The Monthly “12 CIO Personas” Book Turning: CIOs as “Chief Inspection Officer” July 2020

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

This book “12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO’s Situational Leadership Practices” is the extensive brainstorming and logical content expansion of my book “CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of IT,” to reimagine and reinvent CIO leadership via practicing multitudes of digital influence. 

The important thing is that CIOs as the top leadership role must have a strong mindset, a unique personality, and a clear idea of what needs to be done, yet creative enough to not hold the company back from growth. Regardless of which personality they have, digital CIOs need to be both transformational and situational, innovative and tactical, business savvy and technology insightful, communication-effective and operation-efficient. 

   CIOs as “Chief Inspection Officer” 

 

Scrutinize IT Cost, Complexity, and Footprint via Architectural Lens Due to the increasing pace of change, the exponential growth of information, and fierce competition, IT plays a critical role in leading digital transformation. The value-based IT management can leverage useful tools like IT architecture to gain a holistic view of IT cost, complexity, or footprint, be able to increase visibility, and shape varying options to improve IT manageability.

Cause-Effect of IT Planning Fallacy IT management is complex and multifaceted, IT planning is an integral component of business strategic planning. To make planning effective and practical, IT leaders must ensure the organization has a clear vision, well-defined strategic goals, and gain the contextual understanding of the inter-connectivity of both visible and invisible business success factors.

Unpuzzling IT Complexity Information is growing exponentially and the nature of technology is complex, there is a multitude of complexities in the organizational scope. The emergent digital complexity includes hyper-connectivity, hyper-diversity, and hyper-dynamism. The goal of an IT organization is not to make things more complex. The fact is that IT has to become the business optimizer for managing complexity and unlocking organizational performance. Unpuzzling IT complexity means to improve IT organizational maturity from functioning (have redundancy) to firm (work solidly), to delight (“just right” simplicity).

Assess IT Applications by Setting Good Criteria Due to the increasing speed of change and the overwhelming growth of information, business executives really do see value in emerging digital technologies. And they're strong believers that the future will rely heavily upon information technology. At the same time, they're frustrated with "outdated" IT-led business solutions that don't live up to their expectations.

The Various Causes of Dysfunctional IT The contemporary organizations have different functions, structures, layers, and systems with Information Technology as the linchpin. The digital paradigm shift has come to a change in organizational forms away from the overly rigid hierarchies managed through command and control to more fluid and responsive network forms.

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

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Creativity is the Wing of Our Mind

Creativity is the flower seed- the more you sow, the more you harvest.

All humans are born with raw creativity.

Creativity is the wing of our mind and

- it’s the color of our soul.


Creativity has many dimensions

-with multi-faceted truth and myth,

- manifold knowledge,

-and multidimensional insight. 

Creativity needs encouragement as food-

and conflict to spark it.

Creative’s spirit dances with

-passion and imagination.


Creativity is the spring water -

the deeper you dig, the more it flows.

Creativity is the color palette -

life is your canvas, and imagination is your brush.


Creativity is the flower seed-

the more you sow, the more you harvest.

water it, fertilize it, remove the weed-

Nurture it and make it grow and blossom.


Creativity is the light bulb-

you have to switch it on-

for bring up "Aha" moment...


Creativity is the earth-

- the humbler you are, the more open you become.

Creativity is the charming sky-

full of colorful clouds and brilliant stars.


All humans are born with raw creativity,

but not all creativities are created equal.

Creativity needs a problem-

creative people need a purpose.

Creativity muscle needs to be strengthened-

creativity excellence can be cultivated.


Creativity is the wing of our mind.

Creativity is a Beautiful Phenomenon!

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Information vs. Process

Information Management cannot become mature, without decent attention to process management and vice versa.

All forward-looking organizations claim they are in the information management business. Information is the lifeblood of the business, process management is to manage known from flows. 

Besides people, information and process are key success factors of the company. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin - it is unwise to consider one without the other. Information in the business world will not do anything unless it happens to be followed as a process. In the same way, every process in the world of business without the appropriate enhancement of information will become out of context and pointless.

Information is the connection between two processes and a process is the connection between two information "states": Enterprises have parts of their business that are transaction-oriented and therefore process intensive, and parts of their business which are dynamic or innovative, and thus, information-intensive. Information is contextual. It is a process input and process output and can exist in a variety of forms. Information, principally more than data and knowledge alike, carry fundamentally higher entropy than the other two do.

For some companies, it is enough to view an enterprise through the process lens and virtually ignore the information lens. For others, it is essential to view an enterprise through the information lens and virtually ignore the process lens. So the business analysis needs to be wise to take heed of the nature of the activity to determine how best to analyze the subject area and improve business manageability.

Information Management is about data process, refinement, and access: The effective information must come from somewhere. The information does not live alone but permeates everywhere in the businesses. Thus, the value of information is not isolated. Information Management makes information available and useful. Processes are governed by data. Process Management is to manage known from flows. With the awareness and understanding of all of the process flaws, businesses can begin to visualize both the need and means to create much better processes to manage information effectively.

Keep in mind, there is inter-connectivity between information and process. First work to identify how information is associated with the valued tangibles of businesses; processes and resources, etc. Information Management safeguards a full understanding of business processes, tools that are used, and people using those to optimize business efficiency. When information flows into processes, then its own value will become readily apparent and quantifiable by association. Decision-makers as information agents are key in converting/processing data into information as well as consuming that information in their decision-making processes.

Information Management cannot become mature, without decent attention to process management and vice versa: Information Management is about data and a good percentage of process dependency. Business Process Management acts as a kind of structure for Information Management. Data/information Management implementation will require a decent amount of process changes, new process inclusion or optimization, etc.

Validation of proper master data governance can best be achieved through a well documented and actively used business process model, and validation of documented Business Process Models is well served by including Master Data Management process information. Both are model representations of the real business world with a different focus. Their goals are different but complement each other.

