Initiatives

We are experiencing the paradigm shift in the global society, from division to integration; silo-based command & control to information-led mass collaboration.

Information is growing exponentially, the internet and collaborative platforms & tools flatten the world to a certain degree, harnessing information fluidity and cross functional communication. 

The business world we live in is heading the paradigm shift from silo to hyperconnectivity and interdependence; from inside-out process-driven to outside in people centricity. It is a strategic imperative for today’s leaders and professionals to embrace the broader view of global society, collaborate cross-disciplinarily, co-solve common problems innovatively and build an advanced global world harmoniously.

It’s important to generate a set of common values, clarify objective perceptions of crucial issues at the global scope, share holistic view of advancement in humanity : Compared to the industrial era with static information and overly restrictive boundaries in the last century, today’s global world is much more open, hyper-diverse and interdependent. There is abundant global knowledge, enriched cultural heritage, religious beliefs, etc. It requires us to be willing to listen to diverse viewpoints, broaden the perspective to fix misperceptions, develop a set of common values (such as inclusiveness, respect, trust, empathy, innovativeness, fairness, etc.), establish certain common standards, and share a holistic view of the global problem-solving and progression.

Global professionals today need to articulate a set of values that they can bring to the table, present the mindset, attitude, and behavior consistency in conveying those values. It’s strategic imperative to frame the new mind to see the ever-changing world via the multi-dimensional lenses; deepening understanding of how others think and value empathetically; gaining an in-depth understanding of your environment proactively. The new breed of global citizens today have a diversity of thoughts, characters, cognitive differences, skills, styles, etc. Global organizations give people the voices, tools and experiences of how to communicate across the world more effectively even if they have cognitive differences, subjective perception, language obstacles, etc, in order for them to work collaboratively and innovate relentlessly.

It’s strategic to develop compelling global business cases for making proposed investments with global context: The purpose of developing global business cases is to clarify vision and strategy behind initiatives, solve some problems with global context cross disciplines such as innovation, education, sustainability, etc. Business initiative management with a global perspective does require not only interdisciplinary understanding to connect the dots and see what's possible, but also technical expertise to solve problems smoothly.

Strong universal business cases enable organizational leaders to streamline people and process management, gain competitive advantages and generate options for providing future business competencies to solve problems with large scopes, etc. From a business initiative portfolio point of view, the management needs to deal with cost/revenue/regulatory/risk issues cautiously. It should encourage doing better pre-work, defining key performance indicators and the "success criteria," enabling consideration of the range of options, rather than the traditional "jump to solution" problem-solving methodologies and practices.

A global society has a huge potential to become a highly innovative system in which all sorts of ingredients are integrated dynamically to achieve innovation fluency: A system is an organic thing that keeps evolving, with this side, that side, and interactions in between. An integral global system helps organizations recognize challenges, share global insight, understand boundaries, deal with constraints, frictions, bridge a variety of gaps seamlessly; lead radical change, orchestrate structural innovation in the global scope, and make a significant impact on societal evolution.

Our co-shared global world still has quite a lot of boundaries. In many traditional organizations with lower-level of maturity, the business is the sum of pieces, not running as a premium whole. Information technology can work on the system and across the systems; it is the glue to integrate key ingredients into differentiated business competency for solving problems holistically. Hence, today’s leaders and professionals need to connect interdisciplinary dots across the global scope, embrace the broader view of human society, spur & implement fresh ideas, scale up, and achieve innovation fluency.

We are experiencing the paradigm shift in the global society, from division to integration; silo-based command & control to information-led mass collaboration. The key elements that future leaders and professionals in all realms of the global perspectives should acquire to familiarize themselves with multifaceted effects of globalization. In the world-wide scope, cognitive intelligence, cultural empathy, talent mobility, risk tolerance, professional sophistication, intellectual influence, etc, are all unique themes in shaping the global workforce, solving common problems, and building an advanced global society.

Read More

Initiativesoflubrication

Unify people’s differences, enforce trust, transparency, respect, ensure the business ecosystem is able to communicate, negotiate, reciprocate, and cooperate to harness change and lead transformative changes.

The purpose of the book “Digital Hybridity: How to Strike the Right Balance for Digital Paradigm Shift” is to shed some light on how to strike the right balance of stability and changes; being transactional to keep spinning and being transformational to leap forward for making a seamless digital paradigm shift. 

Digital organizations should apply the hybrid management approach, focus on building a diverse, networked, and extended modern working environment in which the powerful digital platforms and computing technologies enable seamless conversations, delayer overly rigid organizational hierarchy, inspire idea sharing and brainstorming, and engage employees and partners to achieve the high-performance result.

Initiatives to Lubricate

Initiatetolubricate The very characteristics of digital new normal are rapid change, exponential growth of information, constant disruptions. Increasingly, enterprises find themselves enmeshed in "ecosystems," full of nonlinearity, unrepeatability, unpredictability. While businesses can influence and get influenced by these "ecosystems," they have limited "control" over these ecosystems. What are the lubricants for the organizations to deal with conflicts, fricions, unexpected events smoothly, how to improve organizational agility, create strategic synergy and synchronize business speed?

