The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter 3 The Digital IT Change Agenda

Crafting an IT change agenda is important to ensure that IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next.

With change as the new normal happening at a faster pace and high velocity, IT faces an unprecedented opportunity to refine its reputation, also needs to take more responsibility as a true business partner. Change is a dance between the top management and the affected parts of the organization, the CIO needs to take the logical scenario to gain change curve awareness, proactively participate in business conversations and get the IT change agenda ready.

IT change planning: Change planning is about stakeholder engagement and how to achieve stakeholders’ ownership of the emerging strategy, plans, and roadmap. Change objectives must be well defined, understood, and accepted through dynamic planning. Well planned Change Management with the comprehensible understanding will greatly reduce and practically eliminate the fear of change that derails good or even great intentions, and have a better opportunity to achieve business expectations for change. In practice, planning fallacy is a business reality. With change as the new normal, perhaps plans are nothing, but planning is everything. The goal of dynamic planning is to keep iterating, learning, and working on a rhythm of sustained delivery and making continuous improvement. To make planning effective and practical, it’s important to get the bigger picture and be clear on what, who, when, and how to achieve business goals based on the financial value and available resources, and practice IT planning management through iterative communication, incremental goal implementation, and make a necessary delegation to implement plan collaboratively.

Take a framework approach: The successful businesses are the ones that have learned “WHEN” change is called for and how to decide “WHAT” to change. It’s a systematic effort. An effective Change Mangement framework helps organizational management navigate through changes by understanding and balancing all important business elements impacting change such as people, strategies, processes/procedures, and IT. Change cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished, it has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the organization. A fine-tuned Change Management framework with clear-defined stages, decision-making parameters, performance thresholds, metrics selections, combined with iterative learning and change processes, as well as the flexible organizational structure improve Change Mangement effectiveness and efficiency. It’s critical to discover the strategic and predictive pathway to change, leverage resources, increase confidence, and engage people, to drive change continually and systematically.

Drive people-centric Change Management: The digital era upon us is the age of people. People are often the very cause to change, and the purpose of change. Change Management is about mentoring the human side of the business through a profound and unsettling change, make the digital shift from process-driven to people-centric change management. Because change cannot be completely manipulated from top-down, it starts with the mindset and encourages positive behaviors. People-centric change methodology is evident reinforcement and proof of the “best practice” leadership and management. Once the employees feel fully invested in changes and they see upper management is fully invested in the change, and then, the likelihood of the change being made more smoothly exists. Transformation is the change but on a grand level, it needs to focus on coordination and facilitation, follow the right set of principles and take the best practices.

We are living in a complex world where inventions, developments, and conflicts are continuously changing and that makes it impossible to have the complete knowledge and understanding of many issues facing businesses today. Thus, it’s important to take the logical scenario, apply the right strategy and methodology. You have to ponder many big questions about changes, to ensure successful initiatives and capture the full intent of the change, in order to create the paradigm shift and lead digitalization effortlessly.

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The New Book "The Change Agent CIO: The CIO's Dynamic Role of Leading Digital Transformation" Introduction

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter 1 The Digital CIO as Change Agent

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction  Chapter 2 The Pervasive Change and Digitalization

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter 3 The Digital IT Change Agenda

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter IV The Digital IT Change Practices

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter V IT Innovation and Intrapreneurship

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter VI: The Digital Change Agent

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter VII Avoid Pitfalls to Run Dynamic Digital IT

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter VIII Play the Number Game Wisely

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Quote Collection I

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Quote Collection II

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Quote Collection III

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Three Aspects on How Collective Learning Fosters Innovation

A learning culture is something that must be ubiquitous in the organization, collective learning is the secret source to foster innovation and drive a company’s long-term success.

We live in the information and knowledge economy, today’s digital professionals are hard workers, knowledge workers, and creative workers, who are exploring, innovating and evolving to new digital paradigm proactively in a continuous way. To create the new requires not just one skill, but many, not just old experience, but new perspectives. Collective learning rejuvenates the organizational culture and foster innovation.