Organizations, like individuals, need to be in flow to operate smoothly and adapt to change effortlessly. Digital information flow and process innovation help to unlock latent expertise, collaborate through communities with geographically-distributed teams, and arise the opportunities to analyze and reuse information to improve decision effectiveness and increase business agility.

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The Insight of the Week 7/25-7/31 “Future of CIO” July 2020

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 7000+ 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 businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight of digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Compelling Digital Leadership Models Under a complex digital environment with “VUCA” new normal, we need to look at each situation individually and ask what leadership model is required, will it be emergent, will it self-organize, or will it be data-driven, etc. When the leadership model is symbiotic or empathetic, only then do things fall into place.In practice, there is NO one single attribute to digital leadership; there is just a delicate mix of management, leadership, and interpersonal skills, along with a lot of different attributes. Moreover, the use of these skills and attributes happens in different proportions for each major undertaking. Here are three compelling digital leadership models.

BoDs as Interdisciplinarians We live in a world in which change is the norm and if we don't embrace it, accept it, roll with it, or make it happen, we're not going to be successful. The digital enterprises with hyper connected and interdependent nature are breaking down the functional, geographical, or even organizational border, in fact, businesses today become much more nonlinear, interactive and intelligent than ever.

Growing Performance Management Tree with a Couple of Main Branches Corporate Performance Management is management control across functional domains and disciplines. It’s not an isolated management practice, but a multidisciplinary approach with a well set of scientific principles, methodologies, and practices. Strategic/Operations/Risk Management are the main branches of the performance management tree. The issue of Performance Management measurement isn't about accuracy, but of validity and reliability. The organization that didn't have a systematic approach to measure performance at both the strategic and operational level has a giant blind spot that is impairing their management effectiveness and maturity.

Scrutinize IT Cost, Complexity, and Footprint via Architectural Lens Due to the increasing pace of change, the exponential growth of information, and fierce competition, IT plays a critical role in leading digital transformation.The value-based IT management can leverage useful tools like IT architecture to gain a holistic view of IT cost, complexity, or footprint, be able to increase visibility, and shape varying options to improve IT manageability..

The Monthly “IT Innovation” Book Tuning: Unpuzzle Complexity and Debunk Digital Ecosystem July 2020 Within abundant information and emergent digital technologies, IT is a key component of a holistic business mindset to re-imagine “what is possible” - unleashing business potentials and improving business efficiency, effectiveness, agility, and maturity. The “art of possible” to reinvent IT in the digital age is to deliver the value of information in helping businesses grow, delight customers, and do more with innovation.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking about the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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Knowledge vs. Imagination to Celebrate #7000 Blog Posting

Knowledge is useless- unless you could use it to create something new. Imagination is delusional  unless you can roll it into reality.

Knowledge is what is and what has been; imagination ponders what it could be-

and creates new knowledge.

Knowledge helps to frame the picture of imagination;

Imagination breakdowns the little box of outdated knowledge.


Imagination and knowledge are intertwined-

Without imagination, knowledge is tedious;

without knowledge, imagination is nonsense.

Without imagination, knowledge is aimless;

Without knowledge, imagination is pointless.


Imagining, inventing, innovating,

Knowing, understanding, sharing…

They are both endless cycles, spiraling up, and circling around…


Knowledge is the fuel to boost imagination engine,

Imagination is the brainchild that needs to be nourished with knowledge.

Knowledge is enriched food that feeds intellectual hunger.

Imagination is fresh water which satisfies a thirsty soul.

Imagination is our wonderland, we have to keep exploring, without hallucinations.

Knowledge is the big sea, we need to learn how to swim in it without getting drowned.


Blue moon, purple tree, paint the color, and connect the dots…

imagination is stimulating, drives us to pursue “the art of possible”-

but shouldn’t be just the shallow spontaneity...

Academy, institute...learn and teach-

knowledge makes people look smart, but shouldn’t suffocate our imagination...


Curiosity stimulates imagination;

but it’s the open-mindedness that drives us-

to absorb knowledge.

Intuitive knowledge feeds our imagination-

Then, imagination flows freely in the consciousness river-

and merges into the ocean of knowledge.


Scientific fiction, artistic fairy tale-

imagination continues emerging, blurs territory and expands horizon.

Explicit knowledge, implicit knowledge-

knowledge keeps building its footprint and amplifies its influence.


Knowledge is useless-

unless you could use it to create something new

Imagination is delusional-

unless you can roll it into reality.


Knowledge could get stale and contaminated fast-

like rotten food.

Imagination might turn to be scary or intimidating-

like a lightened sky.


Sometimes, unorganized and complicated knowledge like big, hairy balls-

it takes bold imagination to untangle it.

At the other time, imagination seems to be ridiculous and out of control-

it takes knowledge to role it into reality.


Knowledge is limited, but imagination is boundless…

Knowledge may inflate ego without humility.

Imagination perhaps sounds foolish without the foundation of knowledge.

Imagination creates blueprints, Knowledge is brick & mortar..


Information, Knowledge, Insight, Wisdom-

Knowledge is circling and transcending...

Knowledge gives wings to the imagination-

But it’s imagination encircles the world.

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Change Management Logic and Methodology

Upon the increasing pace of changes, the reality is that there are a lot of things that can go wrong and it is not always easy to identify what is important.

With rapid change and fierce competition, the organizations that have hit the heights of success in the digital world aren’t those that have determinedly followed the old models and ways of thinking; it’s those that adapt to the business dynamic, and have forged a new path to solve problems and conduct business transformation. 

Top management needs to lead proactively and become really creative on how they architect and implement changes via following the right logic and methodology, to ensure their organization is strategically positioned to be ahead of change curves and achieve high-performance business results.

