Innovativenewyear

New Year's Day is the moment to slow down the daily busyness, learn from the past, live in today and look forward to the future.

It is almost the end of year, and the new year is only a few hours away. It’s the time to reflect on what we did; recharge energy and rejuvenate the passion for opening the new chapter of the life journey. 

The past is a time beyond reach; the present is when we have the time to think and make accomplishments; the new year is the time, hopefully, we can move ahead and make transformative changes.

Look inside: Holiday is the season to relax and reflect, as the process of reflection is the foundation of growth, evolution, improvement, and refinement. Look inside – the introspection is a cognitive process involving self-awareness and self-discovery, allowing us to reach the deeper level of “personal paradigm." New Year is the time to keep our mind fresh, provide clarity on how we think about ourselves and the world, and capture directional opportunities for personal growth. New Year is the time to break down some old, let the new emerge; constructively challenge the limits of traditional thinking, generate the chains of thought-provoking ideas continually, shape the fresh perspectives on things that matter, and take the new approach to solve problems differently.

New Year is the time to make some resolution. Thinking outside the current constraints and comfort zones requires a different vision and the courage to pursue it. Looking inside and understanding deeply of ourselves with a desire for constant self-improvement allows us to leverage that knowledge to increase the influential outreach for the betterment. New Year is the time to be more authentic and courageous, and genuine first and foremost, ensure that our minds, voices, and actions are in synchronization by combined action, endurance, and with the right spirit.

Look back: The year almost passed by, what did we learn and what have we accomplished? People always say you shouldn't live in the past. But looking back allows us to learn invaluable lessons and become well-prepared for the journey ahead in the New Year. Regardless of our professions, having a solid grasp on what has been done successfully; what has been tried before and analyzing why some of initiatives didn’t succeed. The past is in view only to allow us to recognize possible conflicts that could approach from where we are learning from the past, and developing towards a new future. Collectively, the success of our species came from our ability to accumulate knowledge and learn lessons from the past.

We need to see what is behind us, there are invaluable lessons to draw on in the past from time to time to gain “lessons learned.” If the past year gets us stuck, we need to dig through the cause and try to turn around; if the past year is turmoil, we need to analyze the role we play as a problem-solver or problem-generator; what we gained and what we lost; do not be afraid to make fine adjustments as the new year is underway, do not lose our visibility forward. We can understand each other with less bias; only if we look back without judgment and with the context of historical understanding of the times as they really were. Build confidence to take the courage to explore ourselves, new possibilities, the things we always want to try. As life is an adventurous and advanced journey. We must see where we are going. In a way, we are destined to look forward, and in doing so, seeing both the past and the future in front of us is interesting.

Look ahead: After looking inside to understand who we are, looking back about the footprints we have left, can we predict the upcoming trends in the new year more accurately and step into the next chapter of change smoothly? We learn from the past to "understand" self, and shape a new perspective of what we can renew ourselves in the upcoming years. A new digital paradigm arises out of new knowledge, fresh perspective, and enters the Age of Personalization. By looking ahead, we are able to more accurately judge the coming curves and obstacles in our path to reach the “to be” state of who we are.

We live in an exponential information technology world and every day more and more technology affects the way we live, love, and think. The New Year perspective is multifaceted, the prediction of the future is based on the analysis of the past. The long-term perspective keeps us focusing on the most important things; a creative perspective opens our mind, releases the positive energy, out of this comes a beautiful thing, abundant ideas. Scientific perspective can broaden our vision and look into an unknown future, understand how ecosystems, market dynamics, and the connections between things or people are related. We have to be ingenious and selective, observe deeper, ask logical questions, forecast upcoming trends with a certain degree of precision, prepare for changes with multiple scenarios, adapt to new normal proactively.

New Year's Day is the moment to slow down the daily busyness, learn from the past, live in today and look forward to the future. Sympathy reflects the holiday spirit; empathy lifts up the holiday theme and brings new perspective for the upcoming new year, to continue learning and exploring, improving professional competencies and becoming more mature human beings.

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Innovativenewyearinsight

It’s almost the end of year, isn’t it a tough journey to celebrate 8500 blog postings - to pursue the digital way to brainstorming, innovating and sharing?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 5 million page views with 8500+ blog postings 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 innovation leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management to celebrate 8500 blogpostings.

New Year Prediction, Priority, and Practices of Taking a Continuous Digital Journey Change is a fact of business and life. With the new year ahead of us, are we entering the era of digital learning, inquisitiveness, openness, and exponential? Are we opening the new page of accelerating digitalization and catalyzing innovation? Gaining the perspectives of the next level of digital maturity is about having a harmonized vision of overall digital management philosophy, capabilities, structures, and practices. To survive the fierce competition and thrive with the long-term business advantage involve planning, action, adjustment, and speed.

New Year Reflection: Either you are a Leader or a Follower -What Makes a Good Person? It is the end of year, before making a resolution, perhaps we shall take a moment to reflect, regardless of who you are, are you a good person? There are so many things that make a good person good and it depends to a large degree on who is to assess and evaluate what is good - that is, the observer's perspective. One important thing, is that each of us defines our own personal values - who we want to be, what is important to us and how we want to act in relation to others - and do our very best to live in line with those values. To show our own ethos in action, is there a common set of values which make one good?

New Year with Digital Fitness It is another new year ahead of us, and it is the time to recharge the energy, open the new chapter of learning, growing and innovating; do the reflection, make the resolution and kick start the New Year with digital fitness.

New Year's Eve The New Year’s Eve is the time to dig within, and make a wish… New Year's Eve is the time to reflect: It’s the moment to bridge the end and beginning, old and new, past and future, reality and hope. New Year’s Eve is sweet and bitter; relaxing and tough; it's time to wash away your frustration, remove your burden, and rejuvenate your inner self. As tomorrow will be another day。 Every New Year is a fresh beginning, and a new chapter..

