Welcome to our blog, the digital brainyard to fine tune "Digital Master," innovate leadership, and reimagine the future of IT.

The magic “I” of CIO sparks many imaginations: Chief information officer, chief infrastructure officer , Chief Integration Officer, chief International officer, Chief Inspiration Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Influence Office etc. The future of CIO is entrepreneur driven, situation oriented, value-added,she or he will take many paradoxical roles: both as business strategist and technology visionary,talent master and effective communicator,savvy business enabler and relentless cost cutter, and transform the business into "Digital Master"!

The future of CIO is digital strategist, global thought leader, and talent master: leading IT to enlighten the customers; enable business success via influence.

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

The Monthly Learning Summary: Nurture Learning Workforce Mar. 2020

With the exponential growth of information and abundant knowledge, corporate learning is a differentiated business competency and culture shift.

High organizational learning relates to high response in recognizing and addressing system constraints, and adapt to the ever-changing environment.

 With the increasing pace of changes and the cutting-throat competitions, to effectively respond to the digital dynamics, either individually or collectively, continuous learning becomes an important skill for skill-building and prerequisite of developing changeability.

          

Nurture Learning Workforce



Digital Workforce as Learning Master People are often the weakest link but one of the most critical success factors of the organization. Modern digital technologies bring unprecedented convenience for people to learn and collaborate, improve their productivity, learning agility, and innovativeness. The digital workforce is a technology savvy new breed and learning master.

The Culture of Learning Culture is the collective mindset, attitude, and behavior. Culture is the residue of learning. In other words, leaders set a culture based on their vision and leadership substance and style. Much of this becomes "the way we do things around here." What are the factors that shape up an organization's culture? What are they, and how to change organizations and for that matter societal culture to become more learning agile in order to adapt to the "VUCA" characteristics of the digital age? And how can you align business scorecards, awards, and recognition, policies, and procedures which drive behaviors from the "old" culture, to reinvent the digital culture of learning?

Three Continuum to Develop Learning Habit To quote Peter Drucker, an American management guru, “knowledge is the most valuable commodity.” It couldn’t be truer in the digital era. On one hand, the fresh knowledge can be captured from the abundance of information, to create significant business value; on the other hand, it doesn’t take so long for that knowledge to become a commodity once the market is exposed to it. With the overwhelming growth of information and a shortened knowledge cycle, today's digital workforce must develop the hybrid learning habit in order to build professional competency and unlock their performance and potential.

How to Develop a Learning Mind to Spark Creativity At the individual level, being a continuous learner is no longer simply a choice one can make. It is a necessity and imperative; if one expects to add value, to compete for the future with authenticity and consistency. It is the foundation to stimulate creativity. At the organizational level, the always-on, hyperconnected global workplace opens a whole new world on how to build both a creative and productive workforce. Today's digital leaders and professionals must contemplate how to develop a learning mind to spark creativity and how to shape a learning culture -from mindset to mind flow, grooming more collective learning minds and tap the fountain of creativity?

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 long term business success, it is essential for the entire company to be pulling in the right direction, break down resource bottlenecks, improve learning agility, and maximize the digital potential of their business.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 6600+ 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 “Inherent” Quotes of “Digital Master” Mar. 2020

 Every person has the ability to be creative, just tearing down the mental barriers you have and tapping in your inherent ability.

"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 “Inherent” quotes in Digital Master.”


1 Creativity is an inherent ability that cannot be taught, only developed.

2 The pace of change is accelerated both in businesses and the entire human society, either as individuals or organizations, the uncertainty of outcomes or occurrences is inherent in almost every endeavor.

3 Every person has the ability to be creative, just tearing down the mental barriers you have and tapping in your inherent ability.

4 So given the opportunity, establishing a formal and enabling structure in line with your ambition and desired direction, and nurturing culture within it, is preferable to relying on individuals and groups to overcome the hurdles of existing within a structure that inherently is not designed for the innovation.

5 The guiding principles and inherent values of agile promote transparency, trust, collaboration, respect, open communication, customer centricity, creativity, etc.

6 Let's not let all these problems inherent in any change initiative, to get in the way of accepting the business facts that change is inevitable and needed in every business.

7 There is no doubt that the board only fulfills its role to shareholders and the management team when it is focused on performance. To some degree, conformance is inherent within the value-driven performance.

8 A system is only a system in relation to a purpose and that purpose is not inherent in the objects and processes you build and create.

9 Einstein said that every solution to the problem should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. It means that a problem has an inherent, irreducible complexity; any attempt to simplify further than that will fail and any complexity added to it is harmful.

Raise the Digital IQ of the Organization

 The digital organization with high digital IQ is able to understand the value of information, fine-tune smart processes, develop the intelligent workforce, and achieve measurable business profitability.

With rapid changes, the exponential growth of information and continuous disruptions, the beauty of the digital landscape is the fresh insight of the great architectural design and business ecosystem dynamic.

Organizations today need nothing less than a paradigm shift in their thinking about the fundamentals of how organizations work, as well as how to build an ever-evolving digital organization with high digital IQ - understanding the value of information, fine-tuning smart processes, developing the intelligent workforce, and achieving measurable business profitability.


