vision, provide clear directions, bring cohesive process, and stand by their word and motivate. This role affects most through congruent behavior, continuous endorsement of the digital transformation and regular communication to keep the momentum.

Change champions: People need time to assimilate change and work through the issues that result from the change, moving from the emotional to the rational. Many say that people’s intelligence is tested by their changeability, and their quality is proved by their changeability. Changeability gives you confidence because you know you are able to positively adapt to any given situation accepting, embracing, and lead changes. Developing changeability takes effort and time. What a Change Agent or champion most often does is to instill drive, passion, and enthusiasm, expand knowledge, harness skills, build capabilities, and make continuous improvement. Change champion has a specific skill set in the field of the change additionally, to the specialist knowledge. Don’t let change overwhelm you, but ride change curves through building the multilayered changeability. A change agent has the right dose of risk appetite and the good attitude to drive change because it takes courage, confidence, and intelligence to overcome the “ fear of failure.” The best judgment and a qualitative approach are crucial for managing risk in change.

Change specialists: The changeability is the crucial pillar that keeps the business dynamic, energetic, and adaptive. The process, technology, capability tuning. etc, are all tactics to get the organization there; but it all starts with the realization that "we can't stay the same." The right change specialists provide transparency about the tools used and the factors to be managed. They are the people that stand outside the political hierarchy of the changing area. They are cross-functional specialists, insightful outliers, outside experts, their main skills are the understanding of the change mechanisms and human behavior as well as providing appropriate measures for facilitating change. Change is an unspecific way of saying the transition from one to another state. Whether these changes are related to IT, business processes or models, or value systems are not relevant. The mechanisms that have to be applied are the same. Considering putting yourself under the pressure of deviating from age-old habits due to a "Change Regime.” The first question that comes to mind is perhaps "what values in it ? "or "What is the ROI of that extra effort ??" or "what benefit it carries? Change management process will cut across several business units and the ultimate goal will be effective business operation. Main skills of change specialists are understanding the mechanisms of change and human behavior as well as providing appropriate measures for facilitating change.

Spotting change champions is essential to catalyze changes because every organization consists of a majority of the reluctant people with change inertia. Good critical thinking skills, a high level of adaptability, learning agility, communication and engagement skill are all critical traits of change champions. Habit, value, and incentive in terms of benefits or reward or growth are the common factors, which drive an individual to change. Either individually or collectively, change needs to become the ongoing capability and differentiated competency.

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Can CIOs Wear the New Thinking Hat to Run IT as the Business

Although the mind shift is challenging, it is a crucial step to bridge the chasm between IT and business.


Information is now permeating into every corner in the business, and technology is often the disruptive force of digitalization. The general expectation from IT has changed. Not only are they being seen as an enabler, they are now mandatorily required to give ROI for the investments. Forward-looking organizations also empower their CIOs to lead change and catalyze innovation. The CIO's leadership penetration is about the depth of leadership insight and the breadth of enterprise knowledge upon understanding business as a whole. CIOs need to update both their mindsets as well as leadership responsibilities to run IT as the business.

The digital CIO needs to wear the new IT thinking hat: The “old thinking” of IT is the support function to "keep the lights on" and take the orders from business users for fixing things. In many organizations, IT is still perceived as slow, expensive, and not aligned with the business. With the exponential growth of information, on-demand IT service model, and the trend of IT consumerization, it is necessary to rethink the very idea of 'supporting' the enterprise - and think instead of getting rid of as much IT support as possible. Because this is what liberates innovation. You lose trustful repose which you experienced when you still blindly follow the traditional ways of thinking. IT can lead to the design of products and services that actually create a return. But it won't happen with 'old thinking.' The transition from a maintenance mindset to innovative and value creation mindset is a stretch for some IT leaders, especially for those growing under IT rank. Boldness is often not part of their personality profile. But with the digital paradigm shift, the disruptions come almost overnight, information and knowledge management becomes the bottleneck for business’s surviving and thriving. Technology is the important ingredient in almost all critical business processes. In today's hyper-connected digital world, it is very difficult to figure out any business solutions to complex business problems without IT ingredients in it. IT leaders must wear the new thinking hat to reimagine IT as the change agent and reinvent IT as an innovation hub. IT leaders need to be bold enough to lead through a clear vision, determined enough to adapt to changes, persistent enough to stick to the set of core principles, and creative enough to explore the new possibilities.

