Building Three Solid Digital Management Umbrellas to “Keep Business Cool” ~ Future of CIO

Monday, June 17, 2019

Building Three Solid Digital Management Umbrellas to “Keep Business Cool”

10:33 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Business leaders should realize that the breakthrough digital transformation of the business requires both scaling up and digging deeper.

The shift to digital cuts across sectors, geographies, and leadership roles. The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. Businesses today are not just working within the industry, but also permeating cross business ecosystem. It is important to apply the holistic management approach to build the following three giant management umbrellas solidly in order to “keep their business cool” and lead digital transformation effortlessly.

"Change management" as an overarching umbrella: Change is now the business new normal, Change Mangement is no longer the random business initiative, but a systematic management discipline and the ongoing business competency. It encompasses extensive planning, developing a shared vision, relentless communications, discovery of concerns/objections potential points of failure, addressing fears and resistance, enforcing cooperation, measuring outcomes, developing the best and next practices, and gaining lessons learned. It is nevertheless true that change itself has become unpredictable and evolutionary as compared to treading through carefully laid down the roadmap to changes. In the beginning, you often make a small change with linear steps. In the end, when you have gone through the multidimensional analysis or processes and when everything else is in place, you practice nonlinear thinking and holistic management discipline. Change Management needs to be the multidimensional management approach which has to be woven into processes, structures, communications, cultures, and actions of the organization. It means to make a radical shift from a silo and linear classic management style to holistic and nonlinear management discipline.

Information Management as an expansive umbrella: Information nowadays is one of the most invaluable resources and asset of organizations, and information assets need to be managed successfully. Information Management makes data available and useful for growing business or delighting customers. Information Management is a holistic business process of aligning the use of information through a multitude of management practices. The tricky bit with information is that, depending on the level of granularity and aggregation, you can use it for multiple purposes. Information Management has an expansive impact on the economy, politics, culture, and human behavior. Information Management as an overarching management umbrella may cover communication management, knowledge management, decision & problem-solving management, innovation management, culture management, talent management, and customer experience management, etc. Not only is the information interesting economic goods, but the value of information is also difficult to determine. it’s important to utilize technology, leverage information, set governance rules on information management. Further, information is one of the most time intensive pieces of innovation puzzle, data-based business foresight, and customer insight enable the business growing and running a smart business. A well-designed and holistic information/knowledge solutions bound to unlock the enterprise knowledge, to turn a downward (cost efficiency) spiral into an upward (business growth) spiral and drive the organization forward in the right direction. The challenge is to get beyond the tipping point where the power is unlocked and unleash the full digital potential of the business.

Enterprise Performance Management as an extensive umbrella: Enterprise performance management is about how organizations manage business performance at both strategic and operational level to achieve the well-set business goals and objectives. Enterprise Performance Management is critical as new competitive challenges and active market changes underscore the strategic imperative of managing performance more than ever. Performance Management a holistic management discipline which needs to connect many relevant dots to involve business development, enablement, and enhancement. Enterprise performance management is an extensive umbrella for other management disciplines such as Strategy Management, Operations Management, Risk Management, etc. They are all part of good Enterprise Performance Management. More specifically, Enterprise Performance Management is the integration of multiple methodologies including strategy maps, scorecards, customer profitability analysis using activity-based costing principles, customer intelligence, driver-based budgeting/rolling financial forecasts, and quality management, etc. Enterprise Performance Management integrates them as an extensive umbrella to manage performance in a structural way. In practice, the various activities are needed to manage performance including making strategic and operational plans, setting metrics, making day-to-day decisions, running numbers in context, leveraging data to tell stories and getting related results to business goals. A well-designed performance management system is a necessary foundation for continuous improvement.

Digital implies the always on and hyper-connected business nature with "VUCA" characteristics. Business leaders should realize that the breakthrough digital transformation of the business requires both scaling up and digging deeper. To stay competitive, companies must go beyond experimenting with digital technology and take holistic management disciplines to integrate their interdependencies, build solid management umbrellas and ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces, commit to transforming themselves into a high-performance digital business powerhouse.