Openness and interdisciplinary learning: A learning organization is one in which the majority of the employees at all levels are open to new ideas, experimenting with new ways of doing things to spark innovation. With information grows exponentially and knowledge is only a click away, digital leaders and professionals should understand that asking and learning is not a sign of weakness but rather an openness to illustrate the value of collective insight. When people leave the inside box thoughts and standards to seek additional knowledge and experience, they are stepping outside that box into unfamiliar territory, brainstorm fresh ideas and share the power of diverse perspectives to stimulate innovation, paradoxes, and they have a penchant for candor. Knowledge is the foundation of innovation. Thus, learning fosters innovation because digital innovation is the transdisciplinary approach which involves applied science (engineering), art (design), cognition (psychology), social norm (culture) and group behavior (Sociology), etc. In the learning organizations, people focus on the learning opportunities provided by assignments, rather than on the status quo, they are open to fresh ideas, encouraged to be creative, communication and collaboration are harnessed, and the positive energy and creativity flow like the fountain.

Knowledge or technology transfer innovation: Knowledge fuels innovation. If you take knowledge from one context and bring it over into a new context, you have knowledge or technology transfer innovation. Absorbing knowledge is only the beginning of learning. How deeply your understanding is based on the mindset, logic, lenses, and methodology you leverage to interpret things. Learning becomes a knowledge builder and we can define learning through the information it absorbs, the insight being captured, and the capability it builds. The learning friendly workplace uses the diversity of ideas as a rich source of connectivity and relationship, to foster innovation and provide breakthrough thinking to arrive at creative outcomes that would be otherwise very unlikely. Organizational learning is enabling employees to constantly learn so that the organization does not only 'earn enough from today,' but 'thrive in the future.' The collective learning and abundant knowledge foster knowledge or technology transfer innovation. Thus, building a learning organization is not the goal or a vision, the ultimate goal is to ensure such organizations keep tapping their innovation potential and they know the tasks and knowledge required to sustain itself and create an environment and business systems to reach the well-defined vision.

Learning cycles assume that learning is a process, which can be improved to foster innovation: With the exponential growth of information. The digital workforce today has to learn and relearn all the time and then, apply those lessons to succeed in new situations and foster innovation. In the digital age, the knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened, learning and doing are an iterative continuum. High organizational learning relates to high response in recognizing and addressing system constraints. Digital learning is multidimensional, dynamic, interactive, informal, and should be integrated into the innovation cycle. Knowledge management plays a crucial role either in strategy management or information management. It is the management with knowledge as a focus, involves the use of technologies and processes with the aim of optimizing the value that is generated, and with the goal to improve the organization’s collective learning capabilities and innovation competency. The emerging digital technologies such as social platform provide a flexible way to learn, share and collaborate. Thus, learning agility at both individual and business level is a culture shift and digital capability underpinned by the process which can be managed and it will directly impact the speed of the digital transformation. Organizations can work toward a knowledge ecosystem view, which incorporates the virtual aspects of the knowledge system, innovation, and intuitive behavior.

Nowadays the business and the whole world are so hyperconnected and interdependent, people all over the world can share information, co-develop new knowledge and sparking creativity. Variety, complexity, diversification, and collaboration are the characteristics of the digital innovation ecosystem. A learning culture is something that must be ubiquitous in the organization, collective learning is the secret source to foster innovation and drive a company’s long-term success.

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The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter 2 The Pervasive Change and Digitalization

The emergence of potential opportunities for exploiting digitalization is likely to follow a nonlinear pattern as the pervasiveness of an organization’s digitalization journey increases.


The emerging digital era means the overwhelming growth of information and continuous disruptions driven by technologies. Today’s digital dynamic pushes companies to get out of their comfort zone, leverage their various environments or ecosystems, to chase growth opportunities and accelerate business performance. The pervasive digitalization means “speeding up to change.” Organizations can reach the inflection point for change when they can synchronize and conduct change with the scale of interrelations and interactions to make the leap of digital transformation.

