IT Innovation Logic

The biggest challenge to business success is IT and IT has to do more innovation with strong logic to propel the business growth and profitability.

Upon rapid change and exponential growth of information, IT now makes significant impacts on almost every aspect of the business. IT is more like glue than a tool for integrating all important business elements into the business innovation capability. IT plays a crucial role in creating a disciplined and managed space for developing and testing new models, products/services, and innovative problem-solving approaches. 

Forward-thinking IT organizations take a hybrid mode and multipath logics, shielding innovation teams from the organization’s dominant logic and well-established standard operating procedures, to strike the right balance of innovation and process; personalization and standardization; intuition and logic, etc, for accelerating IT enabled business growth.

Nonlinear IT innovation logic: Logic could be perceived from different angles, but more importantly, needs to be proven, abstracted to a certain level. IT innovation logic is the part of business logic that covers several very different types of components such as business rules, workflows, algorithms, and integration logic to manage IT enabled business innovation. IT is no longer that island, or corner and those who still want to stick in that corner or live in its comfort zone! IT is the logic enhancer by building a strong link between enterprise assets and capacity planning to ensure that resources are available before they are needed and enterprise artifacts or assets can be managed effectively to improve innovation success.

Good information opens our mind to connect cross-boundary dots for sparking ideas; good logic brings us lucid light to in-depth understanding. The linear logic helps to break down things to the pieces, but it often ignores the interconnectivity between parts and the whole. In the dynamic business today, innovation logic is often nonlinear and multifaceted. IT leaders should proactively work with the business and partners to ride emerging trends, and leverage the latest digital technologies to fuel innovation engines, integrate different components, and also refine information to capture the customer insight and business foresight for improving innovation management effectiveness. An integrated IT management approach is about leveraging interlogic to understand nonlinear processes and interconnectivity between problems in a managerial context, to improve innovation effectiveness.

Retrospective IT innovation logic: Today’s information technology enables companies to leverage their various environments or ecosystems, to fuel innovation and accelerate performance. Retrospective innovation starts with the end in mind - what you want to see or have, imagine an innovative product or service, and then back to what are the next simpler components, back to what you have at hand, etc. It is the process that many disruptive innovators use to leverage varying processes such as analysis, synthesis, and retrosynthesis at the different phases of innovation management for enhancing the management logic and improving process transparency.

There is no magic formula for innovation. You have to systematically develop the capability to execute it successfully, and it is something you cannot accomplish overnight. Retrospective IT innovation with tailored innovation principles, methodologies, practices, and expertise of observing, creating hypotheses, can really add value by approving or disapproving those hypotheses, providing a structure to frame innovation management, to develop the organizational level innovation competency.

Paraconsistent IT logic: Nowadays, due to frequent disruptions, either within the IT or across the ecosystem, there are many struggles in running a highly innovative organization. When shall you set the standard, when will you need to break down the rules to inspire creativity? Where can you enhance discipline, where shall you flex processes to enable change, etc. Setting rules and goals for creativity goes against the very nature of creativity. IT leaders sometimes have to play oddball games and leverage paraconsistent logic to deal with contradictions and navigate through IT enabled innovation effectively.

The emerging technologies are creative disruptors, and information provides the very clue for the growth opportunity. Leverage paraconsistent logic to IT innovation management discipline is simply about applying paradox management to strike the right balance between standardization vs creativity, ideation and execution part of the innovation process and management. The paraconsistent IT logic scenario to drive innovation within an organization is to understand it even through the opposite angles, strike the right balance, develop the differentiated business capability to innovate, from discovery to development and deployment.

The biggest challenge to business success is IT and IT has to do more innovation with strong logic to propel the business growth and profitability. To untangle unprecedented complexity and catalyze innovation, we need to reach a stage to assess logic of everything: thoughts, processes, actions for dealing with complex problems or rewriting the rules of the competitive game to overcome the common challenge.

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Performance Management

A robust performance management system needs to be designed with end-users in mind, future-oriented, information based and output-driven.

Performance keeps the business running in various related contexts. All company’s performance is directly related to the decisions people make every day, from executives to the frontline, across functional areas and geographical locations.

 Performance is well done of current assignments and demonstrates the capacity of doing great work to achieve measurable results.

Performance is not about numbers, but telling stories: Performances are not numbers with metrics, they are numbers in context, results related to your business goals both at the strategic and operational level. Performance Management is a holistic management discipline that needs to connect many relevant dots such as dynamic strategic planning or organizational structure tuning to involve business development, enablement, and enhancement. Highly effective business managers tell an information-based performance story to make persuasive communication, clarify strategy goals, dig into the root cause of many complex problems and empower staff members to make accomplishments in a tangible way.

When performance is below their expectations, the management needs to make reasonable inquiries and connect all critical dots for telling an information-based story to drive changes: Is it caused by a lagging mindset, immature capabilities or soft factors such as poor communication or inertia culture? Is it caused by a disconnected or distant layer of leadership or disengaged employees? Is it caused by a sea of unclear priorities, administrative bureaucracy, misaligned processes, or lack of clarity or direction, trust, or teamwork? Etc. Those measurement-based communication and stories increase staff's conscious level to understand problems, increase morality, improves business transparency, and help to improve the overall organizational accomplishment.

Future-driven: Traditional performance management in the Industrial Age is often based on more static processes or linear steps to only focus on assessing past performance, and measure defined goals and objectives. There is a danger of not having a dynamic process to "develop and nurture" future performance. With the increasing pace of changes, the future of the organization is fluid, flexible, informative and autonomous. Performance Management in a positive manner to focus on optimizing future performance, move the purpose of performance reviews and management away from evaluating the past, and focus on improving success in the future.

Reimagining the future of business is exciting, but investigating the different paths for unlocking business performance and potential needs to take a holistic, dynamic and systematic approach and develop it into a more solid form. The performance of the total “system” is independent of the performance of any one of the functions and depends more on how the functions relate to each other. The very goal of holistic performance management is to ensure the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces. Performance management needs to be transparent and objective, understood by the entire organization. It should be future driven, promote teamwork, rather than micro-management, focus on creating synergy and unlocking business potential.

Performance management is both art and science: Performance management is not an isolated management discipline, but a holistic approach with a well set of philosophies, methodologies and practices via connecting multidisciplinary management dots to make progressive changes. The science of performance is to optimize processes, to make sure the individual performance is assessed objectively and the corporate performance is evaluated holistically, focusing on where targets are not being met that support planned revenue and profit levels, make measurable improvement to ensure the business as a whole to achieve stellar performance with repetitive results.

In many companies, a pervasive obsession for purely quantitative measurement or numerical success indicators sweeps aside much of the softer and more qualitative information that is crucial in performance management. The art of performance management is to leverage both tangible and intangible factors, develop a high performance culture and unlock business potential - the future performance. The art of performance management is to shape a progressive mindset and develop the digital-ready workforce.

A robust performance management system needs to be designed with end-users in mind, future-oriented, information based and output-driven. Good performance data enables the management to scrutinize mindset and behavior. High mature Performance Management is not a bunch of paperwork, but a combination of management approaches leading to constantly improving business results.

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Leadership

Great leadership is a good combination of mindsets, attitudes, expertise, insight, and behaviors.

Far too often the term "leadership" is thrown around loosely and without any regard to the true meaning. The substances of leadership are about vision, influence, and progression. 

With unprecedented uncertainty and frequent disruptions, it is imperative that "leadership" needs to be re-imagined, explored, and understood thoroughly to make a significant impact.

