Inspection

Forward-thinking companies need to apply an interdisciplinary approach, inspect crucial elements of business management, to improve overall business quality, agility and maturity.

Modern organizations have their own sophistication with silo functions, the sea of information, and the pool of talent. To effectively lead an organization into good practices takes hard work and a level of credibility within the organization, business management should do periodic inspection checkup to ensure organizational effectiveness, efficiency, performance, and maturity.

Inspection of business requirement: It is impossible to deliver an acceptable application to a business without a clear understanding of what is to be delivered. To ensure business initiatives delivering the solutions that meet customers’ satisfaction, cross functional teams should work transparently with the client to see what can be delivered in the given timeline with the best quality.

For the large scale of business initiatives, requirements are sometimes vague and even if they are not, the overall development cycle is long so the requirements are prone to become obsolete before the cycle ends. Often, capturing requirements at the level necessary to get it right the first time is difficult and potentially expensive. It needs to include a close partnership with interpersonal communication and seamless collaboration, to avoid the pitfalls such as misreading business requirements or "lost in translation" syndromes, to bridge the gaps. The top executives who sponsor the initiative and the managers who take charge of implementation are the keys on the requirement inspection.

Inspection of quality: A high-quality enterprise is composed of high-quality people, high-quality products/services, and high-quality business capabilities/processes, etc. Quality is a multifaceted pursuit. From a software development perspective, known bugs can be fixed, ignored or tolerated; standard technical bugs are perhaps unavoidable. Serious bugs in more sophisticated processing or interactions that serve the business process can only arise due to: incorrect requirements (specification) or the failure of a programmer to properly implement requirements that have been identified as correct. Data quality is a very important aspect to run a high performance business nowadays. Ensure enough historical/real-time data is available to be refined into business insight for steering the business in the right direction.

Broadly speaking, quality is doing the right thing right, the first time. Management should be ready to invest time and effort on quality inspection which touches all critical business processes, functions, practices, to shape quality as the mindset and quality as the discipline. To effectively lead an organization into the state of high quality and high maturity, focus on quality attributes takes work and a level of credibility within the organization.

Inspection of business performance: There are individual performance, team performance, and business performance. There is performance at strategic and tactical level. Business performance is not limited to financial performance, but also to the firm's performance in creating value for employees and customers. It is no just about current performance, but also about the future performance, with a mid and long-term perspective. It is focusing on the maximization of capital allocation, organizational performance, and shareholders' value.

Performance assessments are numbers in context, results related to your goals. Performance management is a critical aspect of business optimization. The performance assessment includes such as cost estimation - the operation cost, financials, the varying cost of business optimization, business responsiveness and speed. Any organization that didn't have a structural approach to performance inspection and analysis at both the strategic level and operational level has a blind spot that is impairing their performance in the long run.

In face of fierce competitions and frequent disruptions, forward-thinking companies need to apply an interdisciplinary management approach, inspect crucial elements of business management, make an objective assessment of the key success factors of the corporation, to get the organization from “as is” state to the “to be” state, which implies high speed, high performance, high innovative, and high mature organization.

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Ingredientsincreativity

Being innovative is not only a state of mind, but also an ability to identify patterns or make unusual connections, with capacity to adapt, emotional intelligence to decide, and a risk-taking attitude to innovate all the time.

All humans are born with raw creativity ability. Creativity has many dimensions, with multi-faceted truth and myth, manifold knowledge and multidimensional insight. Creativity is the wings of our mind and the tempo of our heartbeat. Creativity is a constructive disruption, not so bad addiction, and a sensational phenomenon. 

The purpose of “100 Creativity Ingredients - Everyone’s Playbook to Unlock Creativity “ is to classify, scrutinize, articulate, and share insight about one hundred special creativity ingredients, to paint the picture with them, to add colors on them, to embed the music into them, and to make the story via them, in order to unleash our collective creativity potential.

                    Creativity Ingredients

Ingredientsincreativity Creativity is an innate process to generate fresh ideas. Creative people define and create their own convention that they live by in comparison to everyone else who just accepts or inherits their convention to live by. There are varying ingredients in creativity, there are numerous ways to nurture creativity. Self-awareness, intellectual curiosity and engagement count, taking varying activities that can stimulate your imagination and spur creativity either individually or collectively.

Inclusiveness Increasing pace of change and frequent disruptions are the new normal, the business leaders must work with the right mindset to create an inclusive organization with every dip in the business management cycle, from strategy management to performance management, from process management to capability management,

Innercreativeintelligence At present, creativity is the most needed professional quality; we cannot separate knowledge and creativity if we want to stay competitive. Creativity is an innate process to generate fresh ideas. There is no template which you can apply and suddenly become super creative, it takes mind-crafting, risk-taking attitude, and continuous practices

Initiatepersonalizeparadigm With rapid change, abundant information, and frequent disruption, our society moves from which the silo mentality controls the world to one in which reciprocal connectivity rules the globe. Forward-look leaders and professionals ponder what the transformation must look like. They should not only do the planning but also make proactive preparation for the ongoing digital paradigm shift.

Implementationleap We are moving from a static and linear business world with considerable knowledge scarcity to a dynamic and hyper-connected digital era with information exponentiality. It directly impacts how we think and do things effectively and innovate fearlessly.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about 9200+ 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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Initiativesforproblemsolving

Great business initiatives should be viewed as an "opportunity" for solving crucial problems or the chains of problems effectively.

Running an organization is about solving problems large or small by taking initiatives to generate the most value for the company and keep their eyes on what matters. Only initiatives that support the achievement of well-defined objectives should be implemented. 

