Initiateleadershipguidance

Leaders must be forethoughtful to read business sentiment with clarity, set guidance to drive changes, catalyze innovation, and solve problems effectively.

The multidimensional digital effects provide impressive advantages in terms of the business speed, the abundance of information, and the quality of the workforce. If running the business in a transactional mode only can cause digital ineffectiveness in the long run. 

Today’s business leaders must be forethoughtful to read business sentiment with clarity, set guidance to drive changes, catalyze innovation, and solve problems effectively.

 

Innovation guidance: Innovation is a process for transforming ideas to achieve commercial value. Innovation does take systematic processes from idea management to innovation implementation. On one side, breaking rules is indeed an important part of creativity; on the other side, innovation needs a level of guidance. So the term innovation process implies an openness to innovative ideas, with an accepted interface to actually develop the ideas as they come about. After ideation, companies need to filter, prototype, and validate their ideas. Innovation fails usually because that innovation invariably has not had top executives’ guidance and sponsorship. So, the right level of guidance is important, but overly rigid processes or too ‘pushy’ goals will stifle innovation.

Guidance for problem-solving: Problems become more complex in today’s changing dynamic, it’s important to provide guidance for problem-solving. Try not to fixate on single narratives but listen to more feedback and diverse viewpoints. Insightful guidance helps to prioritize important factors such as requirement, quality, and cost when architecting solutions to make business more productive, collaborative, and smarter. In fact, a digital paradigm is an emerging ecosystem of principles, policies, and practices that offer guidance and describe how the components and standards of the business work cohesively to solve complex problems systematically.

Guidance & governance: Governance is about steering the organization in the right direction with direct link to crucial business and its processes. In many organizations, much of GRC management is reactive in the sense that there is a lot of rushing around trying to fix problems instead of preventing risks. Thus, guidance is important for governance enforcement, improving people-centricity, including engagement and motivation. Contemporary business leaders like corporate board directors need to be open-minded, forethoughtful, knowledgeable, innovative, gap-minding and committed to practicing the dual role of guidance and governance effectively, They set strong GRC guidelines, clearly define authorities, disciplines, roles and responsibilities to improve organizational transparency, lubricate corporate relationships, and improve business effectiveness and maturity.

In the face of "VUCA" reality, having constraints provides the guidance for running a strategic organization by opening up opportunities and providing anchors to explore from, breaking down something old, creating something new through a holistic worldview underlying the interdisciplinary theories and methodology, experiment, explore, and engage for accelerating performance and achieving people-centricity.

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Initiativesofbod

Corporate governance is about how well an organization is being run, whether it is in the right direction, as well as its overall problem-solving competency.

Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in the right direction and achieve expected business results. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must have the agility to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals. Here are the multiple perspectives of shaping a strategic boardroom with digital acumen.

 

Initiatives of BoDs

InitiativesofBoDs In face of the "VUCA" reality, organizations need to keep optimizing their management discipline to survive the fierce competition and thrive with the long-term business advantage. Corporate boards as one of the top leadership pillars should practice open-minded leadership, oversee the business strategy, create the space for cross-boundary dialogue and debate, and take initiatives to enhance GRC disciplines effectively.

Initiatebodpractices The corporate board is appointed to practice governance discipline. Governance provides monitoring, measuring, and enforcement mechanisms to corporate management. The more complex contemporary organizations become, the broader scope of corporate governance turns out to be.

Initiatecorporatebodperspectives Organizational environment today is dynamic. To survive the fierce competition and thrive with the long-term business advantage, don’t be overwhelmed by the sea of information and frequent disruptions. The governing body such as corporate directors must define the management’s job, which is embraced in the purpose, policy, strategy, objectives of the organization, focusing more on the following aspects to improve overall organizational effectiveness, agility, and maturity.

Innovative Board Practices to Unlock Potential Governance is steering. The higher the complexity of the organization and the dynamic of the environment in which it operates, the higher the requirement for governance disciplines to shape differentiated organizational capability, unlock performance, and generate multifaceted business value.

Initiatingcultureassessmentinboardroom Culture is the competitive advantage of the business, and the cultural aspect is an intrinsic factor that drives the organization's business longevity. An organization with excellent culture is arguably capable of providing great results in their competencies. Leadership as a system is wrapped in a culture of openness and emergence. Besides strategic oversight, the contemporary corporate boards play important roles in assessing culture impact through the following aspects, and setting culture tones to accelerate business performance

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with 9300+ 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.



The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Slideshare Presentation


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Amazon Order Link


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" B& N Order Link


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" IBook Order Link


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Lulu Order Link


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Introduction


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter 1 Introduction: The Digital Board's Composition Inquiries


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter II Introduction: The Digital Board's Digital Inquiries


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As": Chapter III Introduction: The Digital Board's Strategy Inquiries


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter IV Introduction: The Digital Board's IT Inquiries


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter V Introduction: The Digital Board's Leadership Inquiries

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Initiatetoucyfeelyemotions

Feeling is- not always loose arrow, could it be a quick logic, make you -decisive, strong, to follow -your gut, courageously.