Provide information accessibility and availability, and drive critical insight: The most powerful and differentiating asset in all of today's businesses is information. Focusing on the information aspect of the role in the context of the business is part of the digital transformation. In a business scope, there are some of the important bits and bytes of information needed to forecast the business growth opportunities or capture customer insight. Organizations with high “digital IQ” can weave information into the very fabric of the business, optimize its usage and achieve its value and full potential.

On the flip side, information is something that can hinder the achievement of strategic objectives, having it unavailable or compromised. The quality of intelligence depends greatly on the quantity of information. The digital information management cycle is concerned with information classification, manipulation, and dissemination evolves managing data, information, knowledge, business insight and foresight smoothly. Data-based forecast precision helps the company capture the rising business opportunities timely or prevent potential risks effortlessly.

Shape intelligent digital workforce enabling intellectual stimulation, trust, and reliability: Today's digital workforce is technology savvy and hyperdiverse new breed, developing a high mature digital workforce won’t happen overnight, organizations today need to redefine themselves in which talent can develop and learn more rapidly than anywhere else. It takes planning, adapting, and innovating, such as the integration of cross-training and knowledge-sharing opportunities, having a plan for succession, enabling intellectual stimulation, trust, and reliability, etc.

Technically, there is no single initiative that will suffice to raise the digital IQ and shape the intelligent workforce overnight, people should adapt themselves and their organization through a collaborative and peer to peer approach. The digital paradigm arises out of new knowledge and the emerging trends to nurture a high mature digital workforce and reinforce the very characteristics of the digital business such as enlightenment and people-centricity.

Build smart processes and improve process intelligence to ensure transparency and visibility: A business process is "smart" when it accommodates controlled excursions away from what would otherwise be a rigid sequence of steps. The smart process needs to have dynamic aspects to it. It is rigorous; it can handle ad-hoc and exceptional matters smoothly and it ‘knows’ enough to be able to handle failures effectively. Smart business processes should actually be born out of a strategy, such as a process for customer services, when applied strategically saves much cost, allowing you to become more competitive to achieve business goals.

Process Intelligence is the information that is extracted from a process about the process; throughput times, bottlenecks, etc. Process intelligence can also mean process governance –the process to manage processes, such as risk control, compliance, monitoring, etc. At the business scope, you create a system around the process, call it a management system which becomes a vehicle for strategy execution.

Strike the right balance between customer-centricity and profitability: The digital evolution means that channels to customers. Without customers, an organization cannot survive and without profitability, an organization cannot grow and thrive. Organizations with high digital IQ have a clear understanding of how customer-centric approaches enhance the business model and extend profitability. Everything from how pricing is affecting close times and support calls to referral business activity triggered by high customer satisfaction, etc.

Exert lots of intelligence, through data-based insight, the businesses know what they are giving the customer is both what they really want and what they are willing to pay for. Try to inspire everybody and fight to make your organization customer-centric, also keep at the profitable trail for the long run. For example, the dominant focus on high-value clients may principally be around the retention and penetration lever, whilst efficiency may be the focus for lower value deciles.

The metrics-wise engagement and measurement of business value generation:
A measurement system is a necessary foundation for improving digital IQ and making continuous improvement. The data-oriented metrics-wise engagement is leading the organization to become much more proactive and intelligent in problem-solving, proposing, as opposed to responding to ideas, accelerating the business speed and improving customer satisfaction.

Measurement systems must be in place as part of overall portfolio management to ensure the value proposed in any business case is actually realized. Metrics can help you get some objective perspectives on what you are trying to manage, but they need to be crafted and interpreted well. The right metrics can be helpful to track progress in business improvement initiatives or digital transformation.

Digital transformation represents a break with the past, having a high level of societal impact. The company management is responsible to achieve the strategic goals by leveraging business resources and overcoming day-to-day uncertainties, raising the digital IQ, with the goals of running a highly intelligent and highly effective digital business.

Monday, March 30, 2020

The Monthly Systems Wisdom Summary: Systems Thinking & Problem-Solving Mar. 2020

In today’s complex business setting, problem-solving usually has a very wide scope and takes the interdisciplinary approach.

Systems Thinking is about understanding interrelationships between parts and the whole. It helps digital leaders and professionals discover the interconnectivity and interdependence of the digital business ecosystem,  and ensure that the digital business as an organic system growing and evolving with its environment in harmony.

Systems Thinking helps digital leaders and professionals get behind the "surface" validity and give them deeper insight into the nuances of why and how in order to solve problems effectively.





Systems Thinking & Problem-Solving 



Systems Thinking and Problem-Solving Systems Thinking is about understanding interconnected relationships between parts and the whole. The business problems today usually have many causes and can be very complex. Leveraging Systems Thinking to problem-solving includes framing the right problems, understanding the interconnected relationship between different problems, as well as figuring out potential solutions.

