The Monthly Keyword Summary: Philosophy Feb. 2020

Philosophy is the history of ideas and an ongoing inquiry into the nature of things based on abstract reasoning rather than empirical methods. 

From one generation to the next, the substance of leadership does not change, it’s about the future, change, and influence. However, digital leadership trends will continue to emerge. Here is a set of featured blogs to dig into the “keywords” of the 21st century to brainstorm the future of digital leadership and business transformation.

    

 Philosophy

The Philosophic Mind Due to the digital new normal such as complexity and uncertainty, the philosophic mind is in high demand to provide abstract thinking for reducing complexity; and providing multi-dimensional lenses to navigate through uncertainty. And the philosophic mind can make a questioning reflection about knowledge, the value of philosophical thinking is in the questions, and the value of scientific thinking is in the answers.

Science vs. Philosophy? Philosophy is the history of ideas and an ongoing inquiry into the nature of things based on abstract reasoning rather than empirical methods. Philosophy involves examining basic concepts such as truth, existence, reality, causality, and freedom. Philosophy comprises logic, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology. And science, which was formerly labeled natural philosophy, is now studied separately.

What is Philosophy in the 21st Century? Philosophy is the history of ideas and an ongoing inquiry into the nature of things based on abstract reasoning rather than empirical methods. Has philosophy not always been about the pursuit of truth, reality, and wisdom? Philosophers have asked the questions which are still current and meaningful..."Who am I? Where have I come from? What am I to do with this short experience on earth and where am I going to?" Philosophy involves examining basic concepts such as truth, existence, reality, causality, and freedom. Philosophy comprises logic, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology. And yet by creating a framework for schools of thought, scientific frameworks, are we boxing ourselves in? We say to think outside the box, while are we building the box as well? What is the philosophy in the 21st century anyway?

Leadership Psychology, Philosophy, and MethodologyThe shift to digital cuts across sectors, geographies and leadership roles and the digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. But dealing with challenges and tough problems facing today’s business requires an accelerated digital mindset and open leadership style. To thrive in the exponential digital era, business leaders can see possibilities before others, and they can also tackle great challenges with grand consequences over long time spans. Here are digital leadership psychology, philosophy, and methodology.

A Dozen Key Ingredients of Digital Philosophy Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, communication to process and capability both horizontally and vertically. Digital is the age elevated by the fast growth of information and lightweight digital technologies. Both science and technology are grounded in philosophy. Philosophy is a Greek portmanteau of the love of wisdom. Understanding digital philosophy is to better understand the evolution and harness its power to serve human purposes, and design the institutions and societies to be a well-balanced digital ecosystem with the abundance of energy and sustainable advantages. Here are a dozen key ingredients of digital philosophy.

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 #6500 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.

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The Best “Frustration” Quotes of “Digital Master” Feb, 2020

 When an employee’s everyday experience is one of frustration, failure, and defeat, they use up all their energy just dealing with the obstacles to success strewn in their path.

"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 “Frustration” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Anger comes from frustration, impatience, and many other environmental factors. All of those are about control or lack of control. We spend a lot of energy trying to address those things that we cannot control raising frustration, etc.

2 Usually, the users’ frustration is due to the fact that most people don’t understand IT and feel helpless because they are so dependent on it. Empathize with the user and understand what their frustration is with the technology. IT needs to train people to listen closely to what the user is saying.

3 There is frustration in the process of leadership. Such frustration may come from an element of dissonance or disagreement between leader and followers.

4 When an employee’s everyday experience is one of frustration, failure, and defeat, they use up all their energy just dealing with the obstacles to success strewn in their path.

5 The most significant difference between the two main categories of change is that the tools and capabilities that work reasonably well for improvement have little success in transformational efforts, and, in fact, can be a waste of valuable resources and a source of frustration.

6 When people experience frustration and defeat on the job, due to things beyond their control, they disengage: they realize that the organization will not let them succeed, so they stop trying, or they reduce their expectations.

7 Digital transformation is the large scale changes, but so often the tools or the capabilities that work reasonably well for business improvement have little success in the business transformational effort, and in fact, can be a waste of a valuable resource and a source of frustration.

8 The roadblocks to change include, but not limited to lack of direction, internal politics, current culture/blame, not aligned systems/processes, too much hierarchy or centralization. This leads to frustration, the top and bottom lines not being achieved, losing market share.

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Innovation Leapfrog on the Leap Day

Digital leaders today need to understand the tide, wave, and the ripple effect of an evolving digital organization, proactively shape the digital mindset, optimize processes, and make the leap of innovation.

In the rapidly evolving businesses and economic systems with “VUCA” digital new normal, innovation is the specific phenomenon and strategic imperative of the knowledge-based economy. Innovation management is complex but critical for firms' survival and thriving.