We are -

human beings,

with emotions,

experience -

exterior world of -

seeing,

listening,

touching,

engaged with -

inner world of

thought,

feeling,

understanding,

actively.

Feeling bridges-

hearts and minds;

inner world, out-space,

cognition & emotion;

seek balance -

physically,

psychologically.


As human beings,

we all have -

vulnerable moment;

feel weak,

once a while,

but do not let -

the weak feeling,

take you over,

procrastically.

consider it as -

an opportunity to -

reflect, recharge, renew-

your energy,

consciously.

Feeling is-

not always loose arrow,

could it be a quick logic,

make you -

decisive, strong,

to follow -

your gut,

courageously;

be curious enough to -

understand surroundings,

liberate -

imagination,

unbelievably;

strengthen -

inner strength,

to move forward,

steadfastly.


Feeling touches -

your nerve;

soften your mind;

give you time to -

sort through emotions,

sensitively;

believe in -

your strengths to -

walk through -

the tough journey,

being called life,

sensibly.

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Initiatestrategyconsideration

Importantly, execution is part of the strategy, in order to effectively execute strategic initiatives for delivering higher than expected results consistently.

The blurring line of business border and the uncharted frontier of an organization provides both unprecedented opportunities and emergent risks that directly impact the survival of the business. 

In order to craft a good strategy, the corporate management has to have abilities to ask the hard questions and engage in meaningful dialogues constantly. "When is a strategy not a successful strategy?" Part of the issue is that there is usually no coherent strategy.

"One-size fits all" approach would be considered not a good strategy because there is no differentiation: Change is the new normal with increasing speed, organizations across the vertical sectors are faced with fierce competitions and frequent disruptions. Thus, if you are not innovative, you will become irrelevant for the long term. The management needs to ask themselves tough questions: Is "standard" being opposed to "strategic"? Or is a short-term operational view opposite to a long-term strategic view? Logic or creativity, which one is more critical to craft a good strategy? Etc.

Traditional strategy emphasis has been on logic over creativity. But innovation is the light all forward-looking organizations are pursuing, thus, strategy needs to strike the right balance between creativity and standardization. Organizational strategy management best practices need to be flexed to allow strategic thinking to emerge across the organization to improve business agility and competency. A strategy can’t be formulated by purely deductive logic - otherwise, it is a plan which is outdated sooner than what you think of. Thus, there is no such a "one size fits all" strategy.

Strategy is not a strategy if it is based on merely wishful thinking, not backed by solid reasoning: Statistically, strategy management has a very low success rate. Strategy fails if it is not based on internal and external knowledge of the company, not considering organizational capacities, as well as not being based on account of all your operational realities. To oversee strategy development, make sure your strategy has the detail behind it and creates a roadmap that you will deliver on. To accept imperfect knowledge and make assessments of the "As is" position of the business, identify the desirable "To be" state, build and execute a dynamic strategy and the associated change programs that enable the "To be" state to be achieved, with a set of processes and activities that keep it dynamic.

Have senior management involved in the iterative strategy management processes, to make timely adjustment, and maximize the full potential of the digital organization. Capability based strategy has a significantly high success rate. Corporate executives need to assess the condition or suitability of capability to support a well-defined business strategy. Then, go down to a second-tier, oversee the program portfolio tier to build business capabilities.

Strategy is not a strategy when it is not considered internal or external business factors: A dynamic strategy has to consider both the internal environment (talent, resources, processes, capabilities, systems, structure, culture, stakeholders, etc.) and external environment (social, political, economic, technological, industry, market, stakeholders, etc.) If these things are not taken into consideration, it is not a good strategy. It’s important to strengthen the weakest links in strategy management, and determine how each part of the organization, including all of the key functions must "put it all together" to be successful in implementing a good enough strategy.

The strategy is not a strategy when isolated from the business ecosystem. The digital ecosystem is dynamic, hyper-connected, interdependent, expansive. It provides unprecedented opportunities to strike a dynamic balance between the inner and outer business elements; motivate a group of people, including a variety of stakeholders, toward accomplishing shared visions and goals. For many organizations, ecosystems have evolved without much attention or planning. Forethoughtful organizations intentionally plan a purposeful ecosystem for catalyzing innovation and improving organizational maturity.

Effective strategies come in all shapes and sizes. For some organizations, the entire strategy is simply a high-level roadmap with key initiatives and target dates. In others, it could be a comprehensive play book that addresses every imaginable avenue. Importantly, execution is part of the strategy, in order to effectively execute strategic initiatives for delivering higher than expected performance results consistently.

