Illuminateright

Recognize the right people with right talent, define a common-agreeable set of right principles, processes, practices, identify the right problems and solve them in the right way at the right time.

Organizations across boundaries strive to improve business effectiveness - doing right things; and efficiency- doing things right. It is important for gaining a holistic perspective, garnering good attitude, setting the criteria to define the right mindset, frame the right problems, and provide an information-based right solution for achieving high performance value.

Right people with the right mindset: In face of unprecedented uncertainty and complexity, it is the right timing for changes when there is a static mindset of management and unfit workforce. It’s always important to assess the right people with the right mindset, capabilities, skills, and put them in the right positions for producing high performance results.

People with the right mindset are learning-agile, discerning, innovative, influential, being able to move up toward the next level of cognitive understanding. The right mind is the foundation to build competitive capabilities and motivate them to make change. People can be trained for skills when they have the right mind and positive attitude.

Right problem, being solved in the right ways at the right timing: We live in a world with all sorts of problems; many problems exist because they are not clearly-defined or the concept cannot be captured contextually. Some problems are the symptom; other problems seem irrational as they are caused by people’s emotional reaction to a set of circumstances. Trying to fix the wrong cause of a problem, or solving the wrong problems, will waste time and resources, increase anxiety, and cause more troubles later on.

In the business context, too slow or too fast are as much a problem as backing the wrong disruptive technology or fresh ideas. Even though you have a good intention to solve problems, perhaps you lack the right people with the right talent and capabilities to define the right problems and resolve them smoothly. Make intelligent judgment to ensure the right people are in the right position to solve the right problems in the right way at the right timing. It takes discipline and commitment to stay focused on the real priorities, instead of being distracted by what seems to be more urgent on any given day in order to solve the most critical problems and ensure long-term prosperity.

Right principles, processes or practices: Principles and policies are statements of values; like the compass to guide through the business for moving in the right direction to generate multifaceted value. It’s important to ensure the right things are easy to do, and bad things are hard to do. Good principles define why people make a decision one way or another and the core decision values guide the expected attitude and behavior of individuals within an organization. The right set of ‘rules’ is not for limiting your imagination, but for framing the system to identify opportunities and mitigate risks and make collective progress.

Principle, purpose, and progress are inter-related with each other, should be communicated frequently, and followed uncompromisingly. The purpose of setting principles is to streamline problem-solving logic, enhance business communication, and build an effective workplace in which collaboration and sharing are the norms. Clearly defined principles with specific expected behaviors by top management provides a framework in which the organizations operate, encouraging fitting mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors.

People always look at the world the way they want it to be, so anything that is not matching their way of looking at the outer world, they consider it as wrong, and what’s matching their vision seems right to them. Collectively, in order to run a successful organization and co-shape a progressive society, recognize the right people with right talent, define a common-agreeable set of right principles, processes, practices, identify the right problems and solve them in the right way at the right time.

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Inquiriesofbods

BoDs not only need to be forward-thinking, but they also have to be further looking, and guide the business executive team toward the right direction for a longer term.

Nowadays, it is increasingly difficult to run a successful business due to various factors caused by rapid changes, fast growth of information, and emerging technologies. 

Building a high-performance corporate board requires multifaceted thinking, dot-connecting, asking insightful questions, taking a balance of multiple perceptions in guiding businesses in the right direction and achieving expected business results.

Is corporate boards able to craft a good strategy to improve leadership performance; are business strategies being implemented the way BoDs expected them to under their oversight? The purpose of the strategy is the creation of competitive advantage by being different and making choices that constrains subsequent decisions. To improve corporate board performance and leadership effectiveness, BoDs should develop a good strategy, diagnose the current issues that cause their ineffectiveness, set principles, and make choices to improve their leadership disciplines.

BoDs also play a role in business strategy oversight. A good strategy is always to set up choices and ensure business as a whole is more optimal than the sum of pieces. So corporate boards need to scrutinize whether the strategic planning is capability based, laser focused on solving crucial business problems, increase business ability to achieve goals, and accelerate the organization's speed to reach the vision smoothly.

Is the corporate board setting the right tone for business culture and talent management? At the core of culture, it’s the leadership that impacts on individual mindset, attitude, or actions, as well as their policy setting on how people accomplish work, etc. Hence, culture is established by those at the top, the corporate board and the top leadership team set the tone of the corporate culture. When the business gets stuck and performance is mediocre, culture needs to be changed to adapt to the emerging trends and pull strategy execution towards the right decision. This is accomplished by sharing a clear vision, establishing strong interdependent relationships, optimizing processes, and developing a set of business practices.

Band-aids/quick fixes are not sufficient for most problem-solving, especially for organizational mindsets or attitude, the cultural thing. The cure comes from within the organization- the collective whole, build a great working environment in which people can take ownership of their works, processes, and deliver better than expected results; appreciate the right things they are doing to improve the overall organizational effectiveness.

Are you getting a lot of unanswered questions raised from management and various stakeholders in the boardroom ? Because great questions challenge conventional thinking, stimulate proactive interactions no matter what the situation, eliminate blind spots and leverage intuitive listening to capture the important information for decision-making. Senior management asks BoDs advice on how to improve their practices in achieving performance excellence. BoDs also ask the management about the status of strategy management, enforce governance disciplines. Insightful inquiries lead to better problem-solving and innovative solutions.