Initiativetoinnovate Our business world is becoming more connected and interdependent, the crucial issue for many organizations though is that they don’t have an integrated approach to solve complex problems holistically. They haven’t reached the next level of business growth and maturity.

Inclusiveunification Business world is full of uncertainty and ambiguity. In order to deal with today’s complex problems and overcome challenges, individual work and group work cannot be done without horizontal unification and vertical penetration. Gone are the days where organizations can dictate the parameters of the working relationship via top-down, businesses today need to make shifts from static to dynamic; inside-out to outside-in people-centric. Unify people’s differences, enforce trust, transparency, respect, ensure the business ecosystem is able to communicate, negotiate, reciprocate, and cooperate to harness change and lead transformative changes.

Initiatebalancedapproach Due to exponential growth of information and emerging digital technology, today’s workforce is a technology savvy, hyper-diverse and super-connected with the characteristics of multi-generation, multi-culture, and multi-devicing. There is a risk in investing in your people, but what is the risk of not investing?

Innovation The business needs innovation as a silver-lining. Compared to nimble startups, many well-established organizations are struggling with innovation because of command-control management styles, overly rigid business processes, legacy technologies, inflexible workforce, etc. To improve innovation effectiveness, set guidelines to ensure that innovation efforts are steered in the right direction.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #9700+ 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.

Read More

Illustrateimaginableknowledge

 Imagination boosts- creative energy, enthusiastically; knowledge keeps us to-think, act, logically; imagination breaks down- the old thinking box, boldly; knowledge expands-the bigger box of -thinking consciously.

In the complex world,

with information abundance;

there is no imagination,

without knowledge;

there is no knowledge,

without imagination.

If imagination is -

the seed to -

grow innovation;

knowledge is the soil to-

nurture it.


Without imagination to-

"believe in the possible,"

innovation may not happen,

naturally;

without knowledge to -

roll imagination into reality,

innovation cannot grow-

strongly;

imagination is-

lost without knowledge;

knowledge gets-

stale without imagination.

Imagination leads to -

discovery;

Knowledge deepens -

understanding;

imagination helps us -

initiate ideas,

wildly;

knowledge enables us to-

refine ideas to -

what is feasible,

sep-wisely.


Imagination boosts-

creative energy;

knowledge keeps us to-

think, act,

logically.

imagination breaks down-

the old thinking box,

boldly;

knowledge expands-

the bigger box of -

thinking consciously.

Too much imagination without -

deep knowledge,

is more like-

a fiction tale;

too much knowledge without-

free thinking,

is more like-

oxymoron;

are you bounded by -

knowledge,

stifle imagination,

decrease innovative spirit,

unintentionally?

Can you take -

the right dose of-

imagination and knowledge,

to make advancement,

constantly?

Without imagination,

our planet is tedious;

without knowledge;

our world is-

lagging behind;

imagination has wings,

encircling the world,

knowledge flows,

boundarylessly;

imagination leapfrogs -

human kind;

knowledge empowers people to -

make differences;

progressively.

Can we develop-

“imaginable knowledge”,

wisely;

make transcendent change,

inspirationally?

Read More

Initiatelevelsofinnovation

How successfully organizations can handle “VUCA” digital new normal depends on how fast and capable they can lead their business forward by reaching the next level of understanding, innovation, and leadership.

Human society as an integral component of the natural world is dynamic, diverse, and keeps evolving and progressing. If the knowledge-scarce industrial age means a steep pyramid or silo mentality; then the information-abundant digital era implies a fluid knowledge cycle and transcendent up-levels. 

Either individually or professionally, we need to keep learning, growing, innovating, to build the next level of professional or leadership competency in solving more complex problems, and reaching the next level of societal advancement with the very characteristics of innovativeness, agility, autonomy, synchronization, resilience.

It’s critical for organizations to manage a balanced innovation portfolio, to reach the high level of innovation excellence: Innovation happens frictionlessly in an open environment, There are incremental innovation, radical innovation, and breakthrough innovation, different levels of innovation need to be managed appropriately. Innovation is not serendipity, but a process that can be managed in a structural way, as well as a holistic system that needs to be fine-tuned to reach the high level of fluency. In fact, the business and economic environment play an important role in catalyzing innovation for reaping the business benefits and delighting customers.

There are both tangible and intangible elements that need to be knitted into the unique innovation competency of the organization. Incremental innovation usually starts with a small objective/aim to achieve; generally brings short term value additions or competitive advantage. It is often predictable. Breakthrough Innovation is more disruptive and will change your organization in many fields. That usually implies high risk and high return. You need new technology, new processes, new customers, new knowledge, maybe a new business model. All that makes them very risky, but you will get very great opportunities for great products/solutions that change your organization, your industry, or even the world significantly. So incremental innovation is evolutionary. Breakthrough Innovation is more revolutionary.