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Unusual

People need to take a unique path at their own pace to stretch their strength and build their core competency. 

From one generation to the next, the substance of leadership does not change, it’s about the future, change, and influence. However, digital leadership trends will continue to emerge. Here is a set of featured blogs to dig into the “keywords” of the 21st century to brainstorm the future of digital leadership and business transformation.

           

Unusual

Unusual Unification As the digital world becomes hyperconnected, interdependent, and dynamic, today's digital professionals need to work both smart and hard at the same time, not just keep their hands full, but keep their mind open. Digital mentalities are informative, inclusive, and able to embrace “unusual things'' to stimulate creativity. In a collective setting, it’s critical to encourage free thinking and experimenting, have the right dose of creative tension and “unusual capabilities'' to discover more hotspots of innovation, unify the best of the best, and build the culture of creativity.

Ingenuity Ingenuity is at the edge of art and science, functioning and delight. Ingenuity is the qualification to be creative, insightful, and inventive. Being ingenious needs more understanding, not less. It takes different angles to consider a situation, a thing, a tough problem, they may look very different depending on your perspective, so you can come up with a great solution seemingly effortlessly.

Unconventionalism Every individual is a unique human being; the world we live in is complex and diversified, we are born to experience the world; and everyone is entitled to their interpretation of the world. One valid assessment of that interpretation is what individual life it creates for the person who holds it.

Uniqueness We are on the advancing journey of achieving ultra modernism when we move from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy to a creative digital economy. Different people and organizations have different strengths and capabilities. Thus, they need to take a unique path at their own pace to stretch their strength and build their core competency.

Unusual Angles The digital era upon us is volatile, complex, uncertain, and ambiguous. There are many causes of business stagnation and numerous roadblocks to changes, such as short-sightedness, culture inertia, misalignment of systems, inflexible processes, overly rigid organizational hierarchy, functional silos, groupthink, comfort zone, status quo, or lack of creativity, etc. How to shape high mature digital organizations via unusual angles for enforcing hyperconnectivity, interdependence, and people-centricity.

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thoughts; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making an influence through touching the hearts and connecting minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #9300 blog postings. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. 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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Initiatecommunicationoversight

A well-defined communication protocol expands the ability of professionals at every level of the organization to work collaboratively, grow their roles successfully.

In essence, languages are the tools to make communications, communications are the tools to understand things or people and solve problems. 

Organizations are social realities that emerge from the communication patterns of people. Communication is the coordination mechanism that makes a group of people as a cohesive team to achieve defined goals collaboratively.

Communication strategy oversight: Communication is the word that means many things to many people and initiates a broad set of activities. The oversight of communication strategy and methodology with clarity directly impacts the organizational effectiveness and maturity. Organizational communication strategy is to diagnose critical communication related issues, set guidelines to improve communication coherence.

Communication strategy is an integral component of corporate strategy, to organize a total immersion communication and dialogue program for management to establish a thorough buy-in of the organizational strategy, and the role each individual and each department has to play for its implementation. Communication strategy oversight helps to foster a healthy working environment in which invaluable feedback and vital communication are based on information, trust, and people to foster collaboration and unlock collective performance.

Communication effectiveness oversight: Communication effectiveness directly impacts the problem-solving effectiveness. Misinterpretation and miscommunication are usually caused by misinformation, lack of contextual understanding, pre-conceptual judgment, assumptions, or simply lack of deeper understanding, etc. Communication gaps and bottlenecks caused by cognitive difference, internal politics, ambiguous process, mistrust culture or other management bottlenecks, etc, leads to business friction and stagnation.

Miscommunication leads to ineffective strategy management. The mistake that most organizations make in this regard is to fail to translate the high-level language of strategy into the professional language of staff specialties. Communication has to be customized from general management background to technical background employees, pulling the cross-functional team to communicate and collaborate for leading strategic progress.

Communication practice oversight: There are different ways to communicate, different styles to communicate: listening, telling, questioning, answering. There are interpersonal, intrapersonal communication; there are abstract communication, creative communication; there are face-to-face communication, virtual communication; there are peer to peer conversation, public speaking, touchy feely talk, negotiation, debate, argumentation, casual chat, etc. Be mindful to ensure that our words have been understood in the same sense that we meant them. Pick the right style to fit the circumstances, use the words and style to tailor the audience, to fulfill the purpose of communication.

It would be better to understand what method or means or mode of communication will improve communication effectiveness. Communication is a two way street. Continuous, personalized, and consistent dialogues should replace the 'business as usual,” and “command-control'' communication style. Facilitating effective cross-functional communication with a structural process enables business leaders and professionals to look at the wider aspects around problem space, spread clear messages through a diverse set of activities with mixed communication styles to keep communication flow with verification.