There is the time to ask, and there is the time to answer. In the face of vast areas of unknowns, corporate board directors are the leadership influencer for catalyzing business transformation. One of the most crucial roles of corporate boards is to practice independent thinking in a certain collective way and provide invaluable feedback and deep insight to the management team of the organization and help them improve the management effectiveness and maturity up to the next level.

BoDs not only need to be forward-thinking, but they also have to be further looking, and guide the business executive team toward the right direction for a longer term. They must be competent with unique insight into the right knowledge and experience, bring a broader perspective to complement the management’s view point and orchestrate business transformation smoothly.

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Initiatives

Realignment, refinement or realization are all critical steps in harnessing innovation, accelerating business evolution, with an ideal aim for the betterment of humanity.

The beauty of the digital landscape is the fresh insight of business. An intelligent organization always looks for opportunities across business boundaries to improve value-generation, identify & prevent risks for increasing business agility, reinvent organization for unlocking performance, harnessing innovation by building cohesive, agile, and intellectual capabilities. 

Keep evolving and renewing to achieve the state of dynamic balance, build differentiated business competency and improve the organizational maturity.

Realignment: Both businesses and ecosystems environments are not static, keep evolving with rapid change and frequent disruptions. It’s important to align and realign the business priority and enterprise resources & value chain to achieve strategic goals of the business. Replace the "glue" of the hierarchy with something more fundamental such as common value, purpose, people development, customer satisfaction, etc.

Values alignment and realignment is certainly key to employee engagement as is alignment with purpose. Where there is alignment, then autonomous actions ought to be possible while still aligning with clear vision. Realignment is necessary if organizational management upgrade with repurpose, redefine themselves to create a unique brand and reinvent themselves to reach the next level of business intelligence.

Refinement: Anthropologically, refining your true purpose is a helpful instrument to guide yourself, team, organizations to co-solve problems and move forward. Technically, information refinement enables businesses to understand customers at a deep level, so you can design and produce personalized solutions fitting their needs and achieve the multifaceted business value effectively.

Organizations also take an integral knowledge refinement approach, manage interdisciplinary knowledge, allow people to understand new topics and get access to knowledge effortlessly for getting problems solved effectively. Process refinement often goes hand-in-hand with organizational structure management, establishing early buy-in and support through analysis of how the business initiatives impact the people in the organization in order to refine people-centric process management up to the next level of maturity.

Realization: Problem-solving is both art and science. Creating the awareness of the problem is the first step to making a solution be understood and accepted, realizing “we can't stay the same,” the realization only comes when the problem is perceived. Realization indicates the wisdom that you have learned by observing your previous actions in order to improve change and problem-solving effectiveness.

All scientific principles relevant to problem-solving should be used but with your artistic improvisation. Strategic problem-solving is a process of drawing artistic realization about the best future into a scientific canvas. Change is never for its own sake, but for problem-solving. Organizational change management has a strong role in strategic problem-solving and business transformation, benefits realization, and strategy execution.

In the rapidly evolving businesses and dynamic digital economic systems, making business transformation is critical but challenging for the company’s long term survival and thriving. Realignment, refinement or realization are all critical steps in harnessing innovation, accelerating business evolution, with an ideal aim for the betterment of humanity.

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Initiateoreinvention

Forward-looking organizations experiment with different types of organizational structure design to enforce business alignment, enablement, communication, collaboration, and harmony.

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. 

 From an organizational structure perspective, how can you fine-tune the digital dimensions of your organizational development to harness innovation?

 

Initiate Organizational Reinvention

Initiativesofinnovation We live in a contemporary multipolar society with a multigenerational workforce, interdisciplinary knowledge, and multi-cultural wisdom in a hyper-connected and interdependent ecosystem. The digital paradigm arises out of new knowledge and the emerging trends to capture the great opportunities, synchronize organizational functions and parts to create synergy, develop a high-mature workforce, harness multi-industrial collaborations and make advanced movement in a consistent way.

Iluminatevenustasinorganizationalharmony Due to rapid change and exponential information algorithms, the emergence of potential opportunities and risks for exploring digital is likely to follow a nonlinear pattern with increasing speed. Organizations today are the mix of old and now, hard and soft, visible and invisible, learning and doing continuum. If the business understands itself in relation to its context, it should be able to determine whether it requires organizational design to become viable.

Initiativesofaimingorganizationalreinvention The digital business today is dynamic, continuous, expansive, interdependent, and interactive. It has to keep evolving, sustaining, and self-renewing for adapt to high velocity. The linear system perception needs to be replaced by complex adaptive systems, and the reductionistic management practices should be upgraded to the dynamic digital style.

Initiativestofreinventorganization The digital organization is an integral business system with policies, cultures, work climates, people (employees, customers, partners, etc.) and processes. To keep digital fit, the organization has to keep optimizing its functional or structural design and management pyramid to achieve a high level of autonomy and the state of digital equilibrium. The whole business ecosystem needs to communicate, negotiate and cooperate with each other for catalyzing changes and harnessing innovation. Here are some fair reasons to fine-tune the organizational structure for streamlining digital flow and improving the organizational maturity.

Illuminateaspectsofbiableorganization Digital organizations are the complex ecosystem with the blurring line between functions and geographic locations. Going digital is a long journey with all sorts of barriers and pitfalls on the way. You have to strike the right balance between order and chaos, change and stability, innovation and standardization. Viability is one of the very characteristics of the digital organization. You may leverage design thinking to reinvent an organization that can enforce collaboration and harness innovation by creating business synergy, maintaining viability, and making strategic effects

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 10 million page views with about #10300+ 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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Illuminatebrand

Not only clarify -the substance of- the brand, you would like to convey; but also communicate it, thoroughly.