Bridging the gap between IT and the business is the issue about change: The disconnect between business and IT not only causes miscommunication but even worse, fails the business. The business and IT are inextricably linked in the hyperconnected digital era, a “Change Agent” IT can orchestrate processes, tools, and people into differentiated business competency to drive the transformation from strategy to deployment. IT is empowered to run as a change organization due to its unique position to capture the oversight of the business. By peeling back the layers after the layer, individuals and organizations can discover why they think, feel and operate the way they do. IT is also in a unique position to well align people, process, and the latest technologies,  empower talent, enforce communication, enhance governance, and enable cross-functional collaboration. The inevitable range, breadth, and pace of uncontrollable factors acting on any organizations mean constant fine-tuning business processes for change circumstance is essential to accelerate digital transformation.

Synchronizing and systemizing IT: Traditional IT organization is often perceived as the controller and change laggard. In order to run a highly responsive IT organization, IT business synchronization is a critical aspect of digitalizing IT. IT needs to tell the business about the opportunities and possibilities and the business needs to know what IT can deliver and enter a dialogue about what best serves the ultimate goals of the business. In reality, IT has evolved significantly in running the business today, however, often the business continues to evolve faster in grasping the market share and winning new customers, but sometimes failed due to lack of the real-time information, Thus, the company should empower their IT organizations to lead changes. In forward-looking businesses, the IT organization has become synonymous with the change department, and create the business synchronization of all functions running at the multiple levels of the organization seamlessly. Running digital IT is both art and science. Systemizing IT is about how to take a structural approach to enhance IT-business relationship, make a smooth IT-business alignment and integration, enforce the multidisciplinary IT management practices systematically.

Walk, talk, and make a leap of digitalization: Digital transformation makes a profound impact from the specific function to the business as a whole. The purpose of such radical change is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of business performance and organizational maturity. At the high maturity level, organizations have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving the full-fledged digital transformation. Often, there is more than one road to lead the digital way. The “reach and range” flexibility that now exists removes barriers that have existed in the past. Organizations should develop their own tailored best and next practices to experiment and explore the unique path of going digital. How successful organizations can handle continuous digital disruptions depends on how fast and capable they can adapt to the ever-changing environment. They must take an overarching approach to integrate both hard and soft business elements to build long-term organizational competency and make a leap of digitalization.

Organizations of the future are increasingly exhibiting digital characteristics in various shades and intensity. The emergence of potential opportunities for exploiting digitalization is likely to follow a nonlinear pattern as the pervasiveness of an organization’s digitalization journey increases. Therefore, today’s digital leaders need to understand the tide, wave, and the ripple effect of an evolving digital organization in order to manage changes effortlessly drive digitalization relentlessly.

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B&N Order link
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The New Book "The Change Agent CIO: The CIO's Dynamic Role of Leading Digital Transformation" Introduction

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter 1 The Digital CIO as Change Agent

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction  Chapter 2 The Pervasive Change and Digitalization

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter 3 The Digital IT Change Agenda

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter IV The Digital IT Change Practices

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter V IT Innovation and Intrapreneurship

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter VI: The Digital Change Agent

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter VII Avoid Pitfalls to Run Dynamic Digital IT

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter VIII Play the Number Game Wisely

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Quote Collection I

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Quote Collection II

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Quote Collection III

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Depth + Breadth = Probability for Digital Innovation

The organizations can improve innovation success rate when they have clear leadership vision, knowledge and talent proficiency, as well as process clarity.

Innovation is how to transform novel ideas to achieve the business value. Innovation has to result in something which leads us to a better state than where we are today. Innovations in the digital era are coming at seemingly much fast space, with changes and potential disruptions. With well-educated digital workforce today, it's obvious that innovation is being pursued now more than ever. In the business setting, innovation is the development of a new combination of available resources, in a way that solves real-world problems in a more suitable way. Due to the fact that innovating in today’s digital world has become increasingly complex in nature, it’s important to gain an in-depth understanding of business issues as well as have the interdisciplinary knowledge to connect the dots for sparking innovation. Depth + Breadth = Probability for digital innovation.

