The Monthly Digital Insight: The Digital Framework and Scoreboard Aug. 2018

Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, and creativity is all about connecting the dots.

The digital frameworks add value as they are implementations of the patterns to avoid having to reinvent the wheel, it helps the organization embed a digital culture into the very fabric of the business, explore digital in a structural way and laser focus on the most important things to get business digital ready.

The Digital Framework and Scoreboard

Build a Comprehensive Digital Framework with Principles, Processes, and Practices to Accelerate Digital Transformation Digitalization is not just about adopting the latest technologies or cool gadget only, it has to expand into every dimension of the organization with a structural approach. The digital framework provides guidelines, checklist, standard, processes, do & don't practices, as well as tools and building blocks to define or develop business competencies and manage a holistic digital transformation.

Three Aspects of IT-Woven Digitalization Framework Digital is fluid, digital is also complex. It becomes complex if things do interact, particularly in the case of nonlinear interactions in today’s dynamic digital ecosystem. IT provides an important structure and framework to streamline the processes and orchestrate the digital transformation. The well-developed IT-led digital transformation framework laser focuses on the strategic goals and maintains the digital balance for driving change in a structural way.

How to Develop a Comprehensive Innovation Framework Innovation is not serendipity. Working in an innovation garden not only takes passion but also needs the process and hard work. A systematic innovation approach is to depict innovation as a system, rather than a traditional process. Innovation performance depends on the alignment of its various components (people, process, resources, actions, controls, measurement, etc.). Though there's no single structure that will work in every organization, the comprehensive innovation framework with all important enterprise components is the great tool to intensify innovation with focus and manage innovation in a structural way.

Navigate Changes through “5W + 1 H” Change Management Framework Change is a volatile subject, just like change itself. Everything changes continuously by following the laws of evolution, and the rate of change is accelerated. A changeable organization is to creating organizations where change is the norm and happens all the time, thereby delivering faster and increasing market share. The successful businesses are the ones that have learned WHEN change is called for and how to decide WHAT to change. Change cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the organization, to navigate through the “5W+1H” Change Management framework.

What's on your Digital Transformation Scoreboard: Forward-looking organizations are on the journey of digital transformation. How would you calculate the digital maturity score of your organization? Which management metrics should you apply to measure the progress of changes? Proactive or reactive? On the track or too slow? Healthy or sick? The balanced scorecard is a strategic performance management tool that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. So, what is on your digital transformation scoreboard?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with about #4900th 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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Experiment with Digital Innovation Externally

Digitalization stipulates companies work together in a hyper-connected and continuously converging environment in which organizations can explore and manage innovation in a structural way.

Innovation is a systematic way of applying creativity in real life and business. In general, innovation is a discipline for markets change and shift, and for each company attempting to deal with these changes, there is a different path to follow. An innovation ecosystem should fully cover wide enough directions. It can involve bringing in ideas from outside, the diverse communities to drive features and understand the value-in-use of products/services, and take a structural approach to experiment digital innovation externally.

Look at what others are doing in your industry: Great ideas can be gleaned by viewing similar businesses in your own industry, state, nation or the other side of the world. Design your ideation processes in a way that it allows you to consider multiple viewpoints in a creative challenge for sourcing a lot of ideas externally. More and more firms are learning and implementing industry best practices in innovation, perhaps it is a better approach to strive for using good practices. There is a recognizable core of approaches and activities that produce profitable innovation, and there are companies that use them. But keep in mind: If the best practice you want to adopt is to be implemented in the same context, it could work. If the context is different, it is worth understanding how that difference could impact the situation. Is that the idea or practice good for a certain organization and for the specific situation and challenges that are faced or that actually requires different priorities as compared to others. Be curious about looking at what others are doing, but be cautious of blindly following, as innovation is a differentiated competency which cannot be imitated so easily. Every organization needs to develop its own set of best and next practices.

Look at other industries locally and around the world who may serve a similar target market: Use these insights to create/ modify your products and lead the way in your industry. Digital innovation must be a multi-disciplinary effort to connect the wider dots. Cross-industrial dot connection would add nonlinear thinking and tangential thinking provide more opportunity for innovation than linear thinking. Digital hyper-connectivity can foster innovation through the broader scope of collaboration. it's important to digitally connect key resources/assets in their vicinity/context to the resource-rich innovation hubs/clusters across the business ecosystem. It can also involve close-coupled relationships between organizations, with the intent of exploring areas of learning that fit strategically for all parties. In doing so, you can create the collegiality and "shared context for learning," for sparking creativity. From an idea management perspective, interact with people from another industry, the individuals that shift gears in their day to day work can often produce more fresh ideas, with their ability to think more holistically when it comes to new products or designs, and more often during the early stages of ideation around disruptive innovations.

Query your non-customers: Why isn’t everyone buying your product? Are there consumers who are not yet in the category but could be if a suitable product was available? The outcome could lead to a whole new market to play in. The main challenge organizations face when attempting to innovate is a consistent process through which they can develop an idea to bring the business value. Communities help develop ideas. Communities based on mutual interest encourage close collaboration. To expand your customer base, it's a matter of co-creating with people outside your current customers, and design community that shares a common interest, using a consistent process while maintaining momentum. These communities can be engaged in offering ideas, enhancing these ideas by combining and building upon one another to shape solutions and work together to implement resulting innovations. The paradigm shifts when these clusters morph into larger entities that have sufficiently large internal resources to develop innovative ideas, expand the customer base, create fresh ideas and offer new products or services to attract prospects and fit their needs.