Each one of us is unique,

with a differentiated set of-

value, purpose,

substance, style;

are you able to-

discover inner self from -

vast perspective,

refine professional brands,

constantly?


A strong brand starts with -

being absolutely clear about -

who you are,

how you think,

what you do,

who you will do it for,

crystal clear about -

what value you will bring to-

the table;

delight audiences,

brighten the world,

brilliantly.



People with-

growth mindset, 

innovative attributes,

 develop themselves,

build a unique brand to -

shine through darkness;

stand out,

make a difference,

impressively. 

Isn’t your brand -

like-

the gem of -

the character,

fresh, but not flamboyant;

influential, delightful,

genuinely?



Not only clarify -

the substance of-

the brand,

you would like to convey;

but also communicate it,

thoroughly.

Are you insightful to-

reflect "substance" of -

innate self-

strength, belief, value, underneath;

even if-

it is unconventional;

is “what you look '' consistent with-

“who you are ”?

“where you are moving forward,”

with clarity?

Can you strike -

the right balance of-

maintaining adherence to-

enhance a strong brand with-

creative themes, 

progressively?

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Unusual

It’s always crucial for humans to push towards the next stage of evolution that enables the large collective of people in our societies to think in a more advanced way; communicate empathetically, unleash creative potential and work harmoniously to achieve clearly-defined vision.

The speed of change is increasing, the digital ecosystem has become more complex and dynamic. Diversification, nonlinearity, and interdependence, etc, are the very characteristics of the digital era. Successful organizations see changes coming and with pre-planning to overcome the resistance before it even manifests, build change as ongoing capabilities and differentiated business competency.

 Because the ways of doing business and meeting customer expectations both tend to be more adaptable than the siloed industrial age. It’s important to set the right priority, concentrate on important things, make sound judgment and and do things in better ways

Unbiased: Communication has occurred when the message is received and understood. It’s always important to listen to the business partner’s pain points and develop an approach with business units. If you do not listen, you will never get the two sides of the story. To have unbiased communication reliably requires a bidirectional and reciprocal cycle of listening and answering, questions and answers.

We are stronger through diversity and become ultra-modern through inclusiveness. It's important to apply critical thinking, step out of what you are trying to understand, remove the “old box” shaped via conventional wisdom or group thinking, learn to be impartial, open-minded, unbiased, and take a multidisciplinary approach to solve problems effectively.

Unusual: In the traditional world with a silo mentality and conventional wisdom, it takes risks to be perceived as unusual, in pursuit of different ways to think or do things. Innovative people find more viewing spots than the rest and they can perceive things via unusual angles and always see the possibility in the world when most people only see the way that they have been told.

Never think there is a short list of solutions you can pick from in order to gain an in-depth understanding of problems that occur. In fact, innovative problem-solving is about trying something “unusual”- the thing that has never been done before. Being flexible to take alternative paths to get the work done resourcefully.

Unbreakable: The complication of traditional organizations is caused by layering, hierarchies, fractal structures, and the difference of cultures, subcultures. Complications lead to multiplicative chains of unanticipated effects. People, processes, or technologies all could be the weak link in business changes. It's important to strike the right balance of maintaining the strong adherence to focus on doing things that accelerate corporate performance.

To run a solid business and improve business resilience, it’s crucial to integrate change management, process management, risk management, culture management into a holistic approach, making organizations “unbreakable,” antifragile. Businesses across boundaries have a much better ability to tolerate volatility or even thrive from it. Solid risk management enables the accumulation of enough corporate resources to thrive by capturing opportunities in it and leading changes smoothly.

Unconscious bias causes misperception and misunderstanding. Traditional “as usual” way to do things stifles creative energy sometimes; running a solid, unbreakable, but agile organization is a great challenge. So apply the right strategy and methodology, set out dynamic planning and manage changes in a systematic way. It’s always crucial for humans to push towards the next stage of evolution that enables the large collective of people in our societies to think in a more advanced way; communicate empathetically, unleash creative potential and work harmoniously to achieve clearly-defined vision.

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Innovation

Only in an open trusting space, ideas can flow smoothly, and innovation can be catalyzed effortlessly.

Innovation is about moving forward. In any business, if you are not moving forward, you are moving backward. There is no standing still. The hybrid nature of innovation is a combination of something old with something new. Innovation kaleidoscope shows the ever-evolving dynamic view, hybrid digital patterns, and mixed cultures.

 Innovation management needs to lay out different thoughts structures, and practices, produce intuitive products or services to delight customers in imaginative and advantageous ways.

No matter which analytics you apply, that's a big part of what data has to do - be transformed into actionable insight and catalyze innovation: Information is one of the most critical pieces in the innovation puzzle. Given this assertion, there is no limit to the value of information in harnessing innovation. Innovation often happens at the intersection of customers and businesses; people and process. Top management should be able to capture the signal for innovation now; articulate vision, clarify the opportunity and risks, create a sense of urgency to promote a healthy climate for creativity, motivate the team to achieve higher goals, and improve innovation management effectiveness.

Companies today can abstract business and customer insight from quality information, bring to the table innovative solutions that meet customers’ needs and fit the growth perspective of the organization. Business management needs to be able to break down silos, connect wider dots for stimulating idea generation, handle management paradoxes, deal with innovation dilemmas strategically for improving innovation effectiveness.