New Year Prediction, Perception, and Practice of BoDs Organizations become more complex due to the accelerating speed of changes; nonlinear connectivity, the exponential growth of information, and fierce competition. Digital transformation is an ongoing journey with the updated management philosophy and practices. The digital board is diversified, cognitive, proactive, and instrumental. The BoD role sets the top leadership tone for progression and affects most through cohesive communication, congruent behavior, and continuous endorsement of the change to keep the momentum.

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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Innovativeperspectiveofcorporatebod

The BoD’s governance practice isn’t just about putting restrictions on what you can do, it is also about monitoring and knowing when things are not going to plan so that you can take appropriate action at the right time to improve the corporate effectiveness and consistency.

It’s almost the end of the year, corporate board directors make their resolution to shape a clear vision of their organizations, and share fresh perspectives on how to reinvent an innovative company. 

Driving digital paradigm shift is not a passive activity, it is a proactive pursuit. Corporate board directors are wise advisors and top leadership roles, able to ask insightful questions, look forward and actively position the business in the right place to take full advantage of opportunities and manage innovation in a structural way.

Are you provocative: Quite many companies get stagnated due to unprecedented uncertainty and a highly dynamic business environment, they often miss the opportunities for business growth or lag the speed of the marketing change. They tended toward being reactive, not proactive. The corporate boards set the culture tones, perceive the emerging industrial trends, even look beyond their vertical sectors, to capture growth opportunities. They also play an important role in setting good policies in the language understood by varying stakeholders, encouraging growth mindset, spurring innovation, and ensuring their organization is in the right position to build long term advantage.

Forward-looking companies reach the inflection to transformative change which starts with the realization that where you can currently no longer reach the long-term business vision due to limited business capacity, fierce competitions, or frequent disruptions. Corporate board directors as insightful business advisors who have interdisciplinary expertise and enriched professional experiences can connect wider dots, help the management team see further, dig deeper, oversee the strategy by providing invaluable feedback as outliers. Too often in many organizations with overly rigid hierarchy, decision-making and problem-solving are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crises, and demands, and look at issues in a reactive mode as a ‘problem.’ It would be the great time for BoDs to spend more time on proactive problem-solving, unlocking the full potential of the organization, besides performance monitoring and compliance related judiciary duties.

Can you provide guidance for the organization’sfuture? Many organizations are inundated with tactical tasks and daily operational duties, they don’t spend enough time on scrutinizing the long term vision and strategy. Senior leadership roles such as board directors are the guiding forces, identify blind spots of management discipline, pinpoint bottlenecks in corporate resource alignment and capacity development, harness communication to the organization’s shareholders. Besides “keeping the light on,” corporate boards should have the right dose of risk tolerance, focus on innovation related debates and oversight, as innovation is simply too important to delegate to the management completely. Effective corporate boards assess portfolios of innovation investments, continually evaluate individual and aggregate investments in terms of value, risk, and reward, map the strategic objectives into performance indicators. So they can steer the business in the right direction and explore growth opportunities more confidently.

Strategic planning is not static nowadays in the face of a dynamic business environment, thus, BoD’s oversight of planning needs to be updated and adaptive while coordinating different divisions which sometimes compete for resources. BoDs as one of the most critical governance bodies of the company helps to set the tone for encouraging learning, creativity, building an innovative working environment in which everyone is at the same playing field to follow the same set of rules despite differences in roles; improve decision coherence at the different levels of the organizational hierarchy, and spot change agents or innovators for leading transformational changes.

Can you expand the zone of possible change and development as a high-involvement process? Future brings change; change means more opportunity for business advancement. Change leadership at the board level is important because change management is an interdependent ecosystem that includes many business factors such as business goals, policies-setting, internal control requirements, process improvements, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, etc. Driving digital paradigm shift is not a passive activity, it is a proactive pursuit, sometimes you have to change underlying values, functions, structures. If you want to change the fruit, you need to change the root. Board directorship is about setting directions and inspiring changes; when necessary, break down the old rules, establish new principles, develop the best and next practices for making change happen and sustain its effect.

Change is difficult, it’s important to understand the psychology behind changes. Sometimes there is a matter of management blindness. Things are going OK now so they will be OK in the future." That attitude will lead the organization to the fragile status and even cause the business to fall unexpectedly as the business environment continues to change with increasing pace. Corporate boards as change sponsors enables the management to set the right priority, look forward and actively position the business in the right place to take full advantage of opportunities and manage change in a structural way; encourage people to question the status quo and think independently and create an environment that encourages dissent and candor. It’s about proactively and continuously trying to improve/develop/ change everything in a prioritized order as long as it creates a more long-term business advantage.

There is a myriad of information, conflicts, and change inertia in the modern business environment. The BoD’s governance practice isn’t just about putting restrictions on what you can do, it is also about monitoring and knowing when things are not going to plan so that you can take appropriate action at the right time to improve the corporate effectiveness and consistency.

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Innovationgovernance

The flavor of GRC practices depends on the nature of the business and the level of the organizational maturity.

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?

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.

Innovation Governance

Innovationgovernance As businesses get more cut-throat in an ever-changing environment, innovation is the light all forward-looking organizations are pursuing. However, innovation management has a considerably low percentage of success rate. As there are learning curves and various barriers on the way. In some cases, the hard components such as systems, processes, or technology that many organizations are using to capture innovation value are becoming inefficient in this rapidly changing world; in other cases, the soft factors such as communication, culture, leadership are not effective, becoming the very obstacles to innovation management. Thus, governance is critical for meaningful innovation.