Apply Multidimensional Thought Processes to Problem-Solving Scenario With the overwhelming growth of information and an unprecedented level of uncertainty, there is known unknown and unknown unknown. Many problems become so complex, fact-finding and prototyping are crucial steps in discovering premium solutions. Digital leaders and professionals must keep their minds open, enhance interdisciplinary understanding of the problem, and take the step-wise approach to solve them smoothly.

Systematic Problem-Solving: Looking out of Problems before Looking into the Problems Problem-solving is about seeing a problem and actually finding a solution to that problem, not just the band-aid approach to fixing the symptom. How you find a solution to any problem depends on your perspective to that problem, but every problem has numerous angles to take into consideration. To deal with many of today’s complex problems, perhaps you need to conduct a systematic problem-solving approach - what Russ Ackoff, an American organizational theorist, used to call "looking out of the problem" as opposed to "looking into the problem," in order to solve problems thoroughly.

The Multiple Scenarios to Frame the Right Problems Problem-solving is about seeing a problem and actually finding a solution to that problem, not just the band-aid approach to fixing the symptom. Framing the right problem is halfway to solving it. Running a business is fundamentally an iterative problem-solving continuum. It’s critical to take multiple scenarios for framing the right problems in order to improve problem-solving effectiveness and build unique business competencies.

Three Critical Ingredients in Systematic “Problem-Solving” Formula Fundamentally, running a business is an iterative business problem-solving continuum. Behind every problem is a relationship dynamic out of alignment. In today’s complex business setting, problem-solving usually has a very wide scope and takes the interdisciplinary approach. People have to know how to connect the dots with the hyperconnected business ecosystem, think systematically, holistically and inclusively, comprehend dynamic; master induction or deduction; understand variables, interfaces, and interactions. Here are three critical ingredients in the systematic “problem-solving” formula.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 6600+ 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 “Assignment” Quotes of “Digital Master” Mar. 2020

People focus on the learning opportunities offered by assignment, rather than on the status quo that goes with them. A focus on learning and development reduces attrition and has a great quantitative ROI.

"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 “Assignment” quotes in “Digital Master.”


1 If it’s possible, every process, every expenditure of time, money, or energy, and every assignment of resources should directly relate back to the "why." The goal is to clarify the vision and objectives and make the proper adjustment for driving changes seamlessly.

2 Effective change leadership is highly influential and methodical, building a solid change management team is critical to focus on communication, coordination and facilitation, resource assignment, adoption, and training, for creating and maintaining cross-functional trust, transparency, actions, and results.

3 Digital leaders can utilize their time effectively and include employee development as part of ongoing learning on the work assignment. The culture of learning fosters openness, information sharing, critical and independent thinking, and professionalism.

4 People focus on the learning opportunities offered by assignment, rather than on the status quo that goes with them. A focus on learning and development reduces attrition and has a great quantitative ROI.

5 Create a map for getting from the current mess to the desired condition. Determine constraints, decide what should be done, assign responsibility, and estimate completion.

6 A digital organization can bring greater awareness of interconnectivity, intricacies and the systemic value of organizational systems, business processes, people dynamics, resource alignment, or technological touches. It evolves multidimensional management disciplines to achieve digital delight.

7 The mechanism of change management and the success factors that could help to build a creative business environment are decision-making, people involvement, organizational structure, open communication, incentive and reward system, personnel selection, resource assignment, technology usage, etc.

8 Role conflict or differing priority is often the cause of misalignment. More specifically, misalignment is caused by silo thinking, miscommunication, lack of cross-functional understanding, dysfunctional management behavior, outdated practices, the failure to translate the high-level language of business strategic goals into the tactical functional goals, and then into the various staff specialism or the specific working tasks, or misassignment -the wrong people put in the wrong position to solve the wrong problems, etc.

The Focus Areas of Information Architecture (IA)

Information Architecture defines the current state, future state and guidance of information management; information systems incorporate both ends and means.

Information is one of the most invaluable business assets which can create or multiply the business value and maximize its return on investment. Information Architecture describes through a set of requirements, principles, and models, the current state, future state and guidance necessary to flexibly share and exchange information assets to achieve effective enterprise change.

There are three focus areas of Information Architecture (IA), specializing in different areas complementing each other and overlapping from time-to-time depending on the work structure in an organization.

The Front-End IA is most frequently seen with the closest relationship to UX: Digital is the age of people-centricity. Information Architecture is a structural design technique of the various shared environments, especially at the user-facing level, for how the information could be organized to make it searchable and usable by its users, as well as how these data interrelationships make sense to them. Organizations with fine design and UX competencies are more capable of attracting and delighting customers, and properly implementing and accelerating their digital transformation.

The insightful architects should keep pondering what users want to know or do, what logical information architecture or content structure is needed to do this, how can the information be packaged in UI cohesively to meet the users’ goals. Keep in mind, just because you have abundant information or relevant business content doesn't mean you have everything. They're not perfect - considering user flows (and needs/wants/expectations), an effective architecture enables information assets refinement and exchange to drive effective enterprise change and transformation.