In reality, the evolution of innovation only exists in an open environment or the ecosystem that takes advantage of all sources of creativity in a more open way and makes a leap of innovation management to the next level of maturity.

Inspire breakthrough ideas or creative solutions: We live in the exponential information era in which knowledge is only clicking away. Businesses today face fiery competition and rapid digital shift either technologically or economically. Innovation needs to layout different thought processes, structures, and solutions to develop in its potential in which organizations are combining all that is available to them in imaginative and advantageous ways for building unique business competency.

Fundamentally running a business is an iterative problem-solving continuum. Being creative is about how to solve problems intelligently and come up with elegant solutions. In practice, the ability to innovate is ultimately dictated by the depth of understanding of the problem or issue to be resolved. It takes courage to get out of the conventional thinking box, broaden thoughts and connect wider dots for coming up with alternative solutions to tough problems. It leads to new opportunities because they challenge us to address something that is not working before and keep inspiring breakthrough ideas and pursue radical innovation.

Innovation has a very low success rate. Sometimes breakthrough ideas or creative solutions are rarely or never logical in foresight, but they will look logical in hindsight. Most companies fail at innovation execution because they neither have clear processes nor understand the linkage required to work horizontally or lack of a holistic approach to managing innovation for solving problems systematically. It is important to apply creativity in a recursive way to systematic processes for both problem identification and problem-solving. It is critical to set principles and practices including methods that cover the process from the problem's choice till commercialization.

Leap IT-enabled innovation: Often innovation happens at the intersection of people and information technology. It’s a natural evolution as most innovation initiatives involve IT. In fact, IT is the super glue to integrate people, processes, and technologies into unique innovation competency and integrating policies, programs, and structures for managing a balanced innovation portfolio, with the mixed bag of incremental innovation and breakthrough innovation.

Digital innovation has a broader spectrum and diverse taste. IT plays a crucial role in glue up the innovation framework and creating a disciplined and managed space for developing and testing new business models, products, and management approaches, scale-up innovation practices, and amplify innovation effect. Forward-thinking companies leverage IT as an innovation integrator and the champion of examples and lessons learned from other industries, treat customers, channel partners, suppliers, and industry ecosystem participants as active digital agents to create new experiences and make a leap of innovation.

Create an ever-evolving innovation ecosystem: The goal of innovation is to solve problems large or small. Looking uphill can help to identify the real problems that matter, and on a scale that can make a difference. To solve bigger and tougher problems, innovation efforts should be scaled up, and innovation effects can be amplified to touch more people, businesses, industries, and societies and shape an ever-evolving business innovation ecosystem. An innovation ecosystem or the methodological environment should fully cover a wide enough direction and cover the whole innovation process, from idea handling systems to idea implementation and promotion.

Variety, complexity, diversification, and collaboration are the very characteristics of the digital innovation ecosystem. There are many components in an effective innovation ecosystem that draw together mutually supportive companies from multiple industries that collectively seek to create differentiated ideas and capture value they could not reach alone. Each component by itself may not cause a good environment, but collectively, they can weave an open environment by knitting all crucial components such as leadership, innovation culture, capability, practices, tools, recognition system measurements, or risk approach.

The digital world is dynamic, nonlinear, uncertain, and volatile. The nonlinear behavior as a concept is representative of what we term emergent properties. Digital leaders today need to understand the tide, wave, and the ripple effect of an evolving digital organization, proactively shape the digital mindset, optimize processes, and orchestrate a dynamic ecosystem to make the leap of innovation and unlock the digital potential.

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The Monthly Summary: Information System and Architecture Feb. 2020

Information Technology System is the "nerve system "of the digital business which is like the switch connected to the dynamic ecosystem continually evolving and expanding in the modern world.

The aim of modern Information Management has often been described as getting the right information to the right person, in the right format and medium, at the right time, in order to make the right decisions.

The value of information is qualitative, measurable, and defined uniquely by an organization. Here is a set of blogs to articulate information systems and architecture.

   Information System and Architecture 

Information System vs. Digital Ecosystem Information is permeating into every corner of the business and becomes the lifeblood of the digital organization. Digital technology is lightweight but more powerful. Information Technology System is the "nerve system "of the digital business which is like the switch connected to the dynamic ecosystem continually evolving and expanding in the modern world.

Software Architecture vs. Data Architecture The word software architecture intuitively denotes the high-level structures of a software system. It can be defined as the set of structures needed to reason about the software system, which comprise the software elements, the relations between them, and the properties of both elements and relations

Dots Connection: Information Architecture vs. Data Modeling vs. Business Analysis Information is one of the most valuable assets in organizations today, how to manage them well is at every IT leader’s agenda. First of all, the relevant concept clarification may help connect the information dots more seamlessly.