Innovativegovernancepractices Governance complements the management approach. Without governance, the management could “get lost” or become too trivial. When companies become bigger and bigger, they try to overly control processes and administrative procedures that make it difficult to reach the strategic goal of the company effectively. In a high mature organization, governance must be viewed and assessed at the senior leadership level such as corporate board. High mature governance enhances information management cycle, iterative strategy management cycle, as well as an investment portfolio cycle, etc, to drive high performance results.

Innovationgovernanceaspects Governance is by definition a framework of principles, practices and indeed ethics; separate, different and outside the setting and subsequent control of business strategies, budgets, outcomes and metrics (in short, management discipline). Statistically, innovation management has a considerably low percentage of success rate and there are numerous learning curves and barriers on the way. Innovation has to deliver business objectives, but it needs the right kind of governance to thrive.

Uncoventionalgovernance Corporate governance has a great impact on corporate performance, Governance is the structure and process of authority, responsibility, and accountability in an organization. Without effective governance, businesses will face significant risk for surviving, and miss great opportunities for thriving. It's impossible to change rightly or have a good governance model without having a holistic view, an outside-in perspective and a collaborative approach.

Innovate Governance Upon the digital paradigm shift, we are experiencing at the moment, with the new characteristics such as hyper-connectivity and interdependence of the digital world we live in. The shift of governance is to focus on enterprise change. More organizations will make a bold step—reengineer or redesign the old fashioned governance control, focus on encouraging meaningful changes and nurturing innovation in a structural way. Top leaders should ask insightful questions and embrace multiple perspectives.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 5 million page views with 8500+ blog postings 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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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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Integralreputationriskpractices

The more diverse, the more regulated, the more geographically dispersed an organization is, the more important an integrated risk management approach becomes.

Due to the overwhelming growth of information and the updated technology in the internet age, reputation management, brand protection, and risk governance become increasingly intertwined and crucial. Every staff has responsibility for their own reputation and corporate reputation; but sometimes reputation goes beyond our control. 

Reputation is part of risk management. It’s important to shift mentality from “risk-avoidance” to “risk management” and risk intelligence, and take an integral approach to manage risk smoothly.

 


The greatest risk will be the business reputation issue that is not being properly identified or managed: The generic risk management includes how organizations manage economic, legal, political, social and reputation risks, and how to build up its resilience muscle. Organizational reputation is the overall estimation in which the company is held by its shareholders based on its past, current, or predictive future actions and behavior. Risk management is very useful for achieving business results and building a solid business reputation. There are "human factors" such as irrational, cognitive, or behavioral aspects. People are still the weakest link in Risk Management, they usually are the greatest source of risk -both classical downside risk and upside risk.

Reputational risk is more as a consequence of the public and media reacting to all the other risks. Thus, it’s important to take an integral risk management approach to improve business effectiveness and maturity. Reputational risks are more likely the post-risk processes of damage control and remedial steps involving corporate communication and public relations programs. Reputational risk is that of the blindness of conventional risk management practitioners to the shortcomings of the incomplete solutions. You can't and won't be able to manage or predict every risk, but by mapping and measuring complex interactions in real-time can gain early warning with anticipatory awareness of possible/plausible negative impact on reputation management.

Integrate risk management into a variety of management approaches by measuring, managing or modeling risks: Often a big risk is that the risk management system is detached from the real management of the business. Why do you think that most risk management has not been done effectively? What are the risk management blind spots? Is it because the risk management program is immature and shortsighted? What to do with this risk even when a risk management program is neither immature nor shortsighted. In reality, too few business enterprises have appropriately aligned or devoted sufficient resources to their respective risk, compliance, ethics, governance efforts, and they need to be appropriately integrated, with decent reporting, structuring and streamlined processes.

Organizations have to shift from a risk-avoidance to a risk management & risk intelligence mentality. Businesses weigh risk and reward, take prudent risks and find ways to mitigate risk rather than eliminate it, and drive change large or small proactively. It’s important to develop an effective risk management model for integrating all crucial elements such as processes, technologies, talent, communication, culture, tools, etc, to manage, and measure risks. Integrating risk management into the everyday business model helps to move the organization a couple of steps forward in business excellence. The value could be in better management decisions, improved operations, greater resilience, improved reputation, increased confidence in management, etc.

Reputation is part of the personal or business brand, and the brand usually reflects the personal and enterprise reputation: The organization's brand equity is the key asset of concern when it comes to the question of reputational risk. If the management has put in place effective GRC processes for protecting business brand and reputation, it helps to clarify what the brand stands for, how the company wants its stakeholders to see and perceive the brand name and the connotation it wants its stakeholders to associate to, as well as the primary activities through which the brand name gets communicated. All of which help to build a solid business reputation.

As a matter of fact, a company's brand is one of its most invaluable assets, and like any asset, it is the responsibility of the leaders to protect and nurture it. The organization's brand equity is the key asset of concern when it comes to the question of reputational risk. Therefore, keep close monitoring of reputation management for transparency and analysis of potential long-term consequences. We are all in this together and have our passions focused on a goal with a cohesive leadership to build a strong business brand and use corporate reputation resources wisely as it directly impacts the long term business prosperity.

The more diverse, the more regulated, the more geographically dispersed an organization is, the more important an integrated risk management approach becomes. Top management commitment is important to build risk awareness culture successfully by integrating a variety of GRC processes for connecting the dots on risk across the orga­nizations, increasing business awareness of “VUCA” reality, and improving business effectiveness.

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Innovativepovofcontemporarysociety

A new paradigm arises out of progressive mindsets, updated knowledge, and structural approaches.

We live in the hyper-connected and interdependent modern global society now, it’s important to gain an in-depth understanding of numerous visible and invisible factors that perhaps influence the cycle of organizational balance and growth. 