 

Leadership is first as a mindset: Leadership is more about the future but starts at today. Leadership mindset is open to change, deep to make profound influence; inclusive to embrace diverse viewpoints; empathetic to understanding others, and innovative to do things differently. Great leaders are visionaries who can envision the future with clarity; inspire commitment, and persuade others to follow insightfully. They build trust, bridge gaps, drive transformative changes in pursuit of collective human progress.

In essence, leadership is an influence, starting at the mindset; great leaders have a compelling story to tell, share their vision and philosophy to bridge differences. Their gap-minding leadership must begin with the inner-self-moving into distinctive attitudes and behaviors around the norms. They are very open to knowledge, desire for insight, and hunt for wisdom.

Leadership is really a character, and personal development: Leadership isn't a job title only; or the hour-setting work, you must continue to learn, practice, and improve upon the leadership capabilities and skill sets. Leaders are both natural and nurtured. Look for the character with the right attitude, with the right dose of confidence and humility - be confident to envision and lead the team in the right direction; be humble to keep learning and develop unique leadership competency.

Leadership is a sophisticated discipline. On one hand, leadership becomes more open and omnipresent in the digital era; on the other hand, leadership becomes more complex due to exponential information growth, complexity of business new normal, and the variety of workforce, etc. Leadership is a continuous journey of professional development. Effective leaders have a very high comfort level with change and understand standing still is not an option in today's world with rapid change. So leading, and embracing change has put leaders more at ease because of its consistency.

Great leaders operate with the core principles: Authenticity, Courage, Creativity: Being authentic is the state of self-consciousness, self-discovery, and self-improvement. It means being true to that in every aspect: thinking, saying, and doing to enhance accountability. When you are authentic, release the positive energy, out of this comes a beautiful thing, the freedom of choice, the power of courage, and the plenty seeds of creativity.

In fact, courage is required at every step on the journey toward authenticity and creativity. As it takes courage to break through barriers and difficulties; it takes courage to be egoless or have thick skin in order to lead fearlessly; it takes courage to make effective decisions which may impact many people’s life; it also takes courage to know your authentic self, be creative to think out of the box and explore better ways to do thing. Creative leadership is great when you think, act and enable others with a creative spirit to discover, explore, improve, and achieve great results.

Great leadership is a good combination of mindsets, attitudes, expertise, insight, and behaviors. Great leaders are authentic, their vision broadens leadership impact, their insight deepens leadership influence, and their competency amplifies leadership effect. The future is in our hands. We have to reinvent what leadership is with new normal and new approaches, develop the best and next practice to accelerate its maturity.

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Grip is a Firm Thing

When in the grip of -the creative urge, there is- no thought of -self, ego, status quo, just keep our mind- flowing frictionlessly. Grip is -a dedicated thing.

Think of-

the five fingers of-

the human hand;

without their differences in-

size, 

   shape, 

                                                                                           location,

a grip wouldn’t have been perfect as -

destined by nature.

Get on board,

grab hands,

we all-

make it up -

the hill.

If we keep-

dragging our feet,

we may lose -

our grip on-

things,

and fall off -

aimlessly;

grip is -

a firm thing.


When in the grip of -

the creative urge,

there is-

no thought of -

self,

ego,

status quo,

just keep our mind-

flowing,

frictionlessly.

Grip is -

a dedicated thing.


Mastering -

what instincts are,

how they function,

interact with-

human intellect

jointly command -

everything we do,

would enable-

us to manage-

subconscious mental trend,

consciously;

defuse constant,

subtle inner conflict to-

free intelligence from-

the tight grip of -

instincts,

allow intelligence to-

become -

fully functional, fruitful,

transcendent into wisdom,

super-consciously;

grip is -

an instinctive thing...

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Capability Assessment

Organizational capability management, in essence, consists of a portfolio or matrix of capabilities that are used in various combinations to build the business competency, implement the business strategy and achieve outcomes.

Business capability defines "what" a business does or can do by encapsulating all organization resources (tangible, intangible or human resources) to achieve certain results. The enterprise consists of a set of capabilities; capabilities continue being considered the market-relevant bundles of resources with the potential to drive competitiveness. 

A firm's capabilities today are the result of its history and this history constrains what capabilities the firm can perform in the future. Business management needs to make an objective assessment, fine tuning organizational capability and increasing capability coherence is always critical to accelerate business performance and improve organizational maturity.

Is this capability valuable? Organizational capability presents the high level view on how business can achieve certain goals without getting involved in too many details .Organizational capabilities have business outcomes; they collaborate with each other and are enabled by interrelated processes, talent, services, functions, interfaces, resources in organization. The business executives have to make an objective assessment of their capability portfolio for evaluating capability adequacy, maturity, and getting high ROIs.

Is this capability valuable? Capability provides a level of abstraction that allows more open consideration from multiple perspectives. The top tier is a common executive view of the condition or suitability of capability to support the intended operations and implement a well-defined business strategy. Adding value won't be the same for every company; business management should evaluate by checking up: Does the capability add value to customers, engage employees, optimize business functions, or improve the overall organizational maturity?

Is this capability non-substitutable? Is this capability rare? Every organization has their set of capabilities to get work done. Leading companies usually have some unique capabilities to make them stand out and differentiate them from others to achieve better business results. When the organizations across the vectors move up their maturity level, their capabilities are moving from base or competitive level to differentiated level when an organization decides to differentiate by taking an existing capability to the next level, or integrating different capabilities into a unique set of business competencies.

Every organization is different, they are also at the different stages of business growth, there is no one size fitting all formulas or practices to develop a learning organization and build unique competency. When assessing their capability maturity and overall maturity of the company, business leaders need to ponder around: Are there duplicated capabilities across business functions? Is the capability rare or “me-too” type? The successful up level capability management will depend on the underlying business relationships between all of the crucial points and how they influence each other in building solid and differentiated business competency via continually modernization, integration, and optimization. The goal is to ensure that strategic goals can be accomplished collaboratively and consistently and reach the next business growth cycle effortlessly.

Is this capability costly to imitate? Capability encapsulates process, people and technology, as well as other intangible and tangible resources which are important for a business capability to be effective. Many best practices in the industries perhaps intend to imitate some competitive necessary capability development. However, some competitive unique capabilities evolve and move between categories based on the technology evolution, business driver, business model evolution etc. There are learning and unique culture ingredients or management expertise that the organization goes with. They are firm-specific resources/assets that are difficult if not impossible to imitate. Even if you can make it, it perhaps does not fit for your organizational purpose.

Forward thinking companies continue to upgrade organizational capabilities with repurpose, realignment, and reconfiguration. The best scenario is to create a comprehensive capability map to bridge capability gaps and clarify business objectives. Effectively leverage the existing and new technologies or methodologies to shape dynamic digital capabilities; help to innovate business via the process optimization and capacity building; and recombine capabilities to the new distinctive capabilities. To speed up business growth, high mature organizations won’t imitate, but build their unique set of dynamic capabilities and further build the organization’s strengths in core areas and differentiated competency. The goal is to ensure that strategic goals can be accomplished quickly and consistently and reach the next business growth cycle effortlessly.

It is important to identify the key business capability and make an objective assessment of capability maturity. Resource is an important building block of dynamic capability. There are both opportunities and risks for every investment. The often described business capability attributes include such as robustness, speed, comprehensiveness, responsiveness, agility, improvement, sensitivity, optimization, resilience, etc. It's important to continually evaluate capability based investments in terms of value, risk, and reward, for building a cohesive business capability portfolio.

Capability view makes the business management both confident and humble to assess their organization objectively. Fine-tuned business capabilities offer a competitive advantage in delivering and selling the products/services/processes, and supports the strategic direction of the organization. Enterprise capability management, in essence, consists of a portfolio or matrix of capabilities that are used in various combinations to build the business competency, implement the business strategy and achieve outcomes.

