Risk as a Catalyst to a Growth Strategy

Every risk has opportunities in it, and every opportunity has risks in it. 

Digital brings both significant opportunities and risks to business today. One of the biggest problems with conventional Risk Management is that it tends to focus on risk and ignores opportunities, which will be where the greatest value can be created. Only the high mature companies can take advantage of risk as a catalyst to business growth. From the governance perspective, how to adapt to such digital ‘disruption’ and embrace the opportunities embedded in the changes and transformations?

Manage the risks, but identify some opportunities. Many of the opportunities are in the blind spots. When you are not looking at your blind spots, someone comes in and disrupt you over time. In business, every day is a risk, but when a company embarks on a growth strategy, the risk curve will always be greater than a business as usual approaches. And more than 80% of today's business value is based on their ability to embrace complexity, understand the future, opportunities, decide which one to go after and which one they will not go after and clearly articulate forward the way value will be created.

The majority of the business value is based on intangible assets such as information. Typical risk management programs are based on financials and transactions. Today, more than 80% of the enterprise value is based on nonfinancial assets, the assets that are not currently visible, touchable, hard to quantify; the assets which in a complex digital world are coming and going very rapidly. The intangible factors which are identified as risks need to be clearly defined and given a value. For example reputational risk, client perception, competitor reaction, financial markets perception etc., all have a risk factor which needs to be recognized, and how to capture the insight from those intangible assets is more important than ever.

From risk management to risk intelligence. When boards talk about risk, it’s nearly always referenced as a negative, something to be avoided and certainly minimized within the business model. And today, boards that are still using traditional risk management frameworks and management showing graphs and curves to their board are only moving forward by driving through a rear mirror view. Because the biggest risk for business is beyond those traditional graphs and curves. In fact, companies that are still stuck with their old ways run the risk of being rapidly disrupted. The risk management needs to lift up from risk control to risk intelligence which can identify the potential business growth opportunities.

A multiplier of reward to the investment needs to be established based on a defined payback period. For example, the longer the payback period, the higher the risk; as the original assumptions upon which the investment is based will be subject to greater variances in marketplace conditions. The board needs to ensure that they have a clearly defined monitoring program for each investment.

In order to achieve risk intelligence and take the risk as a catalyst to growth strategy, a harmonic, forward-looking approach to manage opportunities and risks has to be put at the heart of the new 21st century.

Read More

Many Faces of Creativity

 An essential aspect of creativity is the ability to challenge assumptions, beliefs, conclusions, and to be able to contemplate multiple, even conflicting views of a situation.

Generally speaking, creativity means the thinking process to create novel ideas. More broadly, creativity may be more than or perhaps only tangentially related to the making of something new. Creativity is a specific way one or some human brains process information that results in unusual combinations of ideas, metaphors, applications, procedures, insights, and sometimes 'things'. Creativity seems to be a cluster of cognitive behaviors that may or may not result in a product and not necessarily a novel product. Or to put simply, there are many faces of creativity:

Individual creativity vs. collective creativity: Individual creativity is comprised of domain expertise, creative thinking skills, and task motivation; as an ability to release emotional energy in response to a problem stimulus, thus initiating and converting into, creative thought (divergent followed by convergent modes) and action. This energy is expressed through the organization of material into symbolic forms (visual, verbal, kinetic, etc) which may be consciously or unconsciously organized. Collective creativity is formed by the inclusion and improvising of many, rather than the imposition of one, it is different from isolated or introspective creativity. There are some challenges that can benefit from individuals working separately while other problems require a collaborative effort because domain expertise beyond what any one person has is required. Working collaboratively requires trust and the ability to debate that isn’t required when working alone. These elements have to become part of a collaborative creative process. Hence, creativity can be either an individual activity or a team sport, when we experience the manifestation of a creative idea (the "eureka moment"), it is an individual act, we only have one mind. However, many minds can create many creative and different ideas, so working as a team can sometimes amplify creativity.

Creativity color spectrum: Some say creativity is not different 'types' - it is a spectrum. Creativity is like a color spectrum. There are commonalities that are relevant to all colors which reflect the spectrum of light. Such a metaphor connects the dot back to the nature of creativity. There is a "purpose" to creativity. And there are some situations where the only thing that matters is those common characteristics. The color is color regardless of hue or saturation or density. But there are also factors that make each color unique. And there are situations where the unique attributes of each color are incredibly important and meaningful. Creativity is more art and less science. It depends more on empathy and emotional intelligence for its success rather than scientific knowledge and simple problem-solving abilities. As human beings, we do have a desire for the omniscient and the omnipotent. But all things made by humans have serious limitations in their applicability.