The fierce competition and continuous disruptions force business leaders to be more proactive and get really creative on how to improve information fluidity, internalize business value & culture, and explore collective potentiality to manage a seamless digital paradigm shift.

Information synchronization: In the digital era with “VUCA'' characteristics, the power of information empowers the business with real-time insight across the organization for making effective decisions by the right people at the right time, connecting the wider dots and experimenting with a new way to do things, acquiring the ability to reshape products, services, and customer engagement, and improving organizational fluidity and maturity. Information synchronization enables the organization to function like a living thing that is organic, energetic, responsive, coordinated, and consistent in the relationship with its environment. Ensuring data quality and establishing strong information governance are critical steps in information synchronization.

Timing is everything when facing fierce competitions and frequent disruptions. Organization is dynamic and complex, the degree of business responsiveness depends on how business subsystems interact with each other, and those interactions can be nonlinear, technical, informational, or human. Just-in-time information management is crucial for running a real-time digital organization. Information technology needs to really understand the strategic goals of the business and accelerate strategy management by synchronizing information and building the right bridge between business functions, geographical subdivisions, varying shareholders. Streamlining and standardization of information management processes is an essential prerequisite to provide effective information integration solutions for achieving information synchronization.

Culture internalization: With a dynamic business environment, the organizational change shouldn’t be just a few random initiatives, it needs to become a differentiated business competency. In management practice, understand your work environment, understand people, especially at the mindset level, understand what is required to be done, have the right resources and talent, and channel your energy into doing things that can make the difference and accelerate digital transformation. It’s important to bridge the gap between "raising awareness" of business reality - “as is” state of the organization and "internalization" of fine-defined corporate value, culture, and conceptual model, to reach the “to be” state of the business.

Besides integrating tangible business success factors such as people, processes, and technology, it’s important to fine-tune “invisible” business elements, foster a culture of learning and change, and nurture a working environment that inspires open-mindedness, professional excellence, learning agility, and innovation. There are many different perspectives of culture presented along with diverse ways and means of dealing with it. It involves internalization of the “out-of-the-box” thinking to break down outdated common beliefs, generate new concepts or fresh ideas, and take step-wise actions to ensure capability design must fit inside very strict business constraints; the newly established behaviors will be in harmony with the internalized corporate values.

Potential exploration: Performance keeps the light on, potential drives the future performance. Individuals showing potential are distinguished usually by their mastery of new roles quickly and effectively, learning more rapidly than their peers, and being innovative. The organizational potentiality includes the overall organizational ability to perform in the future by discovering their business strength and building core competencies. The importance of potentiality management depends on how and what the organization is utilizing the potential for and how to invest the collective potential for building the unique business competency.

In fact, potential development is the worthy investment and hidden dimension to explore emerging opportunities, design new business models, and investigate diverse paths for accelerating business growth. The potential portfolio investment needs to streamline the strategic objective alignment and accelerate future business growth. Make sure the # and financial investment of the initiatives of unlocking potentiality are aligned with at least one strategic objective over the total portfolio. As a society, we need to respect and encourage authenticity, difference, and uniqueness. It is only when all individuals challenge themselves and then come together as a group will we see real human potential achieved.

A new paradigm arises out of progressive mindsets, updated knowledge, and structural approaches.To effectively respond to the new dynamic, the organization needs to awaken the ecosystem consciousness via open information systems and flexible technologies, start thinking about ways for adapting to their business environment, and creating new revenue streams while becoming highly responsive, highly intelligent and highly innovative.

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Innercareerupcycle

People are human assets and capital, enhancing a healthy career up cycle helps to develop a professional workforce and build an intelligent society.

We are experiencing the paradigm shift from knowledge economy to creative economy by making a transition from homogeneity to heterogeneity; from silo to hyper-connectivity, and from standardization to personalization, etc. When identifying and developing human potential, people are inspired to discover who they are, take a unique path to explore who they want to be.

 Each organization needs to articulate clearly what constitutes “talent,” clarify different talent requirements to fit in different positions, make sure people get placed into the most conducive environment in which they can flourish, not just contribute to the business but to their own upward career journey as well.

Integrate multiple professional capabilities into cohesive professional competency: Developing capability is to bring up the hidden potential of people. At the beginning of the career journey, people’s skillsets are usually linear; they continue learning by doing; accumulate more enriched career and life experience. Often, they develop vertically, keep deepening their expertise; other times, they expand horizontally, to generalize their skillsets, and become more versatile for pursuing their interests. From a talent management perspective, clarify what is the thing referred to as talent, capability, skill, experience, preference, bias or others? how to differentiate them? What is innate, what is learned? Employee development plans should be done with employees and not against them. To achieve professional capability coherence, select how to improve professional capability based on their innate strength and integrate a set of professional skills and expertise into a unique competency. Develop your teams and their abilities so that they can do more for your organization. Influencing people and understanding catering to their needs are the great qualities of the leaders. Talent development is a continuous effort to groom the right talent for the business’s long-term prosperity.

People feel a sense of connection if they participate in activities such as intellectual stimulation to kindle imagination; meaningful collaboration to fuel inspiration, or healthy competitions to catalyze innovation. People enjoy working if they are engaged, feel trustful, and make accomplishments. The management needs to do some check-up: Is there an environment of psychological safety and culture of innovation (Trust) for their majority of employees? Do we have a working environment in which employees are willing to give discretionary effort, want to stay, and are always looking for ways to improve individual and team performance? Are we doing the best to encourage talent growth, create synergy by putting the right talent in the right position, invite employees to brainstorm and contribute to innovation?

