Innovativesociety

The digital paradigm upon us means hyper-connectivity, interdependence, integration and holism.

We are at the intersection of knowledge and creative economy; human society is at a turning point that requires a significant adjustment in our evolutionary path rooted at the mindset level., and expanded into actions with solid footprints. 

Either at organizational or societal level, leaders today need to identify the capability gaps for strategy management; look ahead and be proactively looking for opportunities to improve. To accelerate collective progress, leaders need to be bold and innovative, creating a structure that continually delivers what the business needs and takes further steps toward maximizing the full digital potential.

Synchronization: Information is the most time intensive piece of digital management. The power of information is to empower the business with real-time insight across the organization in ways never possible before for envisioning the future, enabling real-time decision-making, capturing customer insight, for achieving cross-disciplinary management synchronization. Strategy-execution synchronization can lead to the smooth alignment process of ensuring all organizational actions are directed to achieving common strategic goals and objectives.

In the digital era, solving large-scale problems on-time, on-value in a hyper-connected ecosystem usually needs information-based cross-functional communication, collaboration, organizational level process synchronization and collaboration-driven relationship harmony. It starts to leverage powerful technology tools to boost social engagement, improve organizational structural flexibility, create multiple pathways for information flow and collaborative problem-solving.

Agility: Most firms are already using agile in some form or shape. However, the business level agile transformation is a continuous journey. Agile is not just engineering practice, but a set of management philosophy and principles to perceive multidimensional business values. You build up momentum, changes have been made by focusing on iteration, improvement, innovation.

The management needs to keep checkup: Is there more to do? Do you go back to the trenches after you have transformed the organization? How do you keep the morale up and positive gains being made? Agile needs to be the philosophy with the next practices. Make the effort at the leadership and portfolio level to qualify and quantify value in terms of both strategic value and tactical value, to reach the upper levels of agility: collaborative, evolutionary, integrated, adaptive, encompassing.

Cohesiveness: We live in the era with data exponentiality and increasing pace of changes. There are inherent dangers of too much knowledge particularly because of the inconsistencies and incoherence in exponential growth of information and the body of knowledge that surrounds us. Knowledge is power, and it can be useful in trying to understand if what's imagined can be achieved. But outdated or incoherent knowledge or “knowing it all” attitude might turn out to be the burden to stop us from exploring the new horizon, or even turn off the spark of creativity.

Capability coherence is a decisive factor for strategy management; choose how to improve the capability based on unique enterprise strengths for investing in the best of breed capability and integrate them into cohesive and differentiated business competency. Besides hard capability, culture is soft. Considering "cultural" cohesiveness should be part of this effort putting an umbrella on all the practices in building and sustaining dynamics in a workforce, enhancing trust, fostering collaboration, to ensure the business as a whole is superior to the sum of its parts.

Viability: Due to “VUCA” reality, if the organization understands itself in relation to its context, it should be able to determine whether it requires changing something to become viable. The viable digital businesses are solid enough to give some sort of forms and meaning and open enough to its environment, allowing the movement of information, ideas, and people in and out with less friction. take a structural approach to develop differentiated business competencies and build a creative workforce to maintain viability.

To improve organizational competitive advantage, forward-thinking organizations aren't sacrificing the long-term viability of the management portfolio for short-term rewards. The digital organization as a complex and dynamic system needs to be elaborated in a well-organized effort. How viable the business is depends on the business's ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure dynamic and differentiated competences to address rapidly changing environments, build new capability, and achieve innovative forms of competitive advantage given path dependencies and market positions.

Sustainability: Sustainability is about minimizing the usage of non-renewable resources, optimizing resource use, cutting emission and recycling waste. It is a strategic discipline to renew our beautiful planet. However, in many organizations that are getting stuck at the lower level of maturity, the leadership sets sustainability as too low a priority. Sustainability isn’t integrated into existing key processes & performance management systems. Or a key piece of information around environmental and social concerns, has been missing from most business operations.

Forethoughtful leaders need to become advocates and educators for corporate-wide environmental sustainability initiatives and make sustainability an integral component of organizational strategy. Reuse and reduction of waste reduce cost and creates new revenue streams to impact both bottom-line and top-line business growth. It’s important to transcribe a path that converts outside concerns into inside engagement, reducing energy use & waste & emissions in operations, managing corporate reputation for sustainability, and responding to regulatory constraints or opportunities proactively.

The digital paradigm upon us means hyper-connectivity, interdependence, integration and holism. In today’s business dynamic, real societal progress is made through the work of progressive and foreseeable leaders and business professionals who can figure out how to trend the future, spur creativity, enhance trust, harness cross boundary collaboration, and build a highly adaptive, intelligent and innovative society.

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Innerlogic

 Logic is a thinking process in which a result is derived from a thought.

Many organizations are doing digital - applying digital gadgets or taking a few business initiatives. But very few are being digital - move to the high level of digital maturity with a cohesive strategy and a holistic approach. The fundamental difference is the digital mind shift. 

In addition to the set point changing, transformation requires first shifting mindsets and then building new skills, capabilities, and reinforcing and embedding new practices/reflexes.

Inner logic

Innerlogic There are unknown interactions, interdependent pieces, and very high inner dynamics in many problems which have an inherent and irreducible complexity. Many problems today are complex and interdependent, as every complex problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.

Innovativelogic Complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty are the reality today; it’s important to deal with the nonlinear, hyperconnected situations in today's digital dynamic. The most important capability of the cognitive mind with coherent logic is the willingness and ability to seek out knowledge, gain an in-depth understanding of people or things, identify problem areas, dig into root causes, make effective decisions and come up with novel solutions for moving forward.

Paradoxical Logic Due to the occurrence of increased economic integration, information permeation, technology underpinnings, the black and white boundaries continue to diminish in the 21st century. It’s important to deal with the nonlinear, multi-logical situation in today's digital dynamic, and understand the logic behind business scenes. Business logic today is often nonlinear or even paradoxical characterized by the movement of information, people, and businesses with the mixed structures, hyper diversity, volatility, unpredictability, and increased flux. Business management today needs to be interdisciplinary, informative, and innovative.

