Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Inquisitiveness

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


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

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

The CIO as “Chief Inquisitiveness Officer”

 

Inquisitiveness Curiosity is a human nature, inquisitiveness stimulates imagination; amplifies influence and accelerates improvement. Asking the right questions helps to validate how thorough and deep your thinking is on a particular issue: it can also assess whether they consider various different perspectives.

Innovateviacollaborator Being innovative is about thinking differently, acting differently, and adding value differently for solving problems creatively. Innovativeness is a state of mind. From an evolutionary perspective, this is what we humans have always done and will continue doing – exploring our minds and bodies for the latent powers inherent in our genes to generate creative energy, and unleash unlimited potential to drive progression.

Innovativecharacteristics Being innovative is about thinking differently, acting differently, and adding value differently for solving problems creatively. Innovativeness is a state of mind. From an evolutionary perspective, this is what we humans have always done and will continue doing – exploring our minds and bodies for the latent powers inherent in our genes to generate creative energy, and unleash unlimited potential to drive progression.

CIOs as “Chief Inquisitiveness Officer”: Three Big “WHYs” to Reimagine IT for Getting Digital Ready Different IT organizations and enterprises are at different stages of the business maturity, IT can be used as a tool, enabler, integrator, catalyst, or a digital game changer to meet the ultimate goal of an organization's short/medium/long-term strategic plans. Many IT organizations are at the crossroads, should they continue to be run as the cost center to keep the lights on only, and gradually become irrelevant? Or should they take the bold steps, move up the maturity level to get digital ready? The answer seems to be no brainer, but CIOs today, in fact, face numerous management dilemmas. They have to reimagine the new possibilities, convey a clear technological vision to both convince and deliver the alternative view of IT being a profit enabler and innovation engine. Digital CIOs are “Chief Inquisitiveness Officers,” they have to keep asking thought-provoking questions to brainstorm the better way to run IT. Here are three big “WHYs” questions to diagnose the possible causes of IT effectiveness, and improve IT maturity for getting digital ready.

CIO as Chief Inquisitiveness Officer: Can, Shall or How CIOs Say “I Don’t Know” At the industrial age, managers or leaders seem to be expected to have all answers, now businesses are moving to digital era with "VUCA" characteristics (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity), although there’s mountain of data, and information is only a few clicks away, indeed, in many circumstances, finding an answer to a complex problem takes collective insight and collaborative effort. So, as a senior level business executive, can, shall or how CIOs say “I don’t know”? How does someone in a highly visible position such as CIOs say "I don’t know" about the key business issue or technology problems without compromising his/her authority, career and influence?

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

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