The management needs to check how the business initiative differentiates the organization from its major competitors? How does the business initiative develop compelling business cases? Are they competing for best quality, cost advantage or efficient value chain? For the large scale of business initiatives, it’s important to establish a cross-functional team to involve multifaceted management, space and time are made to scope, plan, and execute in a structural way, to improve business maturity effectively.

Information analysis initiatives: Information is one of the most invaluable business assets. It impacts everyone’s life, all companies’ survival. Hence, there are all the bells, hype and whistles for data management initiatives. It doesn’t mean every business must pour huge amounts of resources into it. To take initiatives such as workforce analysis to optimize staff management or sentimental analysis to satisfy customers, the management needs to make an objective assessment of estimated return on investment, time/resource cost, impact analysis. Keep the exact time schedule to everyone including inputs, analytical procedures, outputs and the cooperation required from the owners of the organization.

Without planning and prioritizing well, Information Analytics initiatives might fall by the wayside because they are not perceived to have an impact on the business as a whole. If an organization becomes data-driven but also simplified their business processes and infrastructure, there would be no "hangover." Being data-driven implies that the business demands the data and refines it into business insight and being simplified ensures that increased insight did not come at an increased cost or add another layer of complexity.

Process optimization initiatives: Processes underpin business capability. Crucial business processes directly impact business effectiveness and efficiency. Holistic perspective is critical to process improvement. Often, the people who work in the process are unaware of all the issues and problems. Thus the top management’s oversight is crucial for the success of process management initiatives by clarifying: How the initiative builds business processes that differentiate the organization from its major competitors, etc, select the measurement for assessing the potential for any business process improvement opportunities, feature enhancement or taking business initiatives to offer a competitive business advantage.

Analyzing the "as is" process can create value. You want to discover the process related issues such as quality, bottlenecks, worker frustrations, customer expectations, delays etc. For customer centric process optimization efforts, the front-line workers must be involved in the customer-centric process definition, revision, improvement. Because front-line workers often have direct experience serving customers. Can their processes do what they promise? With the awareness and understanding of all of the process flaws, business users and IT can begin to visualize both the need and means to create a much better process. Process optimization is not a one-time project, but a journey.

IT enabled application initiatives: Due to the digital nature of hyper-connectivity and interdependence, software applications will become more interrelated as we move to a world of personalization-of-people and systems-of-systems in which constraints govern how and what we develop. Architect applications that can form the foundation for the future, take business initiatives that are derived from strategy, improve visibility of applications and drive high return on investment.

The organizations have finite resources to apply to get the best yield possible to meet stakeholders’ expectations It’s the co-responsibility of business and IT to keep consolidating, modernizing, integrating, and optimize the application portfolio, help the enterprise achieve some cost savings by managing components that are common and reusable across the enterprise to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency. The balanced IT application portfolio with more interrelated business initiative can deliver lots of value for the business in many ways.

We live in a dynamic environment with information exponentiality and unprecedented uncertainty. Great business initiatives should be viewed as an "opportunity" for solving crucial problems or the chains of problems effectively. Effective business initiatives require the high risk-taking at a strategic value chain; including investments and manageability. To avoid being overwhelmed by the complexity of business initiative management and overcome problem-solving fatigue, organizations need to take great opportunities for solving crucial problems by assigning their resources and time carefully and solving problems that really matter coherently.

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Innerconnectivityofprocess

The truth is that enterprise is a complex entity that needs to be perceived through a varied lens, and also needs to simplify, highlight and optimize the key processes to reduce waste.

People, process, technology, etc, are all critical success factors of the business. Process thinking is more fundamentally an architecture thinking, holistic, cohesive, and balancing. Today's business process management at the enterprise level is really about getting everyone focused on the customer and the value their process brings to the customer. It's more than tweaking and incremental. 

At the top, people would like to connect the relevant dots, know the benefits from process management in terms of strategic, financials, operational improvement, and alignment to objectives and so on.

Innerconnectivity of process and organizational design: In creating an "outside in '' people-centric business, it is a question of re-engineering people, process, and technology. The most successful transformation involves total business process management, with a substantial review of organization design. It helps establish early buy-in and support through analysis of how the business process "initiative" impacts the people in the organization.

In practice, successful process improvement initiatives should have representation and input from organizational design management. The top management needs to check-up: Where is the dividing line between organizational design and process? Should there be a handoff from process to organizational design and where should that occur? Or should they work together from start to finish, which rarely occurs.

Innerconnectivity of process and strategy: Business process should actually be born out of a strategy. Processes define how basic and routine functions are executed consistently across the organization to implement strategy. For organizations that get stuck at the lower level of business maturity, people in organization follow processes mindlessly, at times just because it becomes a need. Sometimes strategies are more or less taken up like a project, with temporary objectives Clearly, any existing business function that is in conflict with a new approved strategy is an issue, and the processes associated with that function are therefore problematic. How can you develop the best or most appropriate business process if you don't know the strategic business goals at all for solving the business problem?

Therefore, it is important for defining a clear set of objectives, planning, communication and training goes in a proper systems or process implementation, further on, the expected outcome happens over a period of time. a new strategic initiative that involves the development of new business functions will require the definition of processes associated with those business functions. A business process is "smart," encouraging innovation when it accommodates controlled excursions away from what would otherwise be a rigid sequence of steps.

Innerconnectivity between process and capability: Capabilities are processes and competencies viewed strategically. Capability and process are two viewpoints of an organization. An organization has the capability to deliver outcomes; an organization executes processes to deliver an output. Capabilities are what abilities/competencies an organization has. Processes are how an organization does something. The fundamental difference between Capabilities and Processes is "What vs. How."