Review of the past: Some things from the past are circular and keep coming back in. Your business could take advantage of re-introducing the past in a new way. On the roadmap for developing the capability to successfully and perhaps continuously deliver transformational innovations, there are a number of incremental opportunities based on the lesson learned from the past. Incremental innovation is the accumulated step of doing transformational innovation. In fact, you cannot “disrupt” without incremental innovation being part of the process. Review of the past is necessary, however, do not take the innovation theories or best practices as absolute truth. Due to the changing circumstances, some best practices are no longer the best practices for you; or some innovation theories are also outdated somehow. Failure is part of innovation. A balanced approach for innovation management is that failures need to be analyzed, and “lesson learned,” should be applied in the future wisely.

Engage with futurists/visionaries: Futurists can often inform you of what is coming, It can also tell what customers need and perhaps the future trend of products and services. This is largely due to the fact that innovating in today’s digital world has become increasingly complex in nature. The digital leaders need to observe, perceive, and pay attention to the myriad of internal, external, national or global forces that define and influence the way we do business these days. The futurists or visionaries have the growth mind to predict and catch the digital trend. In this fast-changing world, if you don't look further, keep learning, and move forward, you are already lagging. The visionaries think forward and innovatively. But others get stuck to the conventional wisdom for too long; it leads to the outdated perceptions which stifle innovation. Innovation needs to lay out different structures, thinking the solutions to allow this to develop in its potential where organizations are combining all that is available to them in imaginative, advantageous ways. Digital visionaries are the outliers who can step out of a conventional thinking box, or linear patterns. Therefore, they could see things further or deeper.

Digitalization stipulates companies work together in a hyper-connected and continuously converging environment in which organizations can explore and manage innovation in a structural way. Explore innovation internally and experiment innovation externally. How much further along would innovation go if having great management and creative teams facilitated by those proactive innovators, to develop socially and environmentally sustainable innovations. That is the way to pursue the art of possible.

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Three Aspects of Digital Management Precision

Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service is consistent, and business competency is cohesive.

Digital management is responsible for designing, enabling, and enforcing a collaborative, innovative, intelligent, and inclusive working environment for engaging employees, delighting customers, unlocking business performance, and improve overall organizational quality and maturity. Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service is consistent, and business competency is cohesive. Digital precision is one of the most important characteristics of digital quality. Here are three aspects of digital management precision.

Information precision: Information is one of the most invaluable assets of the business. The goal of information management is to process raw data and abstract information from it; it’s concerned with classification, manipulation, and dissemination of information, to gain knowledge and capture business insight and foresight. Thus, information precision directly impacts decision effectiveness and strategy management success rate. If the information is unavailable, inaccurate, lost, stolen, or compromised, it will hinder the achievement of business goals and even misled the business in the wrong direction. Information does not live alone but permeates to everywhere in the businesses. Thus, the value of information is not isolated. The Information Management lifecycle is the overall business process of aligning the use of information through information precision and assurance management to solve the issues such as, what data you have, in what formate and the location & method it is held, information accessibility or reliability,  as well as information exploitation to ensure that the information refined can collaboratively enable and fully support the business objectives. It is the structural process of aligning the usage of information through the multidisciplinary management discipline.

Foresight/Forecast precision: With overwhelming growth of information, a faster pace of changes and unprecedented business complexity, envisioning and foresight are critical to navigating the organization into the uncharted water or blurred digital territories. Forecast precision will help the company well prepare the journey for either capturing the rising business opportunities timely or prevent potential risks effortlessly. ‘Foresightful’ minds collectively feel the horizon in which you are able to make reliable predictions. As the mater of fact, to predict is to control and to co-develop the future for running a better business. In a business scope, there are some of the important bits and bytes of information needed to forecast a new market, an emerging technology trend, or the business growth opportunities. Sometimes you need to be able to look for something “hidden,” which is not always so obvious, in order to make better assumptions or improve forecast precision. Besides information precision, the highest level of future sensitivity comes from appreciations of the whole situation which relies heavily on intuition and sense as well. The goal of the business foresight and forecast is about predicting what will happen and step further - what shall you do upon it. It’s the scientific management discipline of business orientation.

Metrics Precision: A measurement system is a necessary foundation for continuous improvement. Metrics can help you get some objective perspective on what you are trying to manage, but they need to be selected, crafted, and interpreted well. The right metrics can be helpful to track progress in an improvement initiative. Without measurements or lack of metrics precision, it can be hard to tell whether attempted improvements make the situation better or worse. Improving metrics precision means you need to know how to select the right metrics as well as measure them in the right way. You need to know the exact purpose of the metrics and what follow-up action is needed if it does not meet the expectation. When people are not clear about what measures they want to collect and how they intend to use the information to support business decisions, often you can find the problems with metrics precision. People use inappropriate metrics for the situation or people twist metrics to match their agendas or preconceived notions, lack of metrics precision will decrease productivity and cause management ineffectiveness in the long run. It’s important to follow the “SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time-bound) principle for Improving metrics precision and performance management effectiveness.

The digital paradigm shift is the multidimensional expansion. The digital management precision, technology adoption, culture adaptation, and business capability tuning. etc, are all tactics to get the organization from here to there for adapting to the fast pace of changes and getting digital ready.

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 8/30/2018

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 4900+ 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 of digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Monitor the Pulse of Digital Innovation As businesses get more cut-throat in the hyper-connected digital environment, innovation has to become the part of DNA in an organization for delivering unique products or services, improving employee engagement and customer satisfaction. Innovation can occur anywhere in the organization, and frankly, it has to occur in every aspect of the organization. On the other hand, innovation is a means, not an end. If you don't know where you want to go, you are unlikely to get there. Monitoring the innovation pulse of your organization is to help the leadership team make an objective assessment of the business’s innovation capability, as well as how to make the proper adjustment for improving the success rate of innovation management.