Three Characteristics of Information Management System The systematic view of Information Management helps management understand information management as a dynamic living system making a business impact on a daily basis. A system is a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole. A system has a purpose to perform a set of functions to achieve well-defined goals.

Information System (IS) vs. Information Technology (IT) An information system is an abstract view of an activity system focusing on the gathering, processing, distribution, and use of information. It provides the information needed for the decisions that are part of the activity system. The Information Technology system supports the information system. It encapsulates hardware, software, data and communication technologies. It provides data to be used by people as information.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6500th 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.

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The Best “Enlightenment” Quotes of “Digital Master” Feb, 2020

Innovation is in fact, the core activity of human evolution to the ever-changing environment to reach performance for profit, resource, or enlightenment.

"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 “Enlightenment” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Going digital is the right path leading enlightenment which is absolute freedom of thought from any dogma, and open-mindedness to any new or old knowledge/experience.

2 Another side of the enlightenment is about the appreciation of every human being, our humanity - how well our social life is organized to fulfill individual development and overcome common mankind challenges.

3 A new paradigm arises out of new knowledge, such as the age of enlightenment and customer-centricity. It is sensitive to the emergent factors; it generates a variety of options to deal with complexity, velocity, ambiguity, and uncertainty.

4 IT enlightenment comes when CIOs are no longer just tactical IT managers, but strategic business executives, and trustful business partners.

5 A peaceful mind has the real enlightenment to unify minds and hearts. It is indeed remarkable how our feelings within translate into the kind of vibes we generate outside of ourselves too.

6 The digital paradigm arises out of new knowledge and the emerging trends to reinforce the very characteristics of the digital business such as enlightenment, innovativeness, and people-centricity.

7 Innovation is in fact, the core activity of human evolution to the ever-changing environment to reach performance for profit, resource, or enlightenment.

8 There is a purpose that comes from within, and it means within one’s unconscious and collective unconscious. These are the basic instincts they have a key role in shaping what externally we see as our ideals – enlightenment, love, truth, etc.

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The Pervasive Digitization via Continuous Balance Cycles

The pervasive digitalization requires much more time, energy, passion, courage, experimentation, retreat, and reflection to strive continuous balance cycles vigorously in leading digital transformation seamlessly.

Over the last couple of decades, due to rapid changes and fierce competition, businesses have been faced with increasingly more complex and pressing problem-situations, embedded in interconnected business ecosystems operating in dynamically changing environments.

The digital business cycle could be viewed as resulting in emergent means of shaping a vision or mantra reflecting the “mind and soul” of the company to accelerate the pervasive digitization via continuous balance cycles of participation, adaptability, expansion, innovation, and optimization.

Cross-functional contextualism and invisible cultural intricacy: Fundamentally, running a business is iterative change management and problem-solving continuum. Most companies are operated under pyramid industrial hierarchy, contextual understanding is about getting to understand the whole meaning of functional dialects and business dynamic, perceiving the business insight in a cohesive way - find where all the functional boundaries are, see a larger system with interactive pieces and “conflict” goals, and create the relevant context to make an everlasting solution.

Culture is the aggregate of all employees' mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors. The culture of an organization is comprised of many intricate and interconnected parts, including core values, communications, corporate attitudes, and business policies, etc. Culture is invisible but permeating into every corner of the organization, and influences how people think, communicate and act. You have to dive deeper to see invisible cultural intricacy in order to read digital sentiment clearly and drive change effectively. Be aware of how the whole business process is going on, what does business culture encourages people to do, and what results have already been achieved.

Vertical nonlinear logic and horizontal imagination: Business logic is a blanket term that covers several very different types of components such as business rules, workflows, algorithms, and integration logic. The traditional management based on linear thinking and reductionist logic is outdated, causes silo or frictions. Because the linear logic helps to break down things to the pieces, but it often ignores the interconnectivity between parts and the whole. In the dynamic digital business, business logic is often nonlinear and multifaceted. System Analysis of business logic requires many forms of additional thinking - critical, abstract, holistic, system, quantitative, objective, subjective, or temporal (life cycle). The nonlinear vertical business logic comes through different characteristics such as mixed structures, diversity, volatility, ambiguity, unpredictability, and increased flux.

Siloed or outdated knowledge is what leads to a decrease in imagination. The horizontal communication and collaboration, and knowledge sharing are what spurs innovation via cross-pollinating ideas and implementing them systematically. A great wealth of knowledge fuels imaginations. This, in turn, becomes things that can be useful. Do not let opinions deter your imagination. Instead, feed your imagination and let your imagination roll into reality.

Inside out operational excellence and outside in customer-centricity: A digital organization can bring greater awareness of intricacies and the systemic value of organizational systems, business processes, people dynamics, resource alignment, or technological touches. The majority of organizations are pushing inside out, keep consolidating, integrating, and optimizing, etc, to achieving operational excellence.

