Friday, August 3, 2018

Is Digital CIO the System Thinker Who can Understand Pattern Language

System = Pattern. Patterns are defined as “solutions of problems in a context,” with a body of “descriptions of forces.”

The digital organization is the system. System = Pattern. The systematic view of Information Technology helps the management understand IT as a living system with a set of interdisciplinary practices for moving the business to a dynamic, iterative, integral and interactive digital flow. Thus, digital CIOs need to be the systems thinkers who can recognize pattern languages, understand the art and science of IT, practice engineer discipline and add more enriched digital context for the paradigm shift.


Pattern language helps to understand the framework: IT is the linchpin of running a digital organization. From an IT management perspective, an effective CIO’s job is to leverage systems view for an understanding of the variety of business relationship, organizational functions, and processes. Tie pattern thinking and systems thinking together to understand the framework for digital transformation. Systems don’t exist independently and that there are interactions between systems such as system overlaps and real in-and output dependencies. The examination of systems thinking and participatory democracy helps to understand a system is a necessary precondition for effective intervention. It helps to reduce tensions, frictions, and conflict that arise, enforce interrelationship communication and cross-functional collaboration. Pattern language helps you understand the framework for either solving business problems, managing innovation or leading digital transformation. Meanwhile, a framework capture certain paths through a pattern language. The digital frameworks add value as they are implementations of the patterns to avoid having to reinvent the wheel.

Pattern recognition enables to solve complex problems: Understanding patterns is about how to recognize patterns for either solving business problems or enforcing designing thinking. A pattern language is "about" the relationships between patterns - particularly the way you can navigate from pattern to pattern to learn about a problem space and to apply different solutions in combination. Many human problems are caused by silo thinking or mislabeling. A pattern language enforces Systems Thinking which helps to see connectivity and interdependence. Pattern thinking is the type of problem-solving thinking. Because if you look at patterns, you will find that they are containers for articulating relationships. It helps to figure out better solutions by peeling back the layers to find the root causes and address the issues systematically. Thus, patterns are defined as “solutions of problems in a context,” with a body of “descriptions of forces.”

To be creative, you need to continue discovering new patterns: Pattern thinking is a hybrid thinking to combine designing thinking, architect thinking, system thinking, and visual thinking. To be creative, you need to continue discovering new patterns, so it requires you to keep your eyes open and proactively seek out new ideas wherever you can discover them. The systematic structure provides the shell within which individuals can collaborate to create transparency to problems and amplify collective creativity. Actually, creative thinking, systems thinking, pattern thinking, and many other thought processes are all interlinked attributes people bring to their perspective crafts in varying degrees depending on their mental models, perspectives, and distinctions, etc. A systems thinker can see the patterns others may not; it provides the better opportunities to connect dots and sparkling creativity.

The digital world is so data-driven and information-intensive and the digital transformation is multidimensional. Digital CIOs need to be the multidimensional thinkers, genuinely curious about Information, be creative to experiment with better solutions, and leverage Systems Thinking for balancing and capturing the big picture. They are also enterprise polyglots who can speak business language, IT terminology, pattern language, and other computing languages for bridging the chasm between IT and business, practice scientific engineering disciplines and take systematical approaches to manage the high-performance digital organization.

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