It’s important to move from “doing Agile” to being agile in running a high mature organization: Agility is the ability to adapt to a changing environment, as well as create momentum to change. Can agile be understood and applied professionally at both tactical and strategic level? What is an appropriate role for top management to play in an agile journey? Technically, from a development perspective, agile is a software development methodology and practice to deliver customized products or services; from a leadership perspective, philosophically, agile is a mindset, along with a set of principles to focus on “ Interaction, Improvement, Iteration.” 

The senior leaders need to consider multiple levels and multiple timeframes for improving organizational agility: Do you understand what the organizations are trying to accomplish? How will Agile support the organization's strategic goals? Does it address current tactical needs of the organization, as well as the capacity you're trying to build, and differentiated business capability you need to compete for the long run? There are some good ways for senior managers to address the existing organizational pain points via “Agile lenses”; apply agile philosophy, principles to create the synergy of teams, cultivate the business habit of inquiring, interacting, and proactively changing, not overly controlling or manipulating, to ensure business effectiveness- moving in the right direction at the premium speed.

In order to build a learning organization, “adaptive learning” must be joined by “generative learning,” learning that enhances our 'capacity to create’: With “VUCA” reality, Both individuals or organizations need to keep learning and building the next level of competency. Organizational learning is enabling employees to constantly learn so that the organization does not only 'earn enough from today,' but “thrive in the future.” It, therefore, means to ensure that the organization knows the tasks and knowledge required to 'sustain' itself; not only to survive only, but more importantly, to thrive for the long run.

Learning, growing is the journey, it involves the levels of perception, levels of perspective; levels of understanding; the level of decision effectiveness and the level of problem-solving competency. Due to a shortened knowledge cycle, with the mix of outdated information and knowledge abundance, absorbing knowledge and adaptive learning is simply not enough. Today’s business leaders and professionals need to unlearn, and relearning, create fresh knowledge and spur fresh ideas all the time. Organizations are socio-technical so organizational learning models should be socio-technical in nature. Building a learning organization is not and should not be an ultimate goal, the real goal is to build a people centricity business and produce high performance results consistently.

Organizations all face fierce competitions and continuous disruptions; how successfully they can handle “VUCA” digital new normal depends on how fast and capable they can lead their business forward by reaching the next level of understanding, innovation, and leadership. It’s crucial to keep learning agile, envision the future of the world, define the role you would like to play and how to accomplish it, at which scope, the level of responsibilities you've progressed to take, with the goal to unleash collective human potential and build an advanced, harmonized, innovative global human society.

Read More

Initiatives

Take initiatives to develop their leaders, invest in their human capital, explore the processes on how and what they can utilize collective potential for achieving long term business prosperity.

Organizations across the geographical or industrial borders are faced with rapid changes, exponential growth of information, frequent disruptions and fierce competitions. They have to make investment in the most invaluable human capital, they need to take initiatives, put the time and effort into shaping the leadership force, developing "their people"; not only for the employee's future but also for the company's future. 

As the new generation of workforce pursues freedom, independence, and autonomy, at the highest level, to realize their potential.

Leaders can encourage their employees to provide solutions to common problems by rotating their roles and placing them in the fitting positions for problem-solving: Silos cause slowness and small-thinking, further creating cross-functional communication and collaboration gaps. Traditional organizations are based on overly rigid hierarchy; conventional problem-solving is often based on linear logic and industrial best practices. The problems today usually have many causes and can be very complex, you can't figure out the exact cause and effect so the solutions are vague. Always be careful about examining the potential points of engagement, rather than jumping to the “we'll fix this" mentality.

Knowledge professionals today are more purpose-driven and self-motivated. Business leaders need to become more flexible, flatten the overly rigid structure or process, put the right talent with the right expertise to solve the right problems. They can identify high potential people by assessing their learning agility, innovation, accountability, etc. People want to feel valued and explore new opportunities, develop their talent and build professional competency.

Look at how to motivate and obtain the most out of the talent and look for breadth of experiences, internal rotational opportunities for leadership development: Leadership development needs to be a continuous effort via coaching and personalized training program. It's a leadership development construct or perspective- on the job observation, feedback, and rotation. Embedding leadership development into business initiative management by striking a shared balance between operations and development is a great place to start.

Look for leadership potential by understanding how people think, define, and solve problems; Look for people who are able to grow and give them the opportunity to do so, look at how to motivate and obtain the most out of the talent; look for breadth of experiences. Provide people internal rotational opportunities, and look for individuals who are motivated to succeed along with leadership who encourages appropriate risk-taking. That’s the art and science of leadership development.

“Inclusiversity” initiatives are linked to succession planning, role rotation, talent capability building: In a global marketplace, it is a business imperative to make a diversity and inclusion strategy for building long term business competency. Inclusion is the achievement of a working environment in which all individuals are encouraged to think independently, spur creative ideas, be treated fairly and respectfully, have equal access to opportunities, knowledge, resources, align their career goal with the strategic goal of their organization, and make a significant difference significantly.