However, just understanding processes from inside-out view is not sufficient, and inside out management approach might create the gaps between what the customer needs and what business really delivers. Digital leaders need to put customers' shoes on, understand business processes from outside in customers' viewpoints, “step outside” of the system for having different perspectives, and take a comprehensive, anticipatory and design approach to manage a high-performance digital organization.

Reinventing business to get digital ready is an evolutionary journey with ups and downs, promises and perils on the way. The high mature digital organizations are highly conscious about what’s happening in their environment, with the ability to adapt to change timely, grasp opportunities, and prevent risks effectively. The pervasive digitalization requires much more time, energy, passion, courage, experimentation, retreat, and reflection to strive continuous balance cycles vigorously in leading digital transformation seamlessly.

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The Monthly “Digital Boardroom” Book Tuning: Influential Corporate Board Feb. 2020

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 an influential boardroom with digital acumen.

 Influential Corporate Board  

An Influential Corporate Board People tend to make leadership very complex, but in its most simple form, leadership is an influence. With rapid changes and exponential growth of information, the command control style of management is gradually losing its steam. Digital leadership needs to be highly intelligent and influential, to lead through influence, not brute force. The corporate board as one of the top leadership pillars must influence and exemplify progressive leadership and help to shape an ultra-modern digital organization effortlessly.

The Corporate Board as the Mastermind of the Digital Transformation Digital boards are like the steering wheel of their company, leading the business toward the uncharted water and blurred territories for reaching the ultimate digital destination. Digital boards as the strategic advising role are also the “mastermind” behind digital transformation to oversee strategies, drive innovation, catalyze changes, and monitor performance.

The Corporate Board as Digital Brand Enhancer The Board of Directors is an interactive change agent and influential brand enhancer that represents the organization, stockholders, and senior management. If a Board is to fulfill its fiduciary responsibilities to its stakeholders, it needs to take a professional and a structural approach to assessing strategies, prioritizing agendas, advising changes, overseeing risks, monitoring performance, advocating reputation and business brand. The Board of Directors is the top leadership team that can make a great influence on shaping a digital mindset and advocating changes. BoDs can also monitor organizational performance and enforce the business brand by asking the following questions.

The World-Class Board: How to Create Top Leadership Niche Compared to the business world decades ago, information is growing exponentially, the speed of change is increasing significantly, and digital disruptions are happening frequently. The matter of fact is that the changes sweeping the world are hugely disruptive, and from top-down, there is nowhere to hide. Digital boards are the guiding roles, like the steering wheel of their company, leading the business toward the uncharted water and blurred territories. It is a “paradigm shift” to develop world-class leadership and drive the organization up to the next level of business maturity.

A Distinctive Board The purpose of the governing body, or board of directors, is to direct th to challenge the management and make sure that management is doing its job properly. In a world of well-defined problems, directors are required to exercise leadership influence over volatility, manage uncertainty, simplify complexity, resolve ambiguity all the time. Every board is unique, with its own strength and focus. A distinctive board can stand out as the mastermind behind digitalization and lead change effortlessly.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 6500+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.

The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Slideshare Presentation

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The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As"  Introduction

The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter 1 Introduction: The Digital Board's Composition Inquiries

The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter II Introduction: The Digital Board's Digital Inquiries

The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As": Chapter III Introduction: The Digital Board's Strategy Inquiries

The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter IV Introduction: The Digital Board's IT Inquiries

The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter V Introduction: The Digital Board's Leadership Inquiries

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The Monthly “Digital Hybridity” Book Tuning: The Digital Balance Practices to Drive Transformation Feb. 2020

Like running up to the string, keeping digital balance is critical in reaching digital aptitude.

The purpose of the book “Digital Hybridity: How to Strike the Right Balance for Digital Paradigm Shift” is to shed some light on how to strike the right balance of stability and changes; being transactional to keep spinning and being transformational to leap forward for making a seamless digital paradigm shift.

Digital organizations should apply the hybrid management approach, focus on building a diverse, networked, and extended modern working environment in which the powerful digital platforms and computing technologies enable seamless conversations, delayer overly rigid organizational hierarchy, inspire idea-sharing and brainstorming, and engage employees and partners to achieve the high-performance result.

The Digital Balance Practices to Drive Transformation 

Three Digital Balance Practices for Leading to the Future The digital era upon us means fast-paced changes, continuous disruptions, overwhelming information, and a shortened knowledge life cycle. Organizations of the future are increasingly exhibiting digital characteristics in various shades, extensiveness, and intensity. Leading evolutionary changes and driving business growth is the never-ended journey that takes planning, methodologies, and practices. It’s important to understand that digital management is multifaceted and holistic. Balance, growth, and harmony are not fixed, they are flowing. Here are three digital balance practices for leading to the future.