The capability view is more abstract, no detail is provided as to the means by which the transformation occurs; the process view is more logical and detailed, the process shows the receiving processes, the distributing processes, and the transforming processes. Both views can logically show inputs and outputs. Continue to capture opportunities for improvement, from the mouths of the people who know the process best.

The truth is that enterprise is a complex entity that needs to be perceived through a varied lens, also needs to simplify, highlight and optimize the key processes to reduce waste. A smart process follows process management principles, encourages innovation. The long term operations, such as processes for customer services, when applied strategically saves much cost, allows you to become more competitive to achieve business goals. The trend to integrate the related functions or at least not think of them as complete silos helps to unify the business process view/capability view/architectural view/case manager view, to improve business agility and innovation.

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Innerlogicinstrategy

Business leaders need to guide their organizations in the right directions. Logic is the hidden clue of effective strategy execution.

We are in a time of tremendous change, the dawn of the digital era with information abundance and technology advancement, the path to the next level of digital maturity. Unclear strategy perhaps misleads the business in the wrong direction, overly static strategy is not effective to adapt to the change dynamic. 

In fact, strategy implementation is dynamic, needs to be appropriately adjusted when the circumstances have changed, clarify the logic about how the business is a movement for the organizational strategy enablement and improvement, maintain and fix any imbalance in key business elements such as people, process, and technology, update structures, methodologies, and cultures, in order to achieve strategic goals systematically and harmonize working environment structurally.

Logical diagnosis: The strategy is the "way" you choose to reach the goals in the business plan. Nothing is perfect in this world, and that will include 'strategy. The moment something changes, there is a possibility that the strategy will have to change to adapt. One of the important statements in strategy is what are the prioritized problems that need to be solved; “where should you improve,” so you can succeed where you choose to improve. Strategic thinking is analytical, decision-oriented and directional, linking the future with the past and opportunistic. It’s important to apply strategic thinking to take an accurate diagnosis of the organization's current state, identify any barriers to excellence that may exist, then develop strategies for lowering or removing those barriers, and accelerate strategy implementation.

Strategy execution is an iterative problem solving continuum. Many problems today are complex and interdependent. Every complex problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem. To clarify the logic behind the problem, it’s important to clarify the root cause, cause effect, correlation & causation, by pondering continually: What is the problem? Is that a strategic problem or an operational problem? Or is it the symptom of another large-scale problem? What are possible solutions? Do they cause any side effects? Who are insightful problem-framers or innovative problem-solvers? What are the right principles, methodologies and practices to solve problems in an intelligent way? Strategic problem-solving is a process of drawing artistic realization about the best future into a scientific canvas, in which ``science” means processes and the suggestions of a problem, and “art” suggests a more creative solution.

Logical interpretation: Every organizational division has its own focus clarified via functional sub-strategy and dialect, the mistake that most organizations make, in this regard, is that there is incoherence of different sub-strategy; also they fail to translate the high-level language of business strategy into the sub-strategy of business functions and then, into the professional language of the various staff specialties. Effective business management needs to lubricate cross-functional communication, determine how each part of the organization, including all of the key functions must "put it all together" to be successful in implementing the strategy, bringing tangible business results and reaching the business vision ultimately.

Forward-looking companies intend to run a people-centric organization. From the outside-in viewpoint, the customer is the focal point; from the inside-out, employees are the key to executing strategy. Organizations should look at both lenses, articulate the problems they are concerned about, leverage management practices in exploring cause & effect, and build truly people-centric business. The 'effect' dimension is the determinant of a successful strategy. The management needs to learn how to clear logic based on varying stakeholder’s perspectives; learn how to leverage a more open and interactive communication style to bridge the gaps, providing more personalized solutions to increasing customer satisfaction.

Logical alignment: A strategically competent organization has a deliberately close alignment among the company’s strategic direction and distinctive capabilities, to create synergies in strategy execution. Creating an organizational strategy-capability mapping and making seamless alignment helps to set goals for capability deployment and competence building in improving strategy execution success rate. To enhance the weakest links, streamline business alignment and accelerate business performance, organizations need to break down silos in a certain way, keep information and ideas flow frictionlessly. Logically, breaking down silos and being intentional about developing processes that encourage cross-functional collaboration and enforcing business flexibility. Strategic leaders act in ways that manage the tension between being well-done in daily tasks and success in the long term, striking the right balance of quick wins and long term business impact.

One of the challenges in executing the strategy stems from a lack of understanding or ownership of the strategy, that further causes ineffective resource management, lack of accountability, and incoherent performance management. High-mature enterprise architecture can become the super glue between strategy and execution, an enabler in transforming management style to run the digital business holistically The logical alignment of people, process, resource, can expedite business capability development cycles and unlock business performance by moving the business number upwards for achieving calculable business results consistently.

Business leaders need to guide their organizations in the right directions. Change can be an opportunity, at the end of the day, it needs to be all about expediting strategy management. Logic is the hidden clue of effective strategy execution. Developing the strategy through insightful strategists with fine-tuned participatory processes and well-defined performance indicators greatly increases the likelihood that the well-set strategy is implemented with measurable results.

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Initiategrcpractices

Best Practice is something you should do, but Lesson learned helps you learn what not to do.

 

As hyperconnectivity is the very nature of the digital organization, cross-silo collaboration is crucial to build and sustain a dynamic workplace in which collaboration happens in that space between people in relationships receptively and thoughtfully interacting with interest and care for one another’s needs and activities. 

The most effective digital workplace is in which sharing and collaboration are the norms, understand, and recognize that everyone plays a “piece of the pie,” inspire teamwork and collaboration which are the route towards building a people-centric organization.