Planning is the Earliest Stage of Change Management? Embracing digital is inevitable as that is now part of the reality. In order to lead change and drive digital transformation, organizations should ride above the change curve by making the dynamic and comprehensive planning. Planning is the earliest stage of Change Management. Planning work is about stakeholder engagement and about working to achieve stakeholder ownership of the emerging strategic plan and roadmap. Engaging those who will be impacted by the change and enabling them to be part of shaping their future. That is one of the best ways of tackling change and improve its success rate.

Three “S” to Digitize Boardroom The digital organization is a living thing with the ability to continually change as the world changes and evolves with an intersecting and interacting business ecosystem seamlessly. If a Board is to fulfill its fiduciary responsibilities to its stakeholders, it needs to take a professional and systematic approach for assessing strategy, prioritizing agendas, advising changes, overseeing risks and keeping track of business performance by applying efficient tools. The corporate board is also the mastermind of the digital transformation by focusing on the following three “S.”

The Monthly “Digital Hybridity” Book Tuning: The “Digital Hybridity” Book Summary Aug. 2018 The purpose of the book “Digital Hybridity: How to Strike the Right Balance for Digital Paradigm Shift” is to shed some light on how to strike the right balance of stability and changes; being transactional to keep spinning and being transformational to leap forward for making a seamless digital paradigm shift. Digital organizations should apply the hybrid management approach, focus on building a diverse, networked, and extended modern working environment in which the powerful digital platforms and computing technologies enable seamless conversations, delayer overly rigid organizational hierarchy, inspire idea sharing and brainstorming, and engage employees and partners to achieve the high-performance result.

The CIO as “Chief Innovation Officer”: How to Build a Highly Innovative Team The Digital Era upon us is the age of innovation. Innovation involves new ways of bringing together ideas and resources to create something novel and then transform those novel ideas to achieve the business value. Identification of the novel is only the beginning, the heavy lifting starts as the company starts leveraging talented people, aligns resources and executes these novel ideas effectively. From innovation management perspective, how to build highly innovative teams, inspire creativity and improve the success rate of innovation?

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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Awakening the Digital Superconsciousness to Make the Paradigm Shift

The digital leaders today need to gain the multitude of “digital awareness” and be able to look ahead and identify the certain trends in their industry.

Either individually or collectively, the “consciousness” about our own potentials is changing the way we see ourselves, our roles in a community: a team or a company. Digital transformation is a journey, the increasing pace of technological advances and exponential growth of information have clearly impacted the nature and scope of opportunity that the business could ever experience and risks the business exposes to. Is it possible that at some points on the digital journey we all experience so-called digital “super-consciousness,” with the transcendent movement to reach the next level of the business maturity and collective progress?

Awaken information consciousness: In this digital information age, there isn't really much of an enterprise without the massive oceans of information that flows through the enterprise, at any given split second. Information is raw material when you manipulate the raw material in meaningful ways, the business is to make the shift from the unconscious mode for keeping the wheel spinning to the conscious or even superconscious mode to achieve the higher performance business results. Technology allows for the capture, manipulation, and presentation of data, Information Management system helps to process and analyze information. The organizational consciousness can be gained through information management lifecycle as the massive volumes of data and information need to be collected, categorized, sliced, diced, mapped, and refined into the valuable knowledge and business insight for either making tough decisions and complex problems. Information also brings about business ideas, and business ideas generate lots of information as well. Thus, organizations with information consciousness are highly responsive, highly intelligent, and highly innovative.

Awaken change consciousness: The digital era mean increasing pace of changes. Thus, it’s imperative to awaken the changing consciousness of the people. The manual change is fragile and often temporary. it usually occurs at the behavior level. The human element of change entails a people-centric approach to change management style, starting from relations between people, with incremental change consciousness. From Change Management perspective, awakening change consciousness means understanding the psychology behind the change and solving problems at the mindset level in order to have a ripple effect for changes. It means change management needs to be in sync with people, and awakening their consciousness about changes. To understand the business or the world as a complex adaptive system requires an understanding of how things have come together, being 'built,' as well as why change is needed. Either at the individual or the organizational level, to self-renew and create a positive change tomorrow, you need to start today understanding self. The transformative change needs to deprogram the old mindset, and update new knowledge; let go of the “voice from the past,” and connect the hearts and the minds of people; collectively, having the change consciousness to create the paradigm shift.

Awakening the ecosystem consciousness: The digital ecosystem is dynamic, hyperconnected and expansive, it expands when the components broaden their community scopes and expand their business territories. The organizations are like the switch connected to the dynamic ecosystem which is controlled by both internal and external factors. For many, the ecosystems have evolved without much attention or planning. To effectively respond to the new dynamic, organizations need to awaken the ecosystem consciousness, start thinking about ways to influence their ecosystems and create new revenue streams while becoming more responsive and innovative. Those highly scalable digital organizations can expand and amplify their influence with the ability to co-create in a digital ecosystem - treat customers, channel partners, vendors, and other industry ecosystem participants as active agents, and build new experiences and expand its impact. With the ecosystem consciousness, resources should be managed at the level of the ecosystem, rather than managing individual pieces, to improve business effectiveness. From innovation management perspective, the dynamic ecosystem explicitly seeks to create a flexible environment where people can grow, and business focuses on dynamic resources management. Instead of being rigidly grouped around a specific business, ecosystems draw together mutually supportive companies from multiple industries that collectively seek to create differentiated offerings and capture value they could not reach alone.

The enterprise consists of an amalgam of socio-systems, techno-systems, bio-systems, and econo-systems. Understanding that real-world development is multifaceted. The digital leaders today need to gain the multitude of “digital awareness” and be able to look ahead and identify the certain trends in their industry. They should have strong “digital consciousness,” to sense emergent opportunities, predict potential risks; have a strong understanding of what the business does, how it does it, and how it could be better, with a clear goal to achieve high performance and unleash business potential.