The Back-End IA deals with the structuring and relationship of information so that the information can be presented in a useful manner to the user: With the exponential growth of information, the management attention needs to be placed on the conditions that allow information to flow and generate value rather than try to manipulate or control. Information is not isolated, it has to flow into the company, flow out of it, flow to customers. It’s important to identify how information is associated with the tangible value of businesses. The back end IA helps to deal with information structure and relationships to ensure information quality, accessibility, reliability and meet the users’ needs in an acceptable manner for bringing business value consistently.

There arises an opportunity to analyze and reuse information people create as they go about their activities, and from that to generate valuable knowledge that can be shared to improve productivity and innovation. A highly intellectual organization has a higher level of responsiveness that companies should leverage information architecture and design the digital business around information & technology in order to streamline flow and achieve business autonomy.

The Middle IA deals with the infrastructure of getting information from the back to the front and makes a great deal with transformations, styles, and system interfaces: Digital organizations with fluidity are able to circulate information within the ecosystem seamlessly and respond to changes continuously. Information management systems based on a fine designed information architecture play a fundamental role in deploying and continuously open to new information from the dynamic business environment and manage information cycle - collecting, storing, processing and transforming information into customer insight or business foresight.

From a user application development perspective, do research about what the user needs, then the logical content and related information lead to some aspects of the initial design. It continues as you collaborate with the wider team and involve Interaction design, Information Architecture design, Database design, Service design, App structure design, Visual design, etc. The Middle IA makes a great deal with IT infrastructure so that the process design and system interface design integrates at the user to ensure information system cohesiveness.

Forward-thinking companies across the vertical sectors claim they are in the information Management business regardless of the sector and nature of their organization. Information Architecture defines the current state, future state and guidance of information management; information systems incorporate both ends and means, continuously open to new information from the dynamic business environment and are able to circulate information within the ecosystem seamlessly. The goal is to improve organizational fluidity and accelerate business transformation.


Sunday, March 29, 2020

The Monthly “Leadership Master” Book Tuning: The Intrapreneur Leadership Mar. 2020

By practicing intrapreneurship activities in well-established organizations, you will get very great chances and opportunities to lift up the organization to the next cycle of growth and maturity. 

Leadership is complex yet simple: Complex in that there are so many traits and characteristics that are considered when evaluating a leader. Simplicity in that the substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about the future and change; direction and dedication; influence and innovation.

The purpose of the book: Leadership Master - Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity is to convey the vision of digital leadership, share the insight about leadership maturity, and summarize five emergent digital leadership trends Here is the monthly tuning of digital leadership.


                 The Intrapreneur Leadership 


Three Perspectives of Intrapreneur Leadership Intrapreneur leaders present solid leadership attributes such as “full open communication,” “integration,” “ownership,” “digital readiness,” “self-adaptation,” and "resilience." Corporate Entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship has been recognized as potentially viable, it means for promoting and sustaining organizational performance, renewal and enforce competitiveness. Being entrepreneurial is first the mindset, then an attitude and skills are…

Harness Intrapreneurship to Make a Digital Leap Organizations no matter large or small, all face unprecedented changes, uncertainty, and accelerated business dynamics. To keep well-established organizations energetic and innovative, intrapreneurship is about creating a new venture within established organizations to leverage the startup culture for catalyzing changes and inspiring creativity.

Intrapreneurship Perception and Performance By practicing intrapreneurship activities in well-established organizations, you will get very great chances and opportunities to lift up the organization to the next cycle of growth and maturity. Corporate intrapreneurship has been recognized as potentially viable, it is about creating new ventures from within established organizations to leverage the startup culture for catalyzing changes and inspiring innovation.

Practicing Intrapreneurship in Running Enterprise IT Practicing intrapreneurship starts with tuning the digital mindset of IT leaders and professionals. IT organizations play a critical role in the organization’s digital transformation. Many forward-looking IT organizations have built a partnership with startup companies to accelerate changes and deliver innovative and cost-effective business solutions.

Three Aspects of Practicing Intrapreneurship in Enterprise Innovation is an important business capability to catalyze the organization’s long-term prosperity. If entrepreneurship is to look for changes, deploy it as an opportunity, then, intrapreneurship is about creating a new venture from within established organizations to leverage the startup culture for catalyzing changes and improving IT agility.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 6600+ 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 “Inertia” Quotes of “Digital Master” Mar. 2020

 Levels and ways of inertia manifestation could be a criterion for measuring organizational health.

"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 “Inertia” quotes in “Digital Master.




1 It is no surprise that there is learning or change inertia, a lot of people resist as it takes them outside their comfort zone which generally gives a negative feeling.

2 The more dramatic and powerful the change is, the greater the risk would be. People tend to be "risk-averse." Fear is one of the causes of innovation inertia.

3 Levels and ways of inertia manifestation could be a criterion for measuring organizational health.

4 Strategy execution inertia can be overcome via clear communication, cross-functional collaboration, and a strong set of digital capabilities.

5 Change is the new normal, but it also becomes fundamentally difficult in most organizations due to the change friction or culture inertia, because it is treated as something distinct from running the business, evolving performance and increasing results over time.

6 In practice, change makes a lot of people nervous because it means they have to move out of their comfort zone, which causes change inertia.