The CIO has a role to play in balancing, not just leveling the internal playing field: The old thinking of IT is in the box, but digital CIOs should practice “out-of-the-box” thinking to connect wider dots for sparking innovation. The highly effective corporations need to embed the power of information in its fiber to weave business competencies and leverage information to create the long-term sustainable competitive advantage for organizations. However, many organizations create a sense of internal competition that can easily make the C-level participants lose sight of the end game. Information is power and it depends whether that power is used for the good purpose of the organization or political point scoring. IT is actually in a unique position to balance process and flexibility; standard and innovation; opportunities and risks. IT management has to work both in IT and on IT to ensure that information flows frictionlessly and IT is part of the business solution.

The CIO is a serious partner in the inner circle to creating value-added strategies and sharing deeper insights into the opportunities IT can do: The CIO has a role to play in both strategic leadership and IT management. The tough choice facing CIOs is not about only picking one identity as either being strategic or tactical, but about when should act as a strategic leader, when should play as a tactical manager and how to play each role effectively. In high mature, forward-thinking organizations, the CIO is a serious partner in the inner circle, gets invited to the big table for sharing technological vision and co-creating strategies. This is a phenomenal opportunity for CIOs to educate other executive leadership teams on the value of IT and how they can help to accelerate the leadership's strategy and agenda coming and for the future years. As such, CIOs must be the strategic leader as their peer executive officers must be - know the whole business model, understand the markets the business operates in, the competitive landscape, have a medium/long term investment and performance horizon in mind. The role of modern CIO is to have a full understanding of upstream and downstream impacts, identify and blend the ways that information and technology can assist and shape the business by linking all digital aspects together to enforce the value creation and build business competency.

A digital CIO has to focus on guiding the company through the digital transformation. Leadership is about creating a powerful future that is compelling in the present. Although the mind shift is challenging, it is a crucial step to bridge the chasm between IT and business, utilize the best talent, capabilities, and resources, produce meaningful business results and unlock IT performance and potential.

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 4/27/2018

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with 4600+ 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, IT Management, and Talent Management.

CIOs as “Chief Interpretation Officer”: How to Improve Communication Effectiveness The magic “I” in the title of CIO has many indications, such as Chief Information Officer,” “Chief Innovation Officer,” “Chief Influence Officer,” etc. Communications sometimes seem like an oxymoron. As we move from applying technology as a vehicle to maximize efficiency and minimize costs to leveraging technology as an enabler and catalyzer of totally new business models, to maximize business potential, forward-thinking organizations empower their IT to lead the digital transformation proactively. Therefore, CIOs need to become “Chief Interpretation Officer,” to bridge the communication gap between business and IT and improve digital leadership maturity.

The BOD's Three Oversights of Digital Transformation The beauty of the digital landscape is the fresh insight of business. The digital paradigm is an emerging ecosystem of principles, policies, and practices that set limits or boundaries, also offer the guidance for problem-solving or creating something new under the digital rules, keep information flow and achieve a state of dynamic balance. An effective board enables and directs management towards good outcomes, and ensure the business is on the right track to reach well-defined business goals. What are important oversights the board can offer about digital transformation, and what are the possible governance methods, techniques, structures, etc, help to improve the boardroom effectiveness?

Five Stages of Digitalization "Digitalization represents the next stage of business maturity which will improve how the enterprise works and interacts with its ecosystem. During the journey, there are many accumulated steps from doing digital to going digital to being digital. Companies need to take the journey with logical steps, embed digital into the very fabric of the business and laser focus on the most important things to get business digital ready.

Climbing Up the Digital Pyramids to Improve Organizational Maturity Today’s organization simply just can’t stand still. Digital transformation is a journey rather than a destination. It starts with the realization that where you are currently no longer can deliver the business vision and objective of success for your company and your shareholders, especially for the long term. Bridging the 'gap of opportunity' between where you are and want to become is a welcomed challenge. Digitalization is not the flat road. It is the journey with many accumulated steps to climbing up the digital pyramids from doing digital to going digital to being digital.

How can CIOs Shift their Focus to Avoid Becoming “Chief Irrelevant Officer” More often than not, technology is the catalyst for driving business change and digital transformation, information is the lifeblood of businesses. The expectations for CIO have grown multi-fold, and they are expected to be visionary and path-finder for organizational strategy and growth. How should CIO shift their focus to improve leadership effectiveness and how can CIOs prioritize the limited time and resources to ascend IT maturity

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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The Digital Readiness of Organizations

 It’s critical to discover the strategic and predictive pathway to change, increase confidence, position a brand and leverage resources to make the digital paradigm shift effortlessly.