Organizations should build creative workforce proactively by encouraging independent thinking, progression, and iterative thinking-acting continuum: They are truth-seeking, willing to change their views, and are accountable for their actions. Furthermore, they are robust and judicious in pushing down barriers to achieve the best possible effects. The thought-provoking talent continuously invests in adopting and adapting habits of mind that allow them to think and respond to challenges critically and creatively. In doing so, they are able to think objectively about themselves, their team, their relationships with others, the organizations to which they belong, their work, and the environments in which they live and work.

In an ideal workplace, the organizational structure needs to be solid enough to keep people or things in order; but fluid enough to keep information and ideas flowing. The scientific methodology is required for facilitating creativity teams, providing proper tools. And build a suitable and hybrid environment for spurring creativity and exploring potential. Additionally, establish ground rules for communication and meeting progress checks. When organizational leaders value the contributions of each individual, understand and encourage the career aspirations of each person in the team, align the individual’s personal goal with the strategic business goal, the collective potential can be unlocked.

Training should be a means to an end for improving competence and increased workforce capability: Employee development plans should be done with employees and not against them. The purpose of the training is to catalyze long-term talent development through collaboration and effective communication. It should also be clear how the company will invest in developing their human capital since the organization will benefit significantly. Being able to succinctly identify what training is needed and deliver those necessary skill sets to the business are critical deliverables for organizational goal achievement.

Every organization must address their common and unique skills requirements and map that out through some sort of skills/competency matrix within their organization. It is vitally important if organizations need to calculate return on investment and objectively identify talent based on competence and capability, not just training attended. Training doesn't have to be expensive to be impactful. Performance maximization or potential unlocking has to be at the core of any training budget. Being able to succinctly identify what training is needed and deliver those necessary skill sets to the business are critical deliverables for organizational goal achievement.

We are experiencing rapid change and exponential knowledge growth. People are human assets and capital, enhancing a healthy career up cycle helps to develop a professional workforce and build an intelligent society. Talent development will bring business leaders together across the organization to share their experience and insight wherever there is a gap in the organizational system. It is a crucial investment, requiring time and energy in today's fast-paced work environment. As a matter of fact, developing the best talent, and putting them in the right directions are one of the most critical issues facing organizations for reaching the next level of growth and leading a paradigm shift.

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Itasvaluecreator

IT in the high mature organizations progressively see themselves as an integral enabler of business advances, a value creator, translating the promise of technology to a strategic and competitive advantage.

As businesses move into the digital future, technology is the fastest growing arena, information is the lifeblood of the business, and IT becomes the backbone of running a high performance organization. 

The idea that the IT organization is overlooked as a digital driver and is being bypassed by business units comes at an odd time when you consider the robust new technology prospects and pervasive information influence. 

IT not only matters, just as much as any other key functional area within an organization, but it can also become a change agent, riding above the learning curve ahead of other functions; as well as becoming a differentiated business advantage. IT management needs to ask insightful questions, engage business partners in getting invaluable feedback, keep consolidation, integration, and modernization, and improve the overall organizational maturity.

Is IT a competitive necessity or the differentiated advantage of the business? In many companies that get stuck at the lower level of business maturity, IT is the support function that “keeps the light on” only," sometimes IT is seen as a drag on innovation. To improve business efficiency and profitability, IT needs to keep reducing the waste, trimming the cost and trying to stay current with ever-changing technologies. There is a never-ending IT management improvement cycle of refining information, advancing systems, streamlining processes, expanding IT products or services, and making continuous deliveries. IT is a competitive necessity if it can help to improve operational excellence, lubricate business processes, and build business capacity for incremental improvement.

But in many lagging companies, IT organization is overlooked as an innovation driver and is being bypassed by business units. To improve IT organizational maturity and run IT as an innovation engine of the company, IT leaders must have a deep understanding of the business model and how organizations make the profit and gain the competitive business advantage. So they can consider the robust new technology prospects and pervasive information influence for improving the top line business growth. In the end, it is not about information, but how to refine information into customer insight and business foresight to pursue business growth opportunities and prevent risks. Also, it is not about technology, but what technology can do when it is enabling and integrating with change/innovation management and business processes to deliver strategic differentiation. IT needs to get the top leadership sponsorship and understanding and continuing investing and evolving for improving business competency.

What's the business perception of an IT organization: IT and business gaps are the reality in quite many companies, the user perception of IT is very low and generally, this perception is ignored by senior IT management as not being of importance. To improve IT effectiveness, not only should IT understand the business, but the non-IT organizations need to understand IT- as IT touches almost every aspect of the company from customer experience touchpoints to employee engagement mechanism. IT management is the responsibility of the entire company. IT needs to provide a strategic advantage to the business manager; IT needs to make the function more productive and improve overall business performance. Running a highly responsive IT needs to get support from front desks to boardrooms, IT needs to understand stakeholders’ expectations and propose a service/solution portfolio that corresponds to both demand and cost drivers with a focus on business priority and building unique business competency.

In a high performance company, every department needs to work together to be successful. IT can expect some sort of partnership with the business, where you have business folks coming up with further ideas on how they can benefit from IT. Collaboration, transparency, respect and clear leadership are the keys to breaking down the realities and the perceptions of this issue. IT has to change the business’s perception of their organization, from a back office commodity service provider to an equal business partner for co-creating the strategy and contributing to the top line business growth. When the corporate organization invests in information technology resources, it entrusts the IT organization with the stewardship of that considerable investment and the responsibility of providing effective management of that investment.

Does the company ever appreciate the benefits of IT? In order to demonstrate IT value, organizations need to first know wherein lies the IT value. IT value is multidimensional, besides financial benefit by optimizing business operational cost and increasing profit margin, there is customer value that builds business brand; culture value that improves business reputation. IT needs to first understand what the business is, what their pain points are, identify areas for improvement and then those that can be improved with IT and achieve IT value proposition. If you understand that upfront by doing the right strategic questioning, you can later go back and ask if you achieved the value that had been set out to attain.