Communication is both art and science. A well-defined communication protocol expands the ability of professionals at every level of the organization to work collaboratively, grow their roles within the organization by taking more responsibilities, become accountable for their words and actions in solving crucial problems, improving professionalism, and achieving higher than expected results with consistency.

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Ineffectiveness

Organizations rise and fall, not on the quantum of plans and resources, but on the capabilities to manage, lead, yet most important to execute.

"Digital Gaps -Bridging Multiple Gaps to Run Cohesive Business” is a guidebook to help digital leaders and professionals today identify, analyze, and mind multiple gaps with multidisciplinary insight and holistic understanding. 

Today’s digital organization simply just can’t stand still., bridging the gap of opportunity between where you are and want to become is a welcomed challenge, it is important to identify and strengthen the weakest link and take a stepwise approach to make a leap of digital transformation.

           Ineffectiveness

Ineffectiveness Even businesses step into the hyper-connected digital world, many business managers and professionals still apply old silo management mindsets to new ways of organizing, and this legacy of the old economy causes most of the organizations across vertical sectors today are process and control driven, those processes become inflexible and stifle changes.

Ineffective Team or Organization Change is never for its own sake. The true reason behind the change is either due to the ineffectiveness of teams/organizations or the inefficiency of processes or practices. There are many common success factors in an effective team or organization; perhaps every failure has its own causes but generally speaking, what are the symptoms of dysfunctional management?

Innate Stucky Factors of Business Ineffectiveness Organizations rise and fall, not on the quantum of plans and resources, but on the capabilities to manage, lead, yet most important to execute. Business leaders need to gain a complete awareness of organizational intricacies-what is happening in the business, not just based on the visual part on the surface, but also about knowing how-underneath to improve business maturity. It’s also crucial to understand the barriers to change and potential pitfalls on the way to strategy execution by clarifying the vision, gaining a systematic understanding of people dynamics, resource alignment, and technological impact.

Insightofpitfallsinstrstegymanagement Many companies spend a significant portion of time formulating rock solid strategies, but execution does not go smoothly for achieving the expected results. There are varying reasons why strategy management fails, and there isn’t always a right or wrong choice in any situation, there are a lot of gray areas, varying blind spots, capability gaps in strategy management.

What are the Causes to IT Ineffectiveness IT is the spinal cord for the organization, integrating various functional capabilities to bring out technology-enabled business solutions, motivating the IT team to constantly deliver products/services for improving high-performing results and delighting both internal and external customers. However, most IT organizations today are still perceived as a cost center and get stuck at a lower level of maturity. What are the specific causes of IT ineffectiveness in how to keep IT “digital fit,” and make IT the true business partner as the growth engine of the business?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #9300th 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.


"Digital Gaps" B&N Order Link


"Digital Gaps" iBook Order Link


"Digital Gaps" Amazon Order Link


"Digital Gaps" Introduction, Slideshare


"Digital Gaps" Chapter 1 Cognitive Gaps


"Digital Gaps" Chapter 2 Leadership Gaps


"Digital Gaps" Chapter 3 Management Gaps


"Digital Gaps" Chapter 4 Capability Gaps


"Digital Gaps" Chapter 5 Professional Gaps


Conclusion: Bridging Gaps to Catalyze Digital Maturity

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Initiatelogicalproblemsolving

Insightful problem-solvers decode complexity by taking multipath logic from technological, anthropological, psychological, philosophical angles; make things simple, elegant, and purposeful.

Problem-solving today has a very wide scope, intricate factors and dynamic circumstances. There is logic behind any problem. Problem-solving includes both framing the right problem and solving it in the right way. 

The more complex the problem is, the more important it is to diagnose the root cause, scrutinize logical thought processes, and problem-solving scenarios. Solve problems really matter and solve them in the right way.

Leverage multiple logic to perceive the right problems: A solution is nothing if the problem is not perceived comprehensively. Many complex problems are usually difficult to define, indeed, part of the difficulty is that there is a mixed bag of good information and misinformation; diverse groups of people perceive problems differently; or the problem-solving process is outdated due to silo or cultural friction.

To frame the right problem, it’s important to improve information quality, separate the exploration phase from the “decision-making phase” as the logic being applied is inherently different and mixing the two will cause confusion. The more complex the situation is, the more important it is to apply multidimensional thought processes, take an interdisciplinary approach to see underneath the symptoms and dig into root causes of the problem.

List the possible solution alternatives to be adopted: Most decisions on problem-solving are based on ‘logic.’ However, the linear logic should be updated as you need to consider the emergent events and dynamic circumstances. It is important to apply deep thinking and interdisciplinary knowledge to complex problem-solving. Cognitively, human thought is characterized by expansion in multiple directions, rather than in one direction, and based on the concept that there are multiple starting points from which one can apply logic to problem-solving.