We are in a time of tremendous change, the dawn of digital age, the path to the next level of digital maturity, also in the era of confusion and information overload. Most organizations have a mix of old and new, physical and virtual, order and chaos, the old way and the new way to do things, etc. Therefore, evaluating the digital readiness of the business is important to allow room for adjustments and keeping the organization dynamic and informative, in order to manage a high mature business.

Change readiness: Digitalization is a radical change. Closer to reality is that 'change' is continuously happening in the environment of a company. The desires of stakeholders, clients, and employees are evolving naturally. Either individually or at the organizational level, change readiness is an important indicator of the business competency. We are living in a complex world where inventions, developments, and conflicts are continuously changing and that makes it impossible to have complete knowledge and understanding of many issues facing the business today. The only certainty leaders of organizations will have is that their business will change. It is only a matter of time. How do you assess an organization that is ready for changes? How can you measure change readiness? And can you change the process of change management to ensure it's effective rather than fluffy? The change shouldn’t be just a few random efforts put on the surface, it must be defined in its base elements such as process, structure, culture, and associated benefits to be achieved through productivity, financial and innovation lenses. It’s important to take the logical scenario, apply the right strategy and methodology. It is one thing to establish a future state and understand the intended outcome of the future state. Therefore, those who prepare their employees to cope with all coming change will be the companies of the future.  Successful organizations see the changes coming and with preplanning to overcome the resistance before it even manifests. They build change and as an ongoing business capability and differentiated competency. Change Management, therefore, should be an adequate, logical, and systematic effort to any environmental shift. Change readiness starts at the top, how do you engage with today's management and make them change themselves into the role needed today for modern digital Management. Businesses will be more successful when they realize that one of their greatest strengths will be their change capability.

Quality readiness: Quality is defined by a number of factors, such as effectiveness, efficiency, flexibility, innovation, performance, manageability, operability, reusability, reliability, availability, or maturity. Quality has both tangible and intangible characteristics. When you see it, you know it. Quality readiness is a key indicator of overall business differentiation and maturity. Where there are ineffectiveness and inefficiency in business management, there are quality gaps existing. Developing the business scope of best/next process to focus on improving quality attributes takes work and a level of credibility within the organization. From the business management perspective, quality (Efficiency + Effectiveness = Q) is doing the right thing right, the first time, with no backlog and wastage and highest customer satisfaction rate. Generally, you have to have effectiveness first, and then make the effect more efficient. Quality Management is basically the fundamental purpose of serving the customer and meeting/exceeding their expectations. The rest of them are the tools, which can be used as the situation warrants. From a talent management perspective, quality is the perfect mix of confidence and humility; character and charisma, creativity and discipline; toughness and gentleness; intelligence and childishness; uniqueness and fit-in, inquisitiveness and resourcefulness, the right dose of ego, and the good taste, etc. As a degree of quality is in everything people do and experience, quality management is to help them in doing what they are doing better, easier and so on. What is required is clarifying the purpose and engaging all the people involved in working together as a team to excel in the delivery of product/service/solutions. Quality management is not just the task of one specific department, it is the cross-disciplinary practice.

Inclusiveness readiness: Digital means blurred functional/organizational/industrial/geographical borders or territories. It is a waste of resources to leave any valuable human potential left unrecognized, untapped and unused. Good management practice is the ability to harness the best potential of all human resources in the organization. Diversity becomes the hotbed of innovation and inclusiveness should be the digital tune for leading the paradigm shift. The business leaders must work with the digital fit mindset to create an inclusive organization with every dip in the business lifecycle. There are all kinds of differences that exist between individuals. Because creativity is a combination of divergent and convergent thinking. To build a creative team or a highly innovative organization, the focus of inclusiveness needs to focus on cognitive differences, skills, abilities and the wealth of ideas. It is important for building a creative team having people who do not have the same viewpoint of varying issues so that they can complement each other’s viewpoint, and spark innovation or the alternative way to do things. When insight rules the day, mislabeling or misjudgment got fixed and bias, especially at the unconscious level, got taken care of effectively. Orient people and make them aware of the inclusiveness of their organization or team, help them understand the value of harnessing the unique competency and cognitive difference. From the top down, the organization or society is on the right way to embrace diversity from both heart and mind; and inclusiveness becomes the digital new normal.

