The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 2/1/2019

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with 5300+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 27 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.

CIO as "Chief Insight Officer": Is IT Management a Science or an Art? IT management success directly impact the organization’s bottom line efficiency and top-line growth, especially large, complex IT-led business initiatives, which have a very low success rate to reach customer expectation. So what’re the root causes, and is IT management science or art?

Build a Future-Oriented “Synthetic Board” The directorship in the modern organization plays a significant role in business advising, strategy oversight, and performance monitoring, etc. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, BoDs should also set tones for changes and digital transformation. An effective board needs to practice synthetic leadership, enables and directs management towards good outcomes, advocate synthetic problem-solving, and ensure the business is on the right track to reach well-defined business goals and maximize its digital potential.?

A Connective Mind Sparking Creativity Human minds are perhaps one of the most powerful but mysterious things in the universe, as they continue to imagine and invent things for changing the world. The fact is that the world now becomes more advanced, complex, hyperconnected, and dynamic than ever. Creativity is about connecting unusual dots, the connective mind is in demand to sparking creativity and foster innovation.

CIO as “Chief Innovation Officer”: How to Unleash IT potential in the Digital Era? Nowadays, information is permeating into every corner of the organization, and digital technologies bring unprecedented convenience to both our lives and businesses. Modern IT is not equal to IT modernization, it is the key differentiator of the business to “reimagine what is possible.” To keep IT relevant, CIOs need to think and act like “Chief Innovation Officer”: Running IT as the business in the business to reach its full potential.

Leveraging "Sense and Sensitivity" to Experience Digital Digital transformation represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. It is the radical change which cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished, it has to be woven into the collective mindsets, communications, processes, and actions of the organization. The goal for running a dynamic digital business is to create an organization where change is the norm and happens the whole time, thereby, delivering faster and increasing market share as well as improving the overall business maturity. The transformative effort needs to be undertaken as the means of getting to defined competencies to accomplish the defined business goals. There are both hard and soft factors, the art and science of Change Management. How to leverage "sense and sensitivity" to handle the ebbs and flows of change, experience digital and drive business transformation effortlessly?

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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Innovativeness and Innovation

By manifesting creativity and elaborating innovativeness from an individual endeavor to a team activity and a collective effort, the horizon of creativity is expanded and the effect of innovation is magnified.

Innovativeness is the capacity and competency to innovate, innovation is the act of being innovative and the result of innovativeness. Being innovative is simply about being different - think different, see things differently and figure out the different way to do things. Either individually or collectively, creativity is one of the most critical skills and innovativeness the key differentiator between the leader and the follower.

Being innovative as a state of mind: To create the new idea requires not just a single type of thought process, it’s the multidimensional thinking; not just one skill, but many; not just old experience, but the new perspective. Innovators are the round pit, doesn’t fit the square hole, they are disruptive to the status quo. Being innovative is a state of mind. Some individuals demonstrate more innovative traits than others. Indeed, innovation is all about how to disrupt the outdated thinking and the old way to do the things. There are many indicators to assess the intrinsic capacity of individuals such as interdisciplinary skills and knowledge, plasticity (fast learning), openness to experience, tolerance of ambiguity, cognitive ability and styles, intellectual engagement, creative problem-solving, ability to identify patterns or make unusual connections, tendency to constantly question the status quo, capacity to adapt, emotional intelligence and risk-taking attitude. In short, innovators obviously think differently- problem-solving is part of their DNA whether it is in the invention, communication, marketing, or repurposing something already being there.

Organizational innovativeness is the innovation competency of the business: Due to the fact that innovating in today’s digital world has become increasingly complex in nature. Often, organizations can no longer rely on a single individual or team to drive innovation. Creativity can manifest in a collective environment, and innovativeness can be scaled and multiplied collectively. While the individual contributions provide the 'building block" of innovativeness, it is the collective consensus on what to do with them that is exciting. Collectively, a highly innovative team is composed of complementary mindsets and skillsets, has inclusive and progressive traits, embrace diverse viewpoints and maximize the collective potential. The purpose of pursuing collective creativity or organizational innovativeness is based on the intent of the event was to develop a tangible result that did not currently exist; the result was not something that any individual participant could have conceived independently, and the resulting 'product' was more than any individual was capable of achieving. Developing people’s innovative mindset and business innovation competency raise different "learning" issues that organizations must deal with smoothly. The variety of innovation research papers show organizations that have earned a spot as the most innovative tend to have a larger proportion of innovative employees than organization not on the lists have.

Innovativeness and serendipity: Many still think that creativity or being innovative is serendipitous. Serendipity is not a lucky accident and it can be planned and worked upon. A positive attitude in the creative process to redefine, reinvent, re-innovate one’s commitment to being innovative is key. Being innovative is a growth mindset and a proactive attitude. You cannot wait for something to happen, keep curious, always think profoundly, learn new things, and acquiring new capabilities. If you consider being innovative is a state of mind with the creative process - a process of refinement and problem-solving, and then, all failures or successes are possible outcomes, and failure can be considered part of the learning curve. It would be helpful to study Benjamin's Franklin's 13 virtues for insight in attitude toward success in the creative process: Humility, Silence, Justice, Temperance, Cleanliness, Moderation, Frugality, Industry, Tranquility, Order, Sincerity, Chastity & Resolution.