       Initiate GRC Practices

Innateadherence The digital paradigm shift is multidimensional expansion, whether it’s organic or acquisitions depending on the nature and culture of the organization and the stage of its business maturity.

Initiategrcepractices Governance is about steering the organization in the right direction. Corporate governance discipline can fulfill its purpose as a high-level business enabler by providing a structured communication bridge between shareholders/investors and top business leaders such as corporate directors.

Governance Integration As business leaders today, you can’t predict every turn or curve that the organization will face. There is a myriad of information, conflicts, and change inertia in the modern business environment today. Governance is by definition a framework of principle, structure, process, mechanism, practice, and metric, etc.

Increasingriskintelligence In business, every day is a risk, generic risk management includes how organizations manage economic, legal, political, social and human risks, and how to build up business resilience. Enterprise wide risk management intends to manage enterprise risk systematically and effectively; risk management permeates across organizations and should not be a separate function at all, but rather taken as guidelines of business best-practices executed in this larger portfolio management to improve organizational effectiveness and maturity.

Innovationgovernance Governance is like steering wheels, keeping the organization heading in the right direction. It is a state of mind that must be achieved to lead transformational change and move up the human society up to the next level of maturity. It can assure the corporation’s operation under the correct directions and behaviors correctly.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #9200th 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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Innovativesynthesis

You have to be determined to get better results somehow and it will help to try unconventional thinking and synthesize all necessary thought blocks into fresh insight.

Contemporary world becomes over complex, hyperconnected, interdependent. To shape holistic viewpoints and come up with premium solutions to many thorny issues, design concerns, besides information-based analysis, synthesis is a process that merges a dichotomy or in other words, the “for” and “against'' perspectives for creating something that does not exist.

 It involves not only putting the bits together but blending them in such a way that the emergent whole is somehow more than the sum of its parts, fresher, stronger, more influential.

Cognitive synthesis: Analysis answers the ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions while synthesis answers the ‘why’ and ‘what for’ questions. The mind with cognitive synthesis embraces diverse viewpoints, integrating them into more objective views about situations that people intend to understand, incorporates thesis and antithesis into a higher level of understanding. 

A synthetic mind is future-oriented, holistic, using both analysis and synthesis to create new knowledge, fresh insight, deepen understanding, and integrate multiple pieces into a holistic perspective, focus on long-term problem solving, without ignorance of emergent trends. Open critical debate, constructive feedback, healthy argument is needed to stimulate diverse viewpoints which can be synthesized into more objective perceptions or creative insight for solving problems effectively.

Capability synthesis: In adapting to the ever-changing environment, the capability development cycle is significantly shortened. Businesses are able to integrate modular capabilities into more complex and differentiated capabilities to implement their business strategy. Capability synthesis is the right combination of capability integration and innovation. The synthetic capabilities usually are difficult to duplicate, as there are organizational learning and cultural ingredients in it.

Integration is a strategic response to business demands which give rise to the outcomes to be sought.There are a variety of integrations such as technical information technology integration, operational integration, governance integration; customer experience integration, etc. Capability synthesis involves integrating quality information, bridging siloed functions and underlying structures, innovating/optimizing/ orchestrating business processes, binding up varying business components, and using IT as a superglue to synthesize a unique set of core competency.

Design synthesis: Creativity is a synthesis of imagination with which you create new ideas and the concreteness with which you can transform ideas into valuable work. Design as a creative activity requires fresh mindsets, powerful tools, efficient procedures It usually involves both analysis and synthesis procedures. Every synthesis is built upon the results of a preceding analysis, and every analysis requires a subsequent synthesis in order to verify and correct its results.

The design process with creative synthesis necessitates the need for an ability of divergent thinking, a novelty-seeking behavior, and a “putting together” convergence scenario. Imagination and knowledge are both important to design excellence. Knowledge is fundamental. Imagination is more crucial to reinvent product or services; synthesize them into unique design competency as part of the corporate innovation portfolio. Rather than focus on one method, as a team with broad expertise across a range of disciplines, there are choices of tools or methods appropriate for the challenge. It’s important to visualize and synthesize user experience, design and develop personalized experience that fits their needs with personal touch.

You have to be determined to get better results somehow and it will help to try unconventional thinking and synthesize all necessary thought blocks into fresh insight. Synthesizing problem-solvers are good at creating business synergy by blending different pieces of components in such a way that the emergent whole is somehow more than the sum of parts to bring great results and make high influence.

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Innercompliance

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

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.

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

Compliance & Performance

Innercompliance Compliance is the management discipline of designing and implementing effective steps to ensure that the organization actually complies with the laws and regulations relating to its operations, In fact, ensuring and overseeing legal compliance is an essential part of senior leadership roles, as a good reputation to be seen as a good corporate citizen is one of the biggest assets of a company and most definitely a value creator.

Innovatecompliance In the digital age, with overwhelming growth of information and fast pace of changes, the knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened. The digital workforce today has to practice real critical thinking, learn and relearn all the time, and then apply those lessons to succeed in new situations.

Interconnectionconformanceperformance The Corporate Board is one of the most important governance bodies to oversee strategy and enforce GRC disciplines. Many directors think that the role of the director is conformance. The underlying question is actually fundamental: What is corporate governance, when is it necessary and how should it work? Conformance vs. Performance, which is more important for the Corporate Board? Is it possible that companies are burdening the boards with so many different tasks that the main task and focus of the board, which is to create long-term profitable companies, will be inundated by all other types of issues?