An objective way to observe and assess circumstances: Nowadays, there are so many things going on in the business, and there are all sorts of changes going on - positive changes, negative changes, incremental changes, transformative change; reactive changes, proactive changes; technical changes, structural change, or people change, etc. To make change management effective, the first step is to observe, what exactly went wrong, who got affected, who could drive changes? Which mindset, rules, processes, methodology, or technology are outdated, and where are silos or frictions happenings? Etc. For change to be embraced by stakeholders, they ultimately need to understand why it is an improvement, and what it will improve for them.

Upon the increasing pace of changes, the reality is that there are a lot of things that can go wrong and it is not always easy to identify what is important. Making an objective change assessment is not easy, because everyone perhaps has some bias or blind spots blocking the way. sound judgment is a hardcore leadership competency and a crucial step to drive effective changes. Besides “what, who, where, etc,” you need to ask enough “WHY”s to get to the root and uncover the negative factors that create a divide between the vision of the desired future and the current reality. The large scale digital transformation comes with the foresight to envision the need that others perhaps overlook or ignore. Change impact evaluation is multifaceted because the associated change benefits can be achieved via financial, market share, productivity, speed, or innovation perspective.

The descriptive way to list and articulate key success factors: There are both visible and invisible success factors for changes. One of the reasons change often fails because so many change managers only focus on tangible, but they lack an in-depth understanding of invisible or intangible things, just getting them to consider the list of intangibles would be a breakthrough. Keep in mind, there are numerous points-of-view and reference points of varying stakeholders such as senior executives, board members, middle managers, professional staff, etc, they all have a different view on "change." The variety of ideas, opinions, and viewpoints directly contributes to the business value in terms of productivity and profitability. Thus, collecting multifaceted change perspectives, identify key factors, and articulating change management logic and methodology are all important steps in leading change efforts. To succeed, top management needs a unified “one sight” focus, strikes a dynamic balance between the inner and outer success factors of change management in order to achieve expected results.

High-effective change leaders need to be cautiously optimistic and deal with egotism or over-optimism properly by asking: Did I overlook? What perspective am I taking that might blind me to other things I could have distinguished otherwise? What is the best scenario to change? Etc. Change impact analysis and business readiness are two key processes that need to be conducted to give the change management a glimpse of descriptive (nomenclatures of artifacts, relationships, etc.) of Change Management. The result-driven companies often need a set of deliverables so that they can justify the investment of Change Management. Deliverables are of themselves reasonably easy to describe generically but will vary dramatically in applicability, importance, and workload to complete.

The prescriptive way to set rules and form a systematic scenario: The digital organization is hyper-connected and interdependent, the linear system perception needs to be replaced by complex adaptive systems, Change Management often takes nonlinear thinking and iterative steps nowadays. Although there is no magic change formula, change prescriptive (rules on how to evolve system dynamics, some kind of philosophy) may be implicit or explicit or somewhere in between. The right level of change guideline is not about putting restrictions on what people should do; Instead, they are the philosophy behind the change methodologies, and they are the mindsets behind behavior change. “Planned Change Management" shouldn’t be too rigid or overly prescribed, otherwise, it could create a bottleneck for streamlining change scenarios.

Change is not always inside-out, the outside-in approach to change is about focusing on customer perceptions and experiences, with the goal to transform the company's culture and be dedicated to creating value for their customers. Radical change often needs to restructure the root of the company such as values, beliefs, and objectives. To debunk change management maturity, it's critical to account for cross-cutting concerns, putting a puzzle together requires trying different pieces, being flexible and willing to put a piece aside to find another more appropriate piece, enabling people across the organization to share knowledge and co-develop solutions. The changes delivered could be incremental through training, transitional through improving processes, or transformational if it is fundamentally shifting the entire business model of an organization.

It is nevertheless true that change itself has become unpredictable and evolutionary, business leaders today can’t predict every turn or curve on the journey. By taking a logical approach with the right methodology, organizations become highly conscious about what’s happening in their environment, enable dynamic resource allocation, adapt to change promptly, grasp opportunities timely, and prevent risks effectively.

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The Monthly “Digital Fit” Book Tuning: The Workplace Fit July 2020

The purpose of “Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit“ is to share insight about multidimensional enterprise fit from digital characteristics, organizational structure, change, knowledge, and talent perspectives; evoke critical and paradoxical thinking about digital “fit vs. misfit,” spark healthy debates on how to define and develop true digital fit, and build a fitting working environment to inspire creativity and accelerate digital transformation.

                

   The Workplace Fit 

Build a Vibrant Workplace to Catalyze Change As changes are expedited for both individuals and businesses, neither business nor life is linear these days, a digital workplace encompasses so much and has fewer boundaries and more dimensions to expand. The digital management has to break down silos and traditional “command and control” management style, design, enable and enforce an inspirational and inclusive working environment to catalyze changes and maximize the full business potential.

Three Aspects in Building a Digital Workplace Digital workplaces are about building an environment with the abundance of information and the culture of innovation, to put people at the center of business, and to both engage employees and delight customers. After clarifying the Big Why, there are still many questions haunting around about the Knowing -HOW, though: Is it possible to have an effective digital workplace where the culture is more command and control, where the chosen solutions simply mirror or reinforce the way of working within that hierarchy, but do so very well? Or is it a prerequisite of an effective Digital Workforce to have that more open culture and so "traditional" organizations are facing a culture change task alongside the development of a more effective Digital Workforce? Could you be imposing the current values of collaboration and openness on an effective Digital Workforce, and discounting organizations who aren't making progress in developing their own Digital Workforce? When setting the workplace policy to enforce digital management, are you thinking of guidelines for people? Do you have a basic business conduct policy that people sign when they join?