It is the synthetic view of ‘innovation' that binds all crucial components into unique innovation competency: Innovations happen at the intersection of people and information technology, business and customers. Generally, besides incremental innovation, all businesses should have a handful of "bets" in the breakthrough category which could be considered as drivers for emerging digital strategies with the goal to build the long-term competency of the organization. What's important when developing the mix is to make sure you're accepting risk for potential reward.

Innovation success needs to be defined with the tangible value it brings to the business and the level of impact it could make. Hence, it is the time to 'see' the context you are 'part' of, inspire innovation and accelerate the speed of change. An integrative innovation approach with a structural innovation process leads to the development of an innovation initiative foundation, recognizing challenges, understanding boundaries, stakeholders core discipline, enforcing innovation discipline; improving innovation management effectiveness.

It is crucial to examine the causes of failure in innovation, the gaps and pitfalls on the way: In reality, innovation fails because many organizations lack a cohesive strategy or a systematic approach to manage both opportunities and risks in a structural way. There are so many pitfalls on the way to fail innovation - fear of unknown, unhealthy competition, comfort with the status quo, complacency, poor judgment, lack of big picture, lack of recognition causing low-level of employee engagement, discourages change and produces business incoherence.

Resource bottlenecks, business frictions, change inertia, etc, are also all obstacles to innovation. The culture of innovation isn’t built in a day. Assess organizational cultures with some insightful questions such as: Does the culture help to fulfill the business vision and accelerate innovation execution today? How does it drive organizational mindsets, attitudes, behaviors? Effective leaders facilitate progress and encourage innovation. Great managers engage people with effective communication, harness cross boundary collaborations to catalyze innovation and achieve innovation excellence.

The evolution of innovation only exists in the more open environments that create insights, take advantage of all sources of creativity in a more open way. The harmony is based on continuous idea-sharing and constructive criticism. Only in an open trusting space, ideas can flow smoothly, and innovation can be catalyzed effortlessly.

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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.

                    Initiatieves of BoDs

Initiatives The digital paradigm means hyperconnectivity, interdependence, integration, and holism. The reason why many business initiatives fail - some soft factors and the challenge of complexity come into play.

Initiativesofbods Complexity and uncertainty are part of business reality. The digital era upon us means rapid change, the era of people-centricity, the expanded spectrum of innovation. All of these changes bring significant opportunities and responsibilities for the new breed of digital BoDs.

Initiativesofbods Complexity and uncertainty are part of reality. The real BoD’s dilemma is that driving the business forward is extremely difficult, because you need to look into an unknown future and attempt to define the landscape with its risks and opportunities.

Initiativesofbod The world has become more connected and transparent, the organization becomes more diverse and complex. The contemporary corporate board as the directorial role plays a significant role in overseeing strategy, advising corporate executives on critical issues from an outliers’ perspective, setting culture tones and monitoring business performance.

InitiativesofBoDs The corporate board is one of the most crucial governance bodies in the modern enterprise; it holds management accountable for business performance; the stakeholders hold the corporate board and the management team accountable for the effectiveness of the direction, and caliber of action taken by the governing body.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 10 million page views with 10300+ 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


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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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Illuminate”breakorunbreakable”

Breakthrough innovation is - new to the world; something-no one else has done before; really original; are you able to -break down barriers, take advantage of -emerging trends. pull people, things, information technology, in the right direction, create value ultimately?

We are in-

the digital paradigm shift,

with mixed bag of -

old and new;

solid and flow..

what needs to -

be broken down;

what is unbreakable?


We cannot make -

omelets without-

breaking some eggs;

we cannot be -

truly innovative without-

breaking down -

stereotypical mindsets;

silos of thoughts;

outdated rules,

common beliefs;

decision bottlenecks;

overly rigid processes…


When a new stage emerges in-

the progression of society,

continued use of -

the old paradigm,

stale knowledge,

static-world-view-lens,

creates ever-increasing problems,

inevitably;

are you able to -

break down -

conventional thinking box;

equip yourself with-

open, insightful, mature mind;

make a concerted effort to-

know, understand others;

give each other the benefit of -

the doubt until proven otherwise.



Breakthrough innovation is -

new to the world;

something-

no one else has done before;

really original;

can you -

break down barriers,

take advantage of -

emerging trends.

pull people, things,

information technology,

in the right direction,

create value ultimately?

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Illustratealliance

Different shareholders get involved in various business activities and play significant roles in catalyzing change and exploring multiple pathways for unlocking business potential.

It’s a hybrid, interdependent, extended modern working environment with blurred, territories and intriguing interconnectivity. The reality is that organizations that do not respond to external environmental changes will become irrelevant, as nimbler companies catch up and become more competitive to lead industrial evolution. 

Hence, high mature organizations have to be more intelligent, increase flexibility, build strategic competencies, manage the portfolio of relevant cross-border synergies for accelerating its performance and maximizing its potential.

Alliance: In face of fierce competition and complex business reality, building a strategic alliance and business partnership is a “soft,” but an important step in leading changes and improving problem-solving competency. It goes beyond conformity and order taking so that strategy management, change management, and business relational management work in harmony. You have to be allies towards the purpose of the entire organization, and then, work as a coherent leadership team to do the work that you are responsible for and achieve the desired results.

