Saturday, November 30, 2019

The Monthly “Problem-Solving Master” Book Tuning: A Set of “How”s to Frame & Solve Right Problems Nov. 2019

10:45 PM Pearl Zhu 1 comment

The deeper you understand the problem, the easier you could frame the problem, and the better chance you could solve it effectively.

The purpose of “Problem-Solving Master - Frame Problems Systematically and Solve Problems Creatively“ is to throw some light on how to understand, frame, and solve today’s multilayer, interdependent, and over-complex business problems effortlessly. Digital leaders and professionals should self-aware of their role in problems, show professional maturity, and develop a good reputation as the problem-solver.

A Set of “How”s to Frame & Solve Right Problems

How to Build a Good Reputation for Problem Solving Fundamentally, every job is to deal with problems big or small both from the long-term perspective or on a daily basis. We all develop reputations - for being problem creators, problem definers or problem solvers. Sometimes, even if you intend to solve problems but perhaps causes more serious problems later on. So it's important to observe the problem-solving scenarios and ask yourself the sets of questions such as, how do you discover the part you played in the problem/challenge? Which thought processes shall you leverage to diagnose problems and solve them? What is the best way to handle a problem that seems to have no solution?" How to build a good reputation on problem-solving?

How to Apply Creativity to Frame and Solve the Right problem? If the very purpose of business is to create customers, then, the big challenge for business’s survival and blossom is how to solve business problems systematically and skillfully. More critically, how to apply creativity to frame the right problem and solve it right is a fundamental capability to grow as a Digital Master?

How to Apply System Thinking to Shape Right Questions or frame Right Problems We live in the world with all sorts of problems, even though we understand all different forms of thinking, the problems facing the planet don't seem to be reducing. Many problems exist because they are either ill-defined or the concept cannot be adequately captured contextually. Trying to fix the wrong cause of a problem will waste time and resources, increase anxiety and even cause chaos. Therefore, the deeper you understand the problem, the easier you could frame the problem, and the better chance you could solve it effectively. But more specifically, how to discover what is the heart of the problem?

How to Shift from a "Finger Pointing" to a Problem Solving Culture Businesses "fail" for a multitude of reasons including economic conditions, vendor management, performance or production, industry regulations, expansion costs and the list goes on. Look at the primary causes behind the fall of the business. So which failure are you talking about here? Is it a functional failure? Or a major capital project failure? Is it the strategic organizational level failure or governance mistakes? What are the parameters of failure to you? Is it poor financial planning and management or low quality of product and services or strained employee relationship, or ineffective marketing channels and communications, or disconnects in operational practices? What type of organization are you talking about?

How to Dig Through the Root Causes of Complex Problems The digital business world becomes hyper-connected and interdependent, the problems facing business also turn to be over-complex and difficult to solve, how do you identify the root cause of a problem at work and effectively address it?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 6200+ blogs 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.

The Best “Harmonization” Quotes of “Digital Master” Nov. 2019

10:39 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

It’s important to create a business context in which people are empowered and respected to create the business synergy that is the essence of the business harmonization.

1 Create a harmonized working environment by communicating smoothly to make collective decisions and taking a collaboration road to achieve strategic goals and make continuous deliveries.

2 The strategic alignment occurs when all parts of the choir sing their respective parts in harmony to achieve a higher purpose.

3 Digital leadership is more about influencing, mentoring, harmonizing and orchestrating toward the next level of organizational maturity.

4 It’s important to create a business context in which people are empowered and respected to create the business synergy that is the essence of the business harmonization.

5 The challenge for achieving the harmonies of digitalizing the business is to manage its portfolio of relevant cross-border synergies, strategic flexibility and organizational interdependence, fine-tune the structure and improve changeability, empower people, engage digital talent and balance effectiveness and efficiency.

6 If the strategic intent of organizational design can be understood across the organization, the business strategic alignment process could become an analytical “e-harmony” process in which the actual configuration of organizational strategy is a consequence of design and implementation.

7 Creating a context where people can collaborate where they are empowered and respected and make collective decisions is the essence of information governance; it is the business "harmony."

8 Organizations that have a high mature strategic alignment, integration, collaboration, or harmony will outperform their competitors and tend to be more responsive to the business dynamic.

9 Those organizations that have a higher mature strategic alignment through integration, collaboration and harmony, etc. will outperform their competitors and tend to be more responsive to the business dynamic and reach the next level of organizational maturity.

System Thinking vs. Design Thinking

10:35 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Businesses today need nothing less than a paradigm shift in leveraging varying thought processes to solve business problems and generate property of constituencies seamlessly.

Systems Thinking is important for the management to understand the interconnectivity between parts and the whole. It provides the tools and methodologies to define problems under uncertainty and offers a better and more accurate understanding of the overall business and its ecosystem. To improve the organizational maturity from functioning to delight, design is largely considered a byproduct of solid engineering discipline with an artistic touch, not just about wire frame or visual delight, As an organization's maturity about design increased, design moves from a superficial afterthought to a type of advanced thinking and real competitive business advantage.