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initiatingitcostoptimization

The focal point is to calculate which IT-led business initiatives provide the greatest return, and which would be invested in the future.

Besides the human cost, IT is one of the most expensive business investments, and many IT organizations have been perceived as a cost center. In detail, Total Cost of IT includes all costs associated with building and operating a healthy IT organization such as workforce costs, hardware/software/license costs, systems costs, procurement costs, support costs, or investment cost, etc. 

Besides eliminating irrelevant cost, IT needs to have a long-term perspective of cost optimization via continuous consolidation, modernization, and integration.

Cost optimization is one of the top concerns for IT management to keep bottom-line stability and business efficiency: Every IT finance group can capture costs, but the challenge is to have visibility and traceability between costs and the assets consuming those costs. IT needs to continue fine-tuning their own infrastructure, applications, and services via consolidation, modernization, integration, optimization, innovation., etc. IT management is not only the management of IT, but also the management of the entire company. IT needs to continually trim cost, ensure quality, adapt to changes, and work on consolidation, integration, modernization, optimization management lifecycle seamlessly.

The organization leadership team needs IT to be the business cost optimization expert for the company, optimizing costs to the greatest extent possible. It’s important to leverage the latest technologies or tools to continue trimming costs or retooling business processes. The cost breakdown provides insight into where the most money is being spent, which in turn identifies opportunities for bottom line improvements. In fact, there is never "enough" effort to improve efficiency, optimize operations, and fine-tune business capacity.

Actual expenditure should always involve a business case: IT means to the end, every IT initiative is the business initiative. Thus, IT expenditure should be the business related cost. IT management should actively measure what the quality and value of IT products/services is. High quality refers to simplicity, increased visibility and transparency of the business environment through eliminating something which is not used and saving effort on maintaining it for improving efficiency. Every new technology adopted must facilitate business but also bring down the incremental cost of growth and the time to market. That should be the true metric for IT return on investment – how have they been able to impact the top and bottom-line and facilitate growth and competitiveness.

The benefit of fitting IT is to reduce the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) as it reduces a lot of redundancy in the business process which ultimately increases internal and external customer satisfaction, and by comparing the total cost of ownership to the return on investment. At some point in the enterprise evolution, business effectiveness and efficiency are also correlated specifically when the organization reaches its capacity. IT can play a leading role in improving corporate sustainability performance to ensure the long-term economic success of the enterprise. Better service for less cost is the continuous improvement agenda here for most organizations.

IT innovation related investment cost: To keep IT relevant, organizational leaders need to perceive IT as a silver lining for business growth and leverage IT to drive value across the business. IT leaders should invest more to improve their organizational capability and capacity to innovate and grow for reaching the next level of growth. The good IT investment may just be like the rubber meets the ground, all about where and when, bringing multifaceted value by holding business sponsors accountable for realizing the benefits outlined in a strong business case. This has to be about focusing on benefits generation, return on investment and contribution to innovation.

No matter what the percentage is to revenue, what should be included in the expense line for total IT spending. It’s always important to find creative sources of competitive advantages, to better compete in a global marketplace with optimized cost management. IT investment is the boardroom issue. If the Board wants to know percentage spend/revenue as part of a set of measures to ensure IT service provision is cost-effective and service-improving, look for investment initiative to be justified and governed on the basis of benefit delivery, return on investment and/or contribution to innovation, then the CIO is in a very good shape.

IT cost optimization and investments positively affect business productivity and customer experiences. The focal point is to calculate which IT-led business initiatives provide the greatest return, and which would be invested in the future. To reinvent IT as a value creator, business stakeholders have to be accountable for realizing the benefits, not IT. Total IT impact and total value should get more attention rather than just cost.










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Skeptical

Being skeptical is -about having- the right dose of -doubt; without doubts, free thinking is- not possible; without -free thinking, passion fades away; dots cannot be connected, to spur creativity…Being skeptical is-an inquisitive thing.

We live in-

the world

full of -

uncertainty,

ambiguity,

new & old;

myth & truth;

the things-

we know,

compared to-

not knowing,

are the tip of

the iceberg;

being skeptic,

allows us to-

observes deep;

digs underneath;

keeps us to-

be objective.

Being skeptic is-

a reasonable thing.


It's natural to

fear the unknown,

question-

the unproven,

be skeptical about -

conventional wisdom,

examine everything -

before accepting it,

for pursuing -

the real truth…

Being skeptical is not-

an egoistic thing.


Being skeptical is -

about having-

the right dose of -

doubt;

without doubts,

free thinking is-

not possible;

without -

free thinking,

passion fades away;

dots cannot be connected,

to spur creativity…

Being skeptical is-

an inquisitive thing.


A skeptical mind can be-

curious,

humble;

cognitive,

judge-

the world for -

themselves;

open with -

outside viewpoint;.

challenge-

norms and beliefs.

Be positive,

skeptical;

at the same time;

hold a strong belief -

to explore -

the art of possible;

as they push-

the parameters of-

the expected norms of -

life forward.

Being skeptical is-

a courageous thing...


There should be -

certain criteria for one to-

accept new ideas,

but not absorb -

everything.

A skeptical mind -

is able to -

criticize,

scrutinize,

optimize….

search for-

fresh knowledge;

assess-

the value of -

new evidence,

delineate factors-

associated with -

the problem;

think critically

act cautiously,

lead with humility.

Being skeptical is-

a progressive thing.

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Variety of Gaps

Bridging the gap of opportunity between where you are and want to become is a welcomed challenge.

The gap is created when there is a difference between two schools of thinking or the difference between demand and supply. The digital era upon us is volatile, complex, uncertain and ambiguous, many business problems today are complex, without the contextual understanding of the situation, gaps are inevitable. It is important to scrutinize all crucial factors from mindset to behavior; develop a series of gap-minding practices to speed up changes.

Cognitive gaps: Cognition is a perception, sensation, and insight. Cognition can happen in many different ways and cognitive complexity is a multifaceted issue. Cognitive gaps enlarge problem-solving gaps because it will cause the blind spots for defining the real problem and solve them effectively. Cognitive gaps deepens miscommunication by enhancing pre-conceptual judgment, random assumptions, or simply lack of deeper understanding. Because people are different across every dimension with different cognitive skills, backgrounds, life experiences, and personalities, etc, so they filter information differently, they perceive things differently, and they prefer to apply different philosophies and methodology to solve problems. Therefore, collectively, with heterogeneous team setting, we can always gain insight and empathy to understand problems from the other angle and be creative to figure out alternative solutions.

Some say the cognitive gap is even enlarged because each individual evolves into the “VUCA” digital normal at a different pace. Hence, it is the responsibility of each individual to examine themselves and make sure they are open to true understanding. To dig further, what is the gap between the complexity of problems and problem-solvers’ minds? How big is the "complexity gap" really? How effective are professionals in tackling complex organizational/social/global issues once they have experienced advanced mental growth? To overcome the common challenges and advance the human race, we have to really dig beneath the superficial layer, see around the corner and transcend the interdisciplinary knowledge, to get to the heart of the matter by enforcing multidimensional thinking and embracing inclusiveness, in order to solve it thoroughly.

Planning-execution gaps: During the organizational development and strategy management cycle, the gaps exist because the strategy planning or ideation team and implementation team have a different focal point, priority, and performance evaluation criteria. The top reason why strategy implementations fail is because they were not actionable from the get-go. There's a gap between different functions or geographical divisions; there is misalignment of process, resource, talent in strategy management; there is illogic of strategy management scenario. Thus, to close the gap, cross-functional communication and collaboration are important, 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." Then it needs to be easy for employees to understand, align their daily tasks with the strategic goal of the organization, to ensure on value and on time deliveries.