For example, critical thinking includes many other thinking processes such as analysis, synthesis, creative thinking, strategic thinking, holistic thinking, etc. To scrutinize problem-solving logic and be an insightful problem-solver, an individual's critical thinking skills, creative mentality, structural understanding, technical “know-how,” proactive attitudes and the right dose of confidence are all valid within the context of their problem-solving competency. For every problem, list the possible alternative solutions. You have logic to see which creative solution works best to solve the problem more effectively.

Complex problem-solving evolves both detail and the big picture, applying integral logic to deal with chains of issues: Nowadays, problem-solving today has a very wide scope, needs to leverage both analysis and synthesis, take an interdisciplinary approach to break down the over-complex problems into smaller issues which can be handled smoothly. Then, integrate those different pieces into a holistic solution without causing more issues.

Business leaders, especially at the senior level, should take a holistic view, apply nonlinear logic, cross-disciplinary expertise, the right dose of gut feelings for deciding cohesively and dealing with chains of issues in a structural way. It’s important to become more people-centric, focus on creating value for customers in every step, develop strong "thought logic" or "behavioral value chain" between the inputs - intermediate steps - outcomes.

We all have power within, to think, learn and expand our knowledge and improve cognitive ability and problem-solving competency; choice is ours. Insightful problem-solvers decode complexity by taking multipath logic from technological, anthropological, psychological, philosophical angles; make things simple, elegant, and purposeful. They set effective principles, guidelines, processes and procedures to enhance an iterative cycle of problem-prediction, problem-framing, problem-solving continuum.

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Innovationinquisitiveness

To awaken innovation in the well-established organization, business leaders and professionals should think as an intrapreneur and act as a startup manager.

Digital is the age of innovation. Innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation.

 The purpose of the book “Innovation Breakthrough - Depict Innovation as a System“  is to develop tailored innovation frameworks, principles, methodologies, practices, and apply the emerging trends to manage breakthrough innovations successfully.

Innovation Inquisitiveness

InnovationinquiriesThe goal of innovation is about creating sustainable competitive advantages. It's common that many companies tend to focus more on their core competencies with age, often forgetting about the value of innovation. Creative problem-solving is about trying something “unusual”- the thing that has never been done before. Radical innovation starts with a problem, having no solution in the current situation. They are critical to build long term business advantage.

Inquisitivelogic As we live in the era with abundant knowledge and increasing pace of changes. The more we question, the more we know, we learn and thereafter we spread our learning, and solve problems effectively. Some questions seem paradoxical, some questions are circular, some questions are scientific, some questions are philosophical.

Initiateproblemsolvinginquiries The business ecosystem has become more complex and dynamic, interdependent and hyperconnected, problems become much more complex than ever. Problem-solving is a multi-stepped process that includes problem diagnosis, resolution, solution implementation, and improvement. The business management should determine why problems happened, how problems escalated, which areas of the organization were affected, and when the problems started.

Initiateinquiries With the high velocity and unprecedented uncertainty, in many circumstances, business leaders couldn’t predict the future with a certain degree of accuracy, they have to understand the hidden paradoxes, do in-depth cause-effect analysis, optimize complicated things or processes, and deal with the “VUCA” dynamic skillfully.

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about 9300+ 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 to human progression.



"Unpuzzling Innovation" Amazon Order Link

"Unpuzzling Innovation" B&N Order Link

"Unpuzzling Innovation" iBook Order Link

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Slideshare Presentation

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 1 Innovation Classification

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 2 Innovation Principles

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 3 Digital Innovators

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 4 Connecting Innovation Dots

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 5 Digital Innovation Best & Next Practices

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 6 Innovation Paradox

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 7 Innovation Gaps and Pitfalls

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 8 Innovation Measurement

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Conclusion Mastering Innovation in a Structural Way

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Quotes Collection I

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Quotes Collection II

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Quotes Collection III

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Initiateleadershipinfluence

 Leadership is about the future, the future implicates changes and innovation.

The world has become more connected and transparent, there are leadership opportunities at any given point in time where people congregate to reach a clear vision. 

Good leadership means continuous improvements; great leaders operate with the core principles: authenticity, influence, creativity, simplicity, and speed, to lead courageously, solve problems innovatively, develop people insightfully, and amplify leadership influence effortlessly.

Leadership vision: The most critical and yet overlooked foundation to being a real leader is in choosing a destination that creates a better world! Leadership is about identifying and envisioning a worthy objective, and engaging people to work towards that objective empathetically. True leaders are not the followers to capture the tidal waves blindly, but are able to capture the invaluable business insight to make sound judgments in a consistent way. Leadership influence is made based on the leadership substances such as vision, purpose, knowledge, expertise, and competency with effective digital leadership styles such as participation, coaching or delegation.