Improve Organizational Maturity via Business Intelligence The Corporate Board is one of the most important governance bodies to oversee strategy and enforce GRC disciplines. Many directors think that the role of the director is conformance. The underlying question is actually fundamental: What is corporate governance, when is it necessary and how should it work? Conformance vs. Performance, which is more important for the Corporate Board? Is it possible that companies are burdening the boards with so many different tasks that the main task and focus of the board, which is to create long-term profitable companies, will be inundated by all other types of issues?

Should Risk & Compliance Stay under the same Umbrella As part of the effort to run a successful business, organizations have to manage the risks to business operations with an eye on strategic plan. Requirements to ensure compliance are another component of the company’s risks. However, in some businesses, compliance functions say that they never talk to their cousins of Risk Management. What are ideal reporting lines for risk and compliance, should they stay under the same umbrella?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with 9200+ 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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Innerarchitecturecomponents

Business architecture is the visualization of the organizational strategy, competences and operation layers and how they fit together to explore the macro-environment.

The architecture seeks to represent the contextual knowledge of an organization in terms of information, process, and capability, performance either as it exists or as it is intended to be. Thereby, it helps to facilitate the varying business dialogues, the planning and communicating of business change initiatives, the analysis of business issues, opportunities, or marketing dilemmas, develop further architecture standards to become an instrument for leading changes. 

There are varying sub-architecture components such as information architecture, process architecture, design architecture, etc, that enable business management to associate with reality through inductive reasoning that justifies the abstractions, relationships, patterns, and principles to optimize business and improve organizational effectiveness and maturity.

Process architecture: The interactions of the business processes across multiple functions are what create the process architecture of an organization. It reflects the relationships of business processes in the context of the rest of the enterprise systems. Top business executives can leverage process architecture as an effective tool to facilitate process oriented dialogues, enhance management effectiveness. Business process-driven management or governance at the senior level is based on a high-level "architecture" of the business process -the component of business architecture, which captures the interrelationships between key business processes together with enabling support processes and their alignment with the strategies, goals, and policies for an organization

Processes underpin business capabilities. Without coherent process management, communication gaps, decision bottlenecks, weak process links, outdated procedures, bureaucracies, are all detractors to stifle changes. By using process architecture as a navigation tool, the senior executives can make wise investments, sponsor process optimization initiatives, enhance strategy and process-capability linkages, process management and decision-making linkage, and idea process management.

Information architecture: Information is permeating into every perspective of human society right now. The organizational data environment is often fraught with inconsistency, redundancy, sometimes overlapping knowledge, all of which make information management as one of the most difficult, but critical management disciplines. Information is both the input and output of a process. A disruption in the information flows can seriously disrupt business processes and production. Information architecture, like the organization’s nervous system, orchestrates data, refine information into the knowledge insight in enabling business collaboration and optimization.

A fine-tuned information architecture streamlines information flow to make sure that the right information is in the right place at the right time and shared with the right persons for making the right decisions. It is a useful tool to visualize the strategic perspective of information management, covering management and accomplishment holistically via information management lenses. focusing on building information-support solutions in anticipating problems. Information architecture design, management activities and capability should provide real-time inputs, to explore intangible information assets, build competitive business advantage for the long term.

Design architecture: We can construct without design but we elevate construction by design. Enterprise Design can elevate business from functioning, firm to delight, produce customized products, services, or solutions. The careful consideration of requirements in enterprise design along with an overarching vision is what a good design architecture represents. Genuine design capability is essential and most of the well-planned design activities have benefited from the use of design architecture and high-calibrated design teams, take advantage of emerging tools and methodologies, to enforce creativity and personalization in developing the people-centric organization.

Either architecture or design is a thoughtful activity that extends over time. Design = forming human-made objects to be pleasing and preferred by humans. The human-centered design begins with deep empathy and an in-depth understanding of the needs and motivations of people from different perspectives. An effective design architecture establishes a set of design principles, clarifies processes, helps to fine-tune a design driven culture; enhance design relevant context, to elevate design through architectural thinking which is a way of embodying the quality of human thoughts and enchanting customers with elegant design.

Business architecture is the visualization of the organizational strategy, competences and operation layers and how they fit together to explore the macro-environment. It’s an effective tool to navigate critical business activities, facilitate enterprise knowledge related conversations, predict opportunities and risks ahead, estimate the magnitude of the impact of events which may occur in strategic/operational plans, and deal with the variety of complexity effectively.

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Intelligencevswisdom

The way to -acquire intelligence is to process information; the way to -attain wisdom is to -have an open mind, putting aside- all the trained thoughts, limitations, letting open possibilities come- connecting, seamlessly.

Intelligence is-

processed information.

wisdom is -

refined intelligence

Intelligence questions -

the answers;

wisdom scrutinizes-

intelligence;

Intelligence is-

science-driven;

wisdom is paradoxical

mixed with-

art and science.

Intelligence fixes -

problems, technically;

wisdom fixes -

intelligence,

holistically.

dissolve problems,

philosophically.


Intelligence is a

capacity for learning,

reasoning,

understanding.

Wisdom is -

broader, abstract,

long-lasting;

Intelligence comes through-

single lens;

wisdom is -

multi-dimensional pursuit.



Intelligence discovers-

known from unknown;

wisdom opens for -

unknown unknown;

"Intelligence" makes -

inferences,

wisdom challenges-

linear rationality.

The way to -

acquire intelligence is to

process information;

the way to -

attain wisdom is to -

have an open mind,

putting aside-

all the trained thoughts,

limitations,

let the open possibility come-

connecting,

seamlessly.


Intelligence is-

narrow;

wisdom is -

open;

wisdom knows

we do the best,

we can with-

what we have,

intelligently.

won’t repeat -

the same mistakes,

learn from it,

quickly;.