Innovativeness becomes significantly important in the digital era with the advanced technologies because the future of work or running business will not be mere automatons, but continue to discover, differentiate, innovate, and be disciplined as well. By manifesting creativity and elaborating innovativeness from an individual endeavor to a team activity and a collective effort, the horizon of creativity is expanded and the effect of innovation is magnified.

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Five Pillars of Digital Stagnation

Digital transformation is the radical change, it cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into the collective mentality, process, action, and communication.

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, disruption, or crisis. The digital transformation is all about the rapid changes with blurred functional, business or industry territories and expanded organizational horizons. Forward-looking organizations have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving the full-fledged digital transformation. However, many companies get lost or get stuck on the digital journey. What’re the root causes and pitfalls on the way? Here are five pillars of digital stagnation.

Silo mentality: The industrial organization with silo functional setting is to achieve a certain level of efficiency. However, the overly steep organizational pyramid with strictly rigid processes causes silo and bureaucratic management redundancy. It leads slowness, small-thinking, and digital stagnation. Silos are a product of organizational insecurity and internal competition for resources. They are also the results of poor strategic thinking and inflexible organizational design. Silo isolates teams and limits creativity. The duplication of efforts led by silo driven management approach results in wasting valuable resources and time and decrease productivity. To break down old school silos of thoughts, enforcing cross-functional communication, collaboration, and transparency is the key to allow the organization keeping evolved and invested in the greater purpose or vision. Every department in the company needs to work together cross-functional borders when necessary, to ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces. In fact, the hyper-connected nature of digital organization offers particularly fertile ground for building innovation capacity of the business and developing the highly adaptive, dynamic and ever-expansive cross-industrial ecosystem.

Idea bottleneck: Ideas are like water, keep flowing; when ideas get stuck, businesses get stagnated. Most good ideas emerge from business interactions, not a single individual. Thus, organizations need to build their idea reservoir to keep ideas up and manage them effectively for achieving their business value. Innovation happens at the intersection of people and technology. Thus, to break through idea bottleneck, it’s important to identify important technology trends, learn what the trend of such new idea is, as well as learn innovative ideas across the industrial border. It’s also important to develop a highly collaborative platform to manage innovation in the given culture, operating environment, and governance, which can be part of innovation management planning and implementation. As a result, ideas can flow seamlessly, innovation becomes a persistent, shared reality even across silos and geographies.

Communication gap: Communication clarity directly impacts on the business effectiveness, speed, and maturity. However, in many organizations, miscommunication or misunderstanding is prevailing and leads to conflict and malfunction. Communication gaps are often caused by cognitive difference, ambiguous process, mistrust culture, internal politic, or other management bottlenecks, etc. Communications are the tools to solve problems, and languages are the tools to make communications. To bridge communication gaps, it’s important to respect your audience's cognitive diversity and professional interest and try to send the message which appeals to them. It’s critical to initiate information-based communications to connect the minds or open touch-feely talks to touch the hearts, for leading into a virtuous communication cycle. When communication leads to rumor, blame or fingerpointing, it’s gone to the vicious cycle. In practice, bridging communication gap starts at the mindset level. Thoughts are the first order, actions or words are said to be the second order.

Process friction: Organizations, like individuals, need to be in flow to operate smoothly and adapt to changes with less friction. With fast-paced changes and technology-led disruptions, many of today’s organizations are running in between - the mix of old and new; the different departments or divisions within an organization have different speeds. Thus, business managers need to make an objective observation on how their group works with other groups, any frictions existing to decrease productivity, diminish innovation, or decelerate business speed. Lack of systematic processes or having overly rigid processes can be the cause business stagnation. Digital platforms enabled by emerging technologies, efficient apps, and tools, help to lubricate processes, flatter business hierarchies, allow people across the business ecosystem to share knowledge for solving problems and overcoming common challenges. An organization can approach such a flow zone when people are ready for moving to a fluid structure, and digital leaders are eager to set stages and drive a frictionless, immersive, and relentless digital transformation.

Learning disability: Digital means the abundance of information and shortened knowledge cycle. Both at the individual and organizational level, if you fail to climb the learning curve, you will get static and lag behind. Organizations with a learning disability will become stagnated. Learning disability is often caused by static or close mindset with “we always do things like that” mentality. At the business level, Organizational leaders should make an objective assessment of their organization’s learning competency. Having learning curve awareness means to understand how change capabilities are underpinned by change processes, people, and technology, and how much change capability is really required for the change effort you are kicking off. To improve their learning capacity, digital organizations and their people must learn through their interactions with the business environment, then, they apply their learning, act, observe the consequences of their action, make continuous improvement. It is about how to ride the learning curve to get into actions in creative, positive, and productive ways that educate, support and celebrate every critical step of the change curve and the business transformation journey. The business becomes more successful when the corresponding learning curve has reduced uncertainty to the point where both the strategic synergy and organizational interdependence can be structured.

There are many causes of digital stagnation and there are numerous roadblocks to changes, such as lack of direction, culture inertia, misalignment of system/process, overly rigid organizational hierarchy or centralization, functional silo or groupthink, comfort zone or status quo (pass success will come to future success), lack of creativity, etc. Digital transformation is the radical change, it cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into the collective mentality, process, action, and communication of the organization. The ultimate goal of running a fluid digital organization is to get the mass collaboration, create business synergy and accelerate digital speed through less hierarchy, cross-functional communication, and seamless resource, technology, and talent alignment.