Knowledge fuels innovation, but be cautious of the “knowledge trap”: Due to the hyper-complexity of modern businesses, knowledge is the foundation of doing innovation. The ability to innovate is ultimately dictated by the depth of understanding of the problem/issue to be resolved, or important jobs need to be done such as satisfying important customer needs, or reducing the unnecessary business complexity so the simplicity can shine through. Digital innovation not only has a broad scope but also has deep context. Especially the radical or breakthrough innovations are not something that everyone can accomplish. This means that to discover an opportunity, you should have previous knowledge in the field to be able to get recognized. You also need to take a structural approach to focus on translating from the innovation system to the business processes and develop a unique set of business capabilities to implement ideas successfully. Usually, this is something you do not accomplish overnight. Knowledge fuel innovation, however,  you shouldn't get trapped by knowledge, especially the outdated knowledge might stall innovation. Sometimes having too much knowledge about something can be a box that closes your mind to innovation in that area. To put precisely, “too much knowledge,” in itself is not an impediment to innovation, but fail to recognize how vastly ignorant you might become leads to arrogant, that would make you narrow-minded and get stuck in the old way to do things. So, it’s not about, how much knowledge you acquire, it’s about what impact that knowledge has on you, is it about fueling creativity or stifling imagination? Knowledge should help us understand how and what forces we are dealing with in the journey, being innovative is the state of mind.

Innovation management is about prioritization - good ideas over many ideas: With the exponential growth of information, many times, businesses today do not lack ideas, but lack good ideas, or lack the effective process to manage ideas. Innovation is about having new knowledge and new processes to transform creative ideas to realize its business value. A good system can “smell” the right ideas at the right time and place. Good ideas need to seed and mature. Good ideas and expertise are correlated. Most good ideas often emerge from interactions. Most organizations have too many ideas, but more is not always better. It’s important to set good criteria to evaluate ideas and have the right process to prioritize ideas accordingly. Innovation is a means, not an end. If you don’t know where you want to go, you are unlikely to get there. To cultivate a culture of innovation, besides managing ideas, it’s also important to recognize different innovation roles such as idea creators, idea facilitator, idea implementers, in order to build a highly innovative team with complementary skills to expedite innovation delivery and improve innovation management effectiveness.

Make the innovation process as visible, company-wide, as possible, and set the criteria to assess Idea Management effectiveness: Nowadays, innovation can happen anywhere, innovation is nurtured when people are given free space to be creative without overly rigid structures for holding them back. if the working environment with delightful interaction is stimulating and challenging, and then, the brain can thrive from new stimulus to generate new ideas. Thus, to improve the innovation success rate, it’s important to develop an idea management platform which has friendly tools with good accessibility, simple to use, and high flexibility to manage different discussions. There is transparency in follow-up a system of the innovation process from the idea up to the implementation. There is also the mechanism to collect feedback and gain management and peer recognition. Make the innovation process as visible, company-wide, as possible, but not too rigid. To reach the depth and breadth of innovation management, a corporation needs the processes and culture to sustain cross-boundary engagement to discover external ideas. And an internal culture is motivated to accept external ideas and rapidly integrate them into innovative internal ideas.

It is important to build a creative workplace which stimulates passion, encourages insightful cognitions, and inspire learning. You can feel the creative tension when you see it; when you sense the freedom to be creative; the harmony is achieved not based on compliance only but through idea sharing and profound understanding, and seamless collaboration. The organizations can improve innovation success rate when they have the clear vision, knowledge and talent proficiency, as well as process clarity to master both the art and science of innovation management and bring the high-performance business results.

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The Monthly “Digital Master” Book Tuning: Shaping a Digital Organization Sep. 2018

The abundance of information and the unprecedented digital convenience brought by powerful technologies changes the way we think, live, and work.

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. 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. Digital leaders must realize that you cannot wait until there is an immediate pressing task, continuous adaptability is necessary in an ever-changing world, in order to run a future-driven digital organization.

           Shaping a Digital Organization

The Emerging Trends as Digital Shaper In the world where change is significantly speeding up, organizations large or small are jumping into the digital future of “VUCA” new normal –volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Business leaders couldn’t predict the future with a certain degree of accuracy. The business strategy can no longer stay static, and the business goals can no longer be well framed in advance. The emergent trends can shape the behavior of future enterprises and some have been happening already. How can digital leaders predict those trends, proactively influence changes and gain the long-term business advantages?

How to Leverage System Understanding to Managing Change and Tunning Digital Organization? Everything is all connected. There is flexibility, abstraction, and pliability in the concept of a system and system of systems. Businesses are systems. The digital organization is a complex ecosystem with the blurring line between functions, organizations, and geographic locations. To understand the digital business or the world as a complex adaptive system requires an understanding of how the things have come together, being 'built,” as well as how to leverage the system understanding for fine-tuning the business to get digital ready.