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The Monthly "IT Innovation" Book Tuning: From Information Management to Innovation Management Aug. 2018

Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, and creativity is all about connecting the dots.

The aim of modern Information Management has often been described as getting the right information to the right person, in the right format and medium, at the right time, in order to make the right decisions. The value of information is qualitative, measurable, and defined uniquely by an organization.

From Information Management to Innovation Management

From Information Management to Innovation Management The majority of IT organizations still get stuck at the lower level of IT maturity as a support center. With overflowing information and overwhelming business changes, IT must change -to not just "keep the lights on," but more focus on information and innovation management. What are the logical steps should IT take, and how to manage a balanced innovation portfolio to maximize business value and improve business performance?

Information Management vs. Innovation Management The abundance of information brings both unprecedented opportunities and risks to businesses today. Information is the lifeblood of the enterprise, but if not properly managed, it becomes at worst case a liability and at best case an underutilized asset. Information Management is all about having the right people to have the right information to make the right decisions at the right time. Information is one of the most critical pieces in innovation puzzle. Given this assertion, there is no limit to the value of information in running a high mature digital organization. CIOs as “Chief Innovation Officer”: How can you connect the dots between information management and innovation management?

Are we in a Knowledge Economy, Creativity Economy or still in the economy of scarcity Digital is the age of Big Data, information is the abstracted data, and knowledge is the abstracted information. Are we moving to the knowledge economy from the economy of scarcity? Digital is also the era of options, and options are built through creativity, so are we really witnessing a SHIFT from the 'knowledge economy' to a 'creativity economy' as well, or are we simply talking about the role that creativity plays in the creation of new knowledge & the things that flow from it more than before?

Information Management as a Threshold Competency of Digital IT Nowadays information is the lifeblood of the organization, all forward-looking organizations claim they are in the information management business, managing information and the information position of an organization is what ought to be called Information Management. Information Management is to make sure that the right information is in the right place at the right time and shared with the right persons for making the right decisions. IT is often the information steward of the business, and information management is a thresholding competency for running a digital IT.

Three “I” Factors in Digital Innovation: Digital era is the age of innovation. And digital innovation has the broader scope and three phases: Discovery of a problem or new idea, designing a prototype solution and the ultimate delivery of a commercially astute outcome. Innovation is not serendipity, but a systematic process to transform novel ideas and achieve their business values. At the enterprise scope, innovation management should focus on building a healthy innovation portfolio to establish business competency. Here are three “I” factors in digital innovation.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with about #4900th 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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Three “S” to Digitize Boardroom

The Board is responsible for contributing to both protecting the business values and creating the business value through effectively steering, strategizing, and scrutinizing.

The digital organization is a living thing with the ability to continually change as the world changes and evolves with an intersecting and interacting business ecosystem seamlessly. If a Board is to fulfill its fiduciary responsibilities to its stakeholders, it needs to take a professional and systematic approach for assessing strategy, prioritizing agendas, advising changes, overseeing risks and keeping track of business performance by applying efficient tools. The corporate board is also the mastermind of the digital transformation by focusing on the following three “S.”

Steering: Digital organizations are complex systems that are dynamic, self-evolving, self-adaptable, and self-perpetuating. Although you cannot predict every event happening on the journey, surely you need to proactively create a clear vision. Digital boards are like the steering wheel of their company, leading the business toward the uncharted water and blurred territories for reaching the well-selected destination. Thus, the directorship in any organization must be able to lead, build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate. The board directors as senior directorial roles have both privilege and responsibility to “talk the walk,” make the good policies or set digital principles to drive changes and lead digital paradigm shift. In order to steer effortlessly, it’s important for the board to avoid groupthink, gain the contextual understanding of people, process, and technology, embrace the diversity of thoughts to fill blind spots or cognitive gaps. The effective board brings together such tremendous skills and experience mix to steer the change confidently.

Strategizing: The board should be highly accountable for strategy oversight about the future of the company. Effective strategy oversight requires sincere commitment to be independent, insightful and timely. But in some companies, a strategy exists only as a "dust collector" on some shelf. A truly strategic Boards can add real value to management in the strategy arena. Especially if management confuses strategy with the longer-term financial plans. A strategic board should be knowledgeable enough to help the management set broad strategic goals. They need to educate themselves by hearing different views about the organization, its environment, and strategic alternatives. The hot topic about strategy must be followed (with some flexibility, of course) at every board session, to ensure that management follows and does not "forget" the strategy. The boardroom sponsorship, "executive management buy-in" or "executive management's unconditional collaboration" are all critical to achieving the seamless strategic alignment. Objectives and tactics are the appropriate points of delegation to management.

Scrutinizing: Having critical eyes to scrutinizing the management in a constructive way means BoDs are able to see underneath the surface, ask insightful questions, and discover the hidden connections. It involves significant critical thinking elements relying heavily on the judgment in evaluating ideas, planning implementations, assessing risks, and evaluating business results. Consider each risk in terms of its immediacy, impact on the organization and the organization’s ability to absorb the shock and survive to repair itself in the worst case scenario. In practice, the board's role is to pull management out of the trees to see the forest; to understand the business landscape through the broad digital lens, to continue questioning on important issues where the management's answers do not make sense, and to continue looking for the new perspective or alternative solutions. Digital BoDs with the right dose of “doubt” show the constructive skepticism for brainstorming changes and advocating innovation. They are able to quickly assess any numbers and facts they are given, ask tough questions, collect invaluable feedback, update digital principles for harnessing communication and enforcing governance effectiveness.