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The Monthly “Performance Master’ Book Tuning: Assess the Creative Performance of Digital Organization Jan 2019

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 Creative Performance of Digital Organization

Three Dimensional Performance Measurement Hyper-connectivity and interdependence are the digital characteristics, it is important to understand that digital business development and transformation is the paradigm shift which takes multi-viewpoints, multi-discipline, and multi-stage approach. Strategy management, Change Management and performance management need to walk hand-in-hand. Most organizations fail to manage performance effectively because they often only focus on single dimensional behavior performance. In practice, performance assessment is a combination of many factors and shouldn't be quantified so easily. Performance Management is a multidimensional management discipline. Mindsets, behavior, and outcome are all important elements of performance evaluation. Here is the three-dimensional performance measurement.

How to Build and Measure Workplace Creativity? Creativity is an essential building block for innovation in business. Everyone possesses a certain level of creativity; some just have more than others. How does creativity manifest itself in the workplace? What's the best work environment for creativity? What products (tangible or otherwise) are creative? Where that creativity arises from. And what acts, behaviors etc. may be examples of the organizational creative process? What risks are associated with creativity not being manifested in the workplace? How might you see a creative employee?

The Organization’s Innovation Measurement & Scoreboard Innovation is about transforming novel ideas into business values. Innovation score of the organization means an attempt to measure innovation management effectiveness for improving the return on investment. The factors included in any scoring system will depend on what you are looking to evaluate (individual vs. team vs. organization; potential vs. past performance.). This is usually done through innovation indicators. But more specifically, what’re the pros and cons of measuring innovation and how to score the company’s innovation maturity objectively?

Shall you Assess Talent's 'Creatibility'? Traditional performance management in most of the organizations usually focuses on measuring employees’ efficiency: are they doing what is told to do well. However, with increasing competition and emergent business changes, should organizations today also assess their talent from innovation angle, in order to cultivate a culture of innovation and improve business competency

The New Book “Unpuzzling Innovation” Introduction Chapter 8 Innovation Measurement? Innovation is about how to implement creative ideas and achieve its business value. It is the management discipline. Peter Drucker, the modern management guru, was credited as saying, “We can only manage what we measure.” It is also true for innovation management. Innovation measurement and tools can help companies think systematically about business innovation and raise its success rate to meet the business’s expectations and improve innovation effectiveness.

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with about #5300 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

The "Performance Master" Book Amazon Order Link

The "Performance Master" Book B&N Order Link

The "Performance Master" Book Introduction Slideshare

The "Performance Master" Book Preview

The "Performance Master" Book Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 1 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 2 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 3 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 4 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 5 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Conclusion

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection I

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection II

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection III

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Creativity and Aura

When we find calm inside, we sense the aura outside too.

"Aura" is a circle or an outline of energy around us. Aura is the distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person. Creativity is an individual activity. It is, by nature, unique to each person. Aura plays an indispensable part in building up creative energy. It is where you generate the power to be creative. The world needs creative energy, and aura plays an important role in it. How can you increase flow in your aura and how to release creative energy?

All is energy: The aura is the energy bag that surrounds the whole body of the individual, and it is the seat of all emotions. There are full emotion cycles behind creativity, and there are full-color themes of creativity. The mind is the seat of consciousness and it sends out a network of energy into every cell of the body without which the body cannot function. The unit of energy as it grows in size gradually differentiates itself into three parts that are aura, mind, and subconscious. It is connected on one side to the superconscious and on another side to the mind which envelops the brain and connects with it through electrical impulses. The subconscious capacity can sometimes produce creative ideas for disparate tasks. The subconscious mind can be thought of like the secret garden, or fertile soil, in which the seeds germinate and grow and the creative energy is released. it is also the storehouse of all talents developed and lessons learned. Understand what connects you, what stimulates your creative energy.

When we find calm inside, we sense the aura outside too: We feel we create a kind of vibration around us. That enthusiasm, energy, optimism, and love oozes out our bodies. that is the positive aura nurtures creativity. It’s a starting point of experience is from within. Creative people release positive energy, increase their aura flow and brighten their aura color. People with great auras can attract others to them since most have wisdom, power, and love exuding from their energetic bodies. The thought forms being given out by a personality are reflected in shapes and colors and that is all within their aura as well. People who can see auras can sense a person's nature or where they are coming from by the colors surrounding them. Perhaps, that's why creatives attract creatives, insighteers appreciate insighteers.

Your belief is your aura: Your self-confidence, bravery, commitment, and determination, etc, all form as an aura around you when you strongly believe in your strengths. To nurture creativity, it is important to get out of the "fear" that blocks your own genius, learn how to release the creative energy and come up with a new approach to the world. Belief is the aura! Humility coupled with supreme confidence is the rich "AURA" factor indicator. The more worry about your weaknesses turns as a negative aura! At the group setting, provide the intellectual challenge to stimulate thinking and help people grow, and generate collectively creative energy and shape the beautiful aura surrounding the environment.

"When your energy vibrates at a frequency that is in direct alignment with what the universe has been attempting to deliver your entire life, you begin to live in the flow and true miracles start to happen." - Panache Desai

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Should CIOs Become “Creative Digital Populist”

Being a digital populist doesn't mean that CIOs lack of character, acts as an order taker only. In fact, confident CIOs with strong character are in demand to rebrand IT as the strategic and trustful business partner. 