Integrate Systems Thinking and Design Thinking to solve problems creatively and shape desirable future effortlessly: Business problems today are often complex and dynamic, you can drive mechanically thinking about a problem in normal traffic and linear logic. However, if the situation is very natural and fluid, with a lot of inter-dependencies and uncertainty, it calls for Systems Thinking to understand the interconnected business relationships and design thinking for re-imagining and creating a desirable future.

Systems Thinking helps to understand interrelationships of the large problem rather than isolating things, seeing patterns of change rather than static snapshots. It’s also critical to leverage design thinking that provides a counterpoint to the analytical, to help solve problems holistically and creatively. In fact, design thinking is nonlinear and not dedicated to perpetuating the status quo.

The art, design, engineering are all interconnected, at the core of problem-solving, With "VUCA" digital new normal, it's critical to encourages different types of thinking for solving problems creatively. Business solutions need to be made from a much broader and encompassing view that is not possible in linear thinking via single dimensional lens.

Systems thinking and systematic structure provide the shell within which individuals can collaborate to manifest design and create transparency to problems: Design is uniquely challenging because the products of the creative design must fit inside very strict constraints and need to be done under extreme pressure of time, cost and functionality. In practice, there are a lot of reasons why the design results is something different than intended, like gaps existing in the design because there are no processes to handle uncertain situations, unrealistic design that could not be implemented in the organizational system.

Thus, it’s an importance of applying Systems Thinking to provide the shell for enforcing cross-disciplined understanding of nonlinearity - the scope of change and interdependent business relationships. A systematic structure is important to help apply a set of well-defined principles, leverage scientific methodologies, weight in design factors, use efficient tools, take consideration of the range of options to solve problems both creatively and systematically.

Strike the right balance of design thinking and systems thinking to manage an iterative problem-solving continuum: Design thinking is often bottom up, synthetic to build things up; Systems Thinking is usually top down and big picture driven. Systems Thinking does not need to look at the details of the design such as low-level business processes to discover patterns of behavior. It helps digital leaders and professionals discover the interconnectivity and interdependence of the digital business ecosystem, and brings balance and flexibility to manage an iterative problem-solving continuum.

While leveraging design thinking to do actual work or solve problems, you do need to understand that those solutions may come through the back doors and side windows. It’s critical to be open minded to consider all sorts of possibilities. Always be careful about examining the potential points of engagement, rather than jumping to the “we'll fix this" mentality. You have to look at the problem domain holistically and apply the “simplicity and flexibility” principles to architect and design tailored solutions.

Leverage Systems Thinking to understand the interdependence of the problems, explore dynamic perspectives, fresh insight, and balanced views to gain the in-depth knowledge of problems that occur, combine or integrate different pieces of answers to ensure a cohesive solution to larger problems with less side effects. From the business management perspective, great leaders with cultural design lens ought to be concerned not only with the here and now but prayerfully with their legacy to future generations - a better future, delightful business solutions, and brighter workforce.

In the digital era with rapid change and innovation, design, when done with rigor, discipline and focused approach in the right way, can be developed into a strategic business capability rather than just a service. Systems Thinking offers a better and more accurate understanding of the overall situation and problems, and hence, better defining the problems and subsequently, how you should go about solving them and in what sequence. Thus, businesses today need nothing less than a paradigm shift in their thinking about the fundamentals of how organizations work to build a digital fitting workforce and leverage varying thought processes to solve business problems and generate property of constituencies seamlessly.

The Monthly “100 IT Charm” Book Tuning: Running IT with High Impact Nov. 2019

11:24 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Forward-looking organizations begin to see IT as an integral part of the business and empower IT to lead changes.

The purpose of the book “100 IT Charms: Running Versatile IT to get Digital Ready“ is to articulate different flavors of digital IT organizations and brainstorm the best and next practices for running highly innovative and high-performance IT. Digital charm is not based on the style presented on the surface but on a set of unique competencies to make IT shine through as a business differentiator.

Running IT with High Impact

Broader, Deeper, and Bolder - How to Run a Highly Impactful Digital IT Organization Information is the lifeblood of the modern business and technology is the disruptive force behind the digital transformation. Nowadays IT has a lot of things to leverage. Forward-looking businesses empower their IT organizations to lead changes and catalyze innovation. IT and business need to develop a true partnership and work to pursue the desired outcomes. To be the strategic business partner and make the high business impact, contemporary IT organization should become broader, deeper, and bolder in order to drive change and lead the digital paradigm shift seamlessly.

Insight, Innovation, and Influence of Modern Digital IT The exponential growth of information, the wave of emerging digital technologies and the tide of “digital transformation” are creating new opportunities for the business to grow and mature. Forward-looking organizations begin to see IT as an integral part of the business, empower IT to lead changes and learn how to strike the right balance between “old” and “new” way to do things. Here is insight, innovation, and influence of modern digital IT organization.

The CIO as “Chief Influence Officer”: How to Calibrate Your Impact Organizations of the future are increasingly exhibiting digital characteristics in various shades, colors, extensiveness, and intensity. IT is the linchpin of running a digital business. The modern CIOs play a crucial role in driving changes and leading digitalization. The degree of leadership influence is much more complex than the leader’s title or personality. Highly effective CIOs are independent thinkers, unbiased communicators, flexible managers, and relentless change agents.They need to have the ability to “calibrate their impact,” being able to lead through influence, not by brute force.