The Corporate Board’s Unbiased View The digital dynamic creates many blind spots and generates quite a lot of gaps due to its “VUCA” characteristics - velocity, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Thus, the directorship in forward-thinking organizations must have capabilities to advise and motivate, set the right leadership tone, and develop digital “mindsets.” To steer change confidently, Yin and Yang's balance needs to be considered in the boardroom in regards to shape the unbiased view for making strategic decisions and improving leadership maturity.

The Hybrid Digital Management Disciplines The digital paradigm has many dimensions, it is like to solve a jigsaw puzzle with thousands of pieces, easy to get lost when trying to capture the big picture. Digital transformation is the journey for solving problems caused by "conflict," "out of balance," and “lack of logic.” It has to expand into every dimension of the organization with a structural approach. Thus, digital management is a hybrid and holistic discipline with mixed management styles for managing everything that is necessary to get people to adopt new ways of working such as cross-functional communication and collaboration, organizational structure design, change management, talent development, digital business readiness, and stakeholder management, etc.

Look Back and Look Forward to Leading Digital Transformation Confidently Organizational change and digital transformation are inevitable. As a matter of fact, the life cycle of business today grows shorter and shorter because of the increasing pace of changes, overwhelming growth of information, and demand of shareholders. The business transformation journey is full of velocity and uncertainty, thus, a clear vision is in demand. Vision is the ability to see beyond what is to what could be. It is the synthetic view of ‘looking forward,” and “looking behind,” “looking beyond,” and “looking around.” But more specifically, how can digital leaders today look back and look forward to leading digital transformation?

How to Manage Digital Balance Cycles Effectively Digital transformation is inevitable, it means the increasing pace of change and fierce competition. Organizations must keep the lights on and also make strategic movements all the time. Like running up to the string, keeping digital balance is critical in reaching digital aptitude. But how to manage the following digital balance cycles effectively?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6500+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. 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.

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The Best “Fragility” Quotes of “Digital Master” Feb, 2020

The organization gets stagnated because the business systems are no longer able to accommodate changing needs or too fragile to run at a solid speed.

"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 “Fragility” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 No matter how something looks to your intellectual machinery, or how well or poorly it narrates, time will know more about its fragility and breaks it when necessary.

2 For the fragile, the cumulative effect of small shocks is smaller than the single effect of an equivalent single large shock.

3 Some parts on the inside of a system may be required to be fragile in order to make the system antifragile as a result. Or the organization itself might be fragile, but the information encoded in the genes reproducing it will be antifragile.

4 The digital organizations that are able to strengthen those weakest links and overcome business fragility can better survive and thrive in volatility and uncertainty of digital dynamics.

5 The organization has different functions, structures, layers, and systems. When the company seems to get stalled, the workplace is stale, and the organization turns out to be fragile.

6 The organization gets stagnated because the business systems are no longer able to accommodate changing needs or too fragile to run at a solid speed.

7 The imbalance of speed will cause the business fragile and decrease their business effectiveness.

8 When organizational change is stuck, the business becomes fragile. Because a much more dangerous thing is the disengaged workforce to continue doing things in the old way even if the circumstances have changed significantly.

9 The digital organizations that are able to strengthen those weakest links and overcome business fragility can better survive and thrive in volatility and uncertainty of digital dynamic and make a seamless digital transformation.

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Insightful Understanding of Leadership Structure and Maturity

Within a well-aligned leadership structure, that dedication and effort may be spent on innovation efforts rather than overcoming organizational hurdles and pushing against structural boundaries. 

Digital business is a hyper-connected and interdependent ecosystem, active engagement with leaders at all levels of the organization is critical to achieving an overall competitive advantage of the business. Business management should check-up what is the vision and mission your company intends to accomplish and how to make a strategic alignment for realizing them.

The business drives the structure and it tries to ensure a balance between the cultural “why,” the economic “what” and the political “how.” The harmonization of intertwined leadership structure and organizational structure can accelerate business performance and improve organizational maturity. Here is a set of inquiries to gain an insightful understanding of structural based and innovation-driven leadership maturity.

What would be the most effective leadership structure for achieving the business vision and accomplish strategy? Leadership is both art and science. Leadership influences the various factors, but also being influenced by them: Communication - does the chain of communications flow easily or does it stop at one level? Culture - does the culture influence cross-functional collaboration, learning, and innovation? Approach - does management take the top-down or bottom-up; inside-out or outside-in approach? Etc. Further, the structure on the organizational chart doesn't necessarily mean the leadership structure. Within traditional hierarchical structures, mechanical “command/control” leadership/management mindsets and hierarchical structure appear to be the norm, and similarly perhaps function aligned with a strong focus on compliance-related issues.