Nowadays, information is permeating into every corner of the organization, technology is the driven force behind the digital transformation. IT is making an impact on almost every dimension of the organization. CIOs should step into the void of digital leadership by shaping the strategic mindset, gaining interdisciplinary knowledge, and developing differentiated professional competencies. They are neither controller nor order taker, should they become “creative digital populist,” to harmonize IT-business relationship, delight customers, and engage employees? Do they have a distinct vision about the future of the organization and a clear idea of what needs to be done, for improving IT organizational effectiveness and maturity? Being a digital populist doesn't mean that CIOs lack of character, only run IT as a support center. In fact, confident CIOs with strong character are in demand to rebrand IT as the strategic business partner.

Make IT organization the strategic partner that businesses enjoy working with: The best way for IT to achieve partnership is to listen to business users. The CIO needs to understand the needs of the different business units, but their needs/vision would be spelled out by their functional managers, not the CIO. Let them tell you their stories, frustrations, or pain points. Be fluent with digital dialogues and enforce cross-functional communication and collaboration. Truly understanding the business problem is important because you don’t want to come across as having a solution looking for a problem. CIOs can identify and propose business development/ improvement ideas, but you have to know and relate to what they value and how they quantify that value first before you can add real business value. As a trustful IT leader, if you can innovate across the business scope, regardless of which function you are involved in, and then, you can shape of what you deliver, and make continuous deliveries, not just how it’s delivered. Being a creative digital populist means that CIOs need to forge a harmonized relationship with business users, partners, and shareholders and add multidimensional business value to the company in a consistent way.

Make a shift from IT-business alignment to IT-customer alignment: The digital revolution means that channels to customers. The traditional IT organizations focus on IT and business alignment, digital IT goes a step further and moves up to IT and business integration as well as IT and customer alignment. IT has both internal business customers and end customers. Being “creative digital populist” means that CIOs should focus on building a customer-centric IT to empower internal users with efficient platforms or tools to improve their productivity and innovativeness, as well as delight end customers by digitizing the touch points to improve their satisfaction. In reality, customers are always demanding, and IT is already overloading. If IT always sees this as two conflicting forces pulling in opposite directions, you are most likely to get caught and always fall short of business and customer expectations. Keep in mind though, being customer-centric doesn’t mean IT should just take the orders blindly, do what customers ask to do without the doubt. IT has always gone through the dilemma of "customers are always right" vs. "rational approach in designing a solution." Discover what is at the heart of the problem, and suggest the solutions that will benefit the customer, the company and the overall direction of IT. To put simply, IT needs to play an advisory role in solving customer-related problems more creatively, holistically and intellectually.

Build a happy organization employees are highly engaged and IT is highly respected: In the majority of traditional organizations, employees engagement are very low, and IT skills gap is the reality. People are the most important business assets and capitals, innovation happens at the intersection point of people and business, as well as people and technology. Thus, people development is crucial for the business’s long-term success. Influencing people and understanding to cater their needs are the great qualities of the leaders. A “creative digital populist” CIO needs to invest in their people and keep them happy. Let people explore where their energy is and then, align the energy to work at hand, and motivate them to think and do things innovatively. The part of the digital transformation journey is to prepare people for the new structures and to recognize this is a crucial step. High mature digital organizations have highly innovative culture and creative workforce. Highly engaging workforces are highly interested in the work, deriving meaning from the work being performed, and performing the work in a pleasant or harmonious environment. In such a working environment, creativity, self-management, autonomy, self-discovery, and mastery are inspired. Organizations should engage teams early in the process via robust communications, training, and core process workshops to identify issues, concerns, and strategies for making the smooth shift from an overly-rigid process-driven mode to people-centric mode,

No wonder the CIO is one of the most paradoxical and sophisticated leadership roles. There are both toughness and softness, character and charisma in becoming a creative digital populist CIO who can think like the anthropologist for running a people-centric organization to enchant customers, empower employees, evolve business partners, invite all sorts of business partners for feedback, with the ultimate goal to run a high performance and highly innovative IT organization.

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The Monthly “100 Digital Rules” Book Tuning: Problem-Solving Principle Jan. 2019

Fundamentally, every work is to deal with problems big or small both from long-term perspectives or on the daily basis. 

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.

                 Problem-Solving Principle

Five Problem-Solving prinicples? Fundamentally, every work is to deal with problems big or small both from long term perspectives or on the daily basis. And the business or societal progress is made via a healthy cycle of problem framing and problem-solving continuum. We all develop reputations for being problem creators, problem definers or problem solvers. To close the problem-solving capability gap, it is important to keep sharpening your problem-solving skills, always dig under the surface, and build a good reputation as a real problem-framer or problem-solver.

Following the "BASIC” Principles in Problem-Solving and Digital Transformation The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. It is the transformation that is reshaping our thinking and recasting the way we view ourselves, the systems of which we are the part of the environments in which we live, and the way we think and solve problems. To make a seamless digital transformation, it’s important to set guidelines and make updated rules for navigating through changes and steering the journey of digital transformation.

The New Book “100 Digital Rules - Setting Guidelines to Explore the Digital New Normal” Chapter IV Problem-Solving Rules Fundamentally, every work is to deal with problems big or small both from long-term perspectives or on the daily basis. To close the problem-solving capability gap, it is important to keep sharpening problem-solving skills, always dig under the surface, and build a great reputation as either problem-framer or problem-solver.