The CIO as “Chief Impact Officer”: Does your Word Carry Weight in Making the Digital Paradigm Shift? Due to the disruptive nature of technologies and fast-growing information, the pervasive digitization requires IT leaders to rethink how things are done in organizations. The contemporary CIO is no longer the tedious management role to keep the lights only now, there are many critical leadership roles that they have to play for leading IT up to the next level of organizational maturity. CIO can make the significant digital impact through their breadth of business knowledge and the depth of IT insight. But more specifically, the CIO as “Chief Impact Officer”: How does your word carry weight in making the digital paradigm shift?

Running IT as the “Center of Possibility” IT continues to grow in importance to organizations, both operationally and as a competitive advantage. To keep IT relevant, IT management shouldn't just practice some transactional activities or act as a controller only. It has to explore both the art and science of digital management discipline, run IT organization as the “center of possibility,” to accelerate its performance and unlock business potential.

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 minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6200 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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.

The Best “Story-Telling” Quotes of “Digital Master” to Celebrate Thanksgiving Nov. 2019

11:19 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

The good story is about selling today for tomorrow. It's important to use data for telling information-based stories.

1 The good stories are interesting enough to engage others, meaningful enough to touch the hearts, logical enough to connect the minds, vivid enough to reimagine the future and persuasive enough to rolling vision into reality.

2 The good story is about selling today for tomorrow. It's important to use data for telling information-based stories.

3 Digital leaders should tell the number-savvy stories, which can lead to more persuasive and evidence-based communication.

4 Either telling a happy or sad story, they need to have an optimistic attitude.

5 One of the very goals for digitalization is to build a people-centric business. Listen to the fantastic individual stories of their employees and knit them into a vivid business story.

6 Gaining a deep understanding of people means listening to their stories with empathy, truly knowing who they are, how they think, and who they want to become, not based on their physical identity, but seeing through their character, strength, thought process, learning habit, personality.

7 Tell the full story vividly about digital transformation, with shapes and colors, not just part of the plot.

8 Great leaders are great storytellers, envision and communicate a people-centric digital transformation. They are able to represent themselves, able to persuade and to gain trust and respect.

9 Digital leaders should tell the full story with the colorful vision, varying opportunities and possibilities, upward challenges and downwards risks. It should embrace creativity, context, cascade, tailor the varying business audience, in order to close cognitive gaps and enforce communication effectiveness.

The Multi-Stages of “Self Actualization” in the Digital Way

11:16 PM Pearl Zhu 4 comments

High performing and high potential digital leaders and professionals are sself-aware, elf-motivated, self-directed, self-disciplined, and self-renew.

Maslow defined self-actualization to be "the desire for self-fulfillment and being all you can be, namely the tendency for the individual to become actualized in what he/she is potentially.

From the management perspective, digital leaders today should spend time on developing self and others, set a strong leadership tone in building a culture of learning to unleash the collective human potential. “With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. Here are the multi-stages of “self actualization” in the digital way.

“All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It's made up of pioneers, the beginners. That's where the action is.” - Abraham Maslow

Self awareness: In the world of self-awareness or self-change, there is always one clear issue: the issue of self - you. Awareness is at the level of the energetic connection between heart and mind. Knowing who you are or being self-aware, allows you to discover your strength, and become a better human being.

Keep in mind though, the strength is not equal to linear skills; it's a good combination of character, mindset, talent, knowledge and expertise. It's only on the inner journey that we truly understand why we do any of the things we do which lead us to a greater understanding of ourselves. From a team building perspective, self-awareness is about understanding your impact on others, the surroundings, and how to leverage your strength and build a team with complementary skills and experiences to unlock performance and maximize the collective potential.

Self-development, self-confidence: Self-development is the journey to strengthen your strength, improve your digital professionalism, unleash your potential or refine the high quality of being a better version of “you.” Concentrate your energy on developing your own strength and building your cohesive capabilities, not just putting eyes on your competitors.

Being self-confident means the right dose of ego to overcome fears and be courageous enough to take risks. Individuals with high potential are usually distinguished by their mastery of new roles quickly, learning more rapidly than their peers, highly innovative, taking initiatives proactively to keep recreating themselves. They think, create, and self-actualize by architecting themselves, experimenting with new things and exploring the art of possibility. In fact, self-development is the full cycle of self-actualization. It takes both attitude and aptitude.

Self-motivation, self-improvement: Self-motivation -the right attitude to learn and grow. You sense yourself and that's all you need to let your thoughts and behavior work to keep you motivated. Assessing a person’s motivational potential is how well he/she can adapt personal drive and focus on performing well in new and changing context via self-motivation.

Self-motivation and self-improvement help you set disciplines and directional opportunities for personal growth, helps to build on the strengths and improve on their weaknesses. It also allows you to leverage that knowledge to increase the influential outreach via self-actualization. Motivation is moving forward, taking actions.

Self-discipline: Self-discipline is nothing but self-consciousness. Self-disciplined people have better clarity of thoughts and, it’s what supports that moral courage and allows them to act in the right manner. The true self-discipline ought to be able to engage with any situation that one might encounter. It is about being balanced in thoughts and actions rather than getting the trap of polarity.