The critical point is relationships and developing a partnership mentality. IT has to demonstrate value with each business manager to be fully appreciated - and that is up to the IT leadership in each company. IT in the high mature organizations progressively see themselves as an integral enabler of business advances, a value creator, translating the promise of technology to a strategic and competitive advantage for the company's long term prosperity. Top management teams truly understand the implications of emerging technology trends and identify the opportunities for defining a successful business rationale in order to make wise IT investment toward getting a higher ROI.

The optimization of information technology shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all at the expense of the health of the overall organization. IT organizations are shifting from the monolithic industrial mode to mosaic digital style. There are very progressive organizations where IT sparks organizational innovation. It's important to run IT as a strategic partner by taking customized approaches that may apply differently to each problem, and it involves people, process, and technology to build differentiated business competency and improve overall business performance and maturity.

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Innovativeboardoversight

Governance is about guidance, values, and principles governing the company's commercial activities for achieving high-performance results.

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.

  Innovative Oversight

Innovativeoversightofbusinesscompetency Businesses across industries face fierce competitions and ever-changing marketing dynamic, they have to build unique competencies that differentiate themselves from competitors. Differentiation is an effect accomplished by having a sustainable competitive advantage to the market. Cosmetic differences or the differences which can be easily copied or surpassed by competitors should not be the essence of a strategy.

Unlockperformanceviastronggovernance Governance is about doing the right things to ensure business effectiveness; it is about guidance, values, and principles governing the company's commercial activities for achieving high-performance results. Governance is a collective mindset; and can be used to raise visibility and awareness for many things that are captured at the different levels of the organization. There are varying degrees of understanding of the scope of corporate governance and the distinction between corporate governance responsibilities and management responsibilities. Governance is a management enhancement tool and a learning tool that needs to be well understood and reinvented for improving business management commitment and maturity.

Innateprofessionaloversightofbods In a world of rapid changes, governance is a discipline which continually requires stroking and attention. Otherwise, it will stagnate and lose its ability to steer the business in the right direction. The corporate board of directors as the de facto guardians of modern organizations consisting of experienced, insightful, independent, and reputable specialized generalists, plays a critical role in business governance and steering their company in the right direction.

Innovationgovernance As businesses get more cut-throat in an ever-changing environment, innovation is the light all forward-looking organizations are pursuing. However, innovation management has a considerably low percentage of success rate. As there are learning curves and various barriers on the way. In some cases, the hard components such as systems, processes, or technology that many organizations are using to capture innovation value are becoming inefficient in this rapidly changing world; in other cases, the soft factors such as communication, culture, leadership are not effective, becoming the very obstacles to innovation management. Thus, governance is critical for meaningful innovation.

Innovationleadershipagenda We live and share such a beautiful planet together. It's the co-responsibility to deal with common problems and drive evolutionary changes we all want to see. It is a strategic imperative for today’s leaders to embrace the broader view of global society for shaping a transformational vision, co-set a global innovation agenda which covers global leadership development, human capital/potentiality exploration, people-centric problem solving at global scope, risk management, and it is closely related to several other disciplines as well.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 5 million page views with 8500+ blog postings 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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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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Innovationcapability

Businesses today have to make strategic choices all the time about where and when and how they innovate, putting emphasis on identifying, developing the innovative characteristics and building the unique innovation capabilities.

Innovation is to transform fresh ideas to achieve their commercial value for benefiting the widest possible audience within the organizational ecosystem. 

Innovation is what leads to differentiation; it involves new ways of bringing together ideas and resources to create something novel and differentiate the organization from competitors. It is a unique business capability to enable business growth and lead breakthrough business transformation.

Nonlinear and modular innovation capability: The digital innovation capability is modular, dynamic, and nonlinear, having many visible and invisible business elements for improving organizational competency. The unique business competency differentiates your organization from competitors. There are both hard ingredients such as people, process, knowledge, technology, etc, and soft elements such as communication and culture in building a set of strong business capabilities. To make wise investment on innovation capability development, describe business goals, scope, outcomes, technical capabilities within scope, approach, costs, time frames, risks, etc, as capability design must fit inside very strict business constraints, make it truly underpin a well-defined innovation strategy.

In practice, capabilities, especially at the integral level may include dependencies, one is part of another or depends on another. It’s important to gain insight into the condition and relationship or dependency of capabilities to improve capability coherence and maturity, and focus on building long-term professional competency. Top executives need to take a strategic perspective and identify the innovation patterns of the company, make the management view of the condition/suitability/adequacy/viability of innovation capability of the companies to improve innovation management effectiveness.

Lightweight processes allow creativity and innovation to flow, get protected, channeled and nurtured: Innovation capability and process are two viewpoints of building an innovative organization. An organization has innovation capability to deliver outcomes; an organization executes processes to deliver an output. A loosely structured, lightweight process allows companies to connect with the various points of the spiral in different ways vertically or horizontally, to connect the right dots, and spur innovation all the time. Processes Management is a “constructor” to build innovation capability portfolios.

Most companies fail at innovation execution because they have no clear processes, nor understand the structure and linkage required to work horizontally or penetrate vertically to manage innovation. A defined process or structure is essential to manage innovation effectively. However, the systems/processes/ technology many organizations are using to capture innovation value are becoming inefficient. When the processes of innovation management are overly restricted, sometimes innovation becomes the “hammer in search of a nail,” diminishing creativity, and stifling ideas flow. To improve innovation effectiveness, there is the mechanism to collect feedback and there is transparency in the follow-up system of the innovation process from the idea up to implementation, to gain management and peer recognition.