Why would a company or organization want to lag behind by not establishing an “incluversity” initiative, or more critically building an “inclusiversity mindset” from top-down. If diversity and inclusion are strongly supported by management teams, all levels in the organization can reap the benefits of professional growth. And fully-developed talent can contribute to the organization’s long term success. So the true "inclusiversity" mind will be respected for its true role as a "business catalyst."

To unleash human potential, professionals need to be learning agile and build unique professional competency. To expedite business growth, the importance of potentiality navigator is to identify talent with hidden potential, take initiatives to develop leadership, invest in their human capital, explore the processes on how and what they can utilize collective potential for achieving long term business prosperity.

Read More

Initiavesofleadership

Leadership competency is multifaceted, interrelated with the traits, niche skills, unique experience.

Leadership comes in many shades of character. The substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about a clear vision, an attitude of the free mind with both confidence & humility, risk-taking spirit, and exemplary behaviors. 

Great leaders break down outdated perceptions, harness cross-functional communication & collaboration, increase transparency, and unleash collective human potential smoothly.


Leaders are like the digital conductor who can orchestrate their own sheet music and amplify leadership voice: There are those who seek the justification of leadership via virtuous qualities. There are those who amplify leadership influence via effective communication and orchestration. Insightful leaders should be equipped with the advanced mindset to make sure that nothing is dismissed due to out of date beliefs or negative human emotions. Insightful business leaders are good at the perception of technology trends, emerging business opportunities, or alternative business solutions.

The real challenge for business leaders is to understand where and how they can and should improve to get the biggest effect and scale-up across the digital ecosystem effortlessly. The "orchestration" is more relevant to the "system of processes" as business processes management has to be more dynamic and adaptive to the accelerated speed of changes. With effective leadership to reinvent a traditional organization and orchestrate an effective business transformation, digital organizations can be operated as high-performance business catalyzed via diversification, versatility, and intelligence.

Leaders with high professional competency are like the integrator interconnected with hidden clues to solve problems effectively: Leadership has both hard components such as interdisciplinary knowledge expertise and multicore professional competency, as well as soft factors such as communication and reputation. It’s always important to integrate diverse perspectives or multidimensional viewpoints into a holistic leadership perspective. It’s crucial to integrate hard and soft skills, interdisciplinary knowledge and multi-dialect fluency into unique leadership competency; as well as integrate leadership and management into a successful business transformation formula.

In today's information overloading business dynamic, great leadership manifests respect, caring, core value, professionalism, etc, to reach clearly defined vision and strategic goals of the organization. In reality, many organizations that get stuck at the lower level of maturity are divided by so many gaps across leadership, management; leadership integration is to bridge gaps, build trust, practice strategic thinking with enthusiasm to envision the future, and demonstrate unique leadership style to improve leadership discipline.

Leaders with clear vision and fresh insight are great story-tellers amplify their influence by touching the heart and connecting mind: Modern business and society become more complex and interdependent than ever, leadership is about steering people and organizations in the right directions by sharing a clear vision via persuasive communication. It is critical that communication needs to be directly related to your audience situation, how it affects them. What drives you to become a leader? What does your audience want to see in you? What’s the connection between the theories you learn and what happens in the real world? Etc.

The good story is about selling today for tomorrow. Great leaders can tell an inspirational story, discover common ground, present empathy, and construct a collaborative vision. Inspirational stories need to be true and updated, to reflect their vision, character, leadership philosophy. So leaders need to keep checking their gut, their heart, and their mind; use data for telling information-based stories; use professional or personal experience for telling people-centric stories; allow people to ask interesting questions, expect to get information-based answers, and spark innovation to reach the “art of possible.”

Leadership competency is multifaceted, interrelated with the traits, niche skills, unique experience. The leadership maturity is based on the right mix of hard and soft elements, substance and style. There is no one single attribute to digital leadership; there is a delicate mix of leadership ingredients,, along with a lot of different attributes, to improve leadership intelligence and maturity.

Read More

Initiateadvancedresearch

Advancement is about forward-thinking, knowledge enrichment, continuous improvement, and ultra-modernization.

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.

  

 Advancement & Research

Initiateadvancedresearch Nowadays, we shift from the silo based industrial age with information scarcity to the hyper-connected digital era with knowledge abundance. The information savvy workforce , along with the unprecedented convenience brought by advanced technology opens a new chapter of human progress.

Ingredientsin“Advancement” Organizations are faced with fierce competitions, constant disruptions. High level of professionalism is an important quality for today’s multigenerational, multicultural and multi-devicing workforce to produce high performance results and unleash their potentiality.

Initiateadvancement Compared to the industrial era with static information and overly restrictive boundaries in the last century, today’s information-abundant, internet-based world is much more hyper-connected and interdependent. The knowledge domain or industrial territories are blurred, cross boundary communication and collaboration become the new normal. Advancement is about forward-thinking, knowledge enrichment, continuous improvement, and ultra-modernization.