In the hyperconnected and interdependent digital organizations, silo mentality and bureaucratic management need to be broken down. Underlined organizational functions and structures need to be fine-tuned having less organizational layers so that everyone in the organization is closer to the organization’s leadership, the visionaries, or having some sort of direct line to give everyone an opportunity to contribute to the vision seems like the best way to be innovative and implement strategy smoothly.

What structure would ensure the business leaders are actively ensuring the organization is walking the talk of multidimensional business values? The leadership structure is an integral component of organizational structure. Regardless of the structure on paper, the character of the relationships between people is what gives the organization its true structure. The flatter the organization the better for information flow, engagement, accountability, and the freedom to lead and act. The goal is to improve leadership effectiveness and maturity.

The symptoms of ineffective leadership structure and practice include: Failure to be decisive - the organization gets stuck waiting for leadership to decide and move out. Failure to connect emotionally with the people in the organization. Failure to continuous learning. Failure to walk the talk, etc. Too often the whole system is not considered when measuring values and success. An ideal leadership structure streamlines information flow, knowledge sharing, and enables business leaders to walk the talk of multidimensional business values including economic value, customer value, functional value, social value, etc.

What structures would ensure the leaders are actively connecting with others who are seeking to accomplish the same goals? All structures are a result of some sort of compromise in achieving the “line of best fit” as one size and shape does not always fit all. Using old ways of leading and managing to new ways of doing will be ineffective. The digital leadership structure is the right mix of the hierarchical pyramid and relationship structure or formal and informal structures. Horizontal organizational forms will rely more upon the soft “relationship” skills and intangible capital to provide it with the collaborative advantage it has been designed for.

Leadership is about direction and change. So given the opportunity, establish an enabling leadership structure in line with business ambition and desired direction, and nurture a creative culture within it. To catalyze leadership innovation and improve leadership maturity, it is necessary to identify the unofficial structures and take them along on the journey of innovation and change, and manifest connection, caring, trust-building and influence to accomplish strategic business goals.

What structures would ensure active leadership in decision making or developing and monitoring programs to accomplish the mission? With rapid changes and exponential growth of information, flat structure comes with greater empowerment and decision making in the hands of managers and employees. The trend is toward flat, and networked organizations replacing the traditional hierarchical organizational forms in the emerging relational/knowledge economy.

A misaligned leadership structure perhaps reinforces a non-innovation friendly climate, although a strong mentality may be able to overcome it, it will certainly require both dedication and effort. Often, the business friction caused by the constructive conflict of ideas, values, interests, etc, provides the organization with energy. An optimized leadership structure nurtures a culture of creativity and enforces diversification.

Organizational structure is a tool of strategy and leadership structure is the technique of management engineering. Within a well-aligned leadership structure, that dedication and effort may be spent on innovation efforts rather than overcoming organizational hurdles and pushing against structural boundaries. The structure can and should change over time and with the anticipated environmental change in circumstances. The right leadership structure is the one that allows the right mentality and culture to bloom.

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The Monthly CIO Debates Collection & “Digital IT” Book Tuning: The Ultramodern CIO’s Competency Debate Feb. 2020

The digital CIO’s leadership magnetism is based on their technology vision and cross-disciplinary knowledge proficiency. 

Due to the changing nature of technology, IT leadership roles also continue to involve & shift the focus, to move up the maturity level. More and more CIOs are requested to take more responsibility and many CIOs present the breadth of leadership competency. The proactive IT debates help IT leaders to brainstorm better ways to do things and improve management capabilities. Here are the monthly CIO debates collections about envisioning digital IT leadership and running high-performance digital IT organizations.

       The Ultramodern CIO’s Competency Debate

Can CIOs Create “Blue Ocean” to Run a Digital Business With continuous disruptions and fierce competition, many IT organizations suffer from overloaded tasks and overwhelming growth of information? They encounter so many daily distractions that stop them from laser focusing on achieving strategic business goals. High-performance CIOs should have knowledge and leadership influence to demonstrate IT as strategic business competency. They need to build a good strategy which is an integral component of the business strategy, based on the circumstances that will allow the highest probability of IT management success. But more specifically: How to make IT strategic planning right?

What are Qualities and Skill Set to Fill CIO Role CIOs today need to play a different role and wear multiple hats, therefore, they come from different backgrounds, take diverse career path, there’s no one size fitting all skill or stereotypical image to portray a modern CIO, however, there are certain leadership qualities and desired skill set to fill the role.

Knowledge Powers of Digital CIOs The digital CIO’s leadership magnetism is based on their technology vision and cross-disciplinary knowledge proficiency. With rapid change and “VUCA“ digital new normal, the digital trend is that more and more CIOs, who have diversified experiences and colorful backgrounds, working across functional and industrial boundaries, can become well-rounded strategic business executives envisioning the upcoming business trends, practicing their knowledge...