Wisdom is-

intelligent,  inclusive, innovative;

humble, confident,

at the same time;

be aware,

our perspective is not -

the only valid worldview,

be aware,

we could be wrong,

learn from -

experiences,

and those of others,

with humility;

learn to see the globe-

from different angles,

structurally,

shape a better world,

harmoniously.

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Initiateglobalizationagenda

A clearly defined globalization agenda is important to anchor change as a new opportunity, and lead a global society with a step-wise approach.

We live in a global society with enriched knowledge, diversity of talent, and cultural heritage; the variety of perspectives open our mind, and harnesses the multifaceted values that each of us can bring to the table. Contemporary leaders and professionals look at the global economy with an innovative tone and creative potential around the world. 

In fact, to develop an effective globalization agenda requires us to be willing to listen to diverse viewpoints, broaden the perspective to fix misperceptions, break down old traditions, outdated knowledge, and create fresh insight. The point is that interdependence and cooperation rather than domination are the only way to advance global communities, advocate inclusiveness, overcome common challenges and advance human society collaboratively.

Shape a global society via anthropological perspective: The world has become much more complex and smaller all at once due to blurred territories, virtual interactions, intriguing business relationships. Anthropology can help us discover our place in the world as regards diverse culture, world conceptions from linguistic, religious, educational, life style, historical perspectives, complexes, motives of specific human behavioral aspects, or variety of natural phenomenon, etc. So global leaders and professionals with anthropological perspectives are able to wear different perception glasses, experiment with different ways of doing the same things and are more tolerant of cultures and customs other than their own, catalyze innovation and drive progressive changes.

There is biological anthropology (different races, sizes, shapes of creatures), linguistic anthropology (language represents reality in its own sense so there are phenomenal differences in ideas and expressions), or sociological anthropology (diverse societies present varying societal phenomena, human behavior patterns, life styles, cultural differences.) We live in such a diverse world with abundance of knowledge and cultural heritage, thinking through anthropological dimensions, questioning one’s assumptions, and opening one’s eyes to a spectrum of things with so many different shades and colors of the same world, helps to identify the friction of opposites while translating and interpreting from one dialect to the other, harness cross-boundary communication smoothly. Discover the logic in language, historical events, decision processes, leadership patterns, etc. by deepening understanding of different states, different attitudes, or different beliefs in order to diagnose the critical problems and solve them smoothly.

Integrate a global society via information technology lens: Information grows exponentially; the amount of data to manage is huge and creates a lot of pressure. Digitalization and globalization are mutually reinforcing with each other. Information is power and emergent digital technologies are the digital catalyst to recharge business vehicles and reenergize human society. Big Data analytics builds a foundation to develop an information-savvy, people-centric intelligent society via personalization, optimization, integration.

The information potential and emergent technology trends are where the opportunity is located for real competitive advantage from investments in digital into the future. Technically, how can you process information into fresh knowledge, how to leverage knowledge to optimize processes, solve problems that matters; How can contextual changes be best determined to solve chains of relevant issues without causing too many side-effects? How do you structure information systems to deal with uncertainty, forecast the future with a certain level of accuracy? Etc. Either information or technology is the means to the end, not the end. If you don't know how to use it properly you won't get good results. So global leaders and professionals with IT fluency can focus on information-based business strategy management and keep anticipating future hurdles or complications, then they are better prepared to deal with “VUCA” reality smoothly.

Renew a global society from a philosophical lens: Philosophy is always important to “better understand evolution and harness its power to serve human purposes.” It’s a sort of discipline to discover human origin or discover truth from myth. The digital philosophy comes from a worldview that looks at the world as a one, rather than west or east; it is the principle to guide through the business transformation. It's a holistic view that sees the world as interconnected, interdependent and integrated. So people from different regions, religions, and cultural differences should refine their knowledge into more unified insight; clarify the difference between local common beliefs and global principles; compare personal/family values with national, global values, etc. So they can communicate without getting lost in interpretation and collaborate more frictionlessly to solve problems that benefit more people on the earth.

Philosophy is the compass of human civilization; there are more people on this planet than ever, we need more people to pursue truth, unpuzzle myth; rediscover reality, and capture wisdom. Philosophy has a broader lens to see through the world; and has deliberate processes for raising questions, reasoning, and thinking outside the box. Philosophical perspective is often more paradoxical to deepen understanding of contrast conceptualism: Isolation vs. togetherness, stagnation vs. growth, convention vs. innovation in order to orchestrate societal changes, harness collaborations, and build a balanced human society as coherent and consistent as possible. Let the world as a whole run in a harmonized way by integrating the best of two global hemispheres -East & West.

Our co-shared world becomes so hyperconnected and dynamic, now with the uncertainty around, the volatile market situations, fierce competition, abundant information, advanced technology, and globalization. It’s no surprise that we will see more of a sharing between disciplines of anthropology, philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and technology, etc to understand problems profoundly, and lead change empathetically. A clearly defined globalization agenda is important to anchor change as a new opportunity, and lead a global society with a step-wise approach.

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Initiateframeworks

Framework is a coherent set of ideas, principles, agreements, checklists, standards, processes, tools and building blocks, do & don't practices.

The digital frameworks add value as they are implementations of the patterns to avoid having to reinvent the wheel, it helps the organization embed a digital culture into the very fabric of the business, explore digital in a structural way and laser focus on the most important things to get business digital ready.

 

Initiate Framework Approach

Innerframeworkforblance The digital normality-volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity makes it challenging for making effective decisions, solving problems smoothly, and running a successful organization. Balance is not a stillness or stagnation that people or things get stuck by misunderstanding the means and end. Balance is not about putting random or mismatched things in the same box and expecting natural harmony. Balance is an important ability to optimize management, harmonize business relationships, or make adjustments of business speed.