Intrinsic Logic behind Complex Problems Business is complex with many moving parts, to deal with today’s multi-logical situation in digital dynamic requires multiple valid viewpoints, multidisciplinary approach, and multi-choice solutions. Digital leaders or professionals should understand the intrinsic logic - how likely the situation is likely to change or better information will become known.

Logic, Intelligence, Creativity & their Interwoven Relationships "Intelligence" is from Latin word “intellego” -Inter-lego: Bind together, read between the lines, or connect the dots. Creativity is an innate thought process to connect the dots and generate innate ideas. Logic is a thinking process in which a result is derived from a thought.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #8900th 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 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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itledchange

IT has moved from providing largely back-office support to becoming the business change facilitator, value creator, and orchestrator of the large-scale business transformation.

Information technology is the linchpin of strategy management. IT needs to be reinvented from a cost-based transaction department to a strategic partner of the business.

 IT leaders will be welcomed to the executive table if business executives hear the language they understand, aligning people, process, and technology with the company’s strategic plan propels your company far in front of your competition. The strategic goal is to build people-centric, IT-led intelligent organizations or human society.

Enhancing Information Management disciplines: Besides people, information is the most invaluable asset which can drive the progress of a business, forward-thinking organizations across sectors claim they are in the information management business of the digital age. Information Management is to make sure that the right information is in the right place at the right time and shared to the right persons for making the right decision to solve the right problems timely. When the corporate organization invests in information technology resources, it entrusts the IT organization with the stewardship of that considerable investment, managing their data assets to achieve its full potential for business growth and customer satisfaction.

An intelligent organization always looks for opportunities across the business to increase the usage of information. Information management is not the responsibility of the IT department only, as information flows across boundaries, businesses can manage information and climb the information-knowledge insight pyramid for shaping a highly responsive and intelligent organization by enhancing seamless IT-business integration and systematic GRC disciplines.

Identifying areas that need improvement, looking for new avenues of revenue, better practice, etc: Do a thorough analysis of IT activities, programs, and policies in terms of cost optimization, revenue growth, innovation and their contribution in maximizing shareholders benefit. IT is not just the sum of services or processes, or monolithic hardware, IT becomes more “I” driven rather than “T” focused. IT must partner with the business to listen to their feedback, understand their true need, and deliver the best solution to truly solve their issues. It is through this comprehensive understanding that IT can help to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency through consolidation, modernization, integration, optimization, and innovation.

IT needs to weave all necessary hard and soft business elements to build unique competency in reaching high-level maturity. IT application development shouldn’t be strictly a service that follows the order only. The right IT applications blended with current digital trends can deliver the significant benefits to the business, such as customer satisfaction, business optimization, and change adaptability, etc, as well as build dynamic IT enable business capabilities. The breadth and depth of IT management improvement include people and process (, workflow, efficiency, effectiveness, organizational structure); technologies or assets already owned need to be centralized, re-allocated, updated or replaced if needed to optimize “people and process” for reaching the next level of organizational agility.

IT Governance facilitates faster, better execution through visibility, information-based decision making, and structural problem-solving: IT becomes a competitive advantage for supporting the business goals and objectives. IT governance is crucial because the rate of change is faster than the risk management capabilities of companies. This is compounded by the fact that the threat matrix is large enough to put the entire organization at risk. In fact, IT governance needs to be a complementary part of IT strategic management.

IT governance is converging with corporate governance. In practice, IT governance discipline should include not only IT-driven business solutions but also IT policy, process, change management to decide where to make IT investments, provide IT insights, and be the marketer for all the information to ensure consistency and compliance and can assist in risk management. Portfolio management as a governance discipline is also essential to and as such, a comprehensive fusing of a firm's strategic capabilities.

IT has moved from providing largely back-office support to becoming the business change facilitator, value creator, and orchestrator of the large-scale business transformation. As a matter of fact, digital transformation is a natural evolution as most business initiatives today involve IT to create differentiated business capabilities and bridge today and tomorrow of the company.

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Ultimatelevelofstrategyimplementation

Strategy management is multidimensional; strategy execution is often multipath-driven.

Abundant information, rapid change and fierce competitions blur the distinction between strategy formulation and execution. Execution has seemingly increased in priority as a result of the rising frequency of change and turbulence today.

 On one side, great execution is more critical to superior strategies; on the other side, if you execute the wrong strategy, it is not going to get you where you want to be. Execution is more difficult due to its complexity and the culture of resistance. The top reason why strategy implementations fail is because they were not actionable from the get-go. It’s important to identify and bridge the difference/gap between strategy designed at the initial stages and the strategy which eventually got executed has been widening. It’s also crucial to clarify three levels of strategy execution management. If you try to impose solutions or structures that are too far ahead of the curves, the result is alienation and rebellion rather than seamless transformation.

Implementing basic right: Strategy management needs to be mapped with operation management; aligned with business resource and capacity management, accumulated through daily tasks of employees. Doing fundamental right is the first level of strategy execution. Digital leaders have to not only provide clear process guidelines but also see that the teams are engaged, collaborative, and accountable to continually deliver the higher than expected business results to ensure reliability and endurance

The management needs to ponder: Does the faster operation at daily base help to achieve the good or worst strategic business. The fact is that if some problems with basic operational tasks occur frequently, the customer will defect. Implementing basic right is about those routine activities which the customer expects that an organization should be flawless in delivering with reliability - There is no differentiation created by doing these activities routinely well - it simply keeps you in the game.

Prioritizing "wants" or "wishes”: Digital organization is dynamic to adapt to the ever-changing environment, the management must go out and talk with customers to understand their tastes and current and future needs. Every customer has a "wish list" - a list of things they would really like the organization to be doing for them, but at the present time, due to limited resources and time, they are not. If you find these through focus group activity and act on them, you can create differentiation for the business.

Ultimately, what the management, in general, must truly understand the business visions and goals. Senior leaders should oversee across the entire landscape of the business, set the right priority, and become more customer-centric based on their “wants and wishes.” The objective shouldn't be to work on only those projects for which you have staff, it should be to maximize what you can accomplish through creative leverage of your talent pool and build differentiated business competency. The method that is used must deliver the results that are consistent with the business values and goals.