Multi-faceted creativity: Creativity combines effective and cognitive factors where cognition serves effect. Creativity sometimes leads to tangible products which reflect the personality of the individual in their response to the problem stimulus and the means for its expression. Innovative thinking does not happen in response to knowledge. Innovators usually hunt for knowledge based on what they need to validate the innovative idea that they have, rather than develop an innovative idea based on the knowledge they acquire in the present. When the brain is able to seek out solutions outside of the domain knowledge and irrespective of the direct linkage that any knowledge might have with the concerned domain, there will be a greater probability of success in creativity. An essential aspect of creativity (individual or group) is the ability to challenge assumptions, conclusions, and beliefs, and to be able to contemplate multiple, even conflicting views of a situation.

Creativity is a flow, an abstract and an imagination. You can put creativity in a box and say it's "all just creativity", or you can pull it out of the box and look at it through different lenses. The root of our differences is in the different perceptions and the lenses we use, which we have with respect to creativity or innovations. The angle from which you view it determines how you identify and categorize the similarities and differences among the many faces of creativity.

  

Read More

Agile Dilemma: are Managers Happy, Developers are Unhappy or the Other Way Around

The purpose of Agile is to deliver value and delight customer. But better make employees happy as well.

Agile has emerged as the mainstream project management philosophy and methodology, does it make managers happy, developers unhappy, or the other way around, or ideally, can it make everyone happy as a fountain of improvement, interaction and incremental?

Agile is done correctly, developers are the first to be happy, and then overtime managers are happy. Developers should have the more freedom to choose how they implement the best solutions, using right architecture, design and agile engineering methods that assure product quality. Developers need not be told what they have to do, rather, they need to know what is expected of them as the outcome. 

If the agile values and principles are understood properly, they can really add value to projects and people involved. The developers actually like Agile. They don't think it's the holy grail, they feel it works better than Waterfall, as it gives them freedom to explore, make and change as needed, and deliver value much earlier. People blindly follow some rules, but do not have that ideology, that results in failures and unhappy people. The managers, the clients and even the team need to have the Agile mindset before they work on a project. That is the biggest miss found in organizations who say they are Agile. 

It depends from what angle you are looking at it; if you are using agile to double the velocity of team and continuous improvement, then it can be too much pressure on team, but if it is about empowerment of agile teams to make their own decision and commitments, or in self-organized (Scrum) teams, developers are empowered and happy, as long as Scrum master protect them from external interference; but management might feel uncomfortable, losing some kind of power regarding the team; or lack of management discipline may cause the project failure. In the other situation where the project was on schedule, but not on value: The manager was ‘happy’ because the project seems to be delivered on time, but the team was unhappy because of the bad quality of the source code. Result: the software was impossible to maintain, to evolve, and a lot of conflicts have appeared with the hierarchy.  It is important to find the right balance.

Autonomy is a key ingredient to the success of agile: It’s actually a rather important need for the best work to be completed. Scrum and Agile are for the developers to be happy and hereby produce. Managers are secondary, but will eventually be happy because mandated agile adoption can be met with unhappiness. Further, the company, regardless of their practices, can be an unhappy place if the leadership team is lacking. Imagine how a manager could be truly happy if their team isn’t curious to know how you are measuring the happiness/unhappiness levels of developers and managers. Have there been any attempts to identify what "happiness" is to them? Is the evidence showing up to work with a smile on their face? Being nice to co-workers? Bugs/line of code? Or is it how long they have been with the company ...not looking elsewhere for employment.

Happiness seems like such an elusive thing to quantify. Maybe it’s just one of those things that we know when we see it.There just seem to be so many variables to consider. Still, the very meaning of Agile philosophy is to set the guidelines and build more productive and happy working environment for both individuals and teams; for both engineers and managers, with result to bring happy customers as well. 

Read More

The Brutal Truth about Data Analysis

As an emergent digital deployment, there are both optimistic perspective and brutal truth about data analysis!

Although data analysis is at top priority of business agenda in every forward-look organization, the ROI and success rate of such projects are still very low, more specifically, what is the brutal truth about data analysis, and how to overcome such challenges?