The mind with self-discipline should be consciously trained even to some flexibility so that they don't get disturbed too much when they are supposed to be out of that and they need to be flexible with others. People with self-discipline often exercise restraint while expressing emotions or may avoid indulgence because of better control over self via the clarity of thoughts, not because of any weakness. Without self discipline, you do not manage to transform negative habits and you cannot create a new state of awareness in which the self is nourished through the experience of positivity, make yourselves willing to progress and then take the steps necessary to unlock that self-actualization.

Self-adaptation and self -renewal: With rapid changes and continuous disruptions, either individually or collectively, self-adaptation is generally a requirement within digital business systems navigated by habit and the changeability to moving out of a comfort zone, complemented by the cycle of self-development and keep the movement on. That means how to live a creative and productive life by strengthening mental toughness and practicing creativity continually.

From the business management perspective, to understand the business or the world as a complex adaptive system requires an understanding of how things have come together, being “built” at the intuitive level. How successfully the organization can handle digital disruption depends on how fast and capable they can adapt to changes. It is critical to develop time management and prioritization skills, do things matter, and keep self-adapting and self-renewing. Digital organizations are like the living systems that can self-renew in thriving in the “VUCA” digital dynamic.

High performing and high potential digital leaders and professionals are sself-aware, elf-motivated, self-directed, self-disciplined, and self-renew. It’s important to build a positive and creative working environment in which the talented employees can grow and innovate, unleash their full potential and the collective business potential to achieve the organizational prosperity for the long term.

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 11/28/2019

10:53 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 6200+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 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 Tales of Digital Transformation Unpredictability, uncertainty, the exponential growth of information, frequent disruptions, and the probability of surprising emergent properties bring both unprecedented opportunities and risks to organizations across industrial sectors and geographical locations today.

The Monthly “Digital Boardroom” Book Tuning: The Pillars and Practices of Strategic Board Nov. 2019 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 are the multiple perspectives of shaping a strategic boardroom with digital acumen.

The Multidimensional Perspectives of Organizational Core Competency Digital transformation represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. To evoke fundamental evolutions of complex business systems, digital organizations need to have a unique set of core competencies to achieve business goals.

Design Thinking and Simplicity Simplicity means or is related to too many things such as responsiveness, availability, robustness, manageability, scalability, flexibility, reliability, sensitivity, or comprehensiveness, etc. The forward-thinking organizations understand how things such as design thinking and simplicity, etc, can fundamentally change organizations and their societal impact on things such as strategy, manageability, sustainability, and social responsibility. The art of digital management is not to complicate things, but to eliminate unnecessary complications, and leverage design thinking to fine tune modern organizational structures and functions for reaching the next level of organizational maturity.

The Monthly Digital Principles/Practices Summary: A Set of Practices to Move Up Digital Maturity Nov. 2019 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.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking about 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.

The Best “Gratitude” Quotes of “Digital Master” to Celebrate Thanksgiving Nov. 2019

10:49 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Sympathy feeds the hunger, and empathy connects the minds and the world. Be grateful to understand others and be understood.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Gratitude” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Thanksgiving Day is the day to be grateful for insight and wisdom, which are the invaluable treasures to warm the heart and fresh the mind at the ultimate level.

2 When it comes to giving, one must take some time to assess situations where others have given their time, treasure, or talent to help ourselves succeed or grow.

3 The power of gratitude in based on leadership effectiveness and profundity.

4 Sympathy feeds the hunger, and empathy connects the minds and the world. Be grateful to understand others and be understood.

5 Be grateful for those who can truly understand you, empower yourself with the ability to deliver constructive feedback, guidance and support to those sharing with you.

6 Be grateful for empowerment. Growing and empowering others is the gratitude mind for leaders.

7 Be grateful for what you understand, because it gives you the confidence to move on. Be grateful when you don’t know something; for it gives you the opportunity to learn…..

8 Nature is delightful! Delight is reflected in the expression of joy that overflows with aesthetic appreciation and abundant gratitude to nature.

9 Innovation has the full emotional cycle behind it. Be dissatisfied with the status quo, but be grateful for great ideas shared or precious feedback offered.

How to Build a Good Enterprise Learning Strategy

10:41 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

The purpose of building a learning organization is to unlock the full potential of the business.

Learning at the organizational level is strategic because it impacts the firm’s long term surviving and thriving. Thus, learning strategy should become an integral part of the business strategy which enables top management to identify crucial learning related issues, set guidelines, prioritize, and take actions to solve well-defined problems and improve the overall organizational maturity.

Diagnose learning related issues: Digital organizations and their people must learn through their interactions with the business environment, ride learning curves to get into actions in creative, positive, and productive ways that educate, support, and celebrate every critical step of the business transformation journey. To develop a good enterprise learning strategy, it’s crucial to diagnose learning related issues such as learning inertia, learning curve awareness, or learning disability, etc, and further dig into the root causes such as close mindset, static and stale culture, or bureaucratic management style, etc.

It is also important to identify the gap between knowledge and insight, help digital leaders and professionals not become overwhelmed by the exponential growth of information and abundant knowledge, apply learning, act, observe the consequences of their actions, and make continuous improvement.