However, many managers or professionals today still apply silo mindsets to new ways of organizing, creating a multitude of gaps (motivational gaps, resource/asset gaps, etc.) To close planning-execution gaps, it’s crucial to take a systematic approach by leveraging effective tools such as a balanced scorecard, focusing on the most critical issues, putting all things in context, and setting measurement to gauge the right things to gain holistic perspectives. A well defined scoreboard helps to facilitate the strategic communications within the business executives, to highlight changes with standardization, coherence, and visualization of business improvement initiatives and accelerate strategy execution.

Talent/skill/capability gaps: Businesses become over-complex these days, there’s talent/skill/capability gaps in bringing up innovative solutions and shaping the next generation of workforce. More often than not, the skills gap is caused by candidates lacking integral capabilities - not having the appropriate balance of the right technical skills with business/management acumen, or lack of system, critical and creative thinking, interpersonal skills, etc. As at the end of the day, it all means how to solve complex problems effectively.

The high professionals across the vertical domains that have demonstrated he/she can solve complex problems are on demand. In reality, some talent gaps are natural, some are artificial. Too often, leaders are allowed to complain generically about what they mean by skill and competency gaps and often they pick the symptom, not digging through the root causes. In many traditional organizations, the talent gap is perhaps caused by misunderstanding or miscommunication (lost in translation) between talent requests and the organization’s searching mechanism. There's a disconnect between short term staff needs and long term talent perspectives; There is also a gap between the traditional way to recruit and manage talent and the alternative pipeline for talent identification and development. Generally speaking, a combination of the multiple factors such as lack of a solid recruitment strategy, poor candidate research mechanism, wrong communication channel, or weak employer branding is the very obstacle to enlarge talent gaps and unlock business performance.

Either individually or as a team, we simply can’t stand still. Gap bridging is great management practice to reach the vision of professional growth or organizational maturity. Start changes from the mindset level in order to gain in depth understanding about the big “WHY,” further drive change attitude and sustain change behaviors. Bridging the gap of opportunity between where you are and want to become is a welcomed challenge.

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Innateneutrality

Surviving and thriving upon exponential growth of information, fierce competitions, and continuous disruptions requires neutrality, flexibility, interdisciplinarity and innovativeness.

We live in a world with information exponentiality and hyper-complexity. It’s important for business leaders and professionals today to observe deeper, practice independent thinking, be neutral-not to take the side too fast, break through conventional thinking box, shape unique point of view, help the business or society to define a robust and rigorous set of needs and solve many complex problems innovatively.

Impartial: People often like others who are similar to them - look the same or think the same. We all have unconscious biases, believe it or not. There are a multitude of gaps in decision-making. Learning to be impartial means adjective neutral, unbiased, to be fair and less judgmental. The best we can do for bringing up an impartial perspective is to be consciously aware that we all have personal filters, and information could be filtered via the subjective standard. So we need to have strong intention to fix the misperception by embracing diverse viewpoints and exploring different ways to do things

Cognitively, perception is sometimes a false reality; being impartial means to gain an impartial perspective by exploring the multitude of thought processes; willing to listen to diverse viewpoints; be insightful to understand people from different angles and be inclusive to appreciate different points of view to solve problems effectively.

Objective: Being objective is of or relating to something that can be known, as we all have certain learning ability to know things, especially somethings that we are interested in. Keep in mind, knowledge is neutral and can be used for good and become beautiful, or it can be used to harm others and become ugly. The most important capability of cognitive mind is the willingness and ability to practice critical thinking, start with a mentally neutral position; no biases or emotional quandary; seek out relevant knowledge, gain an in-depth understanding, and address our ignorance and the assumptions we make to minimize it.

We are social beings with individual histories built upon both our own experiences and the life stories of those around us. For most of the time, we live in our own zone with subjective perception. The relative objectivity is a continual process in which we skirt the edge of what is possible. Thus, being objective implies we would like to continue to learn, update knowledge, and collect feedback which can help to uncover one’s biases. We need to be surrounded with people having cognitive differences, they can provide honest, friendly and worthy feedback, particularly in a decision process.

Balance: We live in a world with a mix of physical and virtual, order and chao, freedom and discipline, opportunity and risk, fear and favor, etc. A balanced viewpoint is crucial to overcome extreme thinking or action; it’s important to understand that professional or business development is multifaceted and dynamic nowadays. Cognitive balance can be achieved through paradoxical thinking and multidimensional thinking processes. Emotional balance enables us to unbiased observe, dispassionately analyze, and informatively decide.

What is needed now are lots more independent hybrid talents to neutralize differences, bridge gaps, balance the seemingly opposite forces such as individualism and collectivism, process and innovation, stability and dynamism, confidence and humility, logic and intuition, personalization and standardization, etc to create the paradigm shift.

Surviving and thriving upon exponential growth of information, fierce competitions, and continuous disruptions requires neutrality, flexibility, interdisciplinarity and innovativeness. Be open minded with a humble attitude, respect our differences, and become inclusive to spur creativity and co-solve the variety of problems holistically.

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Innateintention

Intention is our heart’s desire; vision is our mind’s blueprint. Our intention to change is to make a better future; evaluating the past can certainly lead us to a good insight towards the future.

Purpose implies intention. Intention is one’s inner drive to achieve, coming with inspiring the mind and winning with purpose attitudes. The good intention is our heart's desire for making things better and getting things done.

The intention is to be courageous enough to do or become something: Intention is to discover who we are, where we are going to be, whatever the state of awareness we arrive at, there is always a deeper state: it’s important to be creative to take a unique path and figure out alternative ways to achieve more. Strong intention with purpose is a process of becoming our true authentic self in all that we are today.

So rather than looking for examples of others out there, look within ourselves and ask: Am I the person/leader I wish to see in the world? Persuasion with good intention should help innovative problem-solving. Strong intention with great purpose, plus dedicated attitude and professional aptitude allow us to become self driven, self-disciplined and self -actualization.

The intention of great leadership is to make a positive influence without affecting anyone in any negative way: The intention of becoming a leader is to facilitate and encourage, as change is often an uncomfortable, yet necessary part of reaching and sustaining success. The intention of a good leader is to inspire a leadership culture at all levels within the organization and our society; to ensure effectiveness and achievement of final results,

The intention of leadership is reflected in vision, action, modeling, enabling, supporting, humble correction and guidance in furtherance of the goal. The intention of leadership is to drive progressive changes. What makes leaders successful is what they do after they fail at something at their early stage of the career. What gives them the chance to do something else? The point is always to learn from the failure and fail forward.

The intention to accept and receive feedback is to make continuous improvement: Providing and accepting feedback becomes part of the scenario of professional growth. The intention to give feedback needs to demonstrate candor, quality, informativeness, truth, etc. As a feedback giver, you should take the responsibility of the words you say, and in a positive business atmosphere, those negative intentions or misjudgments need to be discouraged or even penalized in order to build a healthy working environment.

Accept feedback that is truthful and accurate, constructive with good intention. Those who give negative feedback on correctly assessing your flaws, should receive your gratitude and respect. However, those who give negative feedback based on ignorance, misinformation, misjudgment, or even rumors, envy or revenge, earn scorn and contempt.

Intention is our heart’s desire; vision is our mind’s blueprint. Our intention to change is to make a better future; evaluating the past can certainly lead us to a good insight towards the future. So both follow heart and evolve mind to live a meaningful life and drive a progressive career journey.

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Learning has to become a lifestyle, and develop it as a habit.