The ability to quickly and iteratively ask good questions is often lacking in the analytic expertise. The right approach should be to pose the problem by considering the business question to be answered, the available data and domain specific information, without any bias from known or available algorithms. In many cases, known algorithms can be used, but that need to be decided after the problem is properly posed. If there are no known algorithm for the problem under consideration, then one need to develop new methods. Of course, developing new methods for data science requires good understanding of probability theory, linear algebra, multivariate calculus and optimization.

Do not let the data analysis to fool you as lots of things are so easy to get wrong. It is the consequences of getting it wrong that matter, not the fact that it is easy to do so. And the highly qualified analysis practitioners perhaps make big mistakes as well. What they often lack, but can learn, given the time and interest, is the context and dynamics of the business or organization they are working with. This is why so many analysts did not achieve maximum impact with their work. It's only when you bring sophistication to the right problems that the business executives suddenly listen and get excited with your work. It emphasizes the need for knowledge training about the data systems and company problems and its interfacing, to help you analyze when, what and why you get wrong and how to avoid it. 

You will never be able to automate true knowledge discovery. The creative human interpretation process is needed to tell a most likely story about the analysis results. What you can automate is the input into such creative discovery process that results from feature selection, so that the predicted probabilities are stable and replicable at the individual level and not arbitrary. When you start with non-arbitrary inputs, you are much more likely to make real discoveries instead of the discovery of artifacts. It is the error reduction mechanism in the modeling that gives such stable feature selection and replicable predicted probabilities at the individual level, without the need to do any ensemble averaging (which obscures the interpretation of models).

Data visualization needs to be optimized. The game changer that is radically altering those who spend the money is visual analysis and data visualization. Why? Regular business managers and executives are suddenly empowered to see what is happening and are demanding clear explanations to their business needs. Additionally, those people who work for the executives, with deep business knowledge, but minimal-moderate analytic knowledge, can learn new tools and techniques that radically improve their insight into changing business dynamics and increasing their perceived ability to ask what-if questions for future planning as well. 

Data analysis pathfinder. There are two parallel paths: On the one hand, relatively complex problems in the past will gradually migrate to the broader and less demanding field. So people with a less extensive preparation will be able to extract more value from the analysis than past generations. A growing number of tools attempt to provide increasingly indicators on quality results. For example, automation tools will help explore the data as quickly as possible, and visualized tools make the better business insight and potentially reveal a way forward. For a growing number of regular applications, it will be enough and any inaccuracies will not produce significant negative impacts in various application domains. On the other hand, a new set of problems of increasing digital complexity will require the deep knowledge, but not qualifying for automatic solutions. 

The concept and clarity of use of "judgment" in a scientific context. There are varying concept need to be clarified in analysis practice. For example: What is "judgment"? Is it an individual's personal choice about what rules should apply? Or an individual's choice about how close something is meeting certain standard? Or is it an application of some method to balance the influence of contradictory diagnostics? How can anything be replicated if one "scientist" uses his or her "judgment"? How does the replicator take into account the application of judgment by the original researcher? If judgment is used in application of scientific method, does it mean that the results can be replicated because the same judgment is applied, or that the results can be replicated because they are independent of the judgment applied? If it is the latter, "judgment" would be irrelevant. 

Lack of cross-disciplinary analysis talent: Data analysis, statistics, data mining and forecasting are very hard to master. It's even hard to master just one of these! In addition, neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience is not data science, but data scientists who wish to develop more reliable artificial intelligence applications probably will need to have an understanding of these more basic fields in much the same way that pharmaceutical scientists need to have a understanding of basic chemistry and biochemistry. Data analytics is underpinned by: (1) statistical (2) mathematical (3) modeling methodologies along with (4) reality of data centricity (5) software and code as tools to these disciplines. Unless people understand and appreciate the education they received in these disciplines,analysis will continue to be a big challenge.

As an emerging digital deployment, there are both optimistic perspective and brutal truth about data analysis, with more mature data analysis tools and technologies available, high professional analysis talent get trained, organizations can reap the fruits from their analysis experiment and efforts.

Read More

CIO as ‘Polyglot”: Shall CIOs need to be both Leader & Coder?

Either as a leader or a coder, dedication &  “continuing learning” are important regardless of one’s field.

  Today’s CIOs are indeed ‘polyglot’, not only some of them are multi-linguistic to understand different cultures via cognitive connection, but also most of them have to understand multiple business dialects such as business, IT and architecture in order to act as a business ‘translator’ to mind the gap; further, the IT ranked CIOs may also be good at coding, to communicate with machine via multiple computer languages. The interesting debate upon IT leadership would be: Shall CIOs need to be both leader and coder? Or how to make CIOs more effective?