Innovative problem-solving: Running an organization or a society is simply about an iterative problem-solving continuum. The leadership differentiation provided by unique capabilities is usually more effective and influential for innovative problem-solving. They need to have broad business acumen, deep expertise in the specific field, interdisciplinary knowledge, and cross-functional experiences, to understand perspectives different from their own, frame the right problems and solve them in the right way. The problem-solving is complex, the emphasis is on trying to determine which competencies or capabilities should be used in which combination, and with what level of weight for each, for every different situation, to dig into root causes of critical issues and solve them thoroughly.

Awakening possibility in people to deliver extraordinary results: Contemporary business leaders have unique eyes to discover unimaginable uniqueness of people, look at all aspects of their individual traits, work ethic, creativity, experience, professional competency, hidden potential, achievements and performance. They are able to identify talent gaps by pondering: Where exactly the individual is lacking? What are the skills or attributes that need to be developed, does an individual's capability align well with a business's strategic need, beyond transactional activities, how to mind the gaps of collective capabilities of the organization to realize the strategic goals of the company? Training and development plans for workforces need to be in line with what the business or organization needs for the future. Organizations should set the leadership tone to encourage people to question the status quo, think independently and create an environment that encourages dissent and candor, change and innovation.

Every leader and organization face obstacles that are difficult to surmount, from corporate executives confronting the complex global marketplace to innovators trying to unleash human potential. Leadership is about the future, the future implicates changes and innovation. Leadership is an influence, which is based on their ability to inspire, confidence to assert, insight to bridge, and consistency to produce higher than expected results all the time.

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Innovativepotential

 Identifying and exploring talent potentiality is both art and science, and human potential can be unleashed by exploring it holistically.

The purpose of “Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit“ is to share insight about multidimensional enterprise fit from digital characteristics, organizational structure, change, knowledge, and talent perspectives; evoke critical and paradoxical thinking about digital “fit vs. misfit,” spark healthy debates on how to define and develop true digital fit, and build a fitting working environment to inspire creativity and accelerate digital transformation.

            

Innovative Potential

Innovativepotentialitynavigator Either individually or in the organizational setting, performance keeps us moving forward at a steadfast speed; potential can unlock future performance and lift us to the next cycle of growth. To unleash potential, professionals need to be learning agile and build unique competency. To expedite business growth, the importance of potentiality navigator is to identify talent or business hidden potential, explore the processes on how and what they can utilize their potential for achieving long term prosperity.

Insightofprofessionalism We live in the knowledge economy, being a digital professional is inherently and inextricably linked with high levels of “professionalism,” which means the individual not only has the skill to get work done, but also present knowledge proficiency, credibility, accountability, meet the high standard of professional attitude, and reputation.

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

Unleashpotentiality Human Capital is about potential, if unleashed, can transcend the organization or our society to reach the next level of maturity. It’s the individual, culture, circumstances, and society that sets a limit on that unlimited potential. Either individually or collaboratively, potentiality includes the overall ability to perform in the future unlocking potentiality; talent development should be consistent efforts and ongoing practices to unleash potential and improve professionalism.

Innerpotentiality People are always the most crucial success factor of any organization. There are both cognition and emotion involved, hard and soft elements in potentiality development and management. Identifying and exploring talent potentiality is both art and science, and human potential can be unleashed by exploring it holistically.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #9300+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. 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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Ingredientsinphilosophy

Philosophy as the compass of human civilization, is important to better understand societal evolution and harness the power to fulfill human purposes.

Philosophy is an ongoing inquiry into the nature of things based on abstract reasoning; involving examining basic concepts such as truth, existence, reality, causality, and freedom in human society. The philosophy of abstraction is to convey wisdom, discover the very purpose of intelligent beings. 

The ingredients in “PHILOSOPHY” enable people to discover truth, uncover logic behind the things, understand and harmonize human society.

Paradox: Paradoxes are conflicting choices or conditions that demand equal attention. As paradox is the result of two opposing truths existing side by side, which can be both right. Paradoxical intelligence is a sort of philosophical wisdom, enabling people to see both sides of the coin objectively, without binary or extreme thinking, strike the right balance of viewpoints in understanding complex issues, discern multifaceted truth, and solve problems interdisciplinarily.

Holism: “Holistic thinking" refers to a big picture mentality, understanding things holistically; it has a correlation with philosophical reasoning. Philosophical intelligence is multidimensional; without broad knowledge, profound insight, and ultimate wisdom, you cannot understand complexity comprehensively. Holistic thinking requires a very open mind, to frame the right questions and balance the diversified point of view, transcend conventional wisdom into philosophical insight.

Ideology: People vary in their ideology, cognizance, perceptions, and priorities; and they react to situations in different ways. Thus, change itself is a tough choice. Philosophically, people are encouraged to look for an experience of truth, the unfolding of wisdom by those who have gone beyond traditional thinking and conventional understanding. Wherever there are groups of people, there are conflicts. Ideology matters, as it means how to challenge the ideology of methodology and practices in people management, in pursuing philosophical truth and universal wisdom.