Do we Handle Problems at the Level of the Mindset, or Shall We? We live in a rapidly changing digital era full of paradox: on the one side, the human world is running at internet speed, the physical distance is no longer the barrier to separate the world, the information is only a click away, the knowledge cycle is significantly shortened; on the other hand, people’s minds, mainly shaped in their early age, with change inertia, are far lagging behind the era we live in, they turn to be the true obstacle to distance the heart and stop human progress. And it is also the deep root cause for many business and societal problems. So would it be possible to handle the problems at the level of the mindset, but how.

Three Digital Mandates Due to the increasing pace of changes and continuous digital disruptions, either fast-growing businesses or well-established organizations have to continuously adapt and speed up, proactively build business competency and fine tune the organizational changeability. The digital world is so information-intensive and technology-driven, with blurred territories and hyperconnected nature, Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way that the business is conducted. Here are three digital mandates for steering business ships in the right directions and charting the path to significant business transformation.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with about #5300th 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. 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

Build a Future-Oriented “Synthetic Board”

 A "synthetic Board" can read change sentiment with accuracy and lead change effortlessly.

The directorship in the modern organization plays a significant role in business advising, strategy oversight, and performance monitoring, etc. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, BoDs should also set tones for changes and digital transformation. An effective board needs to practice synthetic leadership, enables and directs management towards good outcomes, advocate synthetic problem-solving, and ensure the business is on the right track to reach well-defined business goals and maximize its digital potential.

Mastering synthesis as the decision -making and problem-solving process: Synthesis is natural digital thinking for hyperconnectivity, to put things together to imagine “the art of possible,” and make the combination of components or elements to form a connected whole. Synthesis is an important skill for senior leaders such as board members because it allows them to step back from trivial details and see patterns, generalization, standards, context and capture a bigger picture. More specifically, synthesis is the opposite procedure of analysis to combine separate elements or components in order to form a coherent whole by putting together, combining, and integrating. It is an important thought process for leveraging the multitude of viewpoints to deal with digital paradox today in order to make effective decisions. Because synthesis merges a dichotomy or in other words, the “for” and “against” perspectives, incorporate thesis and antithesis into a higher level of understanding where you synthesize and where both perspectives are incorporated. The corporate board plays a crucial role in leading digital transformation. Perhaps it’s also a good boardroom practice to make Socio-Technical Systems (STS) Analysis which is the change impact model to measure change-readiness against the contexts of goals, people, processes, procedures, infrastructure, technology, and culture.

Synthesizing leadership is more future-oriented, perceives “what could be”: In the industrial age, businesses are considerably static, with the slower speed of changes, therefore, analytical logic is a predominant management style, while analytics describes “what is.” However, with the accelerating speed of changes, digital leaders such as BoDs have to spend more time on pondering the future and perceive “what could be,” under the “VUCA” digital normal. The synthesizing style of leadership would be labeled as such based on the knowledge, insight, skills, capability, actions, and results (the past), the level of understanding via analytics (loose up), synthesis (put together), Systems Thinking (interconnectivity). Synthesizing leaders are good at creating business synergy by blending different pieces of information in such a way that the emergent whole is somehow more than the sum of parts. They are more future-oriented and optimistic, perceive “what could be,” to unlock business performance for the long run.

Taking a longer-term approach to solving some complex problems: Today’s digital leaders should self-aware of their role in problems and show professional maturity to understand their intention, capability, and capacity for the problems they intend to solve. Many of today’s problems are over-complex and interdependent, that means, besides breaking down, at the senior leadership level such as BoDs, you need to leverage synthesis, combine or integrate different pieces of answers to ensure cohesive and premium solutions to larger problems with less side effect. Solutions are also made from a much broader and encompassing view that is not possible in linear or analytical thinking only. A business needs to make money, just as a human needs to respirate, there is the immediate pressure for business surviving, but there are also good reasons to build differentiated business competencies for the long run. A different living-context may require a different set of values to be adhered to. Synthesis can help leaders see a full business picture more vividly via timeframe and integrate the multiple perspectives into premium solutions, embrace emergent business properties, approach problems systematically and build future-driven business resolutions.

Digitalization disrupts not only the business boundary but also the industry boundary. Change can flow on the surface whereas digital transformation needs to permeate into business vision, strategy, culture, communication, or process, etc. A "synthetic Board" can read change sentiment with accuracy. If you have good change-readiness, and then, you will probably be better at change. Thus, it’s important to develop the future-oriented “synthetic board” with insightful board directors to share the far-sighted vision, represent the overall quality of leadership, set digital culture tones, make a sound judgment, empower changes, and inspire innovation,

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Leverage Systems Thinking to Understand Patterns and Drive Changes

System thinking is just a tool at their disposal to try to evaluate beforehand what will happen as they start the process as well as make the proper adjustment on the way of changes. 

Uncertainty, ambiguity, unpredictability, velocity, etc, are the digital new normal. To keep up with today's changes and market disruptions requires the right people with a growth mindset and high changeability. Systems Thinking helps to understand patterns, interconnectivity between parts and the whole, the interrelationship of businesses in order to manage changes systematically and lead digital transformation seamlessly.