The Board is responsible for contributing to both protecting the business values by monitoring the risk and creating the business value by inspiring the growth and lead the organization forward through effectively steering, strategizing, and scrutinizing. It is the organization as a whole, not just in the boardroom, from top-down, needs to systemically learn how to adapt and renew itself over time.

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The CIO’s Provocative, Sophisticated, and innovative Role in the Digital Business Future Orientation

Future orientation should help you prepare to meet what's coming!

Metaphorically, a digital organization is an organism - the "cells" are its people. It is living. The blood is the information which flows. Digital transformation isn’t just an extension of continuous improvement of the current business, but a quantum leap with radical change. Digital CIOs play the provocative, sophisticated and innovative role in the digital business future orientation which is the ability to identify, interpret, and lead change in the dynamic business environment, leverage information to trigger adequate responses to ensure the business’s survival and long-term success.

A provocative CIO: Fundamentally, organizations should spend more time looking forward - looking ahead in order to be more proactive - to anticipate. With the faster pace of changes, future orientation is part of the foundation of running a successful digital organization. In reality, far too many organizations have tended toward being “reactive,” not “proactive.” Thus, they often miss the opportunities to the business growth or lag the speed of the marketing change. Digital transformation starts with the realization that where you are currently no longer can deliver the business goals and reach the long-term business vision of your company and your shareholders. IT organization is the linchpin of the digitalization. Business-engaged CIO is a trustful leader to run a proactive IT and keeps navigating during rough sea. CIOs should be totally involved and participate in the strategic decisions of upper management and be proactive, build a comprehensive change agenda and have access to both internal and external resources to achieve the desired ROI. No person is perfect, neither is the organization. Mistake are made; its strength, its character, or its sustainability is determined to a large extent by its capability to “recover” and move forward. Digital leaders today must think ahead, be prepared for the challenges on the way, enforce IT-business communication and collaboration in order to lead change steadfastly.

A sophisticated CIO: With the unprecedented complexity and uncertainty facing businesses today, the digital CIO is the sophisticated role in leveraging multidimensional thinking to make sound judgments, applying the multidisciplinary IT management disciplines to build the business competency, and take an integrated approach for dynamic business planning and actions. The top priority of the CIO’s leadership agenda is based on the rough estimation of what the future conditions of business execution would be. CIOs should provide a comprehensive technological vision and the business oversight as IT is increasingly supportive of the competitive position of the business and solving the complex business problems holistically. The CIO’s role is sophisticated because often you need to dig deeper, and make an objective assessment of underlying business functions and processes, and look for something “hidden,” which is not always obvious. You don’t just accidentally find it, but take a structural approach to both identify the problems and solve them right. CIOs should also educate the business to gain an in-depth understanding of the technical complexity behind the scene, as well as the potential opportunities and risks. It requires profound leadership and cohesive management practices.

An innovative CIO: Reimaging the future of business is exciting, but investigating the different path for unlocking business performance and steering change is a journey. Innovative CIOs appreciate digital transformation because it brings an abundance of opportunities for business growth. The CIO needs to be engaged, and at the most senior levels to help influence and shape the business of the future. An innovative CIO plays a unique role for future orientation and making a leap of digitalization. Technology changes so quickly and information grows overwhelmingly, you must first be aware of new technology before you can learn to apply it to the business. Because technology is often the disruptive force behind changes and information is one of the most invaluable business assets, IT needs to be like the light power telling the business about the opportunities and possibilities and that means IT needs to really understand the goals of the business and synchronize with business goals. CIOs generally have a greater opportunity to stand out and take a lead in driving innovation across their companies. They look for every opportunity from risks; besides managing risks with every opportunity.

The only problem about the future is that it is usually here before we are ready for it. Future orientation should help you prepare to meet what's coming! Leadership is about bridging today and future, to know oneself is necessary to understand the filters and the bias. Thus, CIOs must be the open-minded leader to predict and plan for the future by applying a range of techniques, drawing from the experience and expertise of those around them, crafting and casting the vision for orchestrating the digital organization effortlessly.

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The Monthly Digital Practices: How to Shape and Scale Digital Organizations Aug. 2018

The business practice is always a combination of people and how they are used to doing things based on the set of principles and standards for adapting to changes in the business or technology shift. Besides building a set of principles to follow, it’s also important to develop a series of best/next practice to scale up and amplify digital effects

How to Shape and Scale Digital Organization

Three Practices to Scale Up Digital Transformation? Organizations large and small are on the journey of digital transformation. Besides building a set of principles to follow, it’s also important to develop a series of best/next practice to scale up and amplify digital effects The business practice is always a combination of people and how they are used to doing things based on the set of principles and standards for adapting to changes in the business or technology shift. Here are three practices to scale up digital transformation efforts.

Three Digital-Seeking Practices to Accelerate the Multifaceted Digital Paradigm Shift: Organizations across the sectors are steadily moving into the digital era with characteristics of hyper-connectivity and interdependence. They aim to move into a more advanced stage of digital deployment by tailoring their own unique set of business competencies and develop their own set of best and next practices to close the gaps between classic management and digital management. But more specifically, what’re digital-seeking activities practices your organizations are taking to accelerate the multifaceted digital paradigm shift?

Tipping to Scale Digital Systematically? Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way businesses are conducted. It is important to understand that digital transformation is multifaceted. Digital management is responsible for designing, enabling, and enforcing a collaborative, innovative, intelligent, inspiring and inclusive working environment for engaging employees, delighting customers, and unlocking business performance. Leading organizations are able to identify the critical spot to scale up, and leverage the framework approach for reaching the next level of business growth and organizational maturity systematically.

Three Aspects to Scale Digital? Organizations’ digitalization is surely a transformation journey, it has to permeate into business vision, strategy, culture, communication, and processes. etc. It 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. Here are three aspects to scale digitization and make a leap of digital transformation.