Three Aspects of Organizational Digital Fit The digital business dynamic is full of uncertainty, velocity, complexity, ambiguity, information overloading, fierce competitions, and continuous disruptions, etc. The companies today have to move fast; the functional, geographical, organizational, and even industrial borders are blurred, marketing, finance, technology, leadership, and talent are all intertwined. It’s important to work out a smooth strategy and business transformation by assessing the digital fit of the organization objectively and utilizing collective knowledge and experience to build competitive business advantage.

Tuning Organizational Structure from Hierarchy to Circular for Achieving Fluidity, Flexibility, and Fit  With the increasing pace of changes, hyper-connectivity, and interdependence, organizations across vertical sectors are at the turning point, take the multidimensional approach to make the digital paradigm shift. From the organizational structure perspective, the overly rigid pyramidal organizational structure forms communication gaps, encourages silo mentality, creates the performance bottleneck, and decelerates business speed. Therefore, fine-tuning underlying business structure and processes is a critical step for improving digital business fluidity, flexibility, and overall digital fit.

Three "A"ttributes of High-Mature Digital Organizations With the exponential growth of information and increasing pace of changes, the world keeps on turning, spinning, and innovating around you, and there will be new technologies, new perspectives, new approaches, new tools, new people that will have an impact on your team and your organization almost every day. What are important attributes and characteristics of high-mature digital organizations, and how to develop unique business competency to groom more digital masters?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6900+ 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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BoDs as Interdisciplinarians

Corporate BoD is a sophisticated leadership role with many responsibilities, such as leadership advising, governance practices, and resource provision. 

We live in a world in which change is the norm and if we don't embrace it, accept it, roll with it, or make it happen, we're not going to be successful. 

The digital enterprises with hyperconnected and interdependent nature are breaking down the functional, geographical, or even organizational border, in fact, businesses today become much more nonlinear, interactive and intelligent than ever. 

Therefore, corporate board directors should have the business vision to seek out the potential and capabilities they’ll need for the future development of the company. The level of the board accomplishment varies but the essential leadership competencies will remain the same - it's all about change and steering the business in the uncharted water skillfully. The modern board directors need to become interdisciplinarians who can navigate the business ship in the right direction and fill their board fiduciary responsibilities effortlessly.

Multidimensional intelligence: In the digital era, we will be confronting a number of high-complex problems in the hyper-connected world, especially at the strategic level. It requires fundamentally different mindsets and paradigms. The linear thinking and leadership practices are simply not sufficient to manage the “VUCA” digital new normal. Senior leaders at the board level should be skeptical about the conventional understanding of strategic issues so that they examine everything before accepting it for the real truth or advising it to others. They should think multidimensionally and leverage different lenses to see things differently, capture well-blended insight and foresight to make strategic decisions fluently, and build intellectual sophistication of problem-solving capability solidly.

In organic systems like a digital organization, it is argued that the only way to fully understand why a problem or element occurs and persists is to understand their interconnective relationships and complexity. To shape a truly global business, forward-looking corporate boards can think further, bigger, and broader, drive competitive value and global growth by developing world-class insight, which requires critical thinking, holistic thinking, strategic thinking, systems thinking, global thinking and forecasting capability, etc, frame, and solve today’s multilayer, interdependent, and over-complex business problems radically.

The breadth and depth of knowledge: Knowledge is power, top organizational leaders such as BoDs should practice knowledge or expert power relevant for either solving tough business problems or coaching the next generation of business managers or professionals. Because often, top leadership today requires an integration of different sets of knowledge and digital fluency across multiple disciplines, so the interdisciplinary business insight should lead them not only to understanding, but also predicting and preparing, dealing with tough situations, treading tough water, and leading the organization toward the uncertain future confidently.

BoDs need to be informative, insightful, influential and ultimately become the mastermind of digital transformation. The top board leaders with high brainpower and creative energy can clarify a clearer vision, explore the breadth and depth of knowledge, balance hard and soft skills, and build a portfolio of leadership capabilities. However, be alert of pitfalls on the way, egotism or unconscious bias could cloud the vision of senior leadership. Sometimes having too much knowledge about something can be a box that closes your mind to innovation, even worse, failing to recognize how vastly ignorant you might become leads to arrogance that would make you narrow-minded and get stuck in conventional wisdom and cause misadjustment all the time. 

Digital fluency and global Insight: Corporate boards play a critical role in steering the business towards the global business world with uncharted water and blurred boundaries. The board directors need to educate themselves by hearing different views about the organization, its environment & digital ecosystem, strategic alternatives, functionally, geographically, culturally, ecologically, etc. It takes a holistic worldview to choose the decisive factors for making strategic board decisions by involving global capital and collective wisdom, in order to move the business and our society forward steadfastly. 

At the corporate level, a global perspective is important in a more volatile, uncertain, ambiguous, hyperconnected, and globally distributed world as you need a directional guide. Being digital fluent in contextual intelligence aids them in understanding what’s relevant and what’s not, helps them have more antennae focused on the trends and what’s going on in the world, and become unique interdisciplinarians to drive change smoothly. 

Corporate BoD is a sophisticated leadership role with many responsibilities, such as leadership advising, governance practices, and resource provision. No one comes to a senior management role fully prepared for that role. They need to continue sharpening their leadership skills, update knowledge, experiment with better ways to lead and become well-rounded interdisciplinarians to accelerate digital transformation.

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Harness Systems Perspectives to Drive Digital Paradigm Shift

From a system perspective, the most basic principle is that every system is a construct of the mind.

The contemporary companies today are the ever-evolving digital dynamism that consists in being able to break away from being static, and becoming proactive to changes. It’s not so effective to use linear logic to understand highly complex, nonlinear cause-effect relationships and interdependent business functions and structures. 