See the connections and interdependence: Business and world are always on and have become hyper-connected and interdependent. To gain an in-depth understanding of interdependence, it is important to apply System Thinking to view the digital organization as an interconnected and interdependent system. The structured cross-functional interdependencies can be enabled with formal business elements such as management systems (planning and controlling), standardized processes, or centralized functions. There are also the informal business interdependencies (symbiosis), which has a greater dose of informal organizational elements such as information flow, shared corporate value or culture, business dialects, collective knowledge, and expertise, etc. Highly innovative organizations digitally connect key resources and assets in the context of the idea reaching innovation hubs and clusters across the digital ecosystem for sharing and co-creating new context, to reach a higher state of business innovation and maturity.

See the invisible behind the visible: Change is inevitable, but the success rate of change is very low. One of the reason change often fails because so many companies and business managers only focus on tangible, but they lack an in-depth understanding of invisible or intangible things such as culture, communication, etc, just getting them to consider the list of intangibles would be a breakthrough. Thus, systems thinking is an important tool to help identify the patterns, hard and soft forces, visible and invisible factors of changes. Change is dynamic, and the business system is complex and contextual, without an in-depth understanding of people, process, and technology, the blind spots and gaps are inevitable. Typically, either strategy execution or change management fails due to surprises and unknown/unforeseen factors. Metaphorically, change is like the iceberg, usually, the large part underneath the water is invisible, but a crucial decisive factor for the success or failure of Change Management. That means you have to dive deeper to understand unknown, see invisible in order to read digital sentiment clearly and drive changes effortlessly.

See how things in the 'now' came from the past: We cannot predict anything beforehand but can imagine with many experiences involved in current or in the past. History often repeats itself, a business can take advantage of "lesson learned," through re-introducing the past in a new way and build the bridge to connect the past to today’s initiatives and performance. From the management perspective, lack of reflection, change review, and pattern recognition is one of the biggest pitfalls in change management and business transformation effort. Therefore, Systems Thinking is a great tool enabling us to understand the interconnection from the temporal dimension, see how things in the new came from the past. Leveraging systems thinking to view the past also allows us to recognize possible conflict that could approach from where we have been to where we want to go. Like the rear mirror as the tool to make sure we understand where we are, what behinds us, any immediate gaps or dangers that stop us from steering forward safely and effectively.

See how changes would happen over time toward the future: Though there are always great lessons to learn from the past, future is what we should focus on. The challenges that organizations face include the high velocity of changes, complexity, or uncertainties which could blur our vision and make future unpredictable. No wonder today’s business managers so easily feel lost and get stuck at the transactional activities only - keep the business wheel spinning, but sometimes going nowhere. Systems Thinking could become an effective tool to help them understand how changes would happen over time toward the future, look into the unknown future and attempt to define the landscape with its opportunities and risks, and help to push the future in the direction they want, strongly and reliably. By leveraging systems thinking to navigate forward, the business management is able to more accurately judge the coming curves and obstacles, what small change can be made that might effectively change the future significantly.

What consequences can be created through actions: Organizations and their people learn through their interactions with the environment. They plan, act, observe the consequences of their action, make inferences about those consequences, and draw implications for future action. Systems Thinking is an important tool to help understand the interconnections between those steps - what consequences can be created through actions, and how to make the necessary adjustment to achieve a better outcome? Are your people and process integrated to ensure a consistent ability to deliver business results? Digital enablement is always about planning, funding, designing, building, operating, securing, optimizing and balancing. Digital management is fundamentally an iterative cycle to design, build, scale and optimize business competency and achieve the desired effect under specified performance standards and conditions. Systems Thinking helps business leaders pay attention to the myriad of internal and external forces that define and influence the way they do business these days. So they can make systematic planning and take logical steps for achieving well-defined goals, measuring resources, making the adjustment to move forward confidently.

System thinking is just a tool at their disposal to try to evaluate beforehand what will happen as they start the process as well as make the proper adjustment on the way of changes. Systems Thinking does not create change per se. Digital leaders and influencers create change. Systems Thinking is an effective tool, but for the approach to be positive in the social world, you need to stay away from thinking that a system is a "thing," you need to remember it is only a tool, in implementing the goal, you need to understand humans and how they change. They are the center of change and real change masters.

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The Monthly “Dot Connections”: Critical Thinking Jan. 2019

Critical thinking is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion.

The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Organization of the Future is an organization designed openly for anyone with ideas on how human organizations ought to be contrived in the face of the strategic imperatives of the digital era. The work is not the place you go, but a live organization and an experiment lab you can connect the future dots.

      

 Critical Thinking Dots Connection

Critical Thinking vs. Creative Thinking in Workplace? Both critical thinking and creative thinking are vital in the workplace. These skills hand in hand help to drive the growth of an organization and its employees as well as enable effectiveness (doing the right things or framing the right questions) efficiency (doing things right) and agility (ability to adapt to the changes) in solving problems and making decisions.

Critical Thinking & Critical Thinker Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

Critical thinking vs. debate Critical thinking is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion; while the debate is a discussion, as of a public question in an assembly, involving opposing viewpoints (dictionary.com). Critical thinking vs. debate: how to leverage them in decision making and culture shaping?

Criticism: Constructive or Destructive Most leaders or managers hear more compliment than the criticism. Those good words may test leaders’ gravitas, but constructive criticism is the building block of great leadership. How should leaders handle criticism effectively, not emotionally, though?