IT Digital Transformation: Three Practices from Here to There: Organizations are moving from here (doing digital via experimenting with some digital technologies) to there (Going digital via expanding to all dimensions for a holistic digital transformation). Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, organizations have to create synergy via building a positive culture, achieving operational excellence, becoming customer-centric, and doing more with innovation. To stay competitive, companies must go beyond experimenting with digital and commit to transforming themselves into a fully digital business powerhouse. But more specifically, how to develop the best/next practices moving you from here to there?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with about #4900th 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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The Popular Quotes about “Digital CIO Leadership” in “Digital Master” Book Series

“Being an innovative CIO means learning fast, being inclusive, embracing multiple viewpoints and taking calculated risks.”

"Digital Master” is the series of guidebooks (25+ 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 the digital workforce on how to shape game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of popular quotes about digital CIO leadership in “Digital Master” book series.

59 “IT leadership needs to shift from “surviving to striving to thriving” mode; IT also needs to shift from “controlling to change to innovate.”
― Pearl Zhu, 12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices

60 “CIOs are fluent in both business language and IT terminology to ensure the seamless cross-functional communication without “lost in translation.”
― Pearl Zhu, 12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices

61 “The digital CIOs have to wear different colors of hats and master multiple leadership personas and management roles effortlessly.”

― Pearl Zhu, 12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices

62 “The top leaders such as CIOs have to be fluent in both business and IT dialogues and switch them back and forth without “lost in translation.”
― Pearl Zhu, 12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices

63 “The CIO as “Chief Interpretation Officer” is the new digital leadership perspective of harnessing communication and people-centricity for accelerating digital transformation.”
― Pearl Zhu, 12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices

64 “Great CIOs are great storytellers, envision and communicate a full-fledged, people-centric digital transformation.”
― Pearl Zhu, 12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices

65 “Being an innovative CIO means learning fast, being inclusive, embracing multiple viewpoints and taking calculated risks.”
― Pearl Zhu, 12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices

66 “Digital CIOs shouldn’t classify creativity and logic as two completely different disciplines; they are interconnected and need to be mixed seamlessly.”
― Pearl Zhu, 12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices

67 “Innovative CIOs with bold leadership styles are the key to re-imagine IT for achieving the art of possible.”
― Pearl Zhu, 12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices

68 “Modern CIOs as “Chief Interaction Officers,” can master how to well manage different dimensions of relationship to improve leadership effectiveness.”
― Pearl Zhu, 12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices

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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The CIO as “Chief Innovation Officer”: How to Build a Highly Innovative Team

Select for empowerment, select for curiosity, select for progress, and select for low ego.

The Digital Era upon us is the age of innovation. Innovation involves new ways of bringing together ideas and resources to create something novel and then transform those novel ideas to achieve the business value. Identification of the novel is only the beginning, the heavy lifting starts as the company starts leveraging talented people, aligns resources and executes these novel ideas effectively. From innovation management perspective, how to build highly innovative teams, inspire creativity and improve the success rate of innovation?

Select for the diversity of thought, background, perspective, and personality: Today’s working environment is multigenerational, multicultural, and multi-devicing, or to put simply, hyperdiverse. In fact, diversity is the engine for creativity and a facilitator for merging building blocks of new ideas or fresh insights. Creative tension comes from the diversity of thoughts. In the traditional command & control setting industrial era, when conformity to expectations is very highly valued, independent thinkers or innovators are seen, by default, as troublemakers. However, the “VUCA” digital era now expands the lens to understand this hyper-connected and interdependent world. “Thought candor” is offering a different way of thinking about a situation or problem that fills the blind spots and moves the innovation conversation forward. The diverse mind is more successful and always going to be more creative as it has more to draw on. The digital transformation has to go a few inches deeper for cultivating the culture of inclusiveness which focuses on the cognitive difference, abilities, skills, and the wealth of ideas. It’s critical to develop a culture of creativity, orient people and make them aware of the diversity in their team or organization, help them understand the value of harnessing the difference, be comfortable to be who they are, and practice creative thinking and critical thinking all the time.

Encourage intellectual curiosity and appreciative inquiry: A friendly digital working environment like the melting pot to inspire creativity, encourage free thinking & experimenting, stimulate intellectual curiosity and appreciative inquiries. Because asking the right questions can spot blind spots, and great open questions will spark creativity and let imagination soar. In many traditional organizations, silo mentalities create numerous blindspot in the resource, process, capacity, and talent management. The highly innovative organizations have less blind spots because people do not fear to make inquiries and provide invaluable feedback. The cognitive difference expands the lenses to comprehend the business thoroughly and manage the business seamlessly. These friendly workplace uses the diversity of ideas as a rich source of connectivity and relationship, to harness all the spontaneity of interaction the team is capable of and provide the breakthrough thinking to arrive at creative outcomes that would be otherwise very unlikely. The productivity is high in those digital organizations because they have built the culture to challenge, debate, and facilitate the dynamic and respectful dialogues to bridge cognitive gaps, share new ideas, and spark creativity.

Facilitate coaching up, sideways and all around: Managing innovation requires leaders, either formal or informal to facilitate and shepherd an idea through several phases of development, knowing when to move forward and when to return to an earlier phase. Innovation is change, change is a challenge. If you try to turn it into an obligation, you will cause an equal and opposite reaction. From an innovation management perspective, you have to give up some control, focus on coaching, persuasion, and making a tradeoff. Innovation leadership is critical, otherwise, creativity is sporadic rather than integrated into the thinking and activities of the organization. Defining an innovation leader is a way to coordinate the innovation effort by leading the innovation process him/herself. Facilitating digital innovation management is about how to strike the right balance between increasing productivity and encouraging innovation; between setting the standard and letting “out-of-the-box” thinking flow; between risk management and risk tolerance; between discovering the new way to do things and the industry best practices. Innovation managers also act as the “voice of the business,” and become the conduit into the business to help with communication, process, and organizational changes.