High organizational learning relates to high response in recognizing and addressing system constraints, 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 capability building and prerequisite of developing changeability.

 

         Innovate via Learning

Innovatingvialearning People with a learning mind see unique patterns and make fresh connections that others overlook.Learning is a continuous process and everyone has an enormous capacity to learn and we need to learn continuously in order to adapt to constant change. Today, there are continuous technology led disruptions and convenient, overloaded information, and commodity knowledge only a click away. The division between 'working' and 'learning' is replaced by combining…

Unleashpotentialbycontinuouslearning Rapid change and fierce competition demand everyone to continuously learn, maintain and grow their mindsets/expertise/skills. Learning renews ourselves. In the world of the mere mortals, we say: that is our unique gift. We are the light of knowledge and our light is also the goal of universal knowledge. It is our light that is helping in pursuing life's meaning. Digital learning is interactive, interdisciplinary, informal, inclusive, and...

Upliftingadvancement Advancement is about vision, progress, improvement, fresh knowledge, intelligence, modernization while the opposite of advancement is primitivity, outdated concept/tradition, conventionalism, or stagnation. Either individually or collectively, we need to take the advancing journey of learning, growth, and innovating.

Inspiringlearningascoolthing Learning has to become a lifestyle, and develop it as a habit. Our mind is raw, learning makes it mature. To learn constantly, so we continually improve. Learning is not the thing,we are 'done' only in our youth, it has to become a lifestyle, and develop it as a habit. Learning keeps us fresh, energy flow...To create the new requires -not just one skill, but many, not just old experience, but fresh perspectives, creating new knowledge, spurring imagination,...

Initiatinglearningexperimentaleffort The collective human potential transcending into the business competency is the greatest thing the organization should ever invest in...Every organization is different, and it is at a different stage of the business cycle. There is no one size fitting all formulas or practices to develop a learning organization and build differentiated organizational competency. The key characteristics of digital organizations are learning, information...

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 5 million page views with about 8100+ 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.

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Innatecapabilitydevelopmentcycle

Organization need to discover its own strength, find its niche, and build a set of core, and better recombinant capabilities in order to become more competitive

The ecosystem environment today is full of uncertainty, velocity, complexity, and ambiguity, a business capability is the firm’s ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competence to address rapidly changing business environments. However, many business strategy implementation or change efforts are symptomatic of not having a comprehensive understanding and taking a stepwise approach to build competency and managing a seamless transformation. Here is the logical scenario to develop a capability management portfolio with interrelated components and information-based intelligence.




Planning & forecasting: Capabilities underpin business strategy execution. Nowadays, strategy is dynamic, thus, capability development also needs to be dynamic to adapt to the rapid change. Good planning is goal-directed, purposeful, and intelligent. Organizational management needs to do planning and forecasting about how they can compete to capture the uprising trends or explore new marketing shares, which capabilities are crucial to enable their agile strategy. The degree of planning has a positive correlation with the degree of uncertainty and unpredictability. To outbeat the market, a highly competitive company enforces an iterative planning- implementation continuum and has a deliberately close alignment among the company’s strategic direction, its coherent and distinctive capabilities, and most or all of its products and services, and guide the business to the future in a structured way.

You can succeed where you choose to improve. Gain a robust enough view of the future to enter new domains before they take off; translating strategic intent into dynamic planning, then into capability development and into meaningful action and making the needed changes stick can be difficult, doing it frequently and at a fast pace, even more so, but worth the effort. The very first step in capability development is capability modeling which serves many purposes including forecasting & planning. Business capability is the people, process, and tools required to perform a business function. The key to successful capability/capacity planning is to be transparent, know what you are doing and what you are good at - the organizational innate strength, clear leadership at all levels, enhance governance so everyone knows what they are to execute on, and enable capability-enabled strategy management.

Categorization & classification: A classification is based on the position of the concept in the evolution tree, it’s about capability categorization and portfolio management to improve effectiveness, transparency, and resource efficiency. Categorize your own flavor and decompose. There are base capability, differentiated capability, and core competency - a set of capability with a focus, etc. Classification helps the management highlight the real value and a health capability portfolio management can support strategic planning and execution. It allows you to manage the spend in developing the capability, and provide the executive insight about which of the strategic choices is most likely to succeed in the organizational culture, and the program of work required to build and sustain it.

There are capability necessities and capability differentiators. Some keep the lights on; some build unique business competencies. Some can be built in house, some need to be acquired. Some are linear, some are integral; some are stable; some are dynamic; some are event driven, others are goal driven. etc. After formulating strategy alternatives, you design the capability and cost it for each alternative. That way you can see if you can do it with your own workforce through training, or if it will require transitions. Processes underpin capabilities; 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.

Exploration & exploitation: During the journey of business transformation, forethoughtful leaders understand where and how they can and should improve to get the biggest effect and scale up across the digital ecosystem effortlessly. In fact, either individually or collectively, the key factor to the paradigm shift has been the endless self-exploration and self-renewal in intellectual, emotional, material, or spiritual dimensions that need to co-evolve together for continually building capabilities and accelerating performance. Compared to the silo based industrial age, emerging technology tools and abundant information allow a company to speed up in capability development cycle and move into a more advanced stage of digital exploration.

However, for many lagging organizations, the ecosystems have evolved without much attention or planning. Some organizations are operated in a hybrid mode, separating the exploitation of the existing methods and technologies from the exploration of the new way to do things by leveraging the emergent trends to design, build, scale, and optimize business capabilities to drive transformative changes.The multi-thread management involves aligning initiatives, talent, resources, and performance with the goals to implement dynamic strategy and improve business maturity continuously and systematically.

Modeling & mapping: Capability models allow analysts to conduct a fit/gap analysis of capability vs requirements, facilitate the process of deep analyzing, and managing large volumes of activities and run simulation events to identify areas in a capability portfolio that can be changed and optimized, such as duplicated capability or ineffective capability, etc. Capabilities underpin strategy management. Seldom is there a strategy that is achieved by one capability, and this is why the task of mapping capabilities to strategies is difficult, but a necessary step in effective strategy management.

There are natural frictions between different functions of the company, thus, it is important to make a gap analysis between business functions, the current state and future state of the organization, capability evaluation -capability gap in the context of future need, or capability dependency or business capability reliance on technology capability, investment calculation, etc. A capability mapping and development involves capability analysis - documenting how an existing capability works/ flows to capability re-engineering - making improvements to an existing capability; capability design - creating a new capability. But keep in mind, capability is still the means to the end; in the end, it is not about modeling or designing a capability. It's about strategy execution!

Dissemination and integration: The business capability is a composite of "whos," "whats," "wheres," "whens,""whys," and "hows." The composite must be broken down to its constituent elements and each element mapped to associated strategies for enabling business change. The process of dissemination is to analyzing the capacity of each element of the capability against each associated strategy to assure the element as used by each capability to achieve each strategy adequately; to re-framing of business planning processes in order (who participates, how often, allowing creativity and innovation to flow, identifying technology as well as business risks, etc.); re-framing of in-place processes that filter and fund investments, both business-oriented and technology-oriented.

There are both hard and soft components in capability development; the successful capability integration and quality management will depend on the underlying business relationships between all of these points and how they influence each other. Some relevant capabilities can be integrated into unique business competencies to solve more complex problems. The best scenario is to create a comprehensive capability map through cross-functional collaboration. Those business capabilities with gaps are evaluated more deeply, which produces a list of remediation work that needs completing to improve differentiated business capabilities and enhance capability management cycle.