Fundamentally, running a business is an iterative problem-solving continuum. Therefore, business management needs to understand why and how confounding problems persist in complex business systems and what can be done to effectively alleviate them, or proactively diagnose and fix them, and this is accomplished by modeling the digital business system to:

Understand how the structure manifests as the function or behavior of interest: Organizations are dynamic business systems that have structure, defined by components and their composition. They also have behavior, which involves inputs, processing, outputs of material, energy, data, or information. The reality in most organizations though is the process that is forcibly jammed within an existing organizational design. In addition, silo or misalignment are common issues that create gaps and decelerate business performance. System thinking and methodology can practically and quantifiably represent the business systems and give you the means to understand the interrelationship between parts and the whole, structure, and behavior; learn the lessons from the past and predict & push the future in the direction you want, strongly and reliably.

In specific, the organizational structure carries inherent business capabilities as to what can be achieved within its frame. A misaligned structure or disconnect functions reinforce a non-innovation friendly climate and create bottlenecks and stifle business changes. To develop a highly responsive and high-performance organization, it’s important to understand how the structure manifests as the function or behavior of interest, integrate organizational design into process design, and re-engineering to improve business adaptability. In an ideal digital workplace, establishing an enabling a hybrid structure (formal and social) which is solid enough to keep people or things in order, but fluid enough to keep information flow, and in line with your ambition and desired direction.

Experiment with policies and practices that create a favorable and sustainable outcome: Business Management discipline is composed of a set of principles, processes, and practices. From a system perspective, the most basic principle is that every system is a construct of the mind. That means it’s the mindset behind the scenes that influences attitude and drives behavior. Typically, it’s the leadership mentality that shapes the organizational management styles and practices. From a change management perspective, constructive and continuous disruption is a healthy cycle as the rule should be updated to encourage progressive change. Forward-thinking leaders today believe that tomorrow will be better or at least as good as today, they can envision and drive the digital paradigm shift determinedly.

People come and go. Therefore if a system is not in place, the policy is not set right, the roles are not defined, people don't understand the purpose of their roles, it will be very hard to run the business effectively and achieve expected business outcomes. By experimenting, making and following a set of well-defined policies, not overly rigid rules, the business life cycle could be viewed as resulting in emergent means of reorganizing, refocusing, rebalancing resources, and redirecting. From a problem-solving perspective, data does not give you the full insight and understanding of the true nature of a problem; understanding human dynamics, systems and relationships does. So business leaders should focus on creating the culture and climate that enables those closest to the problems to see and connect what needs connecting to unblock issues, and move things forward, and achieve sustainable outcomes.

Handle an emergence-vs-design-paradox smoothly across the business ecosystem complexities: Emergence is a characteristic of complex business systems and subsystems which are not always predictable, and could not be fully explained in terms of their components. The concept of nonlinear behavior is representative of what we term emergent properties. “Emergence” results from the fact that resources are embedded in the company influencing and being influenced by the broader context of the organization such as business culture, leadership style, paradigms, proprietary technology, etc. The better you understand the interrelationships and interactions of the different parts of the whole, the better you can evolve “emergence,” deliberately design and run a successful business.

The digital world is dynamic, nonlinear, uncertain, and volatile, emergence becomes apparent, for adapting to changes, organizations today need to build dynamic business capabilities that are the organizational and strategic routines by which firms achieve new resource configurations as markets emerge, collide, split, evolve, etc. To accelerate performance and unlock business potentiality, focus on the emergence and emergent property which means a property that emerges after a system change to create business synergy. For that emergent theory to be birthed, the old command and control of work production in the systems thinking process is being redirected toward holistic digital management practices and handles an emergence-vs-design-paradox smoothly.

To survive and thrive around the multi-faceted business world, it's important to apply a Systems perspective to decode complexity and make things simple but purposeful. Keep in mind that it is the policies, procedures, rewards, and retributions that drive and groom an advanced mind, good behavior, sustainable balance, enforce cognitive ecological values currently arising in the breakdowns of the traditional industrial era we are encountering and make the digital paradigm shift seamlessly.

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The Monthly “Digital Boardroom” Book Tuning: The BoD’s Leadership Psychology, Philosophy, Methodology July 2020

The function of the corporate board, as the top leadership team and governance body, should like the digital compass to steer the business in the right direction.

Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in the right direction and achieve expected business results. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must have the agility to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals. 

Here are the multiple perspectives of shaping a strategic boardroom with digital acumen.

The BoD’s Leadership Psychology, Philosophy, Methodology 

Leadership Psychology, Philosophy, and Methodology The 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.

The Digital Board’s Digital Playbook The advanced board is the mastermind behind digital transformation because it plays a crucial role in setting tones for the digital paradigm shift, making good policies for the management to follow, and creating digital principles for inspiring learning and creativity. Digital boards co-develop the digital vision and oversee the business strategy, and recommend comprehensive digital playbooks to guide the business through the journey of digital transformation.

Effective Corporate Board’s “SMART” Meeting Agenda Corporate boards make communication with shareholders in a timely fashion. They encourage a climate of continuous learning and collective leadership. To improve the board leadership effectiveness, the corporate board’s meetings are not a comfortable place but continually challenging in order to step outside their comfort zone. The highly effective Board shows the ability and openness to "question itself and its decisions/ discussions.

The Corporate Board with High “PQ” The paradox is “a situation, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.” It is the result of two opposing truths existing side by side, which can be both right. With “VUCA” new normal, there are many concepts that seem to be opposite, indeed, they are complementary to keep the world balanced. A corporate board with high paradoxical intelligence (PQ) can set the tone to practice situational leadership, advocate changes, and strike the right balance of toughness and softness, no silo thinking, no binary or extreme thinking.

The Bridge-Like BoDs A high mature digital board is like a brighter light tower to guide the business in the right direction and take all these significant responsibilities “thoughtfully.” The forward-thinking digital board is also like an amazing bridge to connect the industrial age and the digital era, make good policies, and develop the next practices for ensuring businesses digital-ready.