Empower Change Agents to abolish hierarchy: Although in certain circumstances, hierarchy performs well, often the symptoms such as silo thinking or bureaucracy caused by overly rigid hierarchy stifle innovation and decelerate business speed. In the emerging digital age with the nature of hyperconnectivity, nonlinearity, and interdependence, overly rigid hierarchy becomes the very obstacle to stop the digital flow. To be a highly functional system, hierarchy must balance the welfare, freedoms, and responsibilities of the subsystems and the total system. Thus, Change Agents are in demand to harness talent, skills, drive, passion, and enthusiasm of the whole organization and direct that to shared goals by abolishing hierarchy and reconciling all different factors for fostering innovation. A change agent is not a tile, but the game-changing mindset and a set of fine-tuned skills; creating positive change is a joint effort and responsibility, it needs to involve the entire team at all levels working toward the common goals. People have to be given the opportunity to be creative, they have to become empowered. It is important to provide the intellectual challenge, stimulate multidimensional thinking, encourage creative problem-solving, tolerate calculated risks, and discourage negative emotions or unhealthy competitions for improving innovation management effectiveness.

Inspire innovative leaders to break numerous barriers on the way: In the rapidly evolving businesses and economic systems, the creation of new innovations is very complex but critical for firms' survival and thriving. There is innovation friction, and there are so many big roadblocks and hidden pitfalls on the way, such as cloudy vision, poor strategy, ineffective process, the low maturity of business capability, or disengaged employees. Solely focus on quantifiable benefits or short-term result stifles innovation. Digitalization is all about change, innovation, and exploring! Many disruptive opportunities are brought to life with new thinking on how to monetize them. It’s important to inspire innovative leaders to break down barriers, provide a clear vision, set good principles, and develop the next innovation practices. Dynamic and changing digital organizations cannot thrive with static or negative culture, silo or over-complicated processes and systems, or complacent, unchanging people. In practice, if you are creative, you will challenge the status quo as you break through the conventional wisdom and push toward the path few people take. Innovation is the thorny journey, innovative leaders are like the light to guide the way.

Developing a highly innovative team is both the art and science. Select people who love the clash of ideas, love listening, love being wrong, and love learning. Select for empowerment, select for curiosity, select for progress, and select for low ego. Employees should be encouraged to think out of the box, take reasonable risks, go beyond their defined roles and demonstrate their intellectual capabilities to bring positive changes. It takes time and generations of changes within a company to practice and build innovation as the differential business competency.

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The Monthly Insight of “Digital Quality” The Quality Attributes of Digital Organizations Aug. 2018

Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service is consistent.

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.

         

The Quality Attributes of Digital Organizations

The Five Pairs of Key Elements in Organizational Quality Management Quality is doing the right thing right, the first time. Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service is consistent. In order to get quality out of anything whether it is people, process, or technology, organizations need to cultivate a climate that is conducive to growth rather than using catch-phrases that make things look good. Quality is not the job of one individual department, it is the responsibility of the entire company. Here are five pairs of key elements in organizational quality management.

The Important Factors In Digital Quality Management? Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service is consistent. Quality Management is not one department’s work, as a degree of quality is in everything people do and experience. "Quality management," like "change management," needs to be embedded into the corporate culture; it requires engaging all the people involved working together as a team to excel in quality products/service delivery. Quality is defined by a number of factors, and to effectively lead an organization into good quality practices takes work and a level of trust and credibility within the organization. Make sure systems run according to plan, schedule, cost, and performance standards. Here is a set of important attributes in digital quality management.

The Insight about Quality Management? Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service is consistent. It has four main components: quality planning, quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not only on product and service quality but also the means to achieve it. Quality management, therefore, uses quality assurance and control of processes as well as products to achieve more consistent quality. (Wikipedia).

CIOs as "Chief Inspection Officer": Three Aspects of IT Management Quality Check: 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. 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.

A Scrutinizing Board: How to Inspect Digital Quality of the Business”? Organizations large or small are on the journey of digitalization, adapting to changes in faster speed and expand digital in every dimension of the business. The corporate board as one of the most critical leadership pillars and governance champions plays a critical role in leading change, and laser focus on the most critical things to steer the business in the right decision.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with about #4900+ 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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IMPOSE = OPPOSE - How to Drive Frictionless Change and Digitalization

Digital transformation as the leapfrogging change represents the next stage of business maturity and will improve how the enterprise works and interacts with its ecosystem, with the people at the center of its focus.

The digital business is hyperconnected, you can’t separate things properly and you can’t predict the actual effect of business interactions straightforwardly. Digital organizations are complex because of hyperconnectivity, velocity, and interdependence. Closer to reality is that 'change' is continuously happening in the environment of a company. Transformation is the change, but on a grand level, at the level of the system, differentiate in terms of the end result on a systemic level. Impose = Oppose - How to drive frictionless change and digital transformation?

The root must change for the fruit to change: Often time, change has been pushed down by the management with an intention to change employees’ behavior. However, behaviors are driven by attitude, and attitude results from thoughts, assumptions, and preferences. If people don’t change their mindset, the change at the behavior level won’t sustain. By peeling back the layers after the layer, individuals and organizations can discover why they think, feel, and operate the way they do. To put another way, to overcome change frictions, they must change the belief that causes the thoughts that creates the emotion. Once the belief has changed, the reaction will change automatically. Metaphorically, the root must change for the fruit to change. Either individually or collectively, we all work in progress, learning, growing, and changing for the better. Often, it means to let go of the voices from the past, reprogram the mindset with new perspectives, norms, and attitudes. Thus, Change Management needs to craft and most importantly, deliver the clear message and reinforce the statements through consistent communication and coherent actions. It also means that the management needs to challenge convention and break down people’s natural resistance to change or to new ideas, and helps to deliver incremental improvements over time.