Are You a Traditional CIO or a Modernist CIO? For CIO to shine as the digital modernist, they really need to evaluate the issues, do the due diligence, ask the right questions and take a logical scenario for driving changes and leading digital transformation. Information Technology is now permeating into every corner of the business, it’s a crucial component to run a modern business.

Are you an “Atypical CIO” or a “Stereotypical CIO”? Traditional IT organizations have been perceived as technical support centers and help desks, and traditional CIOs have been portrayed as technology geeks to keep the lights on. Nowadays, businesses are on the journey of digital transformation, and IT is also on the way to transform from a cost center to a value creator. CIOs as digital leaders today, what’s your self-reflection? Are you an “Atypical CIO” or a “Stereotypical CIO”? Are you a transformational leader or a transactional manager? What’s your leadership strength and how to lead IT as a changing organization of the business?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 6500+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. 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.

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Introduction

Chapter 1 Digital IT Leadership Q&A

Chapter 2 Digital IT Fitness Q&A

Chapter 3 Digital IT Innovation Paradox Q&As

Chapter 4 Digital IT Management Dilemmas

Chapter 5 Digital IT Potential Q&As

Chapter 6 Digital IT Priority Q&As

Chapter 7 IT-Business Gap Q&As

Chapter 8 Digital IT Performance Q&As

Chapter 9 IT Branding Q&As

Chapter 10: Digital IT Talent Management Q&As

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The Best “People-Centricity” Quotes of “Digital Master” Feb, 2020

Digital is the age of people-centricity. Going digital is an evolutionary path of pursuing the next level of organizational maturity and collective human progress via empowerment and democratic meritocracy.

"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 “People-centricity” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Organizations are operated by people for the people, this is particularly true for running a people-centric digital business. In fact, people are always the weakest link, but the most critical asset and human capital to invest in the business.

2 Hyper-connectivity enhances people-centricity. Being people-centric is a transcendent digital trait and the core of the corporate strategy in today’s digital organizations.

3 Digital organizations are always on, inter-dependent and hyper-connected, people are always the most important asset in any organization before, today, and future. The digital workplace is all about people-centricity, empathy, innovation, agility, and high-level business maturity.

4 Running a digital organization is to connect the old and new, mix the solid and fluid to enforce digital confluence, foster innovation, and achieve people-centricity.

5 Innovation happens at the intersection point of people and technology. Thus, people-centricity should be another critical component in the innovation playbook.

6 Traditional organizations are process-driven, but digital organizations are people-centric. One of the key determinants of whether an organization can move to new digital structures is the development level of the people.

7 IT now makes impacts on almost every aspect of the business, the biggest challenge to business success is IT and IT has to do more with people-centricity.

8 Digital is the age of people-centricity. Going digital is an evolutionary path of pursuing the next level of organizational maturity and collective human progress via empowerment and democratic meritocracy.

9 From an organizational structure perspective, compared to the traditional organizational structure with a rigid hierarchy, digital organizations are the "living things," that need to continually fine-tune a successful structure to improve people-centricity. And people-centricity becomes the nature of the priorities in the organization.

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The Dashboard to Create a Degree of Abstraction in Presentations

A well-designed dashboard is an excellent tool which is a part of a system for improving overall management effectiveness and efficiency.

A dashboard is a tool to visualize Key Performance Indicators and as such, it is certainly a great way to show the metrics of the values and the effectiveness of the organization, or the measured activity produces.

There are as many preferred items as executives can think of and their presentation preferences are equally varied. Here are a few highlights that the dashboard can create a degree abstraction in presentations to improve decision effectiveness.

Top accomplishments for strategy execution: Velocity of the strategy execution is an important parameter business can measure the execution success. A dashboard is a tool to visualize the metrics of the values and the effectiveness of strategy execution. One of the important goals of a well-designed performance dashboard is to clarify business strategy, determine KPIs, analyze if the data is available and of good quality.

A well-designed dashboard helps business management make good decisions. Decisions that affect the vitality of an organization, should be executed on the heels of history and data. A dashboard is a support decision instrument, gives instantaneous information about the organization's main drivers. An important best practice, especially for an executive dashboard, is that the essential information presented has a clear alignment to the strategy that the audience is trying to execute or manage by leveraging the dashboard.

Observed business benefits/outcomes: Executive management always responds to data. The most effective way to make the presentation to senior management via a dashboard is to show how the data, directly and indirectly, affects productivity, performance, and profitability at strategic areas, the business benefit or outcomes. The valuation is based on financial metrics and projections for future revenues, cash flows, and income.