Evaluation and feedback: The criteria to evaluate capability maturity need to clearly identify the core competencies and focus more on optimization opportunities and tuning organizational competencies. The capability maturity can be measured against the achievement of desired business or customer outcomes. This can be accomplished by measuring the people, process and technology impact on capability effectiveness, Feedback on capability-enabled performance and outcomes help the business management make the timely adjustment for making continuous improvement. Measurement systems should be in place as part of overall capability portfolio management to ensure the value proposed in any business case is actually realized. It can help you get some objective perspectives on what you are trying to manage,

Business executives, employees, clients, and vendors all have their various observations on the capability management cycles. Thus, they can provide great feedback, their respective viewpoints based on their special angles can indicate useful areas for further exploration and confirmation. You should have an in-depth understanding of what capabilities are critical to building the long-term competency for the business's long-term prosperity. Organizations strive to become people-centric businesses. Assuming the company has a great product, creating meaningful, relevant, and compelling differentiation in the mind of customers is the challenge. This is the foundation in which capabilities are built or optimized and brands are built.

In fact, there is no “one size fits all” formula for capability development. Organization need to discover its own strength, find its niche, and build a set of core, and better recombinant capabilities in order to become more competitive

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Inspiringlife

It is -the awareness of- unfulfilled potential, gives one the feeling. We have a destiny..Every life has complexity in it; an abstraction of - the universe;

Life is like-

a seed,

inside each seed,

there is-

an unseen potential,

unleashed energy,

unimaginable colors,

uncompromised substances…


Life is like -

four seasons,

there’s time to sow,

time to grow,

time to harvest

time to fulfill.


Life is a gift;

life is a beauty,

life is a myth;

Life is a journey;

some life are-

straight;

others are -

curvilinear;

life is -

a serendipitous journey,

with soft touch;

have a plan,

but not -

over-plan it;

take the nature path,

keep the original design...


Life is like a-

running river-

with all its bends,

rapid falls,

one must follow-

the right path

or else,

you'll get lost...


Life is organic,

energetic,

resilient,

let it grow, mature;

keep its full theme and color;

cognizant of ups & downs,

capture the insight of -

its meaning;

feel humble,

Every life is-

special,

unique,

precious;

inspiring..

It is -

the awareness of-

unfulfilled potential,

gives one the feeling,

We have a destiny..

Every life has -

complexity in it;

an abstraction of -

the universe;

Life is amazing.

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Simplicity

Unseen is complex until it is known. Once known, it becomes simple.

Logically, simplifying the complicated thing is an optimal and smart choice. 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 an aspect of appropriate abstraction, the conceptual clarity, and the style of elegance.

Simplicity can be expressed through a comprehensive abstract: The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary hassles so that the necessary can speak out. Simplicity means less structure, fewer rules or regulations, changeability, and high maturity. The forward-thinking leaders and professionals should gain an in-depth understanding of how things such as design thinking and simplicity, etc, can fundamentally change organizations and their societal impact.

However, for many, it is the other way round. They use simplicity as the source to make things complicated. In the very rare case, we find people with an optimized mind, who understand the complexity of issues, but follow “simplicity” principles, remove unwanted complexity, and clarify assumptions and dependencies, get on to simplifying everything by being passionate for simplicity.

Unseen is complex until it is known. Once known, it becomes simple: Complexity arises not from nothing. Humans create, though unintentionally in most cases, and generate their own problems. Therefore, they have to untie the knots they made themselves and keep things simply and more clarified. There is a relationship between simplicity and clarity. When things get clarified and understood by all, there's a significantly better chance to simplify and innovate.

There is value in making things simple because complexity threatens or is confusing, simplicity feels familiar, concise and practical. Simplicity emerges synergistically from “work reduction." Simplicity is an optimal level of complexity. One makes things simple when one brings people to understand them. Keep in mind, simplicity has a multitude of perspectives, to look at things from various sides does not make anything complex, it is a process to simplify.

With simplicity, what we are adding is design 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 purposeful. From thoughts to actions, keep positive energy flowing naturally and create synergy. When we try to intellectualize every thought, life becomes more confusing but simplicity welcomes peace because life is less complex and, therefore, easier. Simplicity can harmonize.

An intuitive mind simplifies the complexity. An artistic mind looks at it simply. An Architect’s mind abstracts the complexity. The skill for framing context provides a coherent picture to simplify without losing the substance; keep things clear without skipping critical factors to make things elegant. .

In the core of simplicity is complexity; step back from the old routine to do the things, take time to reflect and understand things holistically; do not get intimidated by complexity, but manage it right to let the simplicity shine and achieve the next level of maturity.

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Framework Approach To Solve Problems

A solid framework is needed to address the effects of getting the work done, problems get solved and keep track of the varying business factors associated with the paradigm shift.

We live in a world with the very characteristics of hyperconnectivity and interdependence. Opportunities and risks emerge almost on a daily basis. Problems that arise are almost always the product of interactions of parts, never the action of a single part. There are unknown interactions and very high inner dynamics in many problems which have an inherent and irreducible complexity. 

Thus, it’s important to build a comprehensive problem-solving framework, apply a set of principles, leveraging a structured methodology that allows you to frame problems systematically and solve problems creatively to enhance a healthy cycle of problem-solving continuum.

 

The first important step is to identify issues that need to be solved by the framework approach from generalization to specialization lens: There are strategic problems, and tactical concerns; tough situations and thorny issues, coming through different characteristics such as hyper-diversity, volatility, ambiguity, unpredictability, and increased flux. There are multiple, inter-related dynamics you have to really dig beneath the superficial layer, see around the corner and transcend the interdisciplinary knowledge, to get to the real problem. Every problem has cause & effect; or possibly, the multitude of cause-effects. The framework approach makes sense if many large scale issues are cross-disciplinary, information heavy, or there are multilogic behind it, and there are diverse groups of people that are impacted by problem-solving effectiveness. Focus on your own situation, recognize what you don't know, can't predict and can't control; identify quantitative measures of success and trouble; assess and address root causes objectively.

Highly effective business solutionists walk through the scenario from generalization to specification by clarifying: What are the exact problems- usually a series of issues that need to be solved? Why haven't they been solved before? Where do we need framework and guidance? What are optimized processes, practical methodologies and best practices to solve them? Do we have trustful resources to get quality information, suited processes and fitting talent to deal with them? Will we expect the mega-integrated solutions across the multi-catalog of products/services? How to handle different stages of problem-solving with attention and proficiency to ensure success? From a finance management perspective, consider what capital you are prepared to risk in delivering innovative solutions, never let this be so much that losing it will cripple your business. Generally speaking, a framework with all important enterprise components is the great tool to intensify problem-solving with a strong focus and manage complex issues in a structural way.

The second step is to choose a framework that can serve as a starting point, tailor it to ensure that the original issues are addressed, implement and enhance the tailored framework structurally: In the corporate scope, there are varieties of complexity such as hierarchy complexity, information complexity, network complexity, governance complexity, etc. The framework is defined as a set of principles/model processes, methods, rules, roles, etc, to intersect and interact with its digital ecosystem that underpins the establishment, governance of a particular set of activities. It describes a best practice of how things should be done from a holistic problem-solving perspective. Organizations can be more effective in executing ideas by relying less on silo functions, more on cross-functional collaboration and continuous improvement. A general framework defines abstract components and hence defines the way to program by reducing the scope of errors due to definition from scratch again and again; by abstracting the concerns or by reducing development time, etc.