Love: Philosophy is a Greek portmanteau of the love of wisdom. You can think good thoughts or bad ones and the ones you focus on are who you become. Learning philosophy allows people to discern truth from false, and deepen their understanding & love of the world. Love is like seed, needs to grow, needs to be tested by the storms, the difficulties, and the adversities. Philosophical understanding of love makes the world more affectionate, fair, wiser and fulfilling.

Originality: Being original is about being authentic, having the courage to use your own intelligence for effective thinking and problem-solving,! The original thinking might have something to do with self -belief. Philosophically, it’s about discovering the truth of yourself as a human being. It can be done if someone remains conscious, alert, and has the inclination to search for meaning and excellence. With originality, the creation bears its own signature of truth.

System: System thinking is about understanding interconnectivity between parts and the whole. So many people do not know how to connect the dots within complex systems, nor think inclusively, holistically, nor comprehend system dynamics. In the rational world with linear thinking discipline, system thinking as sort of philosophical wisdom, has a thought process for seeing interrelationships rather than isolated things, digging underneath the surfaces, uncovering patterns of change, for getting the whole picture of the hyperconnected and interdependent world.

Openness: Openness is the most difficult thing to refresh your mind, but a critical step in spurring creativity and pursuing philosophical wisdom. The advanced thinkers are often more open-minded to new concepts and ideas, demonstrating philosophical understanding of the complex world by leveraging contrarian views to shape a holistic picture. They do not restrict themselves to conventional wisdom, but have foresight with a proactive and predictive understanding of cause and effect. They are open to the unknown, so that new thinking and knowledge can emerge to reinvent the world.

Potentiality: Potentiality has a great deal of what defines us as human beings who are actually full of imagination and creativity. The great way to go on discovering potentiality is to identify and develop our inner strength by following imaginations, insights, and intuitions. Potentiality exploration is the art of creativity, science of reengineering, and philosophy of understanding. Talented people think, create, and self-actualize by architecting themselves, nurturing creative mindset, experimenting with new things, discovering philosophical meanings, and exploring “the art of possibility."

Hybridity: Hybrid Thinking is a set of digital minds integrating the multiple thought processes to think bigger, deeper, broader, and critically, to reach a hybrid view of the world with many dimensions such as culturally, technically, economically, organizationally, scientifically, or philosophically. Hybrid management philosophy is about striking the multitude of balance, such as centralization vs. decentralization, creativity vs. process, personalization vs. standardization, etc, discovering the “hybrid truth,” to the digital balances, in order to achieve a state of dynamic equilibrium.

Yin & Yang: The natural world is a delicate balance of dark and the light, down and up, flow & solidity, yin & yang. Ancient philosopher Lao Tzu wrote "All beings support Yin and embrace Yang and the interplay of these two forces fills the universe." The brightness of daytime enables us to rejuvenate energy and make accomplishment; the darkness of deep night brings quietness, allowing people to rest and recharge themselves. Nature is the balance of “yin & yang.” We need to accept and appreciate both. Observing the beauty, power, and grace between the two takes on new meaning for harmonizing the world.

Philosophy as the compass of human civilization, is important to better understand societal evolution and harness the power to fulfill human purposes. There are more people on this planet than ever. Wisdom cannot be forced either by accumulating knowledge or guessing. Forcing wisdom commonly leads to dogmatic thinking, and cognitive dissonance. We need more people to understand complex reality, develop philosophical ingredients for gaining universal wisdom, pursue truth from the myth, and solve global problems cross-discplinarily.

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Initiatearchitectureapproach

The architecture seeks to represent the contextual knowledge of an organization in terms of information, process, capability, performance either as it exists or as it is intended to be. 

Business Architecture is like a compass tool for the organization to navigate through the right direction, implement a good strategy by enhancing the processes of problem diagnosis (current state), setting up policy/guideline, doing gap/impact analysis to define where and how, that bridges the gap between what is required and how it is implemented, and taking cohesive actions in change management. 

The information provided in the architecture provides guidance/direction on what steps need to be taken by the board and senior executives to reach their strategic goals for the company.

              Architecture Activities & Approach

 

Invalubleactivitiesofarchitecture Business Architecture should play a critical role in designing and managing future businesses in the transition to the strategic state, to move up the organizational maturity level. Business Architecture can be invaluable for performing a wide array of services, including strategic positions via competitive analysis, process optimization and governance, culture design & reinvention, as well as a wide array of other business functions. The ultimate goal of Business Architecture is to envision and design the future state of the business.

Initiatearchitectureapproach We no longer live in the world that runs in years, but one that runs in minutes. Business Architecture is a critical framework that should support the requirements of the business and will need to be adjusted periodically. It helps the management build the roadmap on how an organization executes their strategy by taking into account varying business factors such as the maturity of the company, its business goals, its technology landscape, etc, to facilitate transformative changes, integrate different pieces into a holistic organization and design a strong governance model to improve business agility and maturity.