7 Change is always easier if you know the net value of the change compared to the net value of not changing; there has to be enough net value increase to make it worth the effort of handling the actual physical activities as well handling the mental inertia.

8 Change leaders and managers with learning curve awareness can ride the learning curve smoothly, and there is a high level of trust within the upper rankings of the management team, to overcome roadblocks to changes, such as blurred vision, internal politics, inertia, misalignment of systems or processes, overly rigid organizational hierarchy, lack of creativity, etc.

The Aspect of Complex Problem Solving

 The matter of fact is that the more complex the situation is, the more different approaches and role gaming is needed for effective problem-solving.

Running a business is fundamentally an iterative problem-solving continuum. Given the complexity and uncertainty of the digital business world and given the challenges of hyper-connected and interdependent dynamic ecosystems, problem-solving today has a very wide scope, intricate factors, more often than not, lack of knowledge and scarcity of insight leads to poor problem-solving for the long run.

It needs to take an interdisciplinary approach and logical scenario for solving problems really matter and solving them in the right way.


Situation Awareness: Many of today’s business problems are complex, organizations should have comprehensive digital awareness with the first step to understand them and gain full awareness of both opportunities and risks. The realization only comes when the problem is perceived - knowledge is no doubt important but more than that is complete awareness of what is happening in the context. Because trying to fix the wrong cause of a problem will waste time and resources, increase anxiety, and decelerate business speed.

The tough part is that every problem has numerous angles to take into consideration. Thus, in most cases, it boils down to how you view the problem from different outlooks. If you fail to fully grasp and accurately perceive what leads to problems and difficulties, or you are unclear about the conditions, goals or how the conditions affect the goals, then the methodology to solve the problem becomes a problem. The other challenge is trade-offs. The more you can front load and truly define the current state, the easier the journey of problem-solving moves ahead.

Resource alignment: Effective problem solving requires information refinement and resource awareness, process efficiency and collective wisdom. There are different types of resources such as funds, physical assets, people, information, reputation, resources of the talented people who comprise the firm, such as knowledge, training, insights, or experience, etc. In reality, resource limitations are significant and problem solvers who are not cognoscente of what they can or cannot do will always make bad decisions and slow down the speed of problem-solving.

Problem-solving competency differentiates business leaders from laggards. For any company to succeed in the long term, how resource allocation is determined should be understood by all important parties. Set the right priority to solve the most critical problems, mind resource and investment gap to enforce successful capacity planning and holistic resource management discipline to improve the overall problem-solving effectiveness.

Coordinate solution: The increased visibility of inter-dependency of capabilities means that there is a reducing number of problems that can be solved by individuals. One of the big obstacles for business problem solving is the silo mentality and bureaucratic management style. If they are being reinforced, their existence is perhaps a legacy of traditional management style applied to new ways of solving problems collaboratively. Problem-solving in the complex digital dynamic is often interdisciplinary and sociological, complex problems require a coordinate solution.

There are observable behavioral changes in focus from 'better understanding of solutions” to 'better understanding of problems.” The solution to break down silo is to apply a bigger thinking box, integral processes, and collaborative communication in an attempt to address perceived increase in business system complexity and nonlinearity in order to orchestrate a sociological solution.

Never think there is a shortlist of solutions you can pick from. The matter of fact is that the more complex the situation is, the more different approaches and role gaming is needed for effective problem-solving. The intention is not about finding the perfect solution but making progressive problem resolution, increasing the influence and being part of the solutions.

Saturday, March 28, 2020

The Monthly CIO Debates Collection & “Digital IT” Book Tuning: Is IT Viewed as an Inhibitor or the Driver of Change Mar. 2020

Debating is not for stimulating conflicts, but for brainstorming better ways to do things.

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.


    Is IT Viewed as an Inhibitor or the Driver of Change




Is IT Viewed as an Inhibitor or the Driver of Change We live in a technological world and every day more and more technology affects the way we live and work. Great opportunity, danger, and disruption are around every corner. However, many IT organizations are still perceived by business as a support function, slow to change. Forward-looking CIOs need to ask themselves: Is IT viewed as an inhibitor or the driver of change? What’re the best and next practices to reinvent IT for getting digital ready?

Can CIOs Become Digital Catalyst 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?

How to Set Digital IT Change Agenda Digital businesses become more dynamic and hyperconnected, change is the new normal with faster pace and velocity. IT faces an unprecedented opportunity to refine its reputation, also needs to take more responsibility as a true business partner. CIOs have to get the IT change agenda ready, have access to both internal and external resources for achieving the desired ROI and running high-performance digital IT organization. IT needs to proactively participate in business conversations. Change is not for its own sake, every change needs to have a noble business purpose and a well-set business agenda. Change is a dance between the top management and the affected parts of the organization, and change is an ongoing business capability.

Why Is so Hard for Running IT “Out of the Comfort Zone”? Technology is pervasive, information is growing exponentially. Business transformation or change initiatives today nearly always involves some form of information and technology. All forward-thinking organizations across the industries claim they are in the information management business. To adapt to the increasing speed of changes, organizations have to be more nimble about updating technology and managing information effectively. Hence, IT organizations today can no longer get stuck at the lower level of maturity to keep the lights on only or get struggling to make an alignment with the business. Digital IT organization must get “out of the comfort zone,” to explore better ways of running IT as a trusted business partner, proactive change agent, and hyper-connected innovation hub. "Continual improvement" is the IT mantra in the digital era.