“See Through” Digital From Different Angles? Due to the “VUCA” nature of the business dynamic, information is growing exponentially, the business complexity is unavoidable, technology disruptions are inevitable, and digital transformation is unstoppable. Insightful leaders and professionals with strong “digital awareness” can smell the differences, sense emergent opportunities, predict potential risks, see-through digital from different angles, and ride above the learning curve to make a smooth digital paradigm shift. On the opposite, the organizational management's short-sightedness, silo, and running the business in a transactional mode cause digital ineffectiveness in the long run.

Five “C”haracteristics of Digital IT Organization? The abundance of information and the unprecedented digital convenience brought by powerful technologies changes the way we think, live, and work. Information Technology is now permeating into every corner of the business, impacting every business unit, and it's becoming the driver of changes and digitalization. Thus, digital IT leaders have to reinvent IT organization from a support function to the trustful business partner with the following five "C"haracteristics.

Take a Fast Track of Going Digital? Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way the business is conducted. The organizations that have hit the heights of success in the digital world aren’t those that have determinedly followed the old models and ways of thinking or industry best practices; it’s those that have forged a new path and develop their own next practices to move forward. To take a fast track of going digital, it’s necessary for companies to perform an organizational change impact assessment to understand the current state factors, and then, determine what the impacts, risks, and challenges of any proposed change are. The bigger the change initiative is, the more important to take these into account early rather than late in order to lead change steadfastly.?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached  2.7 million page views with about 5000+ 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 for human progression.

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Running IT as Business in the Business by Taking Innovative Approach

IT is the business in the business and the innovation engine of the entire organization. 

The digital world is so data-driven and information-intensive. Organizations rely more and more on technology, technology needs will only expand. IT is being used more and more around the globe for revenue generating initiatives and the business is becoming IT. IT has also to be run as the business in the business by taking varying innovative approaches.

Effectively and efficiently manage existing and new technology as well as the exponential growth of information: Digital IT should help the business unlock both digital performance and potential by effectively managing existing and new technologies. Making IT organization a profit center is what the real challenge is because it requires some kind of rethinking and reinventing the corporate processes and returning the business capabilities. That requires IT management to make a serious amount of positive communication whilst continuously looking for the cost-efficient replacement of unstable or old processes. IT leaders should position and maintain the IT organization to ensure that it addresses both “IT effectiveness” and “IT efficiency.” Information is one of the most invaluable assets of the business besides people, IT should manage information management lifecycle effectively, in order to capture real-time business insight, identify opportunities for growth and lead business transformation wherever analysis and assessment indicate the potential benefits of change efforts. IT is the business in the business and change agent of the entire organization.

Help to innovate businesses by scaling and optimizing: Most IT specialist is eager to use new technologies and gadgets. But there is a significant difference between technical proficiency and business innovation. Running IT as a business is not just about doing IT innovation but has to innovate business by scaling and optimizing. CIOs should think as an intrapreneur and act like a startup manager, go out and talk with varying shareholders, business executives, customers, partners, to know their pains and gains and understand their tastes and current and future needs. IT can break digital transformation if it cannot ride the learning curve and catch up with the emergent business technological trends, or it simply lacks changeability to make continuous improvement and on-time delivery in a proactive way. Information Management Systems are the backbone and become the making and breaking point of digital transformation. IT has to shift from bits, bytes, and lights to information, intelligence, innovation, integration, improvement, and interface. The challenge is about getting out from the daily burden, and spend more resources and time on innovation-related activities, scale-up, make innovation a persistent and shared reality across functional boundaries and geographical territories.

Apply technology in new and innovative ways and run IT as a superglue for integrating a highly innovative ecosystem to stay ahead of competition and industry: Digital organizations are like the switch of the hyperconnected digital ecosystem. Today’s information technology enables companies to leverage their various environments, or ecosystems, to chase innovation opportunities, take structural innovation approach, and accelerate innovation speed. There are many components in an effective innovation environment or ecosystem, such as innovation leadership, innovation culture, innovation capability, practices, tools, recognition system measurements, or risk approach. Each component by itself may not cause a good environment, but collectively, they can weave an innovation ecosystem. Every organization needs to develop tailored innovation practices by leveraging effective technologies, tools or methodologies and apply them wisely with the expertise to really add value or drive innovation systematically.