Innovation is the development of a new combination of available resources, in a way that solves real-world problems in a more suitable way: Oftentimes, the enterprise capability design and configuration is uniquely challenging because of resource limitations or other business constraints. Resources include technological, financial, reputational, market structure and institutional assets, etc. Innovation management needs to break down resource bottlenecks and manage a well-rounded innovation portfolio effectively and efficiently.

Business management should make an objective assessment of their resource availability and allocation. The resource needs to be assigned scientifically, to make sure that your company has a steady flow of fresh ideas floating in your innovation pipeline, and you can identify the best of the best, allocate resources to grow them into fruity. How resource allocation is determined should be understood by all-important business parties, take advantage of resources effectively, optimize cost, set priority, keep process transparent, and bridge talent gaps to improve innovation management maturity.

Businesses today have to make strategic choices all the time about where and when and how they innovate, putting emphasis on identifying, developing the innovative characteristics and building the unique innovation capabilities. The ultimate innovation isn't what you do; it's what you deliver for premium results to delight customers, and how being innovative becomes the state of mind and core differentiator of the business.

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Innerauthenticity

Authenticity inspires creativity, enhances accountability, unleashes potential, and accelerates professional competency development.

Being authentic is defined as being real or genuine, or simply being yourself, your character, personality, strength and weakness, even if you are not perfect, and nobody is. 

Being authentic is the state of self-consciousness, self-discovery, and self-improvement. The more you understand yourself; the better chance you can have a positive attitude to develop yourself, build unique competency and grow yourself into a talented professional and a high mature human being.

Authenticity inspires creativity: Creativity is both innate and a skill. It is an individual activity. So it’s by nature, unique to each person. Some can really develop it to be something invaluable. When you are authentic, reflect who you are, discover your inner strength, keep your mind flowing, release the positive energy, out of this comes a beautiful thing, the freedom of choice and the plenty seeds of creativity. Authenticity is the engine to boost creativity, and creativity is an idea to convey authenticity. The angle from which you view it determines how you identify and categorize the similarities and differences among the many faces of creativity.

Creativity at its inception is a very intimate personal pursuit. Authenticity makes people understand themselves better, and explore things or activities that interest them, so they get better opportunities to craft skills and build creativity strength. Creativity is multi-faceted, as if standing in a hall of mirrors, you reflect creativity back upon itself and speculate upon its nature, never knowing which image is real and which is the reflection. It seems creativity reflects itself without revealing its true nature. Creative people show intellectual curiosity to ask insightful questions, gain multidimensional understanding of problems, discover the truth from myths, spark fresh ideas and catalyze innovation.

Authenticity enforces accountability: A professional is responsible for his/her actions. He/she should be accountable to his/her organization, to himself/herself or his/her conscience. Consider authenticity to be a positive outcome of inner drive and strength, enlightened and informed motivation, authenticity enforces accountability. Being authentic means being true to that in every aspect: thinking, saying, and doing to enforce accountability; showing integrity to make sound judgment, think and act consistently to lead change smoothly.

In the business setting, accountability needs to be well embedded in the organizational culture; advocating open leadership, shared accountability or collective accountability involves shared ownership, empathetic communication, and cross-functional collaboration which further catalyze innovation. Thus, organizations should cultivate the culture of authenticity - to encourage people to be authentic, inspire inclusiveness and enhance accountability, apply independent thinking for decision-making, with the intention to build on morale and improve business performance.

Authenticity accelerates capability development: Capability developed based on authenticity and natural talent via a series of activities and resources make people feel more confident and effortless. People experience all kinds of situations good and bad in their lives that require moral courage to deal with, and capabilities to deal with them for achieving certain results. Competency is a unique set of capabilities with focus; here are cognitive competency, knowledge competency, or problem-solving competency. All of those could be integrated into core competency to make professional achievement.

Authenticity accelerates capability building because inner talent can be developed more smoothly into professional competencies. Leadership is a unique competency. Being authentic makes leaders more purposeful, truthful and influential. If they can keep discovering who they are, and pursuing the better version of themselves. As a matter of fact, leadership authenticity is based on the purpose of leadership; the leadership strength; and leadership practices. Defining your true purpose is a helpful instrument to guide yourself, your team, your business, and your relations along the other dimensions.

Being authentic means being true to that in every aspect: Thinking, saying and doing. You are the cohesive self, not the pieces of incoherent parts. Everyone is unique, the mind of every individual is different, the actual mental understanding and subsequent manifestations in action will be different for each individual. Authenticity inspires creativity, enhances accountability, unleashes potential, and accelerates professional competency development.

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Innovativepersonalizationii

Providing personalized services or solutions to its customers has become the new normal to run a people-centric organization.

The effects of an increasingly digitized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, creativity is the most desired trait for digital leaders and professionals today, and innovation is the light every organization is pursuing. 

Which themes shall you set to advocate digital transformation? How to lead toward the digital future effortlessly?

    Innovative Personalization II

Innovateviapersonalization Digital is the era of people, option, empathy, or simply put, "personalization." Either for running the business or reinventing an advanced human society, we expect that great personalization leads to better understanding by designing tailored applications to delight customers or premium solutions to solve complex problems. In fact, providing personalized services or solutions to its customers has become the new normal to run a customer-centric organization.

Innovateviapersonalizationframework The purpose of business is to create customers. Providing personalized services or solutions to its customers has become the new normal to run a customer-centric organization. Personalization via the hard touch of human science focuses on discovering and developing human intelligence by taking an integral approach with framework, principle, processes, practices, and performance. Personalization via the soft touch of human science inspires out-of-the-box thinking and paraconsistent inductive and deductive reasoning.