Initiativestoinspireadvancement We live in a diverse global society with blurred geographical, functional, industrial territories, having a multigenerational workforce, multipolar knowledge centers, multi-cultural wisdom, and multifaceted innovation, etc. It’s important to infuse digital into every aspect of the organization, make a paradigm shift from industrial economy to knowledge economy to creative economy.

Upliftingadvancement Advancement is about vision, progress, improvement, fresh knowledge, intelligence, modernization while the opposite of advancement is primitivity, outdated concept/tradition, conventionalism, or stagnation. Either individually or collectively, we need to take the advancing journey of learning, growth, and innovating.

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 reached7 million page views with about #9700 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.

Read More

Illustrateassumptions

Can you challenge-conventional wisdom; eliminate -pre-conceptual assumptions; break down- silo mentality, to deepen- your understanding, objectively?

We all have -

our own set of assumptions,

unconscious bias;

some have more,

some have less;

outdated assumption is like -

glue, make us stuck,

couldn’t move forward,

promptly.

Because,

when assumption are-

wrong,

conclusions will also go wrong,

illogically.

Can you challenge-

conventional wisdom,

eliminate -

pre-conceptual assumptions,

break down-

silo mentality,

to deepen-

your understanding,

objectively?

With abundant information,,

fast-paced changes,

hyperconnected reality;

shall you apply-

critical thinking to-

careful deliberation, examination,

testing of assumptions,

consideration of-

opposing views.

break routine forces,

challenge common belief;

embrace different perspectives,

make logical “assumptions,”

fluently?

can you take the time to -

look at -

every situation from-

multiple points of view;

assume -

every problem has -

multiple solutions,

always explore-

different choices,

define more than one way to-

achieve the goal,

innovatively?

Assumptions, prejudices are due to -

lack of -

deeper understanding;

we all have -

different talent, strength, capacity,

just as water cannot rise -

higher than its source,

one might not assume -

something beyond-

its design!

By setting aside -

what we now appear to-

understand,

where do we -

at this stage, define-

reality from assumptions?

Shall we be humble to-

know our limitations?

The art of

assumption is to -

leverage gut feelings for-

perceiving the future,

intuitively;

the science of -

assumption is to-

use quality information,

cause-effect reasoning for-

preparing the future,

insightfully.

Read More

Illustrategovernancelogic

Governance logic needs to be clarified for developing good governance practices and behaviors.

Corporate governance has a great impact on corporate performance. Governance controlling and enforcement needs to become more agile, intelligent and innovative. Business leaders need to clarify logic behind governance - the sequence of how to get things done: How governance rules can be enforced; how governance processes can be optimized, etc.

Digital era upon us is about innovation and customization. Enforcing enterprise governance involves updating rules, optimizing processes, developing, scaling new governance practices, etc, through good governance behavior to improve organizational manageability.

Governance logic can be enforced by putting clearly defined frameworks, policies and standards in place: The logical governance framework provides a common language, builds proper standards, appropriate business and use cases, etc, and takes governance practices cross-enterprise collaboratively. By enforcing governance logic to clarify sequence & consequence, the good governance standard provides a common corporate "language" and work instructions to decide and take actions for either grasping opportunities or managing risks.

Both architecture and corporate management such as financial control/planning/etc provide views, methods, and rules that address the different aspects of governance. Governance principles and practices need to be periodically assessed, evaluated, and modified to address the latest technology trend as well as enforce manageability via collaborating their geographically dispersed structures and talents. Governance is less about controlling, more about enabling. It takes fresh eyes to see through logic underneath; it evolves “finger-out” to enforce engagement, transparence; it needs “wire-up” to harness cross disciplinary communication and collaboration.

Governance logic is crucial to enhance process logic and maturity: Incoherent processes cause misalignment, schedule delays, waste resources, disengage employees, and dissatisfied customers. At the logic level, with a role-based process view, perhaps there is no “Single Version of Truth” because nobody can agree on what the truth looks like, it's a matter of perspective from which angle of the process you are looking from. As the broader the reach of the process, the more diffuse the truth becomes, and the more important to reach a holistic view of the process. Cross-disciplinary governance approach enhances multipath process logic, improves organizational manageability.

It takes an agile mindset and governance practices to improve process agility and intelligence. It is critical to look at leadership, culture, staff training, existing processes, and existing technology first, make improvements if necessary, then determine whether governance logics/approaches/methods/tools would ensure effectiveness, efficiency and high performance of management practices.

Governance logic as part of intertwined business logic needs to be clear enough to accelerate performance; loose enough to encourage innovation: As organizations or human societies turn to be more hyper-connected, and interdependent, business logic is often nonlinear and multifaceted. It’s important for organizational leaders and professionals to apply a multidimensional thinking box to understand business logic and sustain diversified viewpoints into holistic perspectives to solve problems logically.