The financial indicators only cover part of the story. A good dashboard provides an outcome-based measurement covering all areas that contribute to value creation including service quality, employee engagement, business competency, customer satisfaction, and financial outcomes, etc, and focus on the performance of the entire organization. A good dashboard provides the management a clue of how to enforce management discipline via the insightful understanding of performance parameters so that desired business results can be achieved effectively.

Key challenges and relevant data: The effective performance dashboard with the appropriate visual design provides a brief but clear view about the most critical or pressuring management issues. A well-designed dashboard is crisp and readable while highlighting important aspects of decision/guidance from an executive management perspective. It should be brief enough to keep focusing on the most strategic business initiatives and the most crucial information for making effective decisions. Besides the essential indicators like budget or schedule, there are various preferred items as executives can think of and their presentation preferences are equally varied. The key principle is to keep the dashboard simple and practical.

An effective dashboard helps business executives set the top prioritization agenda and overcome key business challenges. For example, business sustenance and innovation are often on the top prioritization agenda, business management will challenge the cost control efforts, with the drive to bring new capabilities to the business at a fast pace, this, in turn, can force some cost control measures to lower on the priority list. The bottom line is that if the executives want to see “whatever” data, then it is “essential” that you have a system to show it to them in a format they prefer and understand so that they can make effective decisions and achieve the art of possible.

A dashboard tries to present key performance indicators in a visualized way and highlight important business aspects for decision guidance. The dashboard offers a conceived way for executives to gain a wider perspective on their strategic decisions. Visualizing actionable data is meaningless if no one can see it act upon. A well-designed dashboard is an excellent tool which is a part of a system for improving overall management effectiveness and efficiency

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The Monthly “100 Creativity Ingredients” Book Tuning: Creative Wisdom Feb. 2020

Creativity is a complex, multidimensional thought process, it is infused with an inner cohesiveness and comes from a vision of uniqueness. 

All humans are born with raw creativity ability. Creativity has many dimensions, with multi-faceted truth and myth, manifold knowledge and multidimensional insight. Creativity is the wings of our mind and the tempo of our heartbeat. Creativity is a constructive disruption, not so bad addiction, and a sensational phenomenon. The purpose of “100 Creativity Ingredients - Everyone’s Playbook to Unlock Creativity “is to classify, scrutinize, articulate, and share insight about one hundred special creativity ingredients, to paint the picture with them, to add colors on them, to embed the music into them, and to make the story via them, in order to unleash creative potential.    

                           Creative Wisdom  

How to Apply Creativity Wisdom in Problem Solving Creativity is expressive, productive, inventive, innovative and emergent. The innovators are simply those who can see what's around, and easily and effortlessly discover a better way to do things. Every one of us has creative strength. Some have strength in “thinking” - generating ideas and options, reframing issues or queries in understanding things via different way; other people excel at “seeing,” or observing - spotting interesting challenges and opportunities, trend surfing or noticing the significant details that others do not; and some others are good at “acting,’ they take thoughts and notions and figure out a place, manage logistic to make the idea a reality. So how to build a highly innovative team or organization, and take a structural approach for applying creativity in problem-solving?


Inspire Creativity via Multidimensional Thought Processes Creativity is a complex, multidimensional thought process, it is infused with an inner cohesiveness and comes from a vision of uniqueness. Creativity is the "soaring factor." We all should broaden our points of interest and try new things to extend our thinking box and inspire creativity via multidimensional thought processes.

Creative Maturity Creativity is the ability to figure out a better way to solve or attempt to solve problems. It is a mental process that results in an action that tests a possible solution. It is our creative mind that sets us apart from the animal kingdom and has given us the technology to improve our lives and make collective human progress. Creative people are inspired to think and work nearly every day on creating, they are not waiting for such “Aha” moment, but proactively stimulate the new energy of fresh thinking and improve their creative maturity via continuous practices.

Is Creativity a High Level of Thinking Creativity is a relatively new word invented by a Polish author in the 17th century - referring to poetry. Since then, knowledge has exploded, and creativity is defined more broadly as a mind skill (Static subject) or a process (Dynamic meaning) equipping us to make any new idea in any area. The range of scholarly interest in creativity includes a multitude of definitions and approaches involving several disciplines; psychology, cognitive science, education, philosophy, technology, theology, sociology, linguistics, business studies, songwriting, and economics, taking in the relationship between creativity and general intelligence, mental and neurological processes associated with creativity, the relationships between personality type and creative ability., etc

“Digital Valley” Book Preview Chapter 1: Creative Wisdom Thinking things differently and making imagination roll into reality is creativity. Creativity is an innate ability to create novel ideas. Creative Thinking is unique and original than many other types of thinking: some are the habit, repetition of memory, emotional reaction, approval-seeking, following, social conformity. Creativity is about thinking beyond conventional wisdom, or the “Out of Box” thinking.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6500th 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. 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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