Diagnose the real issues of the business and make an objective assessment of digital readiness. The journey of digitalization often needs to work cross boxes instead within the box; go broad to embrace the digital ecosystem and dig deeper to fine-tune the underlying functions, empower people to evolve, innovate and accelerate. It’s critical to discover the strategic and predictive pathway to change, increase confidence, position a brand and leverage resources to make the digital paradigm shift effortlessly.

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The Monthly “Digital Gaps” Book Tuning: Gap Minding Leadership Apr. 2018

 If you are not taking steps now to shrink that leadership gaps, you will not be prepared to lead the digital business in the future. 

"Digital Gaps -Bridging Multiple Gaps to Run Cohesive Business” is a guidebook to help digital leaders and professionals today identify, analyze, and mind multiple gaps with the multidisciplinary insight and holistic understanding. Today’s digital organization simply just can’t stand still, bridging the 'gap of opportunity' between where you are and want to become is a welcomed challenge. Leadership is about future and change, it is important to bridge leadership gap and take a stepwise approach to make a leap of digital transformation.

                                    

                            Gap-Minding Leadership

The Digital CIO as the Gap Minding Role? Nowadays, information is permeating into every corner of the business and technology is often the disruptive force of digitalization. The CIO is not a static management role, but a dynamic leadership role due to the changing nature of technology and overwhelming growth of information. Especially now more and more enterprises are leveraging IT for revenue-generating initiatives. The IT leader of the future and the exemplars of today must move away from pure IT manager, and become a trustful business partner and an insightful strategist to bridge the gap between IT and business, and between the industrial age and the digital era, The important component of IT leadership success has to do with the definition or scope of the role that the CIO is playing and the profundity of IT leadership influence

Gap Minding Leadership Practices in Digital Boardroom? Digitalization makes the business flatter and the world smaller because of its nature of hyper-connectivity and interdependence. Competition at the leading edge of business is also becoming fiercer at the age of digitalization and globalization. Thus, successful companies need to grow and innovation is no longer "nice to have," but must have business competency. The corporate board plays a critical role in setting policies for innovation and exemplifying leadership influence. Thus, foresightful BoDs should always look for the complementary mindsets, diverse experiences, and differentiated skillsets so that collectively, they can avoid groupthink, make sound judgments, provide innovative advice and mind leadership gaps to ensure the boardroom digital ready. ?

Three “G” Factors in Innovators? Creativity is an innate ability to create naval ideas. Creativity is, by nature, unique to each person. Being innovative is a state of mind. There is no template which you can apply and suddenly have a creative workforce. It must be done slowly, experimentally, patiently, and individually. Either for individuals or businesses, creativity is a long-term endeavor. It must be cultivated. The best way to foster creativity is to help people communicate in a way that instills confidence, not fear; rejuvenate passion, not routine; inspire thinking differently, not “command and control.” Here are three “G” factors in innovators.?

The New Book “Digital Gaps” Chapter 2 Introduction: Digital Leadership Gaps Digital means hyperconnectivity, fierce competition, and “VUCA” digital normality. Successful companies need to keep growing and innovating, and developing the next generation of leadership is one of the best ways to do that. The variety of management studies shows that there are significant leadership gaps for both innovation management and management innovation, as well as the radical digital transformation. The traditional cookie-cutting matching leadership development approach more possibly lands a homogeneous follower, cannot discover an authentic leader. And traditional talent pool is too static, limited and not dynamic enough to select authentic, creative, and energetic digital leaders who can lead more effectively in today’s complex global business environment. The change needs to come from the top to amplify its influence. If you are not taking steps now to shrink that leadership gaps, you will not be prepared to lead the digital business in the future. But more specifically, how to identify and close digital leadership gaps in order to improve leadership effectiveness and maturity?

Three Traits to Bridge Digital and Global Leadership Gaps We are at the age of digital dawn, now the physical barriers can no longer be the walls to separate people from communicating and sharing knowledge and insight, are we on the way to recognize the best of the best, or simply blend the variety of perspectives into the new ideas and solutions, and more critically, what are emergent traits to bridge global leadership gaps, and develop the new generation of digital leaders and managers who can gain respect, win hearts and minds not just locally, but globally?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with about #4600th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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"Digital Gaps" iBook Order Link

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"Digital Gaps" Introduction, Slideshare

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 1 Cognitive Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 2  Leadership Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 3 Management Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 4 Capability Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 5 Professional Gaps

Conclusion: Bridging Gaps to Catalyze Digital Maturity

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