IT is the business in the business and the innovation engine of the entire organization. Innovation is not just about technology, Innovation is not always equal to the latest gadget. It’s about people, culture, partnership, and manners, etc. IT can innovate by an in-depth understanding of the business. It’s the partner that works both "on the business" and "in the business," not just "for the business."

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 9/28/2018

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with 5000+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 25 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. 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.

• The New Book "The Change Agent CIO: The CIO's Dynamic Role of Leading Digital Transformation" Introduction Information technology is like the growth engine of the company, CIOs are accountable for the critical part of the business that is constantly changing and evolving. Contemporary CIOs should be capable of evolving leadership skills to not only match the pace with changes in technology and the pace at which an organization can effectively manage these changes but also proactively drive digital transformation based on their vision, passion, and leadership practices. Slideshare Presentation

• The Monthly “100 Digital Rules” Book Tuning: Digital Quality Principle Sep. 2018 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.

• The Monthly “Digital Boardroom:100 Q&As” Book Tuning: “Talk the Walk” in Boardrooms Sep. 2018 Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in the right direction and achieve expected business results. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must have the agility to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals. Here is the monthly “Digital Boardroom” summary of the digital board’s leadership inquiries.

• Three Complementary Elements of Innovation Innovation - the practical application of creativity is essentially about problem-solving at various levels; and to solve a problem implies a wish to make something, or everything, better. In a fundamental view, innovation is a process and every process needs to be managed. Some highly innovative organizations fail to capitalize on great ideas because there was no structure in place to manage the ideas and produce quality products/services. Here are three complementary elements of quality to improve innovation success rate from the management perspective.

• The Monthly Summary: “Simplicity” as the Key Word of the Digital Era Sep. 2018? Logically, simplifying the complicated thing is an optimal and smart choice, to make progress either for designing products, solving problems, or managing an organization. With simplicity, what we are adding is clarity and purpose. Keep in mind, in today’s complex world, in the core of simplicity lies complexity, the more simple one perceives in any system, problem or living being is inherently more complex. Here is a set of featured blogs to dig into “SIMPLICITY” - the “keywords” of the 21st century to brainstorming the future of digital leadership.

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 New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter 1 The Digital CIO as Change Agent

Digital CIOs need to be proactive, visible, and influential top business leaders.

As businesses change shape, size, expansion, and transformation, CIOs have to wear different personas and master multiple leadership and management role effortlessly. The important thing is that the digital CIO as the top leadership role must have the strategic mindset, interdisciplinary knowledge, unique personality, and a clear idea of what needs to be done, yet creative enough to not hold the company back from growth, and ideally, becomes the digital change agent.

Understanding the essence of changes: Change is not for its own sake, laser focus on the business purpose behind it. A change is a fundamental way you look at what you are doing is needed. Why are you trying to make changes? What are you going to do with it? Does your organization take a proactive approach to changes, or only react to changes that have already occurred or is underway. There are organizational change, technological change, and behavior changes. The clear goals for change should focus on betterment, forwarding, and upward improvement. Understanding the essence of changes is critical to improving the success rate of change management. Because sometimes change is the problem, sometimes a lack of change is the problem. Sometimes, times the problem is the inability to perceive a change in the environment and adapt when conditions require it. Sometimes the problem is with the ability to plan and manage changes in a structural way. Organizations have to learn “Why” to change; “What” to change, “Who” are the change agents, “When to change, and “How” to change effectively.

CIOs must set principles, guidelines, and rules to run a “Change Agent” digital IT organization: IT is in the middle of a sea change, CIOs shouldn't get pushed for changes, they are actually in a better position to play a role as the change agent. Running a highly responsive IT organization needs to get support across the organizational boundaries - from the boardroom to the front desk. However, many CIOs graduate from IT management where their job was to maintain. The transition from a maintenance mindset to a changing mindset is a stretch for some IT leaders, but it’s critical to run a dynamic digital IT organization. CIOs are accountable for the critical part of the business which is constantly changing and evolving. Thus, digital CIOs should be capable of evolving leadership skills to not only match the pace with the changes in technology and pace at which the organization can effectively manage those changes but also proactively drive changes in business transformation.