There is gray logic behind running a holistic business today as there is the massive gray area between the two styles of management disciplines: top-down -“command & control” and autonomy - self-management disciplines. In terms of risk avoidance and the risk-tolerance, there is a gray area in between, the key is balance. Thus, strong governance is not too restrictive, but to clarify the gray logic about when or where you need to enforce business management; when and where you should flex the process to catalyze innovation; who and how to enhance governance discipline.

Governance today as a discipline is a living breathing entity which continually requires stroking and attention in the digital era. Governance logic needs to be clarified for developing good governance practices and behaviors. Governance philosophy provides ongoing inquiries to deepen understanding of business context based on abstract reasoning; governance principles offer a set of clearly defined rules to develop empirical methods and next governance practices to harness business management disciplines, improve organizational manageability and maturity.

Read More

Illumination

Isn't it a tough journey to write 9700 blog postings - to pursue the digital way of brainstorming, innovating and story-telling?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with 9700+ blog postings 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. Here is the weekly insight of innovation leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Initiateleadershipinnovation Leadership is complex and situational; there are numerous variables that need to be leveraged in assessing leadership effectiveness. Great leaders grow more leaders; insightful leaders have an ability to help the organization develop a vision of what it can be, mobilize the organization to accept and work toward achieving clearly-defined vision, connecting the right dots to rejuvenate creative energy, inspire people to think independently, act step-wisely, institutionalize the changes that must last over time.

Initiativesofglobalist The business world we live in is in the digital paradigm shift from information scarcity to knowledge abundance, from silo setting to hyperconnectivity; from “command & control” management style to cross-boundary communication & collaboration.

Initiateinterconnectivegovernance We live in an era, full of uncertainty, diversity, complexity, and ambiguity. The result is a higher risk of conflicts and inertia either for solving problems and running a high performance organization. There are so many things organizations need to spin well simultaneously these days.

Initiativeofarchitecture We no longer live in the world that runs in years, but one that runs in minutes. Change is the new normal with increasing pace. Business Architecture is an important tool that should support the requirements of the business and will need to be adjusted periodically; enabling the management to think about the interrelation between stability and adaptation, standard and creativity, sequence and iteration, enhance business growth and balance cycles appropriately.

Initiateleadershipinnovation People are complex, businesses are complex, the world is complex; thus, leadership is complex. Today’s cross boundary leaders have to deal with opposing views, paradox, diverse cultures, constraints, and competition.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking of new ideas; sharing and innovating. It’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

Read More

Initiatives

 Only business initiatives that support the achievement of strategic objectives should be implemented with top priority.

Business is nowadays complex, to manage business initiatives successfully, the logical scenario and different information are needed to achieve high performance. 

There are different flavors of business initiatives which require varying focal points, apply effective technologies, tools or methodologies to solve problems, optimize business management capability and capacity, unlock business potential consistently, and add value to corporate growth in the long term.


Initiate customer-centric innovation breakthrough: People become a focal point in the digital era. Initiate customer-centric innovation is about involving customers in innovation related conversations, so ideas often result from the feedback of customers. Customers may not always exactly know the "products" they want, but they clearly understand their needs and pains, so involve them as early as possible in the process; they can provide insight into their goals, their process, their problems, and their context. Define the most compelling and unique approach to address customers’ needs; analyze the benefits per costs, and quantify why that chosen one is better than the competition and other alternatives.

Taking breakthrough innovation initiatives is usually risky as it is at the most of the time, a bottom-up process. Unidentified risk is, at best, unmanaged and, at worst, mismanaged by the application of knowledge, results in unintended consequences. Risk management needs to be an integral component of such breakthrough innovation. The top leadership team needs to set the right risk appetite, develop risk intelligence, help the organization win competitive advantage by combining different choices about target markets, offerings, channels, and partnerships, enhance customer feedback-feedforward cycle, to search for great ideas, spur breakthrough innovation,

Initiate knowledge transfer innovation: Knowledge does not stand still, knowledge doesn’t always inform you of true understanding, and knowledge is not an isolated fact, but needs to flow and transfer for achieving its business value. Innovation happens at the intersection of people and knowledge, knowledge and process, etc. Knowledge transfer innovation is about taking knowledge from one context and brings it over into a new context for generating novel ideas.

Knowledge basically involves the human factor and captures the benefit of someone's experience, or collective insight, then applying it and making it available to broader audiences, spur fresh ideas, or initiate knowledge transfer innovation. In a creative working environment, people can benefit from the combined intellectual asset of knowledge and experiences. Knowledge assets are a blend of resources, not a single asset, its integrity, availability, and confidentiality, accessibility can be crucial to catalyze knowledge transfer innovation, and build its competitive advantage.

Initiate ecosystem orchestration: Organizations are like different switches connected into a hyper connected business ecosystem with the very characteristics of variety, complexity, diversification, and collaboration. There are many components in an effective ecosystem; each component by itself may not cause a good environment, but collectively, they can orchestrate cross-functional collaboration, create business synergy, and build differentiated business competency. An information-empowered business ecosystem can reconfigure its own structure, reinvent its functions, and change its own behavior pattern with synchronized speed.