Value-adding: A good strategy is based on the application of scientific, economic, socio-cultural, and practical (technical/ non-technical) knowledge to diagnose critical problems and solve them effectively. The ultimate level of strategy management is value adding. The value itself is a multi-dimensional concept, a seamless customer experience, an optimal business product/service, a tailored solution, a commercial value proposition, a social value system which deals with and provides context for varying interest and need. Actually showing how everyone is connected to that strategy in real-time is a big driver in allowing managers to drive to the results they seek in an efficient way.

Differentiated business value can be defined as "any tangible or intangible benefit which the customer perceives the competition is either unwilling or unable to provide." It is an immediate source of differentiation and competitive advantage for your organization. Practically, leveraging information technology to design processes and solutions to resolve and transform situations and complexities in opportunities
and success. Contextually, to really realize the value, the measurement method is to persuade management to believe in measuring the value-adding contributions to the organization as a positive; present a methodology to acquire the “appropriate” contextual measurement items, and maintain vigilance.

We are at the intersection of knowledge economy and creative economy, the enterprises today need to become more open and responsive. Strategy management is multidimensional; strategy execution is often multipath-driven. The business is doomed to fail if the strategy looks “beautiful,” but there’s no solid action to achieve it. Strategy execution success is more dependent on the business's agility to respond to changes, capabilities to implement. With the changing nature of digital dynamic, strategy and execution are no longer linear steps, but an iterative continuum.

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Innovativeleadership

Leadership is about vision and directions that steer the organization in the right direction.

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

The purpose of the book: “Leadership Master - Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity” is to convey the vision of digital leadership, share the insight about leadership maturity, and summarize five emergent digital leadership trends Here is the monthly tuning of digital leadership to celebrate #8200 blog postings.

            Innovative Leadership

Innovativeleadership(v) Due to the complex nature of modern businesses, business innovation today is more complex, often the “cross-science” management discipline. Today’s leaders need to deal with constant ambiguity and unprecedented uncertainty, they naturally gravitate to a leadership role when things are unknown, things will change, technology is involved, a tough problem has to be solved, etc.

Innovativeleadership(iv) Leadership is influence. Leadership is complex because there’re so many variables in it, leadership is simple because the substance of leadership is about future and progression. Innovative leadership is when you think, act and enable others with a creative spirit that drives leapfrog changes.

Innovativeleadership (iii) Today’s internet-based world is much more hyper-connected and interdependent with the exponential growth of information, and continually evolves an ever-expanded ecosystem. Digital workforce is diverse both from heart and mind, not just the outlook on the surface.

Innovativeleadership (ii) Leadership is complex, although it has many facets, the ultimate criterion of "high-influential leadership," is the ability to create more leaders, to spread leadership influence. Effective leadership is the good combination of substances plus styles. The substance of leadership never changes, but it has to shift the styles to adapt to the increasing pace of changes, it takes hard work and endurance to improve leadership maturity.

Innovateleadership With increased velocity, complexity, unpredictability, ambiguity, great leaders know how to carry themselves in most contexts, amplify leadership influence by keeping positive energy flowing around, discovering purpose, strengthening leadership strength, practicing leadership autonomy continuously.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about 8900+ 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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Ingredientsinadvancement

When life is shifting from surviving to striving and thriving, people are becoming more progressive via learning and practicing, life is in the most advanced stage.

We are on the advancing journey when we move from information scarcity to knowledge economy to creativity economy. The most advanced things in the world are the mindset that can think forward, positively and creatively. 

When the organization or the world catches up with the most advanced mindsets, stepping into the further-looking perspective, aligned with invaluable knowledge & resources, fitting into the digital dynamic, and integrating into upward movements, it makes a leap of collective human progress. Here are the very characteristics of true advancement.

Simplexity: Simplicity is the optimal level of complexity. The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary hassles so that the necessary can speak out. Simplicity is a mindset to see things as and what and where they are and be content and cool as it is. There is a relationship between simplicity and clarity. How do you know that simplicity is "just right"? You need complexity to understand, appreciate simplicity and vice versa.

In order to handle unprecedented complexity, it is crucial to look at things from various sides. Simplicity perhaps means different things for different roles via varying angles. Simplicity is an aspect of “appropriate” abstraction. It's all about balance and perception. Simplicity is the building blocks of looking for what is common for maximum reuse. Simplicity is the principle to produce reliable, intuitive and delightful products, services or business solutions.

Brightness: The bright people with the positive mentality and growth mindset can brighten the surroundings. Being bright is not just about “looking bright,” but about thinking about the bright side and coming up with more bright ideas. Brightness is a trait of advancement as the bright mind with optimistic thinking can overcome shadows, break down silo, common belief and conventional wisdom, bring new perspectives to spark fresh ideas and transform inward focus creativity into outward driven innovation.

Innovators and change agents are bright to overcome the shadows in people’s minds, build the culture of learning and creativity. When the color of aura shows bright colors, it often reflects the positive mentality, fresh viewpoints, unique personality, innate strength, and influential leadership traits.

Intelligence: There are as many different ways to characterize intelligence as there are different types and forms of information implying on our senses. Intelligence is a cognitive process involving rational and abstract thinking. It is the goal- directed and purposeful. That means all intelligent activities are planned to reach self-determined goals.

Either individual or business, contemporary intelligence is contextual and multidimensional. Intelligence is the capacity to understand and apply wisdom to the knowledge you are exposed to. High mental ability, therefore, is critical in optimizing thought processes, and improving decision maturity.

Quality: The quality of life is given via the quality of thinking you continually practice. The noble goal of thinking is to either solve problems or discover new phenomena. People quality often decides the quality of the other part of the business. To build an advanced organization, the digital workforce today must improve knowledge proficiency, professional quality, and maturity by developing their unique leadership or professional capability portfolio, and make continuous deliveries.

High-quality enterprise consists of high-quality people, high-quality products/services, and high-quality business capabilities/processes, etc. High-quality digital professionals are consistent life learners, change agents, and creative problem-solvers. They are the ones who can think and work independently, bring positivity and wisdom to the workplace, have excellent problem-solving skills, disciplines, and demonstrate a "customer focus."