Is IT a Building Block or a Roadblock of Digital Transformation Nowadays technologies make impacts on every vertical industry sector and information permeates into every corner of the organization. IT is becoming more critical strategically, and the building blocks of the business competency. But still, there are discrepancies between how IT evaluates its own influence & performance and how IT is perceived by business partners and customers. Sometimes, business partners think IT is lagging behind the change curve, and they see IT as a drag on innovation. Even IT should be the irreplaceable building block of differentiated organizational capabilities, businesses perceive IT as the roadblock. So, how can IT turn around these negative perceptions and build a strong reputation as a change agent, innovation engine and driving force of digital transformation?

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.

The “Granularity” Quotes of “Digital Master” Mar. 2020


Re-usability and simplicity complement each other to a certain level of granularity within the organization.


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 “Granularity” quotes in “Digital Master.”


1 The tricky bit with information is that, depending on the level of granularity and aggregation, you can use it for multiple purposes.

2 An organization can focus on the deliverables of business solutions by which the scope and granularity of the models are created and improve problem-solving effectiveness and maturity.

3 It leads to splitting of digital strategy into multiple layers with different levels of information granularity in which upper layers are holistic and lower layers are comprehensive - covering all attributes needed but for selected concepts only.

4 Capability can "contain" many services, processes, and functionality, but there is a 1:1 correspondence between service and functionality and a process, whatever the granularity level. A capability can be decomposed to finer grain capabilities.

5 Re-usability and simplicity complement each other to a certain level of granularity within the organization.

6 Lenses, frames, paradigms, theories, and modeling--each is appreciated as well and may access insights depending on perspective and distinction as well as granularity.

7 Take the combination of approaches to evaluate processes independently. There are many considerations - granularity being one which is almost so and procedural composition or decomposition.


Change Management Steering Instruments and Methodologies

There is no panacea, no magic bullet with regards to change management. Steering Instrument Tools are capable of increasing speed and consistency of change. 

Change is the new normal with increasing pace. It is nevertheless true that change itself has become unpredictable and evolutionary. If you are not clear on why you are changing or If change is implemented with no clarity then you are doing a change just for change's sake.

Statistically, about 70% of change initiatives fail, rather, they fail to meet stakeholders’ expectations. Forward-looking organizations should have a set of changing steering instruments, systems, and structures in place prior to implementation in order to improve the change management success rate and build the differentiated business competencies.


The change profile-scan: Too many organizations are mechanistic, reactive, control and command hierarchies. Lack of change review, reflection, and recognition often make changes not sustainable. Successful organizations see changes coming and with pre-planning to overcome the resistance before it even manifests. Change profile-scan is one of the important instruments to help diagnose the root cause of problems, the psychology behind the change, or the technique needed for changes.

When employee morale is low and the business gets stagnant, trace down the “unfit” mindset, poor behaviors or lower-than-expected performances, understand the causes behind it, and get out fast or initiate change within. Dynamic and changing organizations cannot operate with unchanging people. Recognize and empower change agents, update change methodology and technology. Sometimes, it's not the change that needs management. It's management that has to change. Pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, etc, are the logical steps in managing change scenarios.

The architecture (business or solution, IT architecture, etc.) as a change steering instrument: Because organizational change becomes common practice within an organization, it turns to be one of the ongoing strategic capabilities which underpin successful execution and move an organization from “keeping the lights on” to strategic responsiveness. To actually facilitate change or movement in a company, you need a business steering instrument such as business architecture that gives you a holistic view (business steering) so that the business problem can be seen from every relevant perspective and every perspective has a whole world behind itself to be described (architecture). From the organizational capability perspective, organizational change management has a strong role in business transformation, benefits realization, and strategy execution.

Change Management should be an adequate, logical, and systematic effort to any environmental shift. Strategically, what you actually need is a business steering instrument such as architecture tool that starts from the top of an organization (mission, vision, goals, and strategy) and handles every new business problem from all the relevant perspectives (IT, Finance, HR, Operations, etc.). Methodologically, the alignment with organizational design, architecture, and functions is ultimately where you need to be to really make a difference. Change cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished, it has to be woven into the collective communication, mentality, process, and action of the organization to bring up business value continuously.

The well-designed scorecard as a change steering instrument: The balanced scorecard enables the management to accurately judge the coming curves and obstacles on the path of change management and drive changes proactively. Scorecards help greatly with prioritization, allowing you to focus on the most important things and tailor the needs of varying business stakeholders.

It is also important to provide a “balanced” view of tradeoff variables. The scorecard helps to understand results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to improve change management effectiveness. Through a well-designed Executive Scoreboard, business leaders can capture both quantitative hard numbers about cost savings and qualitative perspective of Change Management health.

There is no panacea, no magic bullet with regards to change management. Steering Instrument Tools are capable of increasing speed and consistency of change. 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.