Change in today’s digital world has become increasingly complex in nature, it’s usually a collaborative effort, especially the large-scale innovations require mass collaboration across the business ecosystem. Instead of being overly rigidly grouped around a specific function or organization, an enriched innovation ecosystem enables multi-industrial collaborations, and draws together mutually supportive companies from multiple industries that collectively seek to create the differentiated value they could not reach alone, amplifying the change effect.

The new paradigm arises out of new knowledge, the hybrid way of communication, information-based problem-solving and cross-disciplinary innovation. Only business initiatives that support the achievement of strategic objectives should be implemented with top priority. A real-time organization fine-tunes lightweight business processes that allows information and ideas flow frictionlessly, refines them into business value, keeps eyes on what matters, identifies what generates the most value for the company and expresses that in strategic objectives, analyzes potential pitfalls, sets the right priority to manage business initiatives portfolio effectively.

Read More

Initiateresearch

The information savvy workforce, along with the unprecedented convenience brought by advanced technology opens a new chapter of human progress.

The aim of modern Information Management has often been described as getting the right information to the right person, in the right format and medium, at the right time, in order to make the right decisions. 

The value of information technology is qualitative, measurable, and defined uniquely by an organization.

Initiate Research & Analysis

Initiategapanalysis Nowadays, businesses become hyper-connected and interdependent; they are steadily moving into the digital era with over-complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity. High performance organizations have a very clear vision and understanding of why they exist and the value they bring to customers.

Initiatives Organizations nowadays are complex, to manage business initiatives successfully, the nature of how the implementation has to follow a logical path for the premium solution and provides a great opportunity for the digital organization to accelerate its performance.

Initiateadvancedresearch Nowadays, we shift from the silo based industrial age with information scarcity to the hyper-connected digital era with knowledge abundance. The information savvy workforce, along with the unprecedented convenience brought by advanced technology opens a new chapter of human progress.

Initiatives Digital organizations are hyper-connected and interdependent, business leaders today must be able to foster a workplace that thrives on cross-functional communication, collaboration, and social interaction in building business competency.

Improveriskintelligence The business environment organizations find themselves in today is especially difficult as compared to years past due to exponential growth of information and constant disruptions. Organizations encounter more risks than ever because of over-complex, hyperdiverse business dynamics.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #9700th 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.

Read More

Initiatives

Highlight the value of having a good understanding of current and future capabilities, develop differentiated business competency, and improve the overall organizational competency.

The characteristics of digital business are dynamic, volatile, uncertain, and hypercompetitive, therefore, it is critical for companies to improve business agility and develop organizational resilience. 

Faced with restrictive budgets and perceived risks of skill shortfalls, process ineffectiveness, and business dynamic, it is imperative to take initiatives for identifying and closing business capability gaps, building unique organizational competency to reach the clearly defined vision and achieve strategic business goals seamlessly.

It’s important to make an objective assessment of capability, design, build, and preserve core competency: The business capabilities today are the result of its history and this history constrains what capabilities the firm can perform in the future. That means there is corporate learning and accumulation under capability development. To truly build unique business competencies, use the profiles and assess capability portfolios. By assessing the business capability objectively, the business management readily considers information, asset, people, process, etc, elements of capability development; as well as the adequacy, differentiation, or maturity level of the capability dimensions to fulfill their business strategy.

The goal of capability assessment and improvement is to highlight the value of having a good understanding of current and future capabilities, as well as develop and improve the overall organizational competency. Other criteria of capability development may include such as the importance of each capability to the organization’s long term strategy, the multifaceted value it can generate tangibly.

It’s critical to create a comprehensive capability map to bridge capability gaps and clarify strategic business objectives of the organization: To improve capability-enabled strategy management, and increase business competency, create an organizational strategy-capability mapping and make a road map that sets clearly defined goals for capability developing and competence building.

You should have an in-depth understanding of what capabilities are important to achieve strategic business goals, improve customer centricity. Forethoughtful organizations compare their set of capabilities with competitors' to ensure that they are developing differentiated capabilities to build long-term competency.

It’s strategic to integrate relevant business capability into differentiated organizational competency: Every business is different, and they are also at the different stages of its business life cycle, with different levels of business maturity. Many components of business capabilities are common and reusable across the enterprise. To avoid duplication, shorten the time cycle and save the cost for building business capabilities, integrate relevant functional capabilities into core competency, to solve more complex problems consistently.

The business management needs to capture the organizational development needs, develop a holistic portfolio of digital capabilities across all enterprises, build a unique and sustainable business advantage, and take logical steps to achieve high performance business results. The maturity of a business capability would be based on the ability for the organization to produce desired outcome either based on customer needs or building differentiated business competency.