Delight: The digital era upon us is about people-centricity. Employee delight is about creating a positive and creative mentality to focus on problem-solving, autonomy, self-discovery, and creativity. The delightful working environment is the one in which sharing and collaboration are the new normal, with idea-rich innovation hubs and community-based clusters across enterprise ecosystems. From functioning to firm to delight, delight implies a high-level maturity of business.

Inclusiversity is a delight. Delight is reflected in the expression of joy that overflows with talent appreciation and abundant gratitude to knowledge sharing and idea creation. Inclusion would be a team where everyone feels comfortable sharing ideas and thoughts because everyone has a different perspective based on their cognitive difference, diverse life experiences, and enriched cultural values.

 The advanced journey starts when you climb the knowledge-insight-wisdom pyramid, the higher you reach, the more advanced the view you can perceive, the more capable you become to solve complex problems. When life is shifting from surviving to striving and thriving, people are becoming more progressive via learning and practicing, life is in the most advanced stage, and society as a whole is advancing to the next stage. Only through continuous improvement, human advancement can be sustained and the world can move forward with accelerated speed.

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Isn’ttalentfromwithin?

Talent is-a gift; something- in the building.

Talent is -

raw;

a natural affinity to-

do certain things,

confidently.


Talent is -

like the seed,

grow it;

talent is -

something deeper,

to boost-

creative energy;

it can't be -

completely trained;

but can be nurtured,

appropriately.


Talent is-

a gift;

something-

in the building.

Everyone is born with -

some;

an innate ability,

you feel comfortable of-

achieving

no matter -

how long,

you do,

how often,

you want to do it -

to your fullest,

competitively.


Talent comes from within,

make you-

feel good,

intuitively;

from human nature,

instincts,

passion,

emotions,

feelings,

talent could be -

the right balance -

between "heart" & "mind";

between -

what is innate & what is developed;

talent is-

precious;

both natural & nurtured,

hybridly.

Talent is the ability to-

put the skill to-

proper use,

keep us competitive.

for achieving -

the “art of possible.”

Inability to -

understand our own gifts is-

what ends it,

Talent needs -

to be sharpened into-

unique competency.


It's impossible for us to-

wear out our gifts;

the more-

we use them,

the stronger,

we become;

fine-crafted talent is -

a good combination of -

willpower,

brain power,

knowledge power,

talent is amazing.

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Innovativeconnectivity

Organizational maturity is not only about technical excellence, process efficiency, effectiveness, efficiency, but also about business agility, innovation, intelligence, and people-centricity.

Running a business is an iterative business continuum. The digital era upon us is about choice, innovation, people-centricity. It provides the opportunity for business leaders to think the new way to do things, forcing them to get really creative on how they architect and implement change, how they handle the investigation of innovative business solutions, to change the business’s perception, reinvent the business to become more organic, alive, vibrant, energetic, responsive, fluid, and innovative.

Architecture & strategy: The companies today move so fast, marketing, finance, IT, talent, and leadership are all intertwined. Business Architecture that defines the means for the strategy and contains the organizational context, is strategic in that it gives direction to the business design and transformation. It brings a systematic understanding of relationships, ecosystems, market dynamics, and the connections between related business functions. The development of robust business strategies is greatly aided by leveraging business architecture to improve strategy management effectiveness.

Business strategy helps to diagnose real business problems, set guidelines, make choices and take actions. Business Architecture should help to leverage multi-choices of strategy, bridge strategy and execution. That means even if there’s only one destination but it may have multi-routes to get there and improve the promising alternative. Strategy implementation begins with a rich problem framing process that delivers robust strategic choices defined as executable sets of resource allocation decisions. Business Architecture contributes to architect business in the transition to the strategic state defined in the strategic planning via seamless integration, to ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces.

Strategy & intelligence: Information is the grist for strategy; intelligence defines the strategy. In the context of an organization, information is representation of organizational entities including human beings and processes. Business intelligence, which is defined as capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding relationships, facts, meanings, etc, has a multidimensional impact such as assisting in prioritizing business problems or opportunities, enabling better decision-making, and strategic problem-solving.

Running an intelligent organization is all about transforming information into business insight and foresight to improve business agility and maturity. Without intelligence, strategy is dumb; without strategy, intelligence lacks of purpose. Technically, intelligence is captured through leveraging analysis tools to process abundant information to achieve certain values in better management and governance. With the application of intelligence, it is the aggregation, assessment, and refinement of information that creates the intelligence required to define the rules and strategies driving the business forward effectively.

Intelligence & investment: There are both opportunities and risks for every investment; visibility into each investment is established to provide ongoing investment health information as well as enable understanding overall portfolio health. Without intelligence, investment could be costly. Making wise investment presents a greater challenge and reward by pioneering the development of new products, services, processes, or business models, etc. It’s crucial to evaluate the impacts of investment decisions by presenting a strategic look, and do insightful analysis to maximize the business's benefit from the investment.

Great investment managers ask insightful questions to make an objective assessment of their investment portfolio: the impact of ideas, the practicality and scalability of business models, cost/risk analysis, return on investment, etc., achieve portfolio agility to anticipate and respond to changing market conditions. They are able to align the business activities that have a three-way impact - Revenue, Cost and Investments at the same time by choosing an environment to compete to achieve higher-than-expected performance results.

Organizations today need nothing less than a paradigm shift in their thinking about the fundamentals of how organizations work, as well as how to build an ever-evolving intelligent organization. Organizational maturity is not only about technical excellence, process efficiency, effectiveness, efficiency, but also about business agility, innovation, intelligence, and people-centricity.

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Innercustomerexperiencecompetency

In essence, the digital era is the age of the customer; customer-centricity becomes the goal to fit the business’s purpose –to create more customers.

Due to the fast pace of changes and fierce competitions, it is without a doubt that many organizations have come to the realization that in order to be successful within their industry, they have to focus their efforts on improving customer satisfaction and building people-centric business.

 Customer experience is the conjunction point of ideas, purpose and human understanding. As a matter of fact, customer experience is both an output/outcome as well as acting as input to future improvements and innovations.