Friday, March 27, 2020

The Monthly Communication Brief: Communication Practices Mar. 2020

Communication is the mechanism that we use to think and learn.

The great communicators are the high-quality leaders or professionals who can communicate objectively with strong logic, clarity, and understanding; the great communicators are the great artists who are fluent in creative expression or metaphorical description.

Communication is both art and science. How to set principles and develop best practices to improve communication effectiveness and build communication competency?.
                               

  Communication Practices



How to Leverage Systems Thinking in Persuasion rather than Reasoning? Systems Thinking is to see the interconnected relationship between parts and the whole, it’s the ability to study the forest for understanding the context of trees. It’s an important reasoning tool for strategy crafting and decision making. From a communication perspective, what is the role of tools such as Systems Thinking in persuasion rather than reasoning?

Practicing Creative Communication to Bridge IT-Business Gaps Due to an unprecedented level of uncertainty, velocity, ambiguity, and complexity, misunderstanding, misinterpretation or miscommunication are the big causes of many business issues and human problems in our society. Usually, IT-business gap is caused by miscommunication, communication clarity directly impacts on the business effectiveness and organizational maturity. Besides technical dialect or finance language, should IT leaders practice creative communication to close IT-business chasm, enforce business relationships and promote IT as a trustful business partner?

How to Master Different Dialogues to Enforce Communication Digital CIOs are “Chief Interpretation Officers,” “Chief Interaction Officers,” and “Chief Influence Officers,” today, etc. They are able to initiate communication in the different levels of the organization with clarity. There are different types of dialogues. Each kind of dialogue has its context or "initial situation," the participant's goal, or the goals of the dialogue. Digital CIOs need to be excellent communicators, who are business aware and only finally, technically aware, translate from one conversation to the other seamlessly. But more specifically, how can CIO master different dialogues to enforce communication and leadership effectiveness?

How to Communicate Effectively in Digital Dynamic The speed of change is significantly increasing. Decentralization, globalization, and diversified workforces can all be practical reasons for communicating barriers. How do you communicate a common message across the globe with empathy, and, in particular, make sure the message you want to communicate resonates effectively?

How to Leverage Communication in Harnessing Innovation Digital is the age of co-creation. Communication is the mechanism that we use to think and learn - without others to communicate with, learning doesn't happen. When we think alone, we are using internalized speech and thus talking to ourselves. When we communicate with others, we are talking to each other to shape our ideas around problem-solving. However, there are no one-size-fits-all communication styles. In some, talking will be important - and talking at the right time in the process. In others, visuals might be more important. In some language, in some symbols, in some silence; in some solitude in other crowds. To dig through, why is communication crucial to idea development, and how to leverage communication by harnessing innovation?

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, advice on how to run a digital IT 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.

The “Multifaceted” Quotes of “Digital Master” Mar. 2020

 The strategy is not about solving a single problem, but rather a concerted solution to a multi-faceted strategic set of problems.

"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 “Multifaceted” quotes in “Digital Master.”


1 Creativity has many dimensions, with multi-faceted truth and myth, manifold knowledge and incredible imagination.

2 Creativity is multi-faceted and Creative Thinker is unique. Creativeness derives from one’s ability to let go, let go of assumptions and stigmas we place on objects, ideas, functions, and has a vision of purpose besides what is already obvious.

3 Digital CIOs need to have “multi-faceted personas,” to practice the situational leadership accordingly by communicating with varying shareholders, taking multiple management responsibilities, and developing a balanced “running, growing, and transforming” portfolio with adjusted speed.

4 From mind shift to culture fit, Agile suitability is the multi-faceted assessment and multi-dimensional conversation.

5 The strategy is not about solving a single problem, but rather a concerted solution to a multi-faceted strategic set of problems.

6 Analytics is a multifaceted discipline that attracts individuals from many backgrounds, with many skill-sets and psychological preferences.

7 It’s now more relevant than ever to have versatile CIOs with “multi-faceted personas” to enforce IT influence across the digital ecosystem and practice situational leadership accordingly.

8 Governance is a sophisticated multi-faceted process that if well executed, will lead to better decisions.

Design Principles and Disciplines

Design is multidisciplinary in nature via scientific, artistic, philosophical, psychological, sociocultural, sociotechnical, or socioeconomic lenses,

Fundamentally, design thinking is the problem-solving scenario that evolves a lot of ground and irrespective of different professional domains. The strategic objective of design is to understand what your customers need and to help the business orient itself towards those needs in pursuit of its goals. Here is a set of design principles to enforce digital management disciplines.

Less is more: Designers prefer validity and get the right results. Keep things simple, but not simpler, grasp the essence of design philosophy and follow the "simplicity" principle for developing intuitive products or services on an ongoing basis to see how their goals are achieved. Simplicity means fewer layers and high fluidity from an organizational structural perspective; Less is more” needs to become the digital principle for modern enterprise structure design and tuning.