Enterprise success is dependent upon a few core and differentiating business competencies. You have to continuously scale up and dig underneath, optimize organizational processes, highlight the value of having a good understanding of current and future capabilities, develop differentiated business capabilities, and improve the overall organizational competency.

Read More

Initiativestoreinvent

The digital paradigm arises out of new knowledge, and the emerging trends reinforce the digital characteristics of the business such as innovation and people-centricity.

As the business world becomes hyperconnected, interdependent, surviving in today’s business dynamic requires structural flexibility, cross-functional collaboration, goal-driven, people-centric process, and intuitive user interface to reduce business friction, deal with conflicts or disruptions, and build competitive business advantage continually. 

Reinventing business to get digital ready is an evolutionary journey with ups and downs, promises and perils on the way. It’s important to know how to strike the right balance, enhance an iterative planning and execution continuum, make a stride toward the future and lead their organization forward smoothly.

Organizations leverage information based insight to tap a true source of business advantage: New technology tools and abundant information allow a company to move into a more advanced stage of digital exploration; help to set trends and models that work best to meet the business goals. The strategic direction of the company must allow for economic, market or customer change and let business adapt smoothly, tapping a true source of advantage. While business laggards only try to emulate, there is a risk in it because when you emulate your competitor, you start looking like them, perhaps you lose your unique strength and forget your business purpose.

Organizations can expand in different directions to build business advantage. The horizontal linkage enables the business to streamline information flow across functional borders, leading to better decision-making and easier idea access from people anywhere in the organization. The vertical permeation of business relationships management enforces trust and accountability. The organization can improve budgets and prioritization skills, keep developing core competencies to gain the first mover advantage, and improve the success rate of strategy management.

Organization management needs to identify the leverages to put their company ahead of trends or above learning curves: Organizations rely more and more on technology, the digital world is so information-intensive, technology-driven. Business leaders should envision where the future will be for the business, and what’s the trend for their industry. Besides supporting the existing working environment and managing an effective application portfolio, business management needs to focus on what changes/technologies need to be adopted and what needs to just be bypassed due to budget constraint and schedule priority. The emergent trends can shape business development and the behavior of future enterprises to reach the next level of organizational growth.

The high mature digital organizations are highly conscious about what’s happening in their environment, with the ability to adapt to change timely, grasp opportunities, and prevent risks effectively. Forward-thinking companies apply information- based analytics to provide business foresight about upcoming opportunities or rising trends, so they can ride above the learning curve, create change momentum, or adjust their strategy accordingly. To predict and respond to the emergent business properties, organizational management knows what to look for, how to set guidelines, when to make choices, for putting their company ahead of competition.

Organizations should balance commitment and flexibility in the multitude of business management: Either planning or implementing, organizations today need to be fast and flexible, have less boundaries but better abilities for dots connections to enable innovation. There's nothing to be done about an uncontrollable situation; although a good plan can identify the external factors, a good process can enable a company to work around the externals. Either plans or processes are not static, they are dynamic for adapting to rapid changes. The healthy planning-adjusting-evolving digital refinement cycle creates the business synergy to strive in leading business transformation vigorously.

Nowadays, the degree of planning has a positive correlation with the degree of uncertainty and unpredictability. It’s important to understand the big picture, remove assumptions or dependencies, add clarity and purpose, break down silos or overly rigid hierarchy, and build core competencies to improve business performance and maturity. Both commitment and flexibility are critical to ensure smooth strategy implementation. It requires courage and skills to really tackle what is wrong at the strategic level and make a commitment to enable and sustain changes.

The digital paradigm arises out of new knowledge, and the emerging trends reinforce the digital characteristics of the business such as innovation and people-centricity. Foresight is also an ongoing conversation. Business leaders have to keep evolving and broaden their views of transformative change, discover unexpected connections between the business and its rich environment, to shape the future together, and build unique build advantages.

Read More

Illustrategrowth

Can you identify- growth mindset by -digging into how - people think, why they think -that way, how they define problems, or solve them, methodologically?

With a tree,

all the growth -

takes place,

at the growing tips;

people with -

growth mindset  believe -

humans all have -

potential to-

be translated into fulfillment.

their ability level was -

nothing more than-

a snapshot in time,

eminently changeable,

as they continue to -

learn and develop;

tap their talent,

fluently;

Can you identify-

growth mindset by -

digging into how -

people think,

why they think -

that way,

how they define problems,

or solve them, methodologically?

Are you able to spot-

high potential-

with growth mindset,

insightfully?

Can you change-

things through-

the result into -

the great output,

optimistically.

To deal with fast-paced changes,

constant disruptions,

fierce competitions,

people with-

a growth mind today can-

build an enriched professionals portfolio by-

reinventing -

themselves, professionally;  

seeking -

new knowledge, indefatigably; 

building -

unique competency, persistently;

sharing -

unconventional wisdom, influentially. 

Can you ride-

learning curves,

proactively;

make progressive movement,

diligently;

take the journey to-

pursue autonomy,

purpose, mastery,

continually?

Read More