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Tuning: A Philosophical Digital Board The shift to digital cuts across sectors, geographies, and leadership roles. The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. In fact, the Digital Era opens a new chapter of human progress; and philosophy is the compass of human civilization. Digital philosophy is simply in pursuit of a holistic understanding of the hyperconnected digital business world and discovers a better way to do things. The function of the corporate board, as the top leadership team and governance body, should like the digital compass to steer the business in the right direction. So, how can BoDs apply philosophical digital principles to lead changes, and drive business transformation seamlessly?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 6900+ 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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Art vs. Design

Art is the language for “self-expressing.” Design is an instrument to craft functional art.

Design and art are different, but they are also interconnected...

Art looks inward; design looks outward.


Art Invokes the “deep thought,” intends to express “unexpressive.”

Design engages logical thinking, tries to implement the “art of possible.”


Art symbolizes creativity; but design makes the art functioning..

Art enriches the world; design embraces life...


Art enters the design at the beginning conceptually

But design evolves the scientific prototyping, testing, verification..


Art is driven by our wide imagination

Design needs to embed art into scientific discipline.


Art is a perception of the past, today or tomorrow;

Design is future driven, figuring out what will be considered aesthetically pleasing tomorrow rather than today.


Art is the language for “self-expressing”

Design is an instrument to craft functional art.


Art paints the color blue, orange, or yellow, design sets the tunes fresh or luxury.

Art and design keep emerging, creating a new landscape with aesthetic themes.


Art inspires us to sense and appreciate life: joy, pain, color, shape; bright, dark…

Design encourages us to experience and advance life…intuitive, intelligent, inspirational...


Contemporary, impressionism, abstract… art is the condensed version of human society.

Functioning, firm, delight, design demonstrates the progressive journey of societal evolution.


A great artist is a deep perceiver, see invisible, sense untouchable, and speak for those without voice..

An excellent designer is a unique visionary, embrace the future, and touch the high ground of innovation.


In the long river of human history-

Artists swim up and down, dive deep and make continuous splash..

Designers strengthen their energy, capture the wave, and lead the way..

They are both high influencers, enjoy the big ocean and create the scenes...

..

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Growing Performance Management Tree with a Couple of Main Branches

The issue of Performance Management measurement isn't about accuracy, but of validity and reliability.

Corporate Performance Management is management control across functional domains and disciplines. It’s not an isolated management practice, but a multidisciplinary approach with a well set of scientific principles, methodologies, and practices. 

Strategic/Operations/Risk Management are the main branches of the performance management tree. The issue of Performance Management measurement isn't about accuracy, but of validity and reliability. The organization that didn't have a systematic approach to measure performance at both the strategic and operational level has a giant blind spot that is impairing their management effectiveness and maturity.

Under enterprise strategy management, you focus on an iterative strategy and performance management continuum: The purpose of managing performance is about setting performance metrics to evaluate the status of strategy management. Here is a logical scenario: Translate the company vision and mission into a strategy with objectives; then translate the strategy into operational plans to achieve the strategic objectives; then execute these plans and monitor actual performance. Businesses are looking for identifying systemic issues and addressing the causes and corrective actions. Right metrics can reveal anything meaningful for the identified business issues so you can fix them to accelerate strategy implementation effectively.

In practice, sometimes business managers focus on improving business processes, implementation of performance management, or evaluation, but fail to look into the system holistically or think long term. The other pitfall is that sometimes, performance management becomes its own industry, forgetting its very goal to make business improvement or delight customers. A robust performance management system needs to be designed with end-users in mind, future-oriented, output-driven, not process-driven, etc. It facilitates the business information flow, helps to coordinate your strategy, tactics, and risks, makes objective assessments, and understands performance measurement results holistically.

Under enterprise operational management, you look at how to make measurable improvement: Performance Management needs to strengthen the link between strategy management and operational management. When the strategic goals further cascade down to operational objectives, it becomes more traceable and measurable. The performance measurement should cover all areas that contribute to performance value creation including service quality, employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and financial outcomes, etc. In fact, businesses need to expand their capacity by improving operation efficiency and effectiveness with the KPIs to resolve crucial business problems.

Performance management should make objective assessments of those tactical goals, either at the functional or individual level. Inaccurate measurement data will distract the management from making a true improvement. The right metrics can be helpful to track progress in business improvement initiatives, help to get some objective perspectives on what you are trying to manage, concentrate on measuring things really matter, and measure them in the right way, in order to achieve operational excellence seamlessly.

Under Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), look at the things that you essentially do not want it to happen: A company benefits most when it executes Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) in a complementary fashion, as both are critical for achieving the vision and mission of the company. Embed risk identification and assessment in operational processes and multiple management disciplines. Be cautious of the things that would prevent the execution of the strategy or operational plans from achieving the stated aims or that would even make the strategy and operational plans completely obsolete.

Organizations with the right risk attitude and aptitude can use both quantitative and qualitative methods to assess risks under a valid risk evaluation model, lift risk management from risk control to risk intelligence. The goal for risk management measurement is to build a solid understanding of decision support, manage risks effectively, to ensure high-performance results.

Businesses have become very adept at measuring performance results. It’s important to look at Trust in Humans, Trust in Processes, Trust in Technology. But also be skeptical and ask insightful questions. Performance management is the means to end, focus on where targets are not being met that support planned revenue and profit levels, and what actions might be taken to improve at the individual, functional, and corporate levels; focus on achieving long-term strategic value and developing business competency.

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The Monthly Organizational Structure Tuning: Corporate Organizational Structure & Architecture July 2020

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, processes to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in, and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. 

From an organizational structure perspective, how can you fine-tune the digital dimensions of your organizational development to harness innovation?