Inherentapproachofriskintelligence Information exponentiality and change are the new normal, uncertainty and risk are inherent in every venture. In fact, organizations encounter more risks than ever due to over-complex business dynamics, unprecedented level of uncertainty, and complex legal regulation compliance system.

Innersustainabilityframework Running a business is energy-consuming; waste of resources is costly. In most organizations, sustainability isn’t integrated into existing key processes & performance management systems. To deal with hyper-connected and interdependent business new normal, the framework approach makes sense if large scale issues such as sustainability are cross-disciplinary, information heavy, laser focusing on the strategic goals, practices orchestration leadership, facilitates cross-functional communication, develop a comprehensive roadmap, optimize processes, take a structural effort to achieve measurable results.

Innerframeworkofimplementation Reimagining the future of business is exciting, but investigating the different paths for unlocking business potential needs to take a systematic approach. Business executives are eager to set stages for implementing strategies and driving continuous performance management. Balanced Scorecard-based engagement management framework helps the business management translate strategy into business objectives and monitor key results. So people can see what the outcome will look like throughout the transition, and then there should be a consideration for a balanced scorecard that measures the progress of the goals you want to achieve.

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.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #9200th 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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Initiateorganizationalbodoversight

The corporate board’s strategic oversight of either hard or soft business components, includes co-setting business principles and planning to adapt to the dynamic business environment; scrutinizing business prioritization and processes to improve asset/resource management; monitoring business performance and developing the best and next practices to influence business outcomes.

The world becomes over-complex, hyper-connected, extremely uncertain and ambiguous than ever, governance provides strategic oversight, monitoring, measuring, and enforcement mechanisms to corporate management. The more complex contemporary organizations become, the broader scope of corporate governance turns out to be. 

To improve corporate board effectiveness, the important issue in the boardroom is how the corporate board can accommodate diverse opinions and how they assess them and leverage collective insight into good decisions all board directors support, as well as how to build a highly effective and high-mature digital board, ultimately.

Corporate boards oversee business strategy: It’s important for them to work closely with management to scrutinize decision-making processes as well as the quality of decision-makers, prioritize critical issues that need to be solved, make a seamless alignment of resource management, identify both business risks and opportunities, keep focusing on doing fundamental things right. The corporate board’s oversight of strategy with clarity directly impacts the business effectiveness and maturity.

Many boards and independent board directors are unfortunately focused on the data and information fed to them, not on how and where they get the information, perhaps some information is already outdated. Homogeneous setting and group thinking cause a variety of bias, ineffective decision-making. Thus, critical thinking is crucial in the boardroom, corporate board directors should have sharp eyes to identify crucial problems, unique insight to pinpoint the root causes, coaching and mentoring skills to ensure that the management do things effectively and the strategy management is on the right track to accelerate business performance.

Corporate boards set the right tone for business culture rejuvenation: Culture as collective mindset, attitude, is one of the most important "soft" elements that a company will make since they will define how the company interacts with its various stakeholders. Many leaders fail to realize that culture will "happen" whether they understand it or not. Often, corporate boards do not pay enough attention to the culture within the company. since the culture can undermine strategy, they certainly should be concerned.

Culture has much to do about how a group people feel about and how they contribute and make a difference. The spirit comes from the top. The development of organizational culture starts with the board and executive. Not only is the culture of the corporate board/executive important, it is a determinant of the culture developed within the whole organization. The directorship in any organization must have the ability to inspire, guide, motivate, innovate, and adapt. Corporate board and executive management are directly responsible for the culture and leadership, whereby these elements cannot be delegated. They seek assurance that the culture is aligned with the strategy; the values that form the foundation of the couture are aligned with the expectations of customers to improve strategy execution effectiveness.

The corporate boards oversee reputation capital of the business and enhance corporate brand: A company's brand and reputation are some invaluable assets, like any asset, it is the responsibility of the corporate board to protect and nurture it. The corporate board’s reputation capital oversight helps the management 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. It also involves addressing risks to reputation needs to ensure that the management has put in place an effective risk-management process for protecting business brand and reputation.

A company's brand is one of its most invaluable assets, and like any asset, it is the responsibility of the corporate board to protect and nurture it. Reputation management and brand protection become increasingly intertwined and crucial, the corporate board should be accountable to set a good tone on business reputation, get an in-depth understanding of their corporate brand in context - what's your brand reflecting to, the value, purpose, substance, and style, make sound judgments and effective decisions in a consistent way, work closely with varying stakeholders to maintain a good reputation of the company and build a strong brand.

We are living in a complex world in which inventions, developments, and conflicts are continuously changing and that makes it impossible to have complete knowledge and understanding of many critical issues. The corporate board’s strategic oversight of either hard or soft business components, includes co-setting business principles and planning to adapt to the dynamic business environment; scrutinizing business prioritization and processes to improve asset/resource management; monitoring business performance and developing the best and next practices to influence business outcomes.

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Innerconnectivityofagility

Agile has been adopted as the main principle, philosophy and methodology to manage the project and even run the business today.

A digital workplace is all about people-centricity, empathy, innovation, agility and high-level business maturity. Digital organizations are always on, inter-dependent and hyper connected, people are always the most important asset in any organization before, today, and future. 

In an ideal digital workplace, the organizational structure is solid enough to keep people or things in order; but fluid enough to keep information and ideas flowing.

             

Agility Connectivity 

Agility vs. Accountability Agile has emerged as a major methodology and a set of practices for many IT organizations for software development, it is the time that Agile also needs a serious readjustment to scale it up to a new level. Agile has to be readjusted at different organization levels. Today it is not only about doing Agile, but it is also required outside the software development where accountability really matters and being Agile - to shape an agile mindset. Agility vs. accountability - what’s the correlation between them?