Digital gaps may be defined as the difference between “the way things are” and “the way they should be.” The easiest gaps to identify are those relating to learning and knowledge. 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 and learning gaps can be closed seamlessly to improve the organizational learning intelligence.

Set guidelines: Digital encourages learning, autonomy, and innovation. That means the guiding principles, in fact, become more crucial to be defined as core criteria and behavior guidelines to encourage learning and practice a multifaceted digital management discipline. It could also mean less restrictive rules or bureaucracy, break down silo thinking and keep information and knowledge flow seamlessly and inspire learning and growing continually.

In fact, setting guiding principles for organizational learning is not to manipulate “how,” but to clarify “why” first. Create a shared framework which will lead to shared learning and meaning. Some general enterprise knowledge management and learning principles include:

-Learning needs to become the digital mantra; and knowledge needs to be managed more systematically.

-Learning is a human problem and not a technological problem.

-Digital learning should become more informal, interactive, and adaptive.

-You can't resolve 21st century learning and Knowledge Management problems with the mindsets shaped half a century ago

-Continue to learn so you can keep improving.

Manifest the competitive learning “logic” of the business: Collective learning is the secret source to foster a culture of innovation and drive a company’s long-term success. A learning strategy is the organization's competitive learning "logic" manifested through organizational cultures and actions. It’s critical to build a culture to encourage learning, creativity, and align the employees' professional goals with the strategic business goals of the organization.

It is imperative to improve the knowledge management which involves the use of technologies and processes with the aim of optimizing the value that is generated, and with the goal to explore the breadth and depth of knowledge, its prospects and practices and improve organization’s collective learning capabilities and ultimate business competency,

Develop the creative learning formulas: Technology is a cornerstone of digital businesses of any size nowadays. Thus, creative learning can enforce trust relationships within the organization. People want to grow, develop and learn, The digital workforce today has to learn and relearn all the time and then apply those lessons to succeed in new situations.

Try to create a subsystem (team) that leverages experiences, understandings and meaning and develop the creative learning formulas.You need to not only assimilate the existing knowledge, more importantly, you have to create new knowledge, more frequently replace the out of date knowledge in order to do things in a better way for solving either existing or emergent problems creatively. Some interesting learning formulas include:

(Topics + RightwaytoInform*HelptoLook Intelligent)=C-Level Success

Topics = (Buzz Topics = Systems Scalable + Data Mining + Reliable + secure)

HelptoLook Intelligent = Right Topics + Buzz phrases + examples

The purpose of building a learning organization is to unlock the full potential of the business. A good learning strategy can help the business diagnose the common learning disability issues, make an objective assessment of learning curves, set guidelines for collective learning, fine tune the learning organizational structures and processes and improve the overall learning maturity of the organization.

The Monthly “12 CIO Personas” Book Turning: The Digital CIO with Contemporary Intelligence Nov. 2019

10:55 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

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

This book “12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO’s Situational Leadership Practices” is the extensive brainstorming and logical content expansion of my book “CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of IT,” to reimagine and reinvent CIO leadership via practicing multitudes of digital influence. The important thing is that CIOs as the top leadership role must have a strong mindset, a unique personality, and a clear idea of what needs to be done, yet creative enough to not hold the company back from growth. Regardless of which personality they have, digital CIOs need to be both transformational and situational, innovative and tactical, business savvy and technology insightful, communication-effective and operation-efficient.

The Digital CIO with Contemporary Intelligence

Digital CIOs with Five Contemporary Intelligence ? Digital transformation represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. IT plays a crucial role in leading changes and catalyzing innovation. Therefore, the Digital CIO is a sophisticated leadership role with multidimensional intelligence, having an in-depth understanding of the breadth and depth of the digital ecosystem, in order to manage multifaceted IT and reinvent IT organization as a change agent effortlessly.

The Digital CIO with “Strategic and Paradoxical Intelligence” IT is increasingly supportive of competitive position of the business. IT matters not only because it’s pervasive, but also because it continues to advance, its nature of the "constructive disruption" and its “paradox in management.” IT leaders have to deal with issues that combine contradictory features or qualities. At the highest level of organizational maturity, IT needs to become the game changer for their company.

Three Digital Traits to Become a Sophisticated Modern CIO Due to the disruptive nature of technology and fast-growing information, and in a world where practically every aspect of nearly every business, as mundane and detached from IT either sales or accounting, is wholly dependent on IT to a high degree, the CIO role is perhaps one of the most sophisticated executive positions in modern businesses because they have to wear multiple personas to practice situational leadership, and keep reinventing IT to adapting to changes all the time. For the modern CIO, that simply means being a proper "C-level" leader to amplify leadership influence and a tactical manager to keep IT running flawlessly at the prevailing level of sophistication. Here are three digital traits to become a sophisticated modern CIO.

Five "Thinking Forces" to Drive Digital With fast-paced changes, shortened knowledge cycle and fierce competitions, no one can rest on a static mindset, past accomplishments, or the wishful thought that everything is perfect the way it is. The digital workforce is a new breed - it's the super-connected generation with a multitude of varieties - multi-generations, multidimensional intelligence, multi-cultures, and multi-devices. The digital organization is the self-organized but interlaced and hyper-connected ecosystem. The high mature digital organization today needs to be sophisticated enough to act intelligently and nimble enough to adapt to changes promptly. The traditional management discipline based on silo thinking, linear logic, and reductionistic approach is outdated somehow. Here are five thinking forces to lead the digital transformation.