Customer experience is the key differentiator and an important strategy for long-term advantages: From strategic making to execution, customer-centricity means customer is the focal point. The customer-centric strategy takes the outside-in view and puts the customer at the center of business strategy and catalyzes people-centric innovation in a structural way. It’s important to convince senior management the value of customer experience with both “hard data” and soft touch, increasing customer delight from customer service to customer experience to customer success.

Although being customer-centric is at the top agenda of every forward-thinking organization, very few companies can walk the talk from top-down to digitize every touch point of customer experience and quantify its value. Often organizations don't know how to develop a strategic plan based on how to create value for customers. You might find people mistaking methodology for strategy, and applying techniques inefficiently to identify and define customer experience. So innovation and customer centricity have to be built into the business strategy; the culture of customer-centricity should be nurtured, the best and next practices to delight customers need to be developed, focus on creating value for people in every step to achieve well-defined strategic goals with C-level attention and sponsorship.

Customer experience, when done with rigor, discipline and focused approach in the right way, can be developed into a strategic capability: Customer-centricity is the description of the nature of the priorities in the organizations today. Each customer will have different needs and expectations throughout the journey, so the company needs to provide tailored solutions to fit their needs empathetically. Companies can provide input into a qualitative assessment and consider customer-centric services, processes, information, assets, people, etc, dimensions of the adequacy of the business capability to fulfill their business strategy.

Perhaps there is too much bias on terms like ``journey of customer experience or even “sequence of customer experiences.” Information Technology is the integrator and superglue to recombinant dynamic business capabilities for digitizing touch points of customer experience and accelerating the business capability development cycle. If the sequence of events is based on "outside in" data and the end result is to transform the company to increase its customer centric maturity and build a set of differentiated business capabilities to implement customer-centric strategy.

Policy sets the tune for people-centricity; processes optimize customer-experience: A move towards customer-centricity can be delivered through policies that are taken. Customer resolution is as much driven by the policy that informs or governs the process as much as by the physical act of the task at hand. New customer process changes, technology impacts, economic, and political policy trigger changes in the customers’ environment, thus, changing the need.

The process is part of the customer experience, and customer experience is the sum of the process. Not all processes and improvements are equal because each touch-point in any process does not always have the same effect. However, every part of the process is interlinked and the smallest touchpoint will have an effect (bottleneck) on a major touchpoint further up or down the line, and vice versa. To improve customer experience, the management can further verify: How many processes or customer touchpoints are included. How many staff people are involved? How much time/ finance requires at each step or touchpoints, etc. An ultimately honed and efficient business process should offer many valuable experiences and benefits on both sides!

In essence, the digital era is the age of the customer; customer-centricity becomes the goal to fit the business’s purpose –to create more customers. Customer experience strategy management is not just that empathetic understanding of people, but the ability to frame it as a compelling story, and step-wise solution. People-centric businesses are fluid, flexible, and intelligent in knitting all necessary elements together into great customer experience and drive a seamless paradigm shift.

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Innerlearningcorporateboard

 Leaders today need to be the learning champions who can take initiatives to build a learning organization in which people can learn and develop themselves, build unique competency and encourage mastery.

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 learning boardroom.

Learning Corporate Board

 

Innatelearningbods Due to the increasing velocity and variety of changes in the digital era, corporate board, as one of the most significant governance bodies, also faces the unprecedented changes, including the new perspective of boardroom composition, the priority of boardroom agenda, the stakeholder engagement, as well as the merging strategies or risks driven by the latest digital technology. So what kind of board should be ideal, and how to shape a culture of “learning board” in adapting to the speed of changes?

Insightfulboard At today’s “VUCA '' digital dynamic, organizations face both unprecedented opportunities to grow and hyper-competition or great risks to survive. Therefore, the corporate board plays a more significant role in overseeing business strategy, setting principles and policies, making the judgment and assurance of corporate action within a framework of practical knowledge. Not only do today’s BoDs need to have sufficient knowledge to understand the business ecosystem, but also they need to have the collective insight to present today and foresee the future. But how to build an insightful digital board?

Innovattiveagileboard Many forward-looking organizations are shifting from doing Agile to being Agile. Agile is more as a mindset, a set of principles and a type of digital culture, rather than the methodology or technology only.

Ultramodern Board to Lead Digital Transformation At today’s “VUCA” digital dynamic, organizations face both unprecedented opportunities to grow and hyper-competition or great risks to survive. Therefore, the corporate board as the top leadership team and governance body should become the advanced mastermind behind the digital transformation, to envision, inspire, influence, and innovate. Because the substances of leadership are all about vision, change, positive influence, and progression. The spirit comes from the top, an ultra-modern board can amplify leadership influence, advance the digital management mentality and lead digital transformation seamlessly.

Leader as Learning Champion The rapidly changing business climate makes the digital leaders and professionals today feel like to live in the tropical jungle, facing many attacks, in the danger of getting dismissed. How should they survive and thrive in such a dynamic environment? The spirit comes from the top. Digital leaders today need to be the learning champions who can take initiatives to build a learning organization in which people can learn and develop themselves, build unique competency and encourage mastery.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with 8900+ 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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lnnerleadershipintelligence

Business leaders should present a set of unconventional intelligence for dealing with over-complexity and hyper-competition of the digital new normal.

Digital organizations are hyper-connected and interdependent, they have to continue to adapt to the digital new normal with “VUCA” characteristics -Velocity, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. Digital also raises the bar for leadership effectiveness. Contemporary leaders need to present multidimensional leadership intelligence, explore alternative viewpoints, enhance intrapersonal communication, embrace cross-disciplinary perspectives, intensify unique leadership strength to drive great ideas forward, tailor their own leadership/management style to  build a high performance team for delivering better results. 

There are a variety of “leadership intelligence” to verify leadership authenticity and harness leadership maturity.