Often, misalliance is caused by misinterpretation or miscommunication. It is imperative to overcome objections or roadblock by encouraging cross-functional communication, harnessing strategic partnership, and engaging employees, customers, to ensure long-term business success. To expedite the business growth cycle, those organizations that have innovative vendors or stronger alliances can become agiler, resilient, have better chances for business reinvention, and tend to be more responsive to changes.

Aggregation: Any entity, humans or organizations, or any aggregation of entities, performs activities and provides capabilities for problem-solving. Culture as the aggregate of all employees' mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors, directly impacts strategy management and change management. Organizations comprise many intricate and interconnected parts, including core values, communications, corporate attitudes, and business policies, etc. It is the aggregation of those business factors that decide how organizations interact with their environment, how they adapt to changes and generate values constantly.

Information is the most invaluable asset of the business; depending on the level of information granularity and aggregation, you can use it for multiple purposes, leveraging updated information for reinventing business but not reinventing the wheel. It is the aggregation of information and the assessment of the information that creates the intelligence required to shape strategy; define the rules that drive the business; sometimes not so easy to do; run a highly cognitive organization.

Application: Business application initiatives are not just about IT practices, it needs to become customer-centric problem-solving that can bring business value, increase customer satisfaction, improve organizational agility, harness innovation, either for making some quick wins or focusing on long term business benefit. The applications will become more user friendly, interrelated as we move to a world of choices and empathy, people become the center of the business.

Some organizations are faced with serious application sprawl and a growing backlog of out-of-date, often unsupported applications. IT or business are confronted with the limits of the complexity of their application portfolio. There are a lot of applications, which provide overlapping functionalities, there is no clear ownership of the applications. Reuse of existing applications and technology will always be considered first in the provision of any service to the business rationale. Reuse makes sense because it has potential to shorten the product/service development cycle. Not only should we question the applicability of a component for re-use, but we need to capture and analyze the lessons learned from the previous applications of the component.


Different shareholders get involved in various business activities and play significant roles in catalyzing change and exploring multiple pathways for unlocking business potential. Building a real-time organization is all about mastering dynamic planning & competency building, shaping high-innovative people and teams, and accelerating the speed of changes.

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Initiatives

We live in a diverse global society with a multigenerational workforce, multipolar knowledge centers, multi-cultural wisdom, and multidimensional innovation, etc.

We live in a diverse global society with a multigenerational workforce, multipolar knowledge centers, multi-cultural wisdom, and multidimensional innovation, etc. Global professionals today have to continue sharing their viewpoint about things or events happening in their surroundings, their perspective of future global society; their roles on making desired changes, their professional strengths & weakness, as well as how to team up for building competitive global team for co-solving common problems at the worldwide base and developing professional competencies.

                          Initiatives 

Initiatives The global society means a hyperconnected business environment, worldwide knowledge, cross-boundary communication and collaboration, and interdisciplinary discipline. There are many multinational businesses, but very few truly global organizations. It’s important to infuse digital into every aspect of the organization; embrace inclusiveness, manage cross-generational, cross-cultural workforce smoothly; leverage information technology to integrate crucial business ingredients into unique competencies; identify and invest in a variety of global capitals to reinvent the new breed of global organization effectively.

Initiatives ii The pace of change is increasing, the world becomes flattened, information is growing exponentially; the border of knowledge domains is blurred. What is the gap between the complexity of globalist roles and their minds? How effective are leaders in tackling complex organizational, social, global issues; observe, perceive, and pay attention to the myriad of internal, external, national or global forces? Which developmental interventions are most effective at fostering growth in global leadership and professionalism so that people are able to thrive in ”VUCA '' reality?

Initiatives of innovation The organizational ecosystem is complex, nonlinear, interrelated, and interconnected, full of opportunities and risks. Companies have to gain a greater awareness of the intricacies and interdependencies of business systems, processes, people dynamics, technology, resource allocation.

Initiatetegrowth From the past, current to the future, people are the most invaluable asset in any business or society. Talent management needs to have a strategic impact, especially at the global scope. With increased global competition for talent, it is a tough journey to identify, develop global talent, put the right people with fitting mindset and differentiated professional competency in the right position to solve the right problems.

Initiateglobalviews With information abundance and technological advancement, today’s internet-based world is much more hyper-connected and interdependent. There is an intimate interplay spectrum across the digital ecosystem out there. Global wisdom has enriched context, deep historical roots, and constant knowledge refinement for shaping collective progression and advanced human society.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 10 million page views with about 10300+ 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.

Read More

Illuminatequick

From quick logic, to quick response and quick fixing, speed is crucial to not only adapt, but lead desired change promptly.

We are living in an knowledge abundant world in which information is growing overwhelmingly, technology is pervasive and the masses are looking for their own experiences to introduce fresh understanding and new practices into the business constantly. 

How successful organizations can handle emerging issues and disruptions depends on how fast and capable they can adapt to the ever-changing environment and handle a variety of issues effectively.

Quick insight: Everyday, organizations are inundated with overloaded information and issues that need to be dealt with smoothly. In order to make information more “visible” for shareholders, the companies need to investigate areas where they can have "quick insight" with new approaches to data. Intelligence is the quick and clear perception of any situation based on quality information, plus ability to adjust to any circumstances. 

It is important for the business management to gain quick understanding for prioritizing as soon as possible. Reach the quick understanding through detailed risk assessment and point to the issues that need to be solved first. Leaders have flexibility to make quick decisions and communicate them clearly in order to handle situations timely and improve business agility.