Set the priority for Change Management and make change deliverables continually: Change Management is not an isolated practice, it should go hand in hand with strategy management, program management, and performance management. Priority should be clear, approved and shared, the staff should know the big pictures, and know what their role is in it, ensure people committed and incentivized to the plans. There are significant change deliverables that must be tiered to all change plans. The changes delivered could be incremental by training, transitional by improving processes; or transformational if it is fundamentally shifting the entire business model of an organization. You must show change progress as you go along so the business can justify the IT investment.

Change in and of itself is never the reason. Change is an ongoing business capability. Change Management needs to be a mechanism embedded in a multitude of IT management. Digital CIOs need to be proactive, visible, and influential top business leaders, get out of the comfort zone and have to become the change agents to walk the talk effortlessly.


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B&N Order link
IBook Order Link


The New Book "The Change Agent CIO: The CIO's Dynamic Role of Leading Digital Transformation" Introduction

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter 1 The Digital CIO as Change Agent

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction  Chapter 2 The Pervasive Change and Digitalization

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter 3 The Digital IT Change Agenda

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter IV The Digital IT Change Practices

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter V IT Innovation and Intrapreneurship

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter VI: The Digital Change Agent

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter VII Avoid Pitfalls to Run Dynamic Digital IT

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter VIII Play the Number Game Wisely

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Quote Collection I

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Quote Collection II

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Quote Collection III

Read More

How to Keep IT “Fresh” and Get Digital Ready

To keep a fresh image, IT needs to move up its maturity level from functioning to firm to delight, to catalyze changes and orchestrate the digital transformation.

The majority of IT organizations are perceived as monolithic, isolated, and stereotypical support centers with heavyweight hardware boxes, focus on “keeping the business lights on.” IT running in an industrial mode as a business controller or a restraint no longer fits in the dynamic business circumstances or volatile digital new normal. Digital transformation represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. To build IT reputation as the business partner, IT leaders should ask themselves on how to keep IT “Fresh,” and get digital ready.

Spot modern CIOs as the Digital Catalyst: To run a fresh IT organization, the CIO role needs to be continually reimagined, refreshed, and reinvented. CIOs can no longer act as the tactical manager only, they must be the change agent and digital catalyst for a business to differentiate by leveraging of IT to build competitive advantage. CIOs needs to keep the fresh view of the business, they are able to look ahead and relevance of certain trends in its industry may indicate. IT leaders should also encourage their teams to spend more time with other executives on the business side and customers so that the business can gain the fresh view of how IT can help them solve business problems and improve their production and ability to innovate. Digital CIOs, are born to change, how they overcome these digital transformation challenges depend on their ability to think, adapt, and proactively plan and execute. Sustainability and blueprint for proper execution and vision are vital. A modern CIO as the digital catalyst should help IT recharge itself, digitizing its own business processes and build unique organizational competency. IT delivers the best solution to the business problems which meet the business’s requirement or tailor customers’ needs. IT proactively works as an integral part of the business to capitalize on opportunities and drive the digital transformation. It’s important to build up a positive emotional climate, foster business partnership and communicate relentlessly to keep IT fresh and get digital ready.

Spot innovation opportunities: To keep IT fresh, the CIO as Chief Innovation Officers,” should actively look for the innovation hot spots in the business. The original gem of a creative idea often, if not always arrives at the interaction of ideas from different domains of thoughts and experiences. There are many areas within a company where the innovation process can be applied to create business value, including both hard and soft innovations. Businesses love to see IT getting deeply immersed in the new apps, devices, and solutions and make internal customers more productive, collaborative and smart. Focusing on customers’ need and what the marketplace was moving towards should be a reasonable path to grow the innovation fruit and keep IT fresh. Businesses are looking for IT to add new innovative methods for the management of complexity and investigating innovative business solutions. Rather than waiting for the business to tell IT what they need, IT should proactively work with the business and partners upon the great new digital technologies which can change the business for better and fuel innovation engine. To keep IT fresh and become the innovator of tomorrow, IT leaders have to keep learning the new tricks, develop the growth mindset, updating their knowledge, methodology, and approach to lead changes and innovation.