Innovatingviapersonalization The digital era upon us is about people, option, empathy, or simply put, "personalization." Businesses across industries do data mining to gain insight of customers and understand what they need even before they know themselves, provide personalized products/services/solutions, and develop people-centric organization that matures itself via continuous brainstorming, refining and reinventing business models, processes, and differentiated competencies.

Innovating via Personalization It just turns out that, as human society gets more and more complex, dynamic, nonlinear, uncertain, volatile, and ambiguous, the continued use of the old paradigm, the old-world-view-lens, creates ever-increasing problems. The very natural attempt of humans to take the technical aspect of science is also not sufficient to run a hyperconnected and interdependent world.

Innovativepersonalizationframework Digital organizations are all about information savvy, adaptation, people-centricity, high-performance, and speed. Going digital with a personalization theme takes multifaceted management disciplines and structural procedures to drill down the critical success factors for reaching long term business success. All enterprises are designed to varying degrees of detail and with varying degrees of success, but it does not mean that they are architected seamlessly. Digital is the age of people and options, it provides the opportunity to think about the new way to do things, engage employees, and delight customers. An architectural framework is a useful tool for a dynamic and iterative long term strategic planning process that fine tune the internal and external business influence factors, focus on reality, leverage effective methods and practices to untangle current business puzzles and improve people centricity.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 5 million page views with about #8500th 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. 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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Innovateleadershipvii

Information integrity and logic integrity can cause huge swings in strategy management. 

Leadership is about change and direction. With “VUCA” new normal, shaping a clarified vision is often difficult as it requires insight and alignment at the most senior levels and needs to link to the overall strategic imperatives of the company. In the senior position, organizational leaders need to stay on strategic focus rather than tactical details.

 They are able to count on the answer and understand the scope of the answer and any constraints on validity or accuracy. They make deep influence on corporate culture and orchestrate transformative change smoothly.

Senior leaders should have strategic views to “keep the end” in mind and guide through strategy management: Every organization has limited resources, talent and tight time schedule, all strategies fall under and are subject to systemic constraints in which they exist. Senior leaders are systemic at a higher level, forward-looking and goal driven, set the right priority to focus on the most important thing. They have a role to play in balancing, not only leveling the internal playing field, but also leveraging different lenses -you build the best strategy based on the circumstances that will allow the highest probability of success and manage risks effectively.

When the business gets over-complicated or stagnated, trace down the poor behaviors or lower-than-expected performance, understand the causes behind it. Some chaotic situations require an "act, sense, respond" approach, and so the strategy is to act and find out what happens. Top leadership guides through strategy management by checking up: Is strategy understood by employees and customers? Statistics show that in many companies, the majority of their people don’t know what their business strategies are, so they cannot align their daily work with strategic goals of the companies. Senior leaders should oversee their core capabilities, ensure scientific resource allocation in a way that really supports the strategy, day-to-day decisions are in line with strategy, and capability-based strategy have a higher success rate.

Senior management influences "invisible culture": Culture is a collective mindset, attitude, and behavior. Senior leadership makes a high influence on corporate culture. Sometimes it is the management culture that is out of date and harming the organization's prospects. Good culture can lift a so-so strategy, while a negative culture will eat strategy for dinner. Thus, senior leaders need to gain an in-depth understanding of changes, especially at the strategic level. Culture is an amalgamation of people, their core values, their socioeconomic realities, lifestyles, and education. Good policy can make a significant influence on shaping desired cultures. However, culture is not something that can be dictated and followed such as a new policy or rule from management only. Senior leadership has to set good examples, people, process, and technology have to be aligned seamlessly to ensure that great culture can be built to support solid strategy management.

Corporate culture is a business character and personality. Change is supposed to happen. Resistance is supposed to happen. Company strategy flowing from company culture is intentional leadership at its best. Senior leaders should develop a practical roadmap, walk the talk; believe in the effects and high value of company culture, provide ample room for cultural development, design and advocate an authentic culture to improve the success rate of business strategy. It is nevertheless true that the change itself has become unpredictable and evolutionary, an organization with strong culture and change capability is an environment of growth and letting go, possibilities, the mix of order and chaos, solutions, innovation, creativity, and change are interconnected. Senior Management plays the role of culture influencer to drive transformative changes and lift the organization up towards the next level of organizational growth and maturity.

The senior leaders are more interested in getting an update about the performance of the common strategic business goals: Senior leaders make strategic decisions on a daily basis, information integrity and logic integrity can cause huge swings in strategy management. Top management should verify the integrity of the information prior to trusting decisions emanating from it. Quality information allows leaders at all levels to understand where they stand and what is required as a team to enhance business disciplines. People have different focuses and there are discrepancies of perceptions and motivations. One interpretation of performance data may differ greatly from another interpretation of that same data. It is always beneficial to harness communication and improve accuracy of overall results when multiple heads come together to interpret and define information sources and outcomes.

Organizationally, there should be common goals; this kind of common goals helps to create collaboration and cohesion. In many circumstances, having different goals tends to lead to differing priorities, communication breakdowns, and the growth of "silos." Senior leaders have discernment to improve information quality and integration, make a data-based decision to unify, not divide. The more engaged the business leader in assessing information-based performance results, the better and more persuasive and strong their leadership become. Though not every executive needs to become data guru, all senior business leaders, if possible, need to become decision-making gurus and change agents.

Great leadership is a good combination of mindsets, attitudes, expertise, insight, and behaviors. Senior leadership implies strategic foresight, profound insight, decision wisdom, the high level of intellectual and emotional maturity, and leadership influence. Top leaders perceive the business through a multidimensional lens, understand the people and the organization through an ecosystem lens, develop the company as a living thing, and make it possible to allow the organization to explore digital transformation in all directions for making a seamless paradigm shift.

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