Innovation Agility Innovation is neither a serendipity nor a rigid process or discipline, there is no such universal way to do innovation as well. It’s always about connecting, questioning and collaborating. It’s the certain mix of something old and new, being prepared to change what you are doing. So what’re further aspects of innovation agility?

IT Agility vs. Strategy We all remember the old saying: culture eats strategy for lunch. Nowadays, as the speed of change is accelerated, there comes the new saying: Agility will eat strategy every morning. Are agility and strategy mutually exclusive or they do co-exist? And what’s the best way to balance strategy and IT agility?

Agility vs. Quality Agile has emerged as a major software development and management methodology, it is a set of principles, philosophy, and mindsets to either build software or run a business today. However, from the quality perspective, Agile is one of those things that's simple in principle but may be very challenging in practice. How can you maintain quality whilst trying to become agiler?

Agile Tuning: Process vs. Practice Agile has been adopted as the main principle, philosophy and methodology to manage the project and even run the business today. Within the years of experimenting and tuning, it also develops systematic processes and best or next practices. Why are they important for the success of Agile and how to leverage them in Agile management?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #9200th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 29 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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Initiateclevelleadership

Senior leadership implies the high level of intellectual and emotional maturity, strategic foresight, profound insight, decision wisdom, innovativeness, and high-level leadership influence.

Organizations are complex, the business environment is dynamic, uncertain; to lead today’s multi-generational, multicultural and multi-devicing workforce, senior leadership effectiveness in a global context comes into play with reciprocating awareness and personalized influence. Leadership is first as a mindset, then as exemplary behavior.

 Leadership is more about the future but starts today. The power of a C-level leader depends on a number of factors, the purpose to lead, their visions and how to convey the vision with clarity; the professional expertise with a mix of knowledge and experience. In summary, today’s C-level leaders need to be knowledgeable, insightful, influential, strategic, and highly effective.

C-level roles are supposed to be the guiding force in the enterprise, envisioning and leading it towards its future confidently: In the age of digital with “VUCA” characteristics, C-level leaders need to be fluent in multidimensional thinking, have interdisciplinary perspectives, as participating in creating and shaping a company's vision and strategy, and the business model for an organization is what drives the focus for each of these C-level positions. A visionary changes the course of business by seeing beyond what all other see or by charting revenue growth through the creation of a new product or market. Top leaders can foresee the trends or capture the insight others cannot; sound judgment is a hardcore leadership competency and the prerequisite quality of being a senior leader. Information savvy corporate leaders have better chance to lead confidently and decide wisely.

There are silos, egos, and complacency, various stakeholders’ agendas to consider in organizations that get stuck at the lower level of business maturity. C level leaders need to be a “big picture” thinker, to ensure the business is running as a whole that is superior to the sum of pieces under their leadership guidance. That altitude, attitude, aptitude should successfully live at the C-level! To run a highly innovative organization, strong senior leaders need to get both vision and innovation right. "Vision" is about a clearly defined destination and 'innovation' is about discovering unique path and leveraging alternative methods or tools to get you there successfully.

C-Level executives need to reach the state of knowledge proficiency and practice expert power wisely: Being a leader takes one to have a desire to do better than others in certain domains. No one is an expert in everything, but you can always gain expertise for a few things. Practice knowledge power relevant for improving leadership maturity. Top leaders are specialized generalists who should keep learning agile, build their unique leadership portfolio to lead their organizations forward confidently. Insightful leaders can dig into the root causes of issues, leading to understanding and resolution, making sound judgments and solving problems smoothly.

Everything exists in a constant state of change and knowledge of an evolving thing must keep evolving. Collectively, the whole senior executive team has much better opportunities to stay on the same page, each executive can share their own vertical expertise and interdisciplinary understanding, all of them should look at business strategy and solutions from outside-in lens, nurture fertile ground for developing dynamic and recombinant enterprise capabilities; provoke thoughts and actions to unify the varying perspectives of stakeholders, with intention to run a people-centric organization.

C-level leaders play a sponsorship role in process management to improve strategy management effectiveness: Capability based strategy has significantly high success rate. Processed underpin business capability, so process management will become relevant to the C-level when it contributes to getting relevant performance issues on their agenda proactively. In reality, most organizations today are process and control driven, those processes become inflexible, overly rigid due to the increasing pace of changes and frequent disruptions. Without coherent process management, communication gaps, decision bottlenecks, weak process links, outdated procedures, internal politics, bureaucracies, are all detractors to stifle changes. It’s important to progressively look for opportunities in optimizing key business processes, with the continuous improvement of the "how," cross-functionally and within a strategic view of optimizing multifaceted business value.

Change management, process management, and strategy management often go hand in hand. Almost all effective companies do have process management as part of its strategy - of course, there will be an executive sponsorship on C-level. When it comes to managing change from the perspective of strategy or execution, setting expectations with different stakeholders appropriately is essential to ensure the 'battle of ideas' is done best with a 'blended approach' - tactical wins, combined with a gradual build-up of practice, stakeholder engagement, and value realization is the one most likely to succeed in most places.

Leadership now becomes more interdisciplinary, influential and innovative. Senior leadership implies the high level of intellectual and emotional maturity, strategic foresight, profound insight, decision wisdom, innovativeness, and high-level leadership influence. Worldwidely, strong global leadership today is based on empathetic understanding, fresh knowledge, logical reasoning, persuasive communication, professional maturity, with continuous deliveries to deepen leadership influence consistently.

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