A Mind with Multidimensional Intelligence Intelligence is the quick and clear perception of any situation, plus ability to adjust to any circumstances. It is contextual. Whether someone is "intelligent" or not depends entirely on what you are asking them to accomplish with their brain. Intelligence is continuing with life no matter what, and never allow what you can't do interfere with what you can. It is like that "ripples-on-the-water" metaphor, it is our connectedness to the world around us that makes whatever intelligence we have truly useful to ourselves and to others; connected, by a sort of resonance between our cognitive and affective dimensions and the actual world we co-inhabit with those around us.

Modern organizations have their own sophistication with silo functions, the sea of information, and the pool of talent. The CIO is an inherently cross-functional role, to bridge the business and IT; the data and insight, the business’s today and tomorrow. The digital CIOs have to wear different personas and master multiple leadership and management roles effortlessly. They need to lead at the strategic level for conducting a complex digital orchestra; they should be handy managers to plumbing information and keep it flow smoothly; they also have to be like the diligent gardeners, to build a unique IT landscape via tuning technology, removing waste, nurturing culture, and empowering people.

The Best “Appreciation” Quotes of “Digital Master” to Celebrate Thanksgiving Holiday Nov. 2019

10:50 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

We discover our genius factors, we appreciate all good, beauty, and harmonized things at an influential level.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Appreciation” quotes in “Digital Master.” to celebrate Thanksgiving holiday.

1 Appreciate many things we do -read, think, understand, reflect, practice deliberately - not necessarily in that order. Appreciation of cognitive differences: Our differences make us strong.

2 Embracing the diversity in one another brings the full circle of connectedness, interdependence of life; uniqueness of an asset rather than a hindrance.

3 Appreciate diversity. One puts peanut butter on a slice of bread, the other jam. The world is a melting pot of languages, religions, skin colors, genders, etc; and life journey has, but only one purpose, to push the human society forward.

4 Seek beauty in everything. Because what you can't appreciate through a historical lens, you can appreciate through its literary lenses - symbolism or analogies based on it, using it, or from an aesthetic or a physics lens, or a lens of how it functions in a society or organization.

5 Learning is the process of ever deepening and widening the appreciation of the challenges of achievement, of the complex nano-scaled signaling involved in digestion, healing, senses, thoughts, movement, interactions.

6 Appreciation has a creative aspect to it in that value is perceived through being created by the perceptive observer.

7 We discover our genius factors, we appreciate all good, beauty, and harmonized things at an influential level.

8 Appreciation touches all things; and it’s from our heart flow into our mind, we can come together in an effective way of bringing about change we want to see in the world because we live it in our lives.

9 It’s important to gain a pervasive appreciation and work on a fairly comprehensive change management model that views change and transformation as different points along a continuum with very different tools and competencies needed along the way.

Five Thinking Forces Behind Creativity

10:43 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

We have the conditions of the environment in which we operate, with all restrictions, needs, gaps, and pressures that might push our creative minds to soar.

Being creative is the kind to "think outside the box" for idea generation and problem-solving. The most important characteristic of being creative is to act without fear and let you self-conscious express itself. Being innovative is a mindset and a prerequisite to doing sustainable business these days. Here are five thinking forces behind creativity.

Positive Thinking: A positive mind can encompass a positive mental attitude which is much broader than trust, empowerment, competitiveness and personal responsibility to win professionally and elegantly because the mind is focused on strengths, opportunities, to inspire creativity. A positive mental attitude is much broader than trust, empowerment, competitiveness and personal responsibility.

It’s the mentality to drive a positive attitude and help you conquer the current barriers in order to embrace a brighter future. People with positive thinking convey a strong will to make changes and nurture creativity and have a future orientation that makes them more prone to sacrifice immediate needs for future goals and make a positive influence in their surroundings.

Free Thinking: Free thinking is to keep your mind free, to explore and question. If you empty your desire to accept something, your mind will be free. A free mind is open to the new fountain of thoughts and comes up with fresh ideas via divergent thought processes. It is proactive and flow, can make a free choice and spur creativity. you know you may make the natural choice through mindful contemplation but free of thought.

A free mind has the freedom to think about everything and connect unusual dots to spark creativity. Your mind has free will to be in logic. Your mind has a free will to be beyond logic, to spark creativity. Digital leaders and professionals need to free their minds first; they have to be life learners themselves, continue to learn the new trends and updated knowledge in order to spark innovation.

Divergent thinking: Divergent thinking is a thought process to generate creative ideas, gain a new perspective to understand things, and practice “out of the box” thinking to come up with premium solutions. Divergent thinking is nurtured by interdisciplinary knowledge and enriched life experience. Many possible solutions are explored in a short amount of time, and unexpected connections are drawn. It typically occurs in a spontaneous and flow manner such that many ideas are generated in an emergent cognitive fashion.