Quick response: The speed of change is increasing, though businesses still do have contexts of relative certainty, while simultaneously having contexts reflecting both complexity and uncertainty. Each of these contexts requires a different management approach with the matching speed. To differentiate and accelerate, every competitive organization needs to have a unique set of core competencies to achieve business goals. 

It means to break down silo mentality, bureaucracy, update toward agile management style, overcome change inertia, eliminate waste or redundancy, discourage internal politics, so digital organizations can be vibrant, highly responsive, and highly innovative for adapting to the ever-evolving business dynamic with quick response.

Quick fix: Running business is complex nowadays, in order to handle emerging issues timely and adapt to a dynamic environment, the quick solution is very focused on the specific problem, so the broader picture and potential impact on other things are explored later on. Often, the management takes well-established processes and approaches to problem-solving, processes and routines shouldn’t stifle speed and creativity. 

Business strategists need to help functional managers understand the benefits of taking a broader view before jumping into actions, but quick actions and solutions are crucial to overcome challenges timely. As leaders, you should encourage fast speed, creative initiatives, you should expect mistakes and still encourage people to be proactive, be able to solve the problems or to guide the team on finding alternative solutions and this has to happen fast. You are more likely to find a diversity of perspectives at different levels in the organization, in which employees confront external realities directly and are likely to raise critical questions, identify critical problems, fix them quickly,

From quick logic, to quick response and quick fixing, speed is crucial to not only adapt, but lead desired change promptly. In order to build the business competency for long-term growth and prosperity, there is no one size fits all formula, every organization has to take the right pace, walk the talk and explore its own sets of best practices and next practices for acceleration.

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Initiatives

Global society has enriched knowledge and diverse languages, customs, traditions.

The world is diverse; global leaders and professionals must be open minded to appreciate all sorts of meaningful, tasteful, and informative things cross-boundarily. 

Success in the digital world demands both incremental improvement and transformative breakthrough. It's imperative to deepen understanding of global issues contextually and dealing with common challenges cross-industry or cross-geographical locations smoothly.

Global insight: Global knowledge has enriched context and deep historical roots philosophically, scientifically, religiously. There are north and south, east and west; left and right, top line and bottom line; etc. If you stand at the right angle to see both sides, you know even they are different, but both hold part of the truth in it. It’s always important for setting common criteria to make sound judgment and improve problem-solving effectiveness in the vast global society.

Business leaders and professionals should lay out different thinking structures, gain fresh insight and updated global views to reimagine the global society and solve crucial problems that face humanity effectively. Working in multicultural and global environments and organizations, digital leaders and professionals need to develop their own language, balance standardization vs creativity; candor vs. diplomacy, difference vs complementarity, make the proper framing in order to access the process of understanding each other with profundity for making sound judgments or leading organizations forward in a consistent way.

Global abilities: The qualities and competencies of global leaders and professionals include such as tolerance of ambiguity, analysis & synthesis, innovation, cultural empathy, learning agility, handling complexity, communicating virtually, and working across cultures. In a more volatile, uncertain, ambiguous and globally distributed, you need a directional guide. Thus, global leaders need to have navigation capacity for ensuring businesses are scanning the external environment and making sure that you’re seeing signals, patterns, and trends that are going to have an impact on your company’s ability to continue to thrive and grow, in the right direction.

Global professionals are learning agile to keep sharpening relevant skills and building global abilities to overcome challenges. A world-class leader with their finger on the pulse of technological advancement or information insight can provide many ideas on how new technology and abundant information can create fresh new opportunities, renovate business models for upcoming organizational expansion and build a reputable global organization.

Global potentiality: There is no limit to human potential; however, it’s the individual, culture, and society that sets a limit on that unlimited potential. With abundant knowledge only clicks away, unprecedented opportunities and convenience brought by advanced technologies and methodology, what had been previously thought impossible is now accepted as possible. Is the person able to live an authentic life and make the biggest contribution to society according to their specific gifts and passions? How can we push towards the next stage of evolution that enables the large collective of people to think in an advanced manner; communicate empathetically, unleash collective potential to achieve common vision?

The discovery of human nature opens a cognitive window in our psyche to dormant attributes we didn’t know existed. From an societal evolutionary perspective, this is what we humans have always done and will continue doing – exploring our minds and bodies for the latent powers inherent in our genes, and working harmoniously to solve problems smoothly. So individual potential is interwoven into societal potential. It’s always crucial to take an interdisciplinary approach, tapping into the collective potential, generating novel ideas and implementing them effectively.

Global society has enriched knowledge and diverse languages, customs, traditions. Real global societal progress is made through the work of progressive and foreseeable leaders and business professionals who can figure out how to trend the future, capture the great opportunities to unleash collective human potential and build a highly adaptive, intelligent and innovative society.

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Illuminateability

Regardless of - cognitive, cultural, philosophical differences, between us; the ability to - understand is due to - intellect present within us, know the essence of life, deeply; live, act, grow, progressively…

Every person has-

an innate ability to -

be creative,

just tear down -

mental barriers,

you have,

set aside-

time daily, weekly, monthly,

tap in -

inherent potential,

identify patterns,

make unusual connections,

discover untaken paths,

generate novel ideas,

constantly.

If you only look at -

a problem based on-

a formula of the past,

the "options" for-

self-expression is limited;

if situations require-

an alternative option,

rigid thought prevents -

the ability to -

create a new expression from -

manifesting, at that moment;

can you make -

deep observation,

take a step back to -

reflect, exercise,

look forward,

articulate, reimagine possibilities,

unconventionally?