Cognitive intelligence: Even though everyone lives in actual reality, we experience actual reality through the filter of our personal perceptions. Distorted perceptions deepen misunderstanding, cause conflicts or unnecessary pain. There are all sorts of misperception symptoms such as stereotypical thinking or unconscious bias, preconceived ideas about how things should happen, seeing the trees but missing the forest, etc. Sometimes out of date perception is like time glue that keeps you still, lagging behind the era you live in. Perception gaps will further cause the blind spots in decision-making and enlarge gaps in problem-solving.

Leaders’ cognitive intelligence directly impacts their perception objectivity and decision effectiveness. They should make an objective self-assessment by pondering: Can I perceive right and make sound judgments most of the time? Am I a conventional thinker or an innovator? To improve cognitive intelligence, do not always follow the preconceived opinions or conventional wisdom, continue updating knowledge, gain deep insight and empathy, to address our ignorance and assumptions we make to minimize it. The most important capability of cognitive intelligence helps us to make clear discernment and sound judgment. The executives with cognitive competence understand the mind-set of all members of the group, they do not dominate discussions, instead, they encourage open critical debate, embrace diverse viewpoints, encourage each team member to contribute positively, take nonlinear scenarios to solve problems effectively.

Contextual intelligence: Intelligence is the capacity to understand and apply wisdom to the knowledge you are exposed to; contextualization aids us in understanding what’s relevant and what’s not. Either for making decisions or solving problems, contextual intelligence is crucial in making sound decisions, especially at the strategic level. Analysis and synthesis are crucial ingredients in shaping contextual intelligence. In any case, the analysis is to break things down, to have knowledge of an argument, a situation, a problem. Synthesis is to bind up, summarize understanding of the issue and transfer information about it to others without “lost in translation.”

To solve complex problems and lead in the global environment, leaders with context intelligence can gain an in-depth understanding of where all the boundaries are, the scope and context of the problem, see a complex problem with interactive pieces and “conflict” goals, understand the whole meaning of languages and cultures, the interrelationships, and interpret things in a cohesive way, create the relevant context to make an everlasting solution. Furthermore, contextual intelligence can often trigger creativity. A leader works through the context across the boxes to inspire alliance and shape the new box of thinking to encourage innovative problem-solving.

Paradoxical intelligence: Paradox is defined as a statement that seems contradictory, but that may actually be true in fact. Intelligence is a cognitive process involving rational and abstract thinking; it is the goal- directed and purposeful. The leaders with paradoxical intelligence may evoke the paradoxical thinking process, gain understanding of people or issues in a more objective, empathetic, and systematic way, see things from different angles and understand the situation profoundly, to avoid decision pitfalls such as binary thinking or extreme thinking in order to craft better strategies, solve crucial problems and lead forward successfully.

We are shifting into a hyper-connected, and hyper-competitive digital paradigm, the answer to many questions is not just “right,” or “wrong,” but there are many shades in between. Digital leaders or professionals with high paradoxical intelligence can think through multi-dimensional angles, embrace the seemingly paradoxical point of views, shape balanced viewpoints to make effective decisions, and develop emotional excellence which can only be achieved by balancing of confidence and humbleness; logic and intuition, knowledge and imagination.

As both businesses and the world become over-complex and hyper-competitive, business leaders should present a set of unconventional intelligence for dealing with over-complexity and hyper-competition of the digital new normal. They are able to see the full spectrum of colors, with shade in gray; bridge cultural differences, capture leadership wisdom, drive progressive change, and accelerate performance in the nonlinear business dynamic effortlessly.

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Innovativechangeagents

Change Agents are people who have optimistic change mindset, organizational knowledge proficiency, trustful relationships, and established their credibility to ensure change management success.

Change is the new normal; there is disruptive change and incremental change. There is the change you want and change that is forced upon you. There is a change as a response to changing external conditions and changes that are initiated because of external factors. Some change is inevitable and another change is purely elective. 

Generally speaking, the change should be viewed as an opportunity for either solving business problems or making improvements. The change agent is not a title, but the game-changing mindset, a cultivated habit and a set of differentiated capabilities to make the change and be the part of changes.

Change agent as a mindset shaper: Change behaviors often only fix the symptom via manual control, but change mindset can be more innate to make business/digital transformation happen naturally. A change agent can think out of the box, continuously evolve, adapt, and prepare for changes, motivating others to change. Digital leaders who are equipped with a changeable mindset are more comfortable with the overwhelming growth of information and continuous disruptions, uncertainty and ambiguity. They can practice critical thinking to challenge common beliefs, leverage creative thinking to explore new possibilities

There is a critical mindset that needs to change and that is the mindset of management. Change leaders as mindset shapers make influence on culture – collective mindset, can encourage and support their team to be open-minded, adapt to change timely, go further on things that are important for the business and its customers, constantly seek the better way to do things, and lead change frictionlessly.

Change agent as competency builder: Change brings both opportunities and risks, creating positive change is a joint effort, a joint responsibility, that goes beyond the inspirational change leaders and the relentless change agent. It is important to manage changes and get in the way of accepting the business facts that change is inevitable and needs to become an ongoing capability of either individuals or organizations. Learning curve is a model of the states that people who are to change will go through. Change agents help to fuse passion, rejuvenate enthusiasm, identify talent, harness skills and become a change competency builder.

Change is the collective actions to the unifying and shared goal. Change Agent is the ability to play any role and know which to play, when to make change happen and amplify change effect. It needs to involve your entire team at all levels, so every team player becomes a change agent themselves to either advocate change or develop change competency, then change is sustained. The change agent needs to build meaningful relations until you begin to look inside self to value the strength you never knew you had; ride the learning curve, set the right priority, enforce communication and have the perseverance to truly make the change happen, facilitate organizational level change efforts to achieve higher than expected performance.

Change agent as problem-solver: Change is never for its own sake, it’s about getting out of comfort zone, breaking down the old patterns, or solving problems large or small. Usually, a change agent is a skillful problem-solver, understanding the complexity and guiding people through it; finding common ground and initiating continuous dialogues to brainstorm fresh ideas, or turn around the tough situations to solve real problems and sustain changing behaviors.