With simplicity, what you are adding is clarity and purpose. Simplicity is a behavioral attitude to see things as and what and where they are and be content and cool as it is. Simplicity is also the design principle of looking for what is common for maximum reuse, decoding complexity, keeping things simple and optimizing the products/services/ business structure from functioning to delight.

Create for tomorrow: Forward-thinking leaders today believe that tomorrow will be better or at least as good as today. From a design perspective, figure out what will be considered aesthetically pleasing tomorrow rather than today. Fashion will fade away, but the trend could turn into reality. The leaders today need to gain “digital awareness” and be able to look ahead and identify certain trends in their industry and create premium products/services for tomorrow. Keep an open mind and learn more. Focus on ideas, information, flexibility, openness, and curiosity.

Keep mindfully insatiable curiosity. Capture great ideas, spark creativity but always remember to share yours. Try to see different perspectives without pushing toward the one that you think is the truth. Keep in mind how much you can affect the environment and co-design a better future. Then, have a good plan in place, follow the “creating for tomorrow” design principle and leverage the effective technological tools for whatever you wish to accomplish. The good design supports the business strategy. As a matter of fact, those highly scalable digital organizations can expand and amplify their influence with the ability to co-create in a digital ecosystem, build new experiences and expand its impact with the future perspective.

Break the rules: Design is a type of innovation. One innovation “rule” is to break the rules that bind you. Thinking outside the box is all about "rule-breaking." To disrupt, you must hear the whispers of customers, contexts, inner worlds, or outside worlds. The outside-in view stimulates design thinking. From a design perspective, you don't do certain things in a certain order; you just look at things from a non-business-standard point of view until the form emerges. One of the most important things about design is to focus on end-users' need gaps - even looking beyond your product category. It's about what's going on in the consumer's mind, that's the key.

If you look at the history of market disruptions, disruptive innovation is often something that has the potential to disruptively challenge existing solutions and to explore alternative ways to the problem. Constructive disruption is a healthy cycle as the rule might be outdated, disruptive product over time weakens and becomes either an extensional or incremental innovation as it moves towards the eventual commodity status. Thus, you have to keep updating the rules and continue designing innovative solutions to existing or emerging problems.

Design is multidisciplinary in nature via scientific, artistic, philosophical, psychological, sociocultural, sociotechnical, or socioeconomic lenses, and these dimensions interact and mutually influence each other to fit the marketing needs. It’s important to leverage a well-defined set of design principles to clearly articulate attitude, aptitude, and altitude of design, for shaping great products, services or digital businesses effortlessly.







Thursday, March 26, 2020

The Monthly “Digital Boardroom” Book Tuning: The Progressive Corporate Board Mar. 2020

Progress represents change. Without change, one cannot even stagnate. The corporate board must exemplify progressive leadership to help build an ultra-modern digital organization. 

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.


Progressive Corporate Board  



The Progressive View of the Corporate Board The modern society is a dynamic continuum with collective human progress. Progress represents change. Without change, one cannot even stagnate. The corporate board must exemplify progressive leadership to help build an ultra-modern digital organization. The progressive view of the corporate board in a collective setting can sustain a balance of diversified perspectives, creativity, discipline; opportunities and risk; individualism and teamwork, democracy and unification; science and art, intuition and of course, forward-thinking and situational leadership.

The “Good to Great” Journey of the Corporate Board
Most organizations today are looking for the strategic direction of driving transformative changes. The open digital paradigm is not just about opening technology, becoming transparent. It's a new paradigm shift.

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Tuning: A Progressive Board -Setting the Top Leadership Tone to Drive Digital Transformation At today’s “VUCA” digital dynamic, organizations face both unprecedented opportunities to grow and hyper-competition or great risks to survive. Therefore, the corporate board plays a more significant role in overseeing business strategy, setting principles and policies, and making the judgment on and assurance of corporate action within a framework of practical knowledge. The digital fitting BoD is about mental toughness, progressive perspective, and in-depth business understanding in order to set the right digital leadership tone and lead change effortlessly. Leadership is all about future and progression, so how to build a progressive board to catalyze digital transformation?

Is your Board too Backward-looking Digital means the increasing speed of changes, the exponential growth of information, hyperconnectivity, and always-on business dynamic? How successful organizations can handle continuous digital disruptions depends on how capable the board and business management can lead effectively across the ever-changing environment and how fast people can adapt to changes. When change does not meet the shareholders' expectations, the boardroom will feel the pain. The BoDs need to make an objective assessment of their own performance, changeability, and maturity: Is the board too backward-looking, compliance-driven, or internal focus? And how to build the high-performance digital board with a clear vision to drive progressive change effortlessly?

Three “P”s to Digitize Boardroom The Corporate Board is one of the most crucial leadership pillars in modern businesses. Because they have a significantly broad effect on setting business policy, overseeing strategy, tuning business mentality and personality, driving motivation, defining the appetite of innovation, sharpening leadership skills, advocating learning, pulling teams, and improving risk intelligence, etc. However, many boards today still get stuck with a view of the rear mirror mindset and focus on compliance-driven agendas. Digital board directors exemplify leadership influence. Digitalization starts from the top down, here are three “P” words to innovate boards for achieving directorship excellence.

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.