Regardless of -

cognitive, cultural,

philosophical differences,

between us;

the ability to -

understand is due to -

intellect present within us,

know the essence of life,

deeply;

live, act, grow,

progressively;

choose to work, together,

collaboratively;

have ability to -

co-solve problems,

innovatively.

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

Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must have the agility to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals. The important characteristics of digitalization are over-complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity.

Hence, GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) becomes more critical than ever. Here's the context; how should GRC programs be approached? Should technology be a driver? Can you achieve any level of GRC without automation? Can you achieve any level of GRC without people? What is the real driver of GRC? Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in the right direction and achieve expected business results. Here are the multiple perspectives of shaping a strategic boardroom with digital acumen.

Initiatives of Governance

Initiativesofgovernance The speed of change is increasing, and the business ecosystem is more dynamic. The more complex businesses become, the higher the requirement for business connectivity and governance discipline turn out to be in order to meet performance baselines and generate value, allowing different roles to work together in harmony. Governance principles, processes, and practices need to be assessed, evaluated, and modified periodically to address the latest trend, increasing business management effectiveness, performance, and resilience.

Initiategovernance Governance is about guidance and direction; to ensure organizations have set the right guidelines, clarify roles & responsibilities, with clearly defined processes in place. Focus on running your business, doing the "right things"; improving risk intelligence, and making sure that the things are done right afterward.

Initiativesofgovernance The world has become much more complex and smaller all at once due to blurred territories, virtual interactions, intriguing business reality, and global professional mobility. Governance is complex because the management discipline and GRC practices are more interdependent than ever.

Initiativesofgovernance Running a business is complex, governance as an interdependent discipline of management helps to steer business in the right direction. Governance is the structure and process of authority, responsibility, and accountability in an organization.How to enforce the organizational governance discipline depends on the nature, scale, and complexity of the organization, as well as understanding risks and barriers it faces in business changes. Without effective GRC discipline, the business will face significant risk for surviving, and opportunities which it creates cannot be properly transferred into multidimensional business value. Strong governance to enable business management dots connection is both art and science for improving organizational effectiveness and maturity.

Initiativesofgovernance The digital environment is constantly changing, forcing the business to keep adjusting accordingly. In fact, today’s organization has become much more dynamic, informative, hyperconnected, and interdependent. Governance is the structure and process of authority, responsibility, and accountability in an organization to enforce business management.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 10 million page views with 10300+ 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


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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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Initiatives

There are a variety of human societies, but it is still a long way to go for shaping a harmonized global world.

The global society means a hyperconnected business environment, worldwide knowledge, cross-boundary communication and collaboration, and interdisciplinary discipline. There are many multinational businesses, but very few truly global organizations. It’s important to infuse digital into every aspect of the organization; embrace inclusiveness, manage cross-generational, cross-cultural workforce smoothly; leverage information technology to integrate crucial business ingredients into unique competencies; identify and invest in a variety of global capitals to reinvent the new breed of global organization effectively.

It’s important to find how to keep people all motivated and on a mission is the biggest challenge: Through conventional wisdom, people are defined by a set of stereotypes, in fact, that different worldviews learn differently and through different media and methods. So how can professionals belonging to different communities in the world learn from each other, advocate the most advanced thinking, ideas, and viewpoint from a different perspective in order to get to know each other deep enough, work more closely, lead their organizations, and global society to the next level of humanity?

Due to the abundance of knowledge and technology-driven collaboration and learning tools, the global workforces absolutely becomes more open-minded, informative, and fluent in digital dialects and conversations. Have people from different industries, generations, geographical locations find each other, keep learning agile to bridge gaps, build trust, harmonize relationships, and harness global collaboration; instead of assuming they each know everything they need to know to run a successful business. Because how fast they can ride changes curves will directly impact the speed of the business transformation and the progress of the world.

It’s always critical of finding innovative solutions to its customers and running a customer-centric organization: For each problem that is worth the effort, we should find different value-added solution scenarios and walk through them from generalization to specification. The intention is to delight customers by presenting the differentiated solutions, make sure that the end user is getting maximum benefit from solutions, with the ultimate goal to build a people-centric organization. Set up the right customer-centric communication channels, and ensure businesses understand the true needs of customers and solve their problems empathetically.

Engaging customers by providing simplified and intuitive products or services on an ongoing basis to see how their goals are achieved is a good way to improve people centricity. Personalized solutions give customers an impression on how it can tailor their needs to solve problems in a better way. The inquiry of human nature - thinking, attitude, behavior, necessitates an approach which is interdisciplinary to great personalization by designing tailored applications or solutions to delight customers and operate people-centric organizations. You are doing so to a greater extent than your competitors, you are gaining the competitive business advantage.

System understanding of truth is one gateway to finding ourselves within the global systems we are attempting to think about: People are complex systems, there’s convergence of hard and soft sciences of humans from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Organizations or societies are complex systems in which visible and invisible business factors influence how they function and perform to adapt to a changing environment. Open systems concepts will focus on meeting the needs of the ecosystem environment. Seeing the context you are part of allows you to identify the leverage points of the system, and then, select the decisive factors in an attempt to achieve the well-set goals.