 Organizational Structure & Architecture 

An Architectural Framework as a Playground to Optimize Organizational Design An architectural framework is a collection of knowledge composed of different groups of information and knowledge. The framework is also a playground within which you structure, build and perform your work such as culture, practices, knowledge, know-how; design and plan the future enterprise for helping the organization make a transition from the current state to the future state

Business Architecture as a Master Planner of the Organization Digitalization is the state of dynamism, continuum, and interaction. Compared to the mechanical nature of the industrial organization, digital organizations are like the living systems that keep self-adapting and self-renewing. To thriving in the “VUCA” digital new normal, Business Architecture (BA) as a master planner tool can bring greater awareness of intricacies and value of the ever-evolving business systems, interwoven processes, technological advancement, resource alignment, and help to craft the future state of the organization with the following business artifacts:

Enterprise Architecture vs. Enterprise Design Organizations are 'purposeful' systems. This means they have a purpose and work to achieve a goal. Not all systems are purposeful. Enterprise Architecture is the glue to connect such purpose (WHY), strategy (WHAT), and execution (HOW). Enterprise Design can elevate business from functioning, firm to delight. But what constitutes the distinction in detail between design and architecture, between enterprise design and enterprise architecture?

Change-Readiness with Synthesis of Socio-Technical Systems-Perspectives We are living in a complex world in which inventions, developments, and conflicts are continuously changing and that makes it impossible to have complete knowledge and understanding of many issues facing the business today. Organization design is an integral piece of business Change Management. It’s the vehicle through which the business strategy is executed and defines the environment where the talent can unleash the potential. Making an objective change impact assessment is an important step in building the organizational level change management competency and achieving high-performance business results. Thus, change readiness is an important indicator of the business competency at the organizational level. Here is the change readiness with the synthesis of Socio-Technical Systems (STS) perspectives.

In Search of Business Architecture Totality to Drive Transformative Change, The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. It implies the full-scale changes in the way that the business is conducted. Business Architecture contains the organizational context and is strategic in that it gives direction to the business design and transformation. Forward-thinking organizations are in search of business architecture totality, reimagine the future of business, and consider designing the new structural model to embrace high velocity and drive transformative change.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6900+ 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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Our Thoughts are Strange Things

Our Thoughts are strange things; invisible, but powerful; colorless, but brilliant. 

Our thoughts are -

strange things, 

shapeless,

colorless; but-

permeating everywhere,

 endlessly。

Thoughts wrap around -

the thoughts,

like flower buds, 

blossom up; 

smell fresh.


Thoughts push over -

thoughts;

like a tidal wave-

 splashing up, 

in the turbulent sea.


Thoughts chase with -

thoughts

Like snowflakes-

 dance around,

touch the ground.


Thoughts synchronize with-

 thoughts,

like music symbols, 

harmonize into -

the resonate theme.


Thoughts pile up with -

thoughts

like lego blocks, 

assemble together to -

manifest our bold imagination.


Cleansing, 

 

    Refining, 

       Transcending. 

Thoughts turn to be -

perception, 

     sensation, 

        insight.

Thoughts woven with -

thoughts,

 like a thread -

hold all precious gems,

full of charming. 


Thoughts merged with-

 thoughts;

create a River of Mind flow,

Cascade, 

 

     Tide up, 

       swirl around,

shape a unique scene.


Thoughts Click with -

Thoughts

Spark amazing intelligence,

Bigger than -

our Being;


Our Thoughts are -

Strange Things，

Invisible, 

but powerful,

Colorless, 

but brilliant,

Thoughts Grow with -

Thoughts,

We Become -

What We Think.

Change our Thoughts, 

we Can Change -

Ourselves, 

and the World.

  

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Abilities and Skills of Corporate “Strategic people”

A strategy is the organization's competitive "logic" manifested through organizational actions.

 The business strategic logic is acquired through a learning process involving discourse within the context of an organization's culture. You can call a plan or a course of action to have pre-defined results only when “strategic people” are involved. 

“Strategic people” are those who have decision-making authority or who can veto a decision. They should have vision, knowledge, or common sense to bring all stakeholders together with the right view and conduct. Here is a set of abilities and skills of corporate strategy practitioners.

An understanding of the past and an understanding of the future so far as data permits: History often repeats itself, a good strategic practitioner understands the interconnection from the temporal dimension, see how things in the new come from the past. The past allows you to recognize possible conflicts that could approach from where you have been to where you want to go. In fact, the hindsight from the rear mirror is a useful tool to make sure you understand where you are, any immediate gaps or dangers that make the forward view unrealistic, and how to develop a good strategy through re-introducing the past in a new way and build the bridge to connect the past to today’s business initiatives and performance smoothly,

The issue is that the rear mirror only cannot steer the business vehicle moving forward. It’s critical to harness the power of information for providing the emergent business trends with a fact-based vision of where to aim and how to get there. A strategy practitioner understands how changes would happen over time toward the future, connects the previously unconnected dots, looks into the unknown future,  attempts to define the landscape with its opportunities and risks, and help to push the future in the direction they want, strongly and reliably.

Ability to view the complete business system as a dynamic ecosystem with all its dependencies and interconnections: Contemporary organizations are not just the sum of functional pieces, but an integral whole. When using the word “strategy,” it must have a long term objective, the company level implications, and deals with the business ecosystem interactively. A strategy practitioner can take a holistic look at the variety of business relationships and interconnectivity, connect the wide dots, make strategic choices, and take a series of actions to reach the well-set vision in a step-wise manner.

The digital lens has many dimensions, such as socio-cultural, socio-technical, socio-economic, organizational, scientific, philosophical or anthropological, etc. Strategic people are open-minded, learning agile, advocate out-of-box thinking, breakdown silos, and focus on relationships between things rather than characteristics of things. Because limited hierarchy works best in a creative environment in which the free flow of ideas and their prompt implementation is a key element of strategy management to lead long term business success.