It’s best to bring a group of people together with cognitive differences such as different backgrounds, capabilities, strengths, etc, together to obtain such a way of divergent thinking. Divergent thinkers develop mental techniques to come up with great ideas and explore different solutions to the problem. They do not take things for granted, but challenge conventional wisdom or some automatic assumptions about the problem, and figure out better ways to solve it. Ideas are seeds of creativity that can change a certain situation and future.

Convergent thinking: After the process of divergent thinking has been completed, information and ideas are organized and structured by leveraging convergent thinking. To a certain degree, the process to transform a novel idea to the business value is a combination of divergent and convergent thinking, the systematic and synthetic processes.

Truly creative people use the gap between vision and reality to generate energy for change. In order to innovate, it is necessary to follow a process where divergent or convergent thinking is always present and where you can use different tools. To a certain degree, the process to transform a novel idea to the business value is a combination of divergent and convergent thinking, the systematic and synthetic processes.

Generative thinking: One of the aspects of creativity is the environment in which individuals or groups need to generate creative ideas regularly and frequently. Encourage thinking differently by generating different scenarios where there is no one solution to one problem, but rather, to construct an event where the individual inputs must compound and build upon each other.

The more synergizing co-resonance there is within the designing team, for example, then the more likely that those sudden “aha” moments could flow from this created ”differential” between “what now” and “could be.” It starts with the articulation of a desirable future experience scenario for creative talents and then allowing that to act as a form of attraction or “pull” as an actualizing potential.

Creativity is the "soaring factor." We all should broaden our points of interest and try new things to extend our thinking box. Diversity in thoughts can provide you with new perspectives on life and possibly work. Creative people leverage specific systems to be creative, emergent, divergent, convergent, and generative thought processes and so on. We have the conditions of the environment in which we operate, with all restrictions, needs, gaps, and pressures that might push our creative minds to soar.

The Monthly “Digital Gaps” Book Tuning: The Multitude of Digital Management Gap Nov. 2019

10:40 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

At the high maturity level, organizations have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving the full-fledged digital transformation.

"Digital Gaps -Bridging Multiple Gaps to Run Cohesive Business” is a guidebook to help digital leaders and professionals today identify, analyze, and mind multiple gaps with the multidisciplinary insight and holistic understanding. Today’s digital organization simply just can’t stand still., bridging the gap of opportunity between where you are and want to become is a welcomed challenge, it is important to identify and strengthen the weakest link and take a stepwise approach to make a leap of digital transformation.

The Multitude of Digital Management Gap

Closing the Multitude of Digital Gaps We are at the age of digital dawn, hyper-connectivity is the most critical digital characteristics. Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way business is conducted, so that simply adopting a new digital technology may be insufficient. You have to transform the company's underlying functions and organization as a whole with adjusted digital speed. Otherwise, companies may begin a decline from its previous good performance. However, many business managers today still apply old silo management mindsets to new ways of organizing, create the multitude of gaps blocking the way of the radical digital transformation. Being divided by so many gaps across leadership, management, and innovation, etc, organizations lose their collaborative advantage as they are being over managed and under led, remain disconnected, hoard knowledge, decrease effectiveness, and do not have the competence to collaborate in the long term.

Closing the Gap of Traditional Management vs. Holistic Digital Management ? At the industrial age, the majority of organizations have been operated with classic management discipline, which is based on a tacit assumption that organizations can be compared to machines as a mechanical system. Traditional management is inside out process oriented and efficiency driven. Consequently, silo functions and divide-and-conquer methodologies are promoted both in organizational design as well as task responsibility or accountability distribution. Nowadays, businesses are steadily moving into the digital era with characteristics of hyper-connectivity and interdependence, how to close the gaps between classic management and digital management in order to enforce cross-functional collaboration and improve business effectiveness and maturity?

Minding The Resource & Investment Gap of Corporate Learning With the exponential growth of information and abundant knowledge, corporate learning is a differentiated business competency and culture shift. One of the main barriers to corporate learning is the business resource. For the long term business success, it is essential for the entire company to be pulling in the right direction, break down resource bottleneck, improve learning agility, and maximize the digital potential of their business.

The New Book “DIgital Gap” Chapter 3 Introduction: Digital Management Gaps Most organizations at the industrial age have been operated with classic management discipline, which is based on a tacit assumption that organizations can be compared to machines as a mechanical system. They are based on silo functions and divide-and-conquer methodologies which are promoted both in organizational design as well as task responsibility or accountability distribution. Nowadays, businesses are steadily moving into the digital era with characteristics of hyper-connectivity and interdependence, how to close the gap between classic management and digital management in order to improve business effectiveness and maturity?

Bridging Digital Gaps to Catalyze Business Maturity Digital is the new paradigm shift to deeply connect the business with the natural ecosystem. At the high maturity level, organizations have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving the full-fledged digital transformation, in order to adapt to the new world of business - fast, always “on,” highly connected and ultra-competitive. On one side, the idea of digital lenses is to "seeing the whole," or helping people reach a shared understanding of the whole. On the other side, digital enlarges the thinking and capability gaps because different organizations, functions, and individuals evolve with varying speed. In reality, many organizations are still operated with the traditional management discipline with the silo mentality. So, how to bridge multiple digital gaps to catalyze overall business maturity?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6200th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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.