The Opposite of Critical Thinking There are many types of thinking. Many of them overlap with each other. They are all happening in the same sphere of influence of an individual human or groups of humans, or humans interacting with knowledge of the past, or connection with some "super-conscious" field. Critical Thinking is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion. What’s the opposite of Critical Thinking though?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with about #5300th 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. 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 Art and Science of Creativity: A Set of Albert Einstein’s Quotes to Explore Creativity

 The most advanced societies are diverse mixtures of peoples that can spark creativity and amplify innovation effect.

Creativity is both innate and a skill. Developing creativity requires both internal motivation and self-awareness. Creativity is the high level of thinking because it evolves many thought processes, such as imagination, pattern discovery, originality, intuition, etc. There are both art and science about creativity. Here is a set of Albert Einstein’s insightful quotes to explore the breadth and depth of creativity.

“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks a real advance in science.”- Albert Einstein

Knowledge is fundamental. But without the imagination to "believe in the possible," creativity may not happen. Imagination leads to discovery. Discovery is both an event and a thought process. A great wealth of knowledge fuels imaginations. However, being creative is not just being knowledgeable. At the highest level of imagination engagement, we become driven to leverage our imagination for visualizing and expanding ideas. Knowledge helps us refine our idea to what is economically feasible to achieve the tangible results. Sometimes it is not possible to "see" the facts because they exist in different planes, they often seemly unrelated because they are scatted in transdisciplinary, but interconnected domains. So until you deal with facts from different sources that relate essentially to the same matter, the patterns are not apparent. Creativity is the high level of thinking which occurs often at the intersection of imagination and knowledge, to recognize patterns and come up with better solutions.

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” - Albert Einstein

In the business world, at least, you can't always wait for the "best" solution to emerge. Because with the increasing pace of changes and frequent disruptions, the best practices are outdated sooner than ever and “commonly known” method is no longer working anymore when the circumstances change. It is important to experiment, explore, and encourage new ways to solve problems. When you encounter a tough problem, you need to think of it in a creative way. There is as much creative thinking that goes into problem identification as solution discovery. Sometimes lack of creativity becomes the problem after many people refused to deal with it for various reasons and ignored it until it becomes a problem and later, the bigger problem and the harder problem. It takes courage to get out of the conventional thinking box, practice creative thinking to come out novel ideas, broaden thoughts and connect wider dots for figuring out alternative solutions. Creative problem-solvers have the ability to reframe the circumstances or conditions around a problem, they see the old problem from every direction and find a better way to solve it creatively.

“We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.” Albert Einstein

There are  known known, known unknown, and unknown unknown. The things we know compared to the things we don’t know is just a tip of the iceberg. Digital organizations are complex systems, with nonlinear patterns or emergent behaviors. Generally speaking, unknown unknown is caused by the nature of randomness or even chaos. It’s unpredictable and lack of a stable pattern or order. The business management needs to know which factors contribute to uncertainty. Is it caused by “unknown” factor - not identified with the scope of the business planning; or is it caused by “unknowable” -beyond the knowledge and understanding of management; or is it caused by “stochastic events”- situations with random distributions as well as “unknown” distributions. Ignorance of unknown (both known unknown and unknown) is the pitfall for problem-solving. Handling uncertainty effectively is fundamentally the ability to adapt to the business dynamic and solve problems innovatively. It’s important to deploy new ideas, new process and new adventures to adapt to changes. Be humble to admit our limitation. It’s critical to collect information and feedback, doing enough homework for planning with necessary adjustment on the way to fit the emerging situation, take the structured methods or empirical practices for problem-solving.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” - Albert Einstein

Logically, simplifying the complicated thing is an optimal and smart choice. Simplicity is the design principle of looking for what is common for maximum reuse. Simplicity is a behavioral attitude to see things as and what and where they are and be content and cool as it is. Everything is designed. Design thinking is a creative process coming up with novel ideas and figuring out elegant solutions. People complicate simple things when they don't have the answers. When a business becomes overly complex and people get frustrated and annoyed by not being able to accomplish things easily, this drives the search for simpler concepts and methods. There is a coherent relationship between simplicity and clarity. Complication proceeds simplicity, not the other way around. When pioneering and solving problems, initial solutions are often more complex than required, and then, adoption and progress come with simplification. Creativity process could be sophisticated, but creativity is never for making things complicated, the opposite is actually true, creativity is to advance, but also simplify things.

“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.” - Albert Einstein

Creative people judge the world for themselves and they are skeptical of but open with outside opinions. Originality and independent thinking are crucial ingredients in creativity. Independent thinking means you do not follow others opinion blindly, but analyze and synthesize all sources of input and information to form your own viewpoint and blend into fresh ideas. Creatives sharpen their thinking skills via open and skillful questioning, They ask different questions, or ask questions differently; they are not afraid of challenging the status quo or rocking the boat; they are thoughtful in making comments, not finger pointing, but focusing on problem-solving. They kindly ask questions to draw out other’s assumptions; holds the flow and keep track, not to get lost on tangents. They embrace opposite views to trigger creativity, and they can look at the source and find from the neutral point, something that will shed light on solving the disparity that exists. They refine the massive amount of disparate information to discover patterns and come up with fresh ideas or alternative solutions.

It’s not difficult of being creative, it’s difficult for you to be understood by others most of the times. Creatives are often visionaries and forward-thinker. People perceive creative people as risky or unrealistic because creative people always see the possibility in the world when most people only see the way that they have been told with ignorance of invisible, or intangible things. A set of Albert Einstein’s Quotes inspires us to think differently and take courage to practice creativity. The most advanced societies are diverse mixtures of peoples that can spark creativity and amplify innovation effect.