Understand what pushes your button: Change is neither just a business routine nor a process. It needs to be people-centric. People should know “where you are driving them to,” and “what’s on it for them.” People need to know what will push their buttons, and how to get motivated for change. From the management perspective, it’s important to evolve people from the beginning; break down the change processes into phases and communicate each phase to employees on time. Without empathetic communication and early staff engagement in the dynamic planning, the roadblock will hinder the progress. In order to execute a successful Change Management process, it’s also important to delegate roles and responsibilities and make each individual feel responsible for the success of the plan, people get motivated and make sure the outcome of change will solve their issues and provide the better working environment. It’s important for the business leaders to cultivate the trust environment for people to feel comfortable being who they are and taking the necessary risk to fulfill their potential. The mechanism of change management and the success factors that could help to build a creative business environment are decision-making, people involvement, organizational structure, open communication, incentive and reward system, personnel selection, resource assignment, technology usage, etc.

"Less is more”: In the traditional organization with a lower level of maturity, the business is struggling with overly restrictive hierarchy and bureaucratic mentality. To break down silos and run a frictionless organization, organizations need to build a highly integrated business platform, fine-tune organizational structure to enable business flow, idea sharing, harness cross-functional communication, and collaboration. Digital enterprises are inherently and intensely complex. Often time, the goal of the change is to simplify things - less is more. Simplify the business process so information, idea, and business can flow frictionlessly. These changes do not happen in isolation from each other in a predictable way. An organization achieves the state of digital equilibrium through its management layers, resilient process, and elastic capacity. Digital businesses are boundaryless, the linear system perception is replaced by the nonlinear adaptive system. The goal-seeking system becomes more purposeful, the digital organization is the living thing, so the technical behavior is replaced by socio-technical behavior. Impose = Oppose. Digital organizations need to focus on growing, innovating, harmonized relationship, and long-term perspectives.

The speed of change is increasing. Change Management is usually involved in negotiating a way around all the roadblocks which people erect against the change. Keep in mind: Impose = Opposing. Win the minds and connect the hearts. Digital transformation as the leapfrogging change represents the next stage of business maturity and will improve how the enterprise works and interacts with its ecosystem, with the people at the center of its focus.

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The Monthly “Lesson Learned”: How to Avoid Pitfalls on the Digital Journey? Aug. 2018

The journey of digitalization will not be flat. It represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact. 

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. Digitalization is the thorny journey and innovation management is both art and science. What are the pitfalls on the way?

            

How to Avoid Pitfalls on the Digital Journey?  

What are the Pitfalls on the Journey of Digitalization? Digital means the increasing speed of changes, hyperconnectivity, and always-on business dynamic. The digital boundary is not a straight line, it has the zig-zag patterns on it. The journey of digitalization will not be flat. It represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. Ad hoc digitalization is doomed to fail, how to take the stepwise approach, identify and avoid pitfalls on the way?

Three Root Causes of Digital Stagnation? Change becomes the new normal, and even the speed of change is accelerating. Either for individuals or businesses today, change is inevitable, some of us get it quicker than others. But too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crisis. From a change management perspective, what's the psychology behind the change? What are the possible change pitfalls on the way? What would be a good way to empower change agents and develop changeability? Many organizations are on the journey of digitalization, what are the root causes of digital stagnation?

The Bumpy Road to Going Digital  The digital era is volatile, complex, uncertain and ambiguous, the shift to digital 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. It is important to bridge the multitude of gaps for speeding up changes, unlocking performance, and building a delightful workplace in order to run high performance and high mature digital organization. However, many organizations are still confused digital with general technology adoption. It's a significant shift from doing digital to going digital and being digital. In practice, doing digital perhaps means that the business takes a few initiatives for adopting some new gadgets, but going digital is an overarching management discipline which includes breaking down silos, tuning underlying processes & functions, managing both tangible and intangible business elements, evolving emerging trends and dynamic ecosystem. There are numerous barriers and pitfalls on the way, and for most organizations, it will be the bumpy road from doing digital to going digital.

Three Missing Links in Digital Transformation? Digital Paradigm means holism, hyper-connectivity, interdependence, and integration. Digital transformation is not just a one-dimensional stretch, but a multi-dimensional expansion. The digital ecosystem expands when the digital business territories blur and the business communities broaden their scope and consume all sorts of resources. However, for those digital lagging organizations, the ecosystems have evolved without much attention of planning and having multiple missing links. So, to shift from "Doing Digital" to "Being Digital," the real challenge is to understand what are exactly those missing links, where and how you can and should connect all important dots, improve to get the biggest effect and scale up across the digital ecosystem effortlessly?

Three Pitfalls in IT Digital Transformation The majority of organizations are designed to improve functional efficiency in the industrial era; there is nature friction between different functions of the organization, because often they compete for the limited resources, or speak different business dialect. Different IT organizations are also at the different stage of business maturity, IT can be used as a tool, help desk, enabler, catalyzer, or a digital game changer to meet the ultimate goal of an organization's short-term quick win and long-term strategic advantage. There is no one size fits all formula to run a highly effective IT organization. Regardless which flavor of IT you are running, here are three pitfalls in IT digital transformation you should avoid in order to improve organizational effectiveness, agility, and maturity.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2+million page views with about #4800+ 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.

Read More