Sometimes, the concepts of the framework are good, but they are often implemented in a bureaucratic manner with a focus on processes and not execution. The capital and resource allocation (money, focus, time, and people) commitment will be fuzzy until the key challenges are understood and agreed upon. You need to implement a comprehensive framework that fits your needs to achieve the benefits of industrializing certain domains of activities to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and maximize value. A mature solution framework describes how the components and standards of the business work cohesively to solve complex problems, and focus on the solution deliverables by which the scope and granularity of solution models are created. It’s also important to provide the visibility of overall investment in the portfolio and the expected or realized value to be achieved. This can be measured in cost savings, additional revenue, increased customer satisfaction etc.

If necessary, tailoring an integral framework may mean merging it with another framework, including another paradigm, etc: As nowadays, the digital era upon us is all about change, choice, innovation, and people-centricity. Many complex issues need to be handled via interdisciplinary approaches. Growth is the focal point of leveraging an integral framework to solve problems by embedding governance mechanisms into processes, increasing learning, and improving your chances of meeting your objectives on your continuous attempts. A competency framework can merge with sorts of relevant frameworks such as change/culture/learning management framework, resource/talent management framework, performance/potential management frameworks, incorporates multiple and diverse components, provides guidelines, checklists, standards, platforms, processes, tools, and building blocks, to solve problems progressively.

Some complex problems are perhaps caused by dysfunctional systems in which people are just one of the root causes. Loosely structured cross-border interdependencies require a much greater dose of informal organizational elements such as information flow, shared values and culture, common language, multidimensional knowledge and skills, a set of dynamic processes and capabilities. An integral framework type disciplines are used with solid technical skills that understand how things as a system really works and how to improve its overall maturity from functioning to delight. Usually, the containing business ecosystem has social, ecological, economic and political elements and you must advance the development of all of these factors in order to solve the problems in a holistic way. Otherwise, it is a stifling process that diminishes the value of creative framework, across the organizational, industrial, societal scope.

A framework can be either abstract or detailed. Keep in mind, it’s a tool with the goal to create a disciplined, managed space for developing and testing new models, products, and approaches to ensure the real problems have been diagnosed, fixed and cause the least side effect possible. A solid framework is needed to address the effects of getting the work done and keep track of the varying business factors associated with the paradigm shift.

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Innovativecultureanalog

Culture is deeper; culture is powerful. the right culture would be the one which is an "enabler" rather than an "inhibitor" to achievement of an organization’s vision.

Culture is a collective mindset, attitude, behaviors and action in a company. Hence, every person in the organization has a fair share of contribution to the business culture, either in the positive or negative way. Culture is changeable, and the speed of culture change may also be expedited as the world becomes more hyper-connected and interdependent.

Analogously, culture is to the foundation of a building: You can architect and construct the best building in the world, but doing so on a shaky foundation is a waste of time, and risky. Good cultures can lift an average strategy; but an ineffective culture can easily screw up a good strategy. You cannot consider culture as one element of the strategy execution unless you can identify the dominant cultures, subcultures, and the layers of those cultures. A lot of its culture is in a state of flux and can transform to suit a new chosen strategy. Just like you can remodel the building, but it’s difficult to make the foundation more solid. In practice, changing the culture to fit the strategy is tough because culture changes both slowly and reluctantly.

The objective culture assessment is hard because culture is too complex and many assessors overly focus on the underlying assumptions. One part of the assessment is to get employees to identify what the ideal culture would look like and the instrument captures the current culture. Technically, the culture analysis tools break down all cultures into constructive, passive-aggressive and passive defensive and assign behaviors to each of these categories. Let staff understand the different culture patterns, so they can change their collective mindset and behaviors. The goal is to ensure the organization can cultivate a culture that reveals the organizational value, aligned with the strategy and facilitates long term business success. Senior leadership is the crucial culture influencer. Trust for transparent performance is only possible if culture is nurtured formally or informally, by the leaders at the top who support an open and trusting work environment and enforce consistency throughout the organization.

Culture is like the iceberg with both visible and invisible parts, metaphorically speaking: Culture influence is like the water, permeating in the organization and impact on how people do things there. Culture itself is like the solid-state of water - the iceberg metaphor describes the layers of culture, the visible elements, such as attitude or behaviors; the underlying mindsets, values and beliefs, expectations and assumptions, often being under the surface. The execution and conviction of strategy strongly rely on culture. It’s nearly impossible to change the culture without bringing those underlying pieces of culture elements to the surface, articulating them and assessing whether they are still the right ones for the current environment.

Water needs to be clear and transparent. There are stereotyping and elements of ethnocentric culture as well as there is also subculture. Culture visibility is really important for teams as every member is always aware of how the whole process is going on, what business culture encourages them to do, and what results have already been achieved. With comprehensive culture understanding, the senior leadership team can set effective policies, procedures, rewards, and retributions that shape a more advanced mindset and drive desired behavior and it is the employee attitude and behavior that expresses “culture.” The spirit comes from the top, the culture will only be as strong as the mindset and behaviors of the senior leaders and the way they use these to demonstrate their commitment to the values and vision on a daily basis.

Culture is the glue to integrate business relationships or culture is the "fabric" of an organization and habits/behaviors/practices being woven into it: Anthropology provides an expanded lens for business leaders to understand people and culture differences. Company culture is closely aligned to what the company believes in, along with the business practices and expectations associated with these beliefs. A strong leader can influence or enhance the culture. A manager is not a great leader if he or she is completely influenced by the existing culture; as they do not have the ability to evolve it because their vision is blurred and their mindset needs to be updated.

Culture of high-performance, culture of learning or culture of creativity are the most desired culture models; creative culture is usually outward-looking rather than insular, people are more willing to accept a degree of risks and experimentation, etc. Culture development isn't built in a day; it is an evolutionary journey and takes innovative leadership and long-term strategy. Culture-the collective values/beliefs/habits/mindset of the organization has to act as enablers to make the business transformation journey easier, faster and more successful.

Culture is deeper; culture is powerful. the right culture would be the one which is an "enabler" rather than an "inhibitor" to achievement of an organization’s vision. Every organization should remember that they are a part of society; corporate culture and societal culture mutually reinforce each other. If a societal culture is open and inclusive, the organizations within it would considerately be more open than competitors operated within other societies. When a leading organization’s culture is more innovative and open than its community or region in which it locates, it can make a positive influence on its ecosystem and the surrounding environment. Thus, Great companies spend significant energy on building and sustaining a great culture, as culture is their brand and footprint.

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Focus

In fact, staying focused and setting priority to leverage limited time, resources and talent to maximize performance and unlocking potential is an important step in improving professional maturity.

Contemporary global citizens have their own set of conveniences and concerns. Is the Information Age flooding one’s brain with an overwhelming amount of diverse knowledge, some fresh, some outdated? Are many people suffering from change fatigue with fear- fear of the unknown; fear of misunderstanding, fear of failure? Doesn’t the daily busyness without focus decrease productivity, stifle creativity, and impede the speed of change? 

Today’s business leaders and professionals should learn how to “ignore,” become more conscious to focus on the most important things, benefit from a structured approach to keep creative energy flow, manage workflow effectively and build professional competency effortlessly.

You have to be selective for improving judgmental skills and building professional competency: With exponential growth of data and knowledge is only a click away, we all need to be cautious about the quality and usability of those soft assets without getting distracted or inundated with overloaded information. There is no way, also not necessary to absorb every bit & byte of information flowing to you, you need to be selective in order to be more informative with cognitive intelligence. You have to stay focused, learn how to swim in the sea of information in which we live; otherwise, it will drown you, you will get lost, make poor judgment, ineffective decisions, lose your identity, and even be swallowed by the whirl of information.