It is also critical to be able to step outside of the system, explore the full cognition spectrum, adopt different perspectives to shape an objective view and gain an in-depth understanding; explore dynamic perspectives, fresh knowledge, and balanced views to gain an in-depth understanding of problems that occur, navigate the digital divide skillfully and develop a flexible approach to overcome the challenge effectively. Systematic understanding will improve communication, collaboration, and coordination. Global leaders need to shed the tendency to bridge a variety of differences, shape the cross-boundary mindset with common digital traits and perceive a more complex and complete picture of their workforce in unlocking collective potential.

There are a variety of human societies, but it is still a long way to go for shaping a harmonized global world. Real societal progress is made through the work of progressive and inclusive leaders and diverse business professionals who can figure out how to trend the future, capture the great opportunities to grow, light up the business full cycles and emerging properties (trends, opportunities) to create synergy, unleash collective human potential.

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Illuminateliberate

Real freedom is liberated from-the desire to be free. be authentic, explore our inner self, let inner feeling flow, follow our gut to- make choices, intuitively.

Our world is -

multi-dimensional,

colorful;

how we perceive -

the world around,

relate to it,

decide our influence to-

the surroundings,

intangibly.

Does our mind feel free to-

liberate thoughts,

in a real sense to -

look for-

novelty,

fresh insight,

unconventionally?

Are we able to -

get out of the "fear"-

that blocks creative energy,

learn how to liberate -

imagination,

come up with bold ideas,

sow the seeds of-

creativity,

courageously?


No imagination,

creativity engine will not run,

smoothly;

can we attract -

diverse viewpoints,

liberate fresh thoughts,

carry on “can do” spirit

to catalyze innovation,

unbelievably?

Real freedom is liberated from-

the desire to be free.

be authentic,

explore our inner self,

let inner feeling flow,

follow our gut to-

make choices,

intuitively.


Liberate feelings and emotions-

passion, patience,

tenacity, trust, are-

all great emotional ingredients to-

trigger innovation,

sensationally;

liberate minds and guts,

without deep thoughts,

people with-

a vast vocabulary are not able to -

liberate communication,

express themselves,

eloquently;

as what is the connect between -

thoughts, vocabulary, eloquence, expression, translation, is -

understanding, articulating, influencing….

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Innovationvariance

Innovation management needs to be able to enforce integrative diversity by breaking down silos, handling innovation management paradoxes and dealing with innovation dilemmas strategically.

Due to abundant knowledge, increasing pace of changes, blurred territories, and hyperconnectivity, innovation can happen anywhere across the organization and its ecosystem. However, it has a very low success rate; every organization has a tolerance for the variance which, when exceeded, produces a failure scenario.

 It is important for integrating the variety of agile business processes and management practices into a strategic level, catalyze innovation, and ultimately build unique business advantages.

Innovation variance: A very simple way initially to improve innovation in almost any organization is to simply broaden the audience, and its diversity for solving challenges. Variance by strengths, personality, function, industry experience, stakeholder (customers, suppliers, resellers/retailers, regulators, etc.) allow for superior need discovery, business model creation, assessment, and validation. Innovation is the most needed change. You have to bring it back to the fact that resistance to change has root causes in fear-driven by evolutions.

When someone is resisting innovation; it is usually because one or more of the elements is missing for them. Look at the issues from their perspective. If you stagnate, you don't grow and your company doesn't grow. For growth to happen, the whole team must all be on board to harness innovation. The culture of innovation needs to be cultivated intentionally, and change has to be anchored in and set in movement by all parties.

Variance in the quality of generated ideas: Individually, to become innovative, people need to keep learning agile, build variety of experience, play different personas in understanding issues from different angles in order to come up with alternative ways to do things. There are high-quality traits of professionalism such as positive mentality and attitude, fair judgment. At the organizational level, if the company does not understand the failure, then there will be no innovation. Be open-minded to ensure ideas were heard, not slapped down. The balance is achieved via inspiring freedom and enforcing discipline; the business harmony is based on continuous idea-sharing and constructive criticism to foster a culture of innovation.

In reality, many people are inherently cynical about innovation or change, many doubt there are effective means to accomplish them. To achieve innovation excellence, either at the individual or organizational level, it’s great to have “enthusiasm,” and courage, based on the inner strength that is able to increase the quality of innovation performance. From an innovation management perspective, ensure there are abundance of ideas flowing into pipelines and get processed smoothly. There is more flow of creative ideas, the more is happening, the pie gets bigger. Bottlenecks should be broken down, all processes should be observed, controlled and optimized holistically.

Information and process variance: Nowadays there isn't really much of an enterprise without the massive oceans of information that flow through the enterprise at any given split second. Water is tough, there’s turmoil in the information sea. Information variance and many analytical factors have a major influence on the fine parts of a process refinement. Information quality, the frequency of occurrence, process cohesiveness directly impact innovation effectiveness.

Information and processes are two sides of innovation management. In some incremental innovation scenarios, data has a significant role in defining the process and data comes first. A good process includes an understanding of value, function, data, responsibility, and control flow. In management practices, integral information/process management directly impacts the maturity of innovation management; the process refinement is often based on an iterative cycle of designing, modeling, and optimizing. As long as you have the freedom to design what you want to do, generate novel ideas. Then, you design the process, define the data you need along the way to implement them smoothly.

In reality, innovation fails because many organizations lack a cohesive strategy or a systematic approach to handle variance, manage both opportunities and risks in a structural way. Innovation management needs to be able to enforce integrative diversity by breaking down silos, handling innovation management paradoxes and dealing with innovation dilemmas strategically.

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