"Digital Gaps" B&N Order Link

"Digital Gaps" iBook Order Link

"Digital Gaps" Amazon Order Link

"Digital Gaps" Introduction, Slideshare

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 1 Cognitive Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 2 Leadership Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 3 Management Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 4 Capability Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 5 Professional Gaps

Conclusion: Bridging Gaps to Catalyze Digital Maturity

The Best “Art” Quotes of “Digital Master” Nov. 2019

10:35 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

It is essential that we in business operate with a full understanding of both art and science and how they can work together to create stronger ideas.

1 The basic principle of Art is simply to express feelings.

2 Some traits of character apply to both business and art, such as creativity and passion.

3 Artists can serve as outstanding businessmen and businessmen can be tremendous artists. Both have the same main motivation - the passion for achievements.

4 An artist attempts to create forms for his/her feelings, new images of the world, and he/she hopes for their eternal value for mankind.

5 It is essential that we in business operate with a full understanding of both art and science and how they can work together to create stronger ideas.

6 There are more similarities than differences between those who work as artists and entrepreneurs; all of us humans are time-variant expressions across a spectrum of possibility and capability.

7 In order to move up the organizational maturity from functioning to firmness to delight, the art of management will take the more crucial role in change management, innovation management, talent management and beyond in order to lead the business’s digital transformation seamlessly.

8 Art is most usually seen by the artists themselves as being principally about the act of creation; of bringing into existence something which did not previously exist.

9 Quite simply, the linkage between the business and art are intertwined, and many skills are transferred between the two.

Design-Driven Digital Organization

10:32 PM Pearl Zhu 5 comments

Design lifts up the organizational maturity from functioning to firm to delight.

Modern organizations have their own sophistication with silo functions, the sea of information, and the pool of talents. Design = forming human-made products or services to be pleasing and preferred by people. Design lifts up the organizational maturity from functioning to firm to delight.

Organizational design is the ultimate expression of the organization’s strategy. Because it reflects the resource allocation and configuration of the value-creating processes. The big advantage of being design-oriented is that you prioritize making things likable vs. just making them functioning with the goal to run a high mature digital organization. In fact, the design does need more recognition as a thinking and problem-solving process, even a strategic differentiator.

Interactive design: The digital era upon us is the age of innovation and customer-centricity. Digital leaders with a design thinking mindset can leverage strategic thinking (starting with the end in mind) and nonlinear logic, apply outside-in customers’ lens and loosen up the process to implement interactive design and run business in a creative way. The strategic objective of Design Thinking is to understand what your customers need and help the business orient itself towards those needs in pursuit of its objectives. The more customer-facing innovation is, the higher the customer satisfaction would become.

Design is actually also a critical enabling factor for quality. Being design-driven is when innovation meets the products/services to fit the design proposed as long as costs meet the criteria, not over-engineering with quality and performance meeting expectations of customers. The user interface is not just about wireframes and visual designs. Interactive and intuitive design is critical to improving crucial touchpoints of user experience and close products/services quality gaps.

The matter is that the dynamic digital organization needs to get away from letting things fall through and start creating an “integrated wholes” by utilizing correct processes and harmonizing the underlying business relationships. The good design supports the business strategy for building a people-centric organization.

Robust persona: The persona can be seen as the “public relations” part of the digital role that allows people to interact socially in a variety of situations with relative ease. For example, a customer persona, also known as a buyer persona, is a semi-fictional archetype that represents the key traits of a large segment of the audience, based on the information you've collected from user research. It helps to build great relationships with the end-users that personalize the customer experience. Once you gain insight into your customers, you can better engage them with more effective customer experience. It is about taking structural processes and leveraging the practical tools to design, produce, or improve products, services, processes, or business models that deliver new value to customers or satisfy employees.

To think outside yourself in a customer-centric way requires knowing yourself as a customer-first; as knowing your inner customer help to build an empathetic bridge to understand customers and their expectations. A mindful leader with a robust persona is often open-minded to enjoy “out of the box” thinking, develop problem-solving competency, and directly influence the culture of customer-centricity.

Fluidity, community, collaboration: The digital business today is not just working within the industry, but also permeating the cross-ecosystem. To function seamlessly, an enterprise has to be linked to many and varying touchpoints between itself and its dynamic environment. The digital era upon us is about customer-centricity.

The emerging enterprise collaboration platforms and tools, cross-functional communication, and social engagement are the new normal in the effective digital workplace. It is a significant task that demands a great amount of proactive leadership and many dedicated practices for shaping a design-driven digital organization by improving organizational fluidity, building the wide user-community to nurture great ideas generation, increasing interaction, and harnessing mass collaboration.

To achieve such a state of dynamic balance, a radically different social and economic structure will be needed and holistic digital management is imperative. The customer-centric organizational design has to become much more organic in the sense that it’s melded with business processes, structures, functions, etc, to make the business more dynamic and innovative.

To build a design-driven digital organization, you need to understand the company’s long-term goals, business identity or brand, and the industry realities such as competition or marketing position, etc. The important thing is to identify the common design principles and the shared body of knowledge that will help to raise design thinking from an inwardly focused semantic argument to the truly recognized digital management discipline. It’s also about developing a culture of customer-centricity, and aligning your culture to your brand, and empowering staff to deliver remarkable customer experience.