Each one of us is unique, we have different interests, expertise, or experience, it’s important to tailor your own needs, set high standards, and take a progressive lens to collect the "best" material that interests you; filter the information that comes your way so you can build your own knowledge foundation on topics that interest you. Because knowledge is updated so fast in some domains, sometimes, you need to keep learning, unlearning or relearning, focus on things matter. To become an expert in your domain, you need to not only assimilate the existing knowledge, but also have to create the new knowledge, more frequently to replace the out of dated knowledge; be fluent on the topic, then, you can improve your judgmental skills and become high-professionals.

You need to spend time and energy on setting the right priority and focus on result-driven activities: Prioritization is critical to force people to become more proactive for change and focus on effective problem solving; as the alternative is a land grab for resources and energy exhaustion. There are existing issues and emerging problems on a daily basis, the challenge is to prioritize what you know about and keep an eye open for signs of things you don't know about. Setting priority to leverage limited resources, times and talent to maximize performance and unlock potential. Stay focused, continuously try to improve, develop, or change everything in a prioritized order as long as it creates a more long-term advantage and solves the critical business issues with continuous deliveries.

Upon increasing paces 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. When people’s everyday experience is one of frustration, failure, and defeat, they use up all their energy and waste their time on trivial things. People don't mind the stress if they feel in control of their work. Prioritization is about managing constraints and using the right methods to classify and laser focus on the most important things. For longer-term items, break them into pieces and slot in the pieces each day to ensure they get done. With upcoming issues and events, the dynamic prioritization all wrapped up in a smart and adaptive plan that turned out to be most critical to improve productivity and generate creative energy.

Time management coupled with discipline is a crucial step towards staying focused, developing capabilities and achieving professional goals: Time management is the process of organizing and planning how much time you spend on specific activities. Invest some time to learn about how to manage your own time more efficiently, and save yourself time in the future. Either individually or in the corporate setting, there are long-term, intermediate, and immediate actions you need to take, strong time management skills help you decide the course, and improve work effectiveness. For business managers, it’s important to learn how to delegate, not micro-manage, let people do things in their own way.

We need to be very vigilant about time. Time management is not about punctuality. Time Management is all about choosing to help oneself by being able to put in efforts only after you have prepared yourself to take actions to achieve well-set outcomes. The effective time management nurtures creativity; recharges energy, boosts confidence and builds new capabilities, which can be gained through self-improvement from the inner transformation of self. It helps to enhance strong discipline and focus on developing professional competencies to make high accomplishments.

Laser focus on things that really matter, be selective on the knowledge you want to gain, the people you try to communicate with; the things you are interested in, the goals you intend to achieve. In fact, staying focused and setting priority to leverage limited time, resources and talent to maximize performance and unlocking potential is an important step in improving professional maturity.

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Innovative Reframing

Forward-looking organizations should keep expanding their collective thinking box, reframing strategic problems and come up with innovative solutions consistently.

With “VUCA” new normal, there is known unknown and unknown unknown, you can’t predict every turn or curve that the business will face, it’s always important to be self-adaptive in the dynamic environment, reframe critical factors, from leadership mindset, to problems businesses intend to solve to the very strategy organizations are crafting, etc.  The varying stakeholders can adjust "every day" of activities to enforce the broader scope of collaboration as the current situation keeps evolving.

Reframe leadership thinking box: The information abundant business world becomes hyper-connected. In today's competitive environment, what was outside the box yesterday, may not be such today. Business leaders and professionals need to expand their thinking box, ask open-ended questions, embrace diverse viewpoints, accumulate interdisciplinary knowledge, and drive transformative changes. In fact, it takes courage to get out of the conventional thinking box, broaden thoughts and connect wider dots, break down some old rules, rewire new connections, as well as take risks to shape new ideas boldly. As a matter of fact, great ideas only happen outside of the usual restraints, emerging via expanded thinking. Creativity is one of the most critical professional qualities today, so there are no such things as too much outside the box thinking, but it's important to reframe the newer box to stay focused. A collaborative approach can help to leverage the existing knowledge upon how the organization enables teams to grow beyond their limits and expand their corporate thinking box skillfully.

Reframing a bigger thinking box implies to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. It is often difficult to think outside the box from within, not only what your eyes are still blinking at, but also looking around, looking above and looking deeper. Often, businesses regularly forget what's in it. And then, look beyond the light you see when you first jump out of the box for answers. For practicing innovation leadership, take a look at outside your industry - far outside your industry, connect wider dots, develop the best and next innovation practices. If you have to pull the team out of the box, that's when the real ideas work. Reframing leadership thinking boxes is simply all part of a well rounded paradigm. It is not only the ideas that are important, but the challenge and willingness to try, the atmosphere in which the ideas are presented, the mindset out of fear and mediocre, and the team out of homogeneous setting and conventional wisdom.

Reframe complex problem: In the digital era upon us, we will be confronting a number of high-complex problems in the hyper-connected world. In fact, running a business is an iterative business problem solving continuum. Because everyone has a different interpretation of what the problem is, therefore, staring at an unclear problem gets confused. So don't jump too quickly into solution mode, and make sure everyone is really clear on what the problem is. Behind every problem is a relationship dynamic out of alignment. Thus, understanding human dynamics, relationships and systems do help to assess problems systematically and solve problems innovatively. For some thorny issues that haven’t been solved effectively before, you have to reframe a problem and realign resources, refine the knowledge, and then, try to solve them effectively.

For either solving existing or emerging problems, it’s critical to recognize patterns, perceive invisible behind the scenes, be able to reframe circumstances, alter or change the frame of reference. The "methodologies' ' being put into the innovation bucket are somewhat unique and previously outside of the business norm, but have the potential to reframe the problem which in itself is the significant contribution to innovative problem-solving. Keep the end in mind, by brainstorming:"What is the purpose you are striving for?” You must use rational arguments, and you have to read philosophy because it helps to see the reasoning in action. And then, when you have seen the reasoning in action, you've got an example of what's philosophy behind it, a problem, and logical argumentation. Laser focus on goals, not processes; continue clarifying: What is the cause of the problem - in-depth thought often opens up the creative "outside the box" solution, and figures out the best solution possible. It is an orientation towards life-powered by an ever-evolving collection of principles, methodologies, and practices.

Reframe the strategy: With ever-evolving business dynamics, there is no "predictable future, "but there are many possible ones. Agility, nimbleness, and responsiveness are particularly needed to adapt to the new normal. To be able to move deliberately and swiftly, it takes strategic agility to transform a traditional organization into an innovative enterprise. Long term planning has its place, but linearity and over prescriptive-ness" don't. Strategy Planning becomes a "living process" with regular evaluating, scanning, listening, revisiting and potential course correction. Forward-looking organizations need to review and to reframe the core of the management- system, set the guidelines, establish a framework to focus or refocus, and apply efficient tools to improve strategy management effectiveness and efficiency.

Business transformation is a long journey full of uncertainty, velocity, complexity, and ambiguity, with many curves and bumps, roadblocks and pitfalls on the way. .You never know for sure what is going to happen, but through continuously scanning the market, you should be able to identify different scenarios. The tough part is trade-offs. The more you can front load and truly define the current state, the easier the journey moves ahead. Part of reframing a strategy is to have built -in a mechanism to correct the direction if the variables are changing or if there is an innovation that has disrupted the landscape all together -either in a disruptive way or in a gradual manner. The continuous movement leads to feedback that allows strategy correction and refinement dynamically.

The blurring line of the business border and the uncharted frontier provides both unprecedented opportunities and emergent risks that companies must deal with appropriately for adapting to the dynamic ecosystem smoothly. Organizations should keep expanding their collective thinking box, reframing strategic problems and come up with innovative solutions consistently. Be prepared, be flexible, and be insightful, ride the learning curve and orchestrate business transformation collaboratively.

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