Often problem-solving is associated with human nature. The journey of complex problem-solving is thorny, with bumps and roadblocks along the way. Change Management needs to be people-centric and goal-driven, apply interdisciplinary knowledge to solve existing and emerging problems. A change agent needs to have a comprehensive understanding of change, be able to identify the root cause of a problem or the core issues of a situation in order to solve it thoroughly. The focus should include actions designed to sustain business improvement, and anchor change as a new opportunity.

Change Management is managing everything that is necessary to get people to adopt new ways of thinking and working to accelerate performance and make collective progress. Only the most advanced mindset can accelerate transformative changes; Change Agents are people who have optimistic change mindset, organizational knowledge proficiency, trustful relationships, and establish their credibility to ensure change management success.

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Itgovernance

Sound IT governance enforcement makes complex things less complex, improves the management effectiveness and eliminates risks.

Information Technology is the linchpin to run a contemporary organization. IT is an integral part of the business “the business” and “IT” are inextricably linked in the 21st century. IT governance evolves the leadership, organizational structures and processes that ensure the IT organization sustains and extends the enterprise strategies and objectives. 

The effectiveness of IT governance depends on the overall organizational capability, vest stakeholders’ interest and organizational maturity.

The management capability: IT management and IT governance mutually reinforce each other. IT management focuses on building a unique set of business capabilities. IT GRC enforcement makes complex things less complex, focusing on monitoring of IT service/solution delivery, cost optimization, availability of talents, scalability of operations, ensuring people, processes, technologies, culture, etc, working in harmony, and driving IT-driven business initiatives to increase revenues. In order to improve IT manageability, IT governance should include not only IT solutions but also IT PMO, IT policies, IT processes, IT change management, etc. It all depends upon the complexity, size, maturity of the organization.

IT governance enforcement starts with understanding business as a dynamic, complex and adaptive system. Identify IT pain points (Delayed Projects, Cost Overrun, No Innovation, No business involvement). Senior leaders need to ponder: How would you model different value propositions to different customer segments yet developing and offering the product and services using the same or similar business capabilities? How is governance needed to manage risks in capability development? Etc. From capability analysis, to re-engineering existing capabilities to designing new capabilities, a strong governance discipline helps executives and management perform a risk analysis, oversee IT strategy which as an integral component of business strategy, harness cross-functional connectivity (communication, coordination, and control), raise visibility and awareness for many things that are captured at the different levels of the organization, to accelerate IT performance.

Generally organizational maturity: IT maturity is proportional to overall organizational maturity. Organizational maturity is assessed based on the overall business effectiveness, efficiency, operational excellence, responsiveness, performance, innovation, intelligence, resilience, and people-centricity. Gauging IT organizational maturity has a multitude of focuses such as customer satisfaction, the fiscal health of IT organization, the success rate of IT delivery, and overall IT capacity and capability. IT governance should be looked at more holistically in an enterprise, and follow the logical steps to improve organizational effectiveness and maturity.

The strong IT governance makes sure IT systems run according to plan, schedule, and performance standards. Control costs to the greatest extent possible, including resource, equipment, and facility costs under the CIO's purview. IT investment is usually expensive, so most of the time, IT ends up living with current technologies and standards rather than investing. Advanced technologies are really good and more helpful to drive business demands. adopting and realizing the benefits requires investment. With strong IT governance discipline, look for and assess new technologies, determine viability and alignment with the organization's strategic direction, calculate return on investment, and improve IT investment effectiveness.

The degree of interdisciplinarity and level of people-centricity: It is reasonable to understand anything that has strategic or operational implications should thus not be taken solely by IT. In reality, IT-business gaps and frictions are the reality, neither business nor IT knows the full picture on these two pieces of the puzzle until they work together. Either for strategic IT management or governance practice, cross-functional collaboration is crucial. There are both hard and soft components in business governance. Governance as a multi-disciplinary approach is an enabling vehicle that provides a platform for determining sound corporate attitude, behavior and structured decision-making for improving business maturity.

There is an ongoing problem with highly structured GRC approaches that seem to overlook the very human and social behavioral factors that underpin real GRC success. Take an interdisciplinary, people-centric IT governance approach, including engagement and motivation, to improve cost optimization, availability of talents, scalability and nonstop global operations, on-demand products/services delivery model, or other sourcing solutions. Under strong IT governance, the well-defined KPIs will help to measure business performance results qualitatively and quantitatively.

Sound IT governance enforcement makes complex things less complex, improves the management effectiveness and eliminates risks. Governance 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 actions at the right time. Sound governance is part of eliminating risk and doing the right thing. Governance practices need to be sufficiently informed and able to keep pace with what is going on. Governance improves resilience by enhancing self-organizing and self-regulating, and improves the overall organizational maturity.

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Innovativeinsight

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking of new ideas; sharing and innovating.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with 8900+ 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 8900 blog postings.

Innovativeleadership Leadership is an influence. Leadership is complex because there’re so many variables in it, leadership is simple because the substance of leadership is about future and progression. Innovative leadership is when you think, act and enable others with a creative spirit that drives leapfrog changes.

Innovativeness Being innovative is a state of mind. The most important capability of the innovative mind is the willingness and ability to explore new lenses to understand things differently for solving problems in alternative ways.

Initiateriskanalysis Nowadays, opportunities and risks co-exist, risk management is the discipline of managing risks and opportunities; risk intelligent organizations allocate sufficient time to identify opportunities whilst they are managing their risks. Strategic risk management actually creates value by identifying opportunities to capitalize on uncertainty and volatility to maximize gains and improve competitive positioning.

Innovateviapersonalization The digital era upon us is about people, option, empathy, innovation, or simply put, "personalization." In face of fierce competitions and frequent disruptions, it is without a doubt that many organizations have come to the realization that in order to be successful within their industry, they have to focus their efforts on building people-centric business.

Inneraspectofarchitecture Building an evolving digital organization is to advocate the concept of “business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces. Business architecture provides an invaluable set of philosophy, methodology, and mechanism for performing a wide array of tasks including strategic positioning, process optimization, balancing the business priorities and forcing conversations that are otherwise difficult to have, to make an impact on all crucial aspects of the organization.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking of new ideas; sharing and innovating. 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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Innercreativeinsight

Understand each other empathetically, develop creative intelligence, and take the journey of human evolution with the purpose to make collective progress.