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Leveraging "Sense and Sensitivity" to Experience Digital

Walkthrough “look, listen, feel, taste, and question,” stages for tuning a digital organization.

Digital transformation represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. It is the radical change which cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished, it has to be woven into the collective mindsets, communications, processes, and actions of the organization. The goal for running a dynamic digital business is to create an organization where change is the norm and happens the whole time, thereby, delivering faster and increasing market share as well as improving the overall business maturity. The transformative effort needs to be undertaken as the means of getting to defined competencies to accomplish the defined business goals. There are both hard and soft factors, the art and science of Change Management. How to leverage "sense and sensitivity" to handle the ebbs and flows of change, experience digital and drive business transformation effortlessly?

Look: The digital scenery is so vivid, The inspiration happens, but it's so bright and electric, it may take great insight for the creative eyes to recognize amazing patterns and takes a lot of effort to look through, around corners and look forward. Before taking actions, start a deep observation to understand your business and its ecosystem by capturing multifaceted views, such as the “zoom out view” for capturing the holistic picture; the “zoom in view” for highlighting or prioritizing the business concerns, as well as the “diagnostic view” for solving critical business problems. For many business leaders, there is no surprise that they will see the mixed picture of “old and new,” from the mindset, business model, process or practice perspectives. Try to see more different perspectives without pushing toward the one that you think is the truth. This is an interesting and a never finished journey of connection with others. Make an objective assessment of the business stage in a life cycle of the organization, dig through the real issues which need to be addressed, and keep tuning the business to unlock its performance and maximize its potential. Digital leaders can communicate with their audience persuasively. Analogies can be noted, information and data can be supported, and connections can be spelled out. Chains of thought that can lead to those inspirations can be told as vivid stories.

Listen: Communication has occurred when the message is received and understood as a two-way street. The large scale of changes is complex, it’s important to listen to people’s feedback because often they are the cause and center of change; involve them in both change planning and process implementation, to gain insight and empathy. This is particularly important for today's business leaders and managers. Because when you are in a position of authority, you have lots of opportunities to tell, but perhaps lack the patience to listen in the right way. Like many things in this world, there are always two sides to the story. You need to listen to both for gaining the true understanding. Listen to both the “Naysayers” and “Yay sayers” when it comes to deep and far-reaching change. Listen and hear what people are saying or trying to say, even try to figure out what’s in their mind, not being said yet. Communicate carefully about the reasons for changes, and be honest about the impact, positive and negative on them as individuals. Actively listening and communicating to one another also creates excitement which propels good ideas to be formed and actions to be taken.

Feel: As the saying goes, "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." People respond in different ways to different situations. You don’t need to be the psychologist to understand people; but as the business leaders and managers, you should understand the psychology behind changes. People’s feelings need to be addressed. Either process change or technology update is the means to end, not the end itself; it must create soft touch for either engaging employees or delighting customers. For the large transformative changes, even the underlying business systems, structures or collective mindsets - culture needs to be reinvented. Often, people have no problem with change! They have “change blue” because they feel uncertain, risky, doubt or fear. It’s important for change leaders and practitioners to share their vision for changes with clarity, inspire people to think long term, make people feeling better by listening with empathy and communicating with respect. Digital dynamism consists in being able to break away from static or stale, and being fluid and proactive. Either for the individuals or the businesses, if you stick and restrict, you cannot be dynamic.

Taste: The high taste of digitalization means openness, responsiveness, innovativeness, fluidity, hybridity, high quality, and great design. Homogeneity, bureaucracy, primitiveness, and stagnation are tedious and tasteless. Digital transformation is a meaningful journey, the purpose is the salt you put on the teams for achieving common goals. The constructive criticisms which perhaps taste spicy or sour, are crucial to making continuous improvement. Running a “high taste” digital organization needs to set up the high standard, build a good strategy, engage a diverse workforce, be open to embracing diverse viewpoints, and build differentiated business competencies. High taste means high quality. High-quality enterprise is comprised of high-quality people, high-quality products/services, and high-quality business capabilities/processes, etc. High taste also means great design. Designing is about forming human-made objects to be pleasing and preferred by humans. High taste design lifts up business quality from functioning to firm to delight.

Ask: Asking questions can build consensus. Change without good reason and adding value is futile and useless. Asking questions, besides telling is an important tool to make a positive change. Asking questions is crucial to learning for everyone involved. Asking questions is a nonoffending way of making the point by understanding the point of view of another side. It can be used in multiple social interactions. However, without being able to listen with an open mind and heart, just asking questions may fall on "deaf ears," if there is not trustful relationship developed. If you do not understand their frame of reference, formulating the questions or understanding the context of the response becomes meaningless. To lead a seamless digital transformation, digital leaders need to ask deep questions for gaining an in-depth understanding of whether their organizations are well ahead of change curve or get stuck in the middle of nowhere. The key point is to use the right questions to slow down the analysis and decision-making processes by acquiring all the necessary information to make correct decisions.

Digitalization represents the next stage of business maturity which will improve how the enterprise works and interacts with its ecosystem, with people at the center of its focus. An enterprise has to be linked to the many and varying touch points between itself and its marketplace environment. Look, listen, feel, taste, and ask, etc, are all critical steps for driving changes and leading digital transformation to reach the next level of business performance and maturity.

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