Spot innovators: Bright people with fresh thinking keep IT fresh. When people get stuck in the old ways to do things, IT goes stale. Creative people who have “thought candor,” ask open questions, identify blind spots, and recognize patterns from the random things, can keep their environment dynamic and fresh. However, many traditional organizations are still managed through overly restricted hierarchical management discipline which discourages “Thinking differently,” and make the working environment stale. Thus, it's important to spot innovators who can break down the boundary, shape a bigger box of thinking, look at the outside of the function, company, or industry for connecting the dots to spark innovation. Digital fluidity keeps things fresh. Build a strong culture with trust and transparency to keep the workplace positive and fresh, create the right environment in which sharing knowledge is the must, creativity is encouraged, innovation is managed effectively. Put the right people with the right capabilities in the right seat for the right purpose to solve the right problems timely.

IT can no longer just hide in the corner to play the background music only and was run as a cost center. To keep a fresh image, IT needs to move up its maturity level from functioning to firm to delight, to catalyze changes and orchestrate the digital transformation,

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The Monthly “Performance Master’ Book Tuning: The IT Performance Scorecard Sep. 2018

Corporate Performance Management is a management control from strategy till shop floor. "If you can't measure, you can't manage," legendary management guru Peter Drucker once asserted. Managing performance means understanding results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to ensure it happens. It takes multifaceted approaches from multidimensional perspectives to unlock digital performance and catalyze change.

 

           

The IT Performance Scorecard & Dashboard

The Digital CIO’s Scoreboard Due to the overwhelming growth of information and the disruptive nature of technology, IT becomes more and more significant in driving organizational changes and catalyzing business transformation. Digital IT leaders today must have the right mindset, skillset, and toolset to lead change in a structural way. From IT performance management perspective, You can only manage what you measure, IT Executive scoreboard is an effective tool to enable executives and leadership team to improve management of IT via quantifiable and qualitative data. IT Executive Scorecard should have pre-built key performance indicators that reflect best practice measurement areas across IT holistically. But more specifically, how to build an effective IT management scoreboard and set the right performance indicators for evaluating overall IT management health and improving IT organization maturity?

IT Performance Management: Two-Level Value Delivery & Balance Scoreboard? Traditional IT is still being labeled as cost center, as value hasn’t been conveyed in a structured or quantified way, or it only focuses on measuring internal value (cost efficiency, internal customer satisfaction), but it may not reflect the full set of value IT can bring to accelerate business growth or delight end customers. The issue here is: what is your understanding of value? Is it an economic measure? Is it a competitive measure (when you compare with other IT departments) or other perceptive values? How are you monitoring and quantifying IT Department value in your organization? The tool is secondary if you don't speak the same language with your business partners. Therefore, both strategic and operational metrics are needed in order to paint a full picture of IT performance.

The CIO's Four Views of IT KPIs IT is pervasive in any contemporary enterprise today, however, most of IT organizations still get stuck into lower level maturity, with the reputation as a cost center, IT should work with stakeholders to develop KPIs that show how IT is improving business and enforcing business capabilities. Here are four views of KPIs, from IT cost breakdown to IT Performance quadrant; from PMO measure to business capability metrics.

Does IT Need A Dashboard to Show Value to the Organization? As internal IT faces competition for the first time from end users with their own devices and App Store solutions and cloud providers that are trumpeting “better” economics and faster time to value, one has to ask the question, “how IT “markets” its activities and benefits to the organization it serves?” “How is IT showcasing the value it brings?”

Three Essential Information from an IT Management Dashboard? Due to fast-growing information and emergent digital technologies, IT becomes more significant in driving organizational changes and catalyzing business transformation. You can only manage what you measure, how to build an effective dashboard and setting the right performance indicators to measure IT performance can be the right step to improve IT effectiveness, efficiency, and overall organizational maturity. As IT leaders, here are three pieces of essential information you should get from a well-designed IT management dashboard.

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The "Performance Master" Book Introduction

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The "Performance Master" Quote Collection I

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