Today’s digital business environment is dynamic, complex, and uncertain. There are always different complexities at a different time or dimension; and there are diversity of thoughts and variety of cultures. 

At present, we cannot separate creativity, logic and intelligence if we want to stay competitive, connect wider dots based on interdisciplinary knowledge and develop creative intelligence dedicatedly.

Creativity is infused with an inner cohesion, hidden logic, emotional wholeness and comes from a unique vision and continuous practices: The essential to questioning stimulates the creative side of our brains in order to find answers. Creatives always ask open questions which lead to discovering situations others do not see at first. To be creative, you need to re-frame the new box thinking, embrace the unknown. Second, you need to challenge the knowledge. At the heart of both system and process distinctions is people being empowered to grow in creative intelligence throughout their lives.

In practice, creativity involves the two-step scenario: the spark of inspiration which plants a new concept, and then, the building of a structure of associations and relationships between that "seed" concept. Creative attitude and aptitude are important because innovators are truth-seeking, willing to embrace diverse viewpoints, change their views and are accountable for their actions. Further, they are robust and judicious in pushing down barriers to achieve the best possible effects.

Creativity is an outcome of a deep understanding of the patterns based on systems thinking: Systems thinking allows us to go beyond the obvious, understand the interconnectivity between parts and the whole. Keep fresh eyes, with the beginner's mind, then ask what additional connections might exist. Then, try to do the very things you've been observing because it will bring much more insights when you try to fiddle with it, and even come up with more fresh ideas.

Observe, and think deeper. Systems Thinker will do so with his/her eyes open to broaden their perspectives and deepen their thoughts. Systems Thinking helps to discover the connectivity and common ground from the difference and dig into the paradoxical intelligence between seemingly two separate views. And therefore, it advocates inclusiveness and embraces diverse PoVs to generate fresh ideas and spur innovation in a structural way.

Creative teams become experimental breakthroughs that eventually produce radical impacts on dynamic performance engines: Uncertainty per se is not a problem, it poses a risk for those who have a fixed mindset and creates opportunities for those with a growth mindset. You need to not only assimilate existing knowledge, more importantly, but you also have to keep updating knowledge, transform knowledge into fresh insight for spotting growth opportunities and catalyze innovation.

Evolutionary innovations can be either incremental or spiral. The most important element is the attitude to increase the chance of generating creative ideas, tolerate risks and be confident to move the ideas forward. Incremental innovation is triggered and limited by the past. On the other hand, breakthrough innovation is in the future with no necessary continuity with the past. Generally speaking, an organization with lightweight processes which allows creativity and innovation to flow, get protected, channeled and nurtured will succeed more often than an organization that does not have such a process.

The world is a melting pot of languages, religions, races, genders, cultures, working in multicultural and global environments and organizations, digital leaders and professionals need to develop their own language, understand each other empathetically, develop creative intelligence, and take the journey of human evolution with the purpose to make collective progress,

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Innerlearningindicators

Keep track of the progress made via learning toward the predefined set of goals in a consistent manner to develop professional capability and organizational competency.

Learning agility at both individual and business level is a digital capability to adapt to or drive changes, Self-assessment or evaluation gives people the opportunity to self-reflect “who am I,” organizing their thoughts related to the various performance indicators. 

The individual learning indicators involve multidimensional perspectives; the organizational learning indicators include cross-disciplinary management issues. It’s important to measure parameters which encourage learning mindset, form interdisciplinary teams, not teams of specialists, discourage mediocrity, notice and reward awesomeness.

Learning plasticity (fast learning) as one of the indicators to assess the intrinsic capacity of individuals or organizations: Learning agility at both individual and business level is a digital capability and culture shift. Individually, a creative mind with learning plasticity is able to absorb all necessary knowledge and adjust its thinking processes according to changes in its environment, connect wider dots for sparking creativity, applying the acquired knowledge and lessons learned to succeed in new situations, solving problems innovatively.

Collectively, high organizational learning relates to high response in recognizing and addressing knowledge limitation and system constraints. Second, we can measure the results - the 'things' that have been learned. There should be a consideration for a balanced scorecard that keeps people focused, measures learning effects (acquisition, skills, behavior, understanding), examines the learning process that enables you to develop effective learning and teaching approaches, measures the progress of the milestones you want to achieve during the learning scenario.

Cognitive ability & style: Cognition is a perception, sensation, and insight. Cognition, or cognitive processes, can be natural or artificial, conscious, or unconscious. When we explore the mental process of acquiring new knowledge through thoughts, experiences, and senses, cognition involves exploring varieties of meanings/thoughts and abandoning old and establishing new relations. These processes are analyzed from different perspectives within different contexts to improve our cognitive abilities to generate fresh ideas and capture unique insight.

Cognitive gaps will cause the blind spots for either defining the real problem or solving it smoothly. In fact, the cognitive gap is one of the serious problems for both problem-solving and innovation. Cognition reorganizes parts of one’s belief system, and thoughts navigate within one’s present belief system as it is. By understanding cognitive abilities and styles, people can think profoundly, learn promptly, and innovate effortlessly.

Personality (openness to experience, tolerance of ambiguity, personal initiatives) becomes one of the characteristics of individual or organizational learning style: Personality is subjective and personal. The world is perfectly fine to have a diversity of personality such as introverts, extroverts, and ambiverts who interact with the world and learn differently. In face of “VUCA” digital new normal, regardless of your natural personality, you need to keep learning and growing yourself with your personal styles and paces; you have to show the balance of personality traits in order to adapt to the changes smoothly.

Personality comes from one's convictions and value systems not only preferred but also personally practiced. Given these parameters, personality can change over a period of time depending on the consistency of practices. The learning organizational structure and process tuning, learning/training management, performance management, culture management, etc, need to be fine-tuned to improve organizational agility.

The learning indicators need to be “SMART” -what are the relevant metrics and how can they be quantified and validated? People can see what the outcome will look like throughout their learning journey. The effective learning performance measurement approach should enable business managers or professionals to define a set of key performance indicators, keep track of the progress made via learning toward the predefined set of goals in a consistent manner to develop professional capability and organizational competency.

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