The ability to tie all important things together in order to develop actionable plans: The strategy is the art of designing a way of navigating and effectively utilizing available resources to attain a clearly defined objective. However, in many business contexts, the word strategy is either an oxymoron or demotivating. Many strategies are not executable, as many organizations have an intention, but not an execution ethos; have human resources, but lack of the right talent being put in the right positions to solve the right problems. It is critical to identify and strengthen the weakest link - people and determine how each part of the organization, including all of the key elements must "put it all together" to be successful in implementing strategy and bring tangible business results seamlessly.

Strategy navigation is critical to improving its success rate. Many organizations don't have a clear organizational identity (vision & mission, values, culture, and brand). If the top management doesn't know "who" the organization is, the planning and its execution will likely be inefficient. Strategic plans need to get to the level of specifically achievable goals such as "Who is doing what, with whom, how are they doing it and when does it need to be started and finished by," and achieve measurable results effortlessly.

The ability to identify key leverage points in which the nonproportional impact can be made: The difference between the tactical manager and strategic leader is that the first one thinks about the business from a transactional perspective while the second one is thinking business from a transformational perspective; the first one focuses on “ keeping the lights on,” while the second one focuses on exploring the “art of possible.” Strategic people are often skillful business solutionists, who can assign their talent, resources, and time carefully to solve problems that really matter, and make non -proportional impact to build business advantage innovatively.

To survive and thrive in today’s “VUCA” digital new normal, companies need to understand that prioritization technique is a critical leverage point that enables them to spend time and energy on strategic goals and result-driven activities. Strategic people can “see” the business context, identify the leverage points of the business system and then 'choose' the 'decisive' factors, have a respected intra-organizational agreement of priorities and resources, laser focus on strategic imperatives, and unlock business performance relentlessly.

The ability to hypothesize interventions and iterate them till the right fit is made: Due to the rapid changes, the "right" strategy can't be completely defined by the planning space. If a strategy can be thought of as a bunch of hypotheses about how the business executes to achieve the desired outcome, then, execution is the testing of those hypotheses in the real world as it attempts to implement the strategies. A digital strategy execution is not linear steps but an iterative continuum. Too many organizations separate thinking and doing. One of the challenges in executing the strategy well stems from a lack of understanding or ownership of the strategic principles. Handing off a strategy without suggested execution is risky even to a senior person.

A strategy is a planned direction to act and provides the first steps but can be radically changed as demanded by the environment and experience of execution. It can be thought of as a bunch of hypotheses about how one might execute to achieve the desired outcome, then, execution is the testing of those hypotheses in the real world as one attempts to implement or execute the strategies. The learning from the testing of those hypotheses allows one to tweak, or even pivot on the strategy in order to better meet the real-world execution.

Strategic thinking encourages thinking about the future by exploring the “why” factor and dealing with "discovering novel'', rewriting the rules of the competitive game. "Strategy" should be in the DNA of anyone who is a member of the leadership team of an organization, but, as we know, that doesn't make it so, unfortunately, less than 5% of the population is a natural strategic thinker. Still, strategic thinking can be developed and strategic people are in demand to solve complex problems and overcome business challenges.

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The Monthly “Digital Master” Book Tuning: GRC Reinvention July 2020

Governance needs to focus on effectiveness-to ensure business doing the right things, and many times, management is about doing things right. 

The important characteristics of digitalization are over-complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. Hence, GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) becomes more critical than ever. 

Here's the context; how should GRC programs be approached? Should technology be a driver? Can you achieve any level of GRC without automation? Can you achieve any level of GRC without people? What is the real driver of GRC? And how to reinvent GRC to get digital ready?

GRC Reinvention

Adopting a Social-Technical-Ecological Perspective of Governance Models The business environment becomes hyper-connected, over-complex, uncertain, and ambiguous, digital organizations are emergent at the age of information abundance. When focusing on governance, the organizations may need to consider business architecture in managing a social-technical-ecological business view, and adopt the governance models to embrace such multidimensional perspectives. 

Explore People Dimensions of GRC at the Boardroom The characteristics of digital business are interdependent, dynamic, volatile, uncertain, hypercompetitive, and people-centric. It requires interdisciplinary management practices and high-level GRC maturity. At the Board level, it requires a strategic and forward-looking perspective, to deal in “VUCA” new normal, “think the unthinkable,” "see invisible," "listen to not being said," “ask the unpalatable question,” and explore the people dimension of GRC to accelerate business performance and maturity.

Three Insights of Governance Governance, per se, as a concept goes back 2500 years, deriving from Greek naval terminology, kubernesis or kuberneo, and referred to the act of piloting a ship - both providing direction to accomplish the ship’s purpose and its protection (risk avoidance) in that process. Plato used the term in a metaphorical sense—to lead or rule strategically. Wikipedia is pretty close in saying: … “ governance aim(s) to assure (sometimes on behalf of others) that an organization produces a worthwhile pattern of good results while avoiding an undesirable pattern of bad circumstances. Perhaps the moral and natural purpose of governance consists of assuring, on behalf of those governed, a worthy pattern of good while avoiding an undesirable pattern of bad.”

Five Practices in Digitizing Corporate Governance Theoretically, almost everything in an organization should have both management and governance components, as governance needs to focus on effectiveness-to ensure business doing the right things, and many times, management is about doing things right. However, in today’s business dynamic, does governance always need to add a heavy layer of control and enforcement which causes discomfort or even bureaucracy? Shall you think of a more innovative way to do governance?

Digitizing Boardroom: Three Perspectives of Innovation Oversight and Governance Every organization is different, every innovation initiative is also unique, there’s no one size fitting all innovation practice, that makes innovation still serendipitous for many organizations. Therefore, innovation governance is an important perspective to improve the innovation management success rate. Innovation needs a level of guidance, it has to deliver business objectives, it needs the right kind of governance to thrive. Innovation governance is to advocate, steer, and sustain innovation with the following perspectives.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 6900+ 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.

Read More