Innerarchitecturecomponents The architecture seeks to represent the contextual knowledge of an organization in terms of information, process, 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.

Initiatearchitectureconversation In face of today’s business velocity and frequent digital disruptions, Business Architecture is a practical tool to explore macro-environment and navigate critical business activities to manage uncertainty and deal with complexity smoothly. Any architecture has to accommodate the fact that all organizations operate simultaneously as open and closed systems. It's an important tool for business executives to fine tune critical success factors, facilitate continuous digital dialogues, optimize process coherence and improve business agility.

Innerconnectioninofphilosophy&architecture In face of constant changes, frequent disruptions, management is both science and art. The traditional linear management practices working in the considerably static industrial age are simply not sufficient to manage hyper-connected, interdependent business. Philosophy allows the management to ask insightful questions which are still current and meaningful to architect a purposeful organization for achieving high performance results. Evolutionary business architecture conveys the management philosophy as the abstract wisdom to set guidelines for business change; navigate the business transformation journey step-wisely.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #9300th 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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Initiatechangeinspireinnovation

Change is worth its weight because of its high impact on the business’s long-term prosperity.

In an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, problems become over-complex and interconnected. Change is the new normal, but it is never for its own sake, but to solve problems large or small for generating multifaceted value. 

In reality though, there is a struggle between: siloism vs. togetherness, stagnation vs. growth, convention vs. innovation. In order to make radical change, you have to transform the company’s underlying functions, build robust business capabilities, cultivate a great culture, for leading change successfully and ensuring long term business prosperity.

Unify silos to bridge gaps: The industrial organization with a silo functional setting helps to achieve a certain level of efficiency. However, it generates gaps, creates barriers that surface between departments, causing people who are supposed to be on the same team to work against each other. Individually, silos might make you feel isolated and “powerful,” but they form a very insecure basis for the ego. So digging into the root causes, silos are not a structural issue, they are the result of poor thinking; lack of strategic thinking, holistic thinking, system thinking, etc, further enlarging communication, collaboration, and motivational gaps. It builds the wall in people’s minds and sets barriers to organizational strategy management. To deal with today’s complex problems and overcome challenges, individual work and group work cannot be done without horizontal unification and vertical penetration. Great organizations are supposed to maximize individual, team, business system potential. Cross-functional brainstorming and collaboration unify differences, unlock collective performance.

Accelerate growth by overcoming stagnation: When the business gets stuck, it usually shows the dysfunctional symptoms such as unresponsiveness, unproductivity, rigidity, inflexibility, disengagement; fragility, culture inertia, outdated system, etc. Ad hoc change is doomed to fail, so the management needs to ponder around: Is stability the same as stagnation? How to drive incremental change in a stepwise manner? When resource management becomes a bottleneck, or culture is inflexible, people are used to following overly restrictive procedures, they become unproductive, and businesses get stuck. If you need to transform the business upto the next growth cycle, the management needs to take a holistic view, discover and fix the root causes of stagnation in order to accelerate growth.

To deal with continuous disruptions and lead strategic changes, a growth mindset is in strong demand to ride learning curves and make the progressive movement. Business professionals with a growth mind today can build an enriched professional portfolio by reinventing themselves, continuously building new skills and competency. It takes practice to build a competitive team which is composed of many self-motivated people who can adopt a personal drive to achieve high performance in a changing context. Corporate leaders with a growth mindset are audacious, adaptive, inspirational to step out of their own comfort zone, both self-motivated and can motivate people moving into growth trajectory, walk the talk and lead changes confidently.

Catalyze innovation by breaking through convention: Traditional organizations often have conventional pyramidical settings, conventional culture and conventional “command & control” management discipline to keep the lights on, but do very little to innovation. They might become irrelevant for the long run. In fact, the digital era is about innovation, if you are not different and move forward, you are already lagging. It's important to break down innovation obstacles, look into an unknown future, strike the right balance of order and chaos, creativity and standardization, management and governance, etc, to improve innovation excellence.

There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. Creative people tend to be non-conformists, seeing things from different angles to gain fresh perspectives, connecting wider dots to shape fresh views or new concepts, perceiving underneath the surface, understand patterns, discover the difference between seemingly similar things, jumpstart into the innovation mode, accelerate the speed of changes, and make a transcendent movement. Collaboratively, people are sharing and working closely with both similar-minded or complementary minded fellow global citizens to chart breakthrough innovation continually.

Change is worth its weight because of its high impact on the business’s long-term prosperity. The large scale of change is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of business performance and organizational maturity. Forethoughtful organizations have to overcome challenges, constantly fine-tune the uncontrollable factors acting on the business for leading change success interdisciplinarily.

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