CIOs bridges the gap between these two domains - business and technology. It is a challenging thing to achieve but fundamental to becoming a truly effective CIO. IT strategy decisions cannot and should not be made without a solid understanding of the technology behind them. This doesn't have to be at the maximum level of detail, but enough to understand what's important and how to achieve it. Indeed, leaders and coders may share some ‘common mindsets’ such as analytical thinking and creative thinking; but a leader needs to be a specialized generalist, have more strategic mindset to oversight big picture of business ; while a coder is more as a technology specialist, needs to be more focused on design thinking and technical details. It is very useful for a CIO to have had some experience of writing code or other technology areas for that matter as part of their earlier career. However, as the C-level executive, the CIO's decisions are more about strategy, risk, vendor partnership, internal relationships, hiring quality staff, coping with finance and resource challenges, etc.

Critical thinking and problem-Solving skill are more important for leaders; that a CIO is willing to and will take whatever legally permits, creatively and relentlessly to achieve the success. Being able to write code is a useful skill; doing it at CIO level is not a strategic task, though. Being able to understand new technologies quickly and make good choices about which ones to adopt or even investigate is probably more important for a CIO. There is also the danger that too many hands-on removes the CIO from thinking about the big picture and no one else is mandated to do that. So every leader in any position should understand that which they should be managing. And it is especially useful if at some point in their career they had hands-on experience in key aspects of what they now oversee. A CIO benefits enormously from having a tangible feel for the work that staff does - not just the outcomes. Otherwise, he/she cannot appreciate their challenge.

It's about having the right blend of leadership skills, business knowledge and technical knowledge (not necessarily hands-on) that makes the right CIO. Technical knowledge such as leadership styles are just one of the tools in your toolbox, and you need to keep them all sharp to work effectively. How you sharpen your tools is a personal choice. It is about leadership and hands-on. Some CIO's know how to lead, but don't know how to code. Some coders know how to code, but don't know how to lead. Some ideal hands-on leaders know not only how to lead but also how to code. This is an issue of a mix of leadership and hands-on approach. A mix of macro and micro perspective.

CIOs must understand the business and the role IT plays in it, knowing IT capabilities well helps him/her to better perform the job. Previous experience in technical activities helps him/her to drive informed actions and have synergy with the team. And maintaining an interest in technology (including what's happening in software development) and listening to those with deeper knowledge are far more important and are sometimes lacking in CIOs. However, the role of CIO is very different to a software developer. Critical thinking skills are far more important than deep technical expertise, especially in top leadership roles. Successfully climbing the corporate ladder requires a technologist to understand that they need to gain business skills, quantification of benefits, ROI among other factors...

 In an IT leadership role, you’d better understand technology to some degree. Being in IT (regardless of the role) you make a commitment to always be learning the new. Understanding technology and where it’s going will allow the CIO to look into the future and how it can be used to propel a company forward. Writing code may not be possible for a CIO in the long run due to wide nature of her/his job. However, She/he sure has to learn the technology and leadership as well. Most effective CIOs know how IT works, have a broad business knowledge and know how to apply IT effectively. Therefore, they need a lot of IT knowledge to determine what works and what not, and how to make things work without knowing all details. Given a specific CIO position and its circumstances, the CIO must know what they are signing up for: When accepting a role, the real skill is to know to ground their choice in their ethical stand. Being able to shift between strategic leadership and tactical management. Leaders can capture the insight from their previous coding experience, though. Both leadership and code are complex by nature, whereas IT leadership needs to translate business strategies into IT project portfolio and leverage information technology to solve business challenges; and coding teaches the purest essence of information technology, to translate real-world problems and opportunities into cohesive, logical information systems and solutions. IT leaders should learn to communicate briefly like assembly language; encapsulate the vision, take the inheritance of leadership quintessential and practice multi-threading management disciplines, like object-oriented language; or learn from extreme programming by not being extreme, but being more balanced, interactive and agile.   

Either as a leader or a coder, “continuing education” is important regardless of one’s field. For a CIO, technical competence becomes more about how technology impacts the organization than about the mechanics of how it works. Hire competent people to take care of that, hold them accountable for making good decisions, and stay on top of the overall performance of your organization. Never forget that when the leader gets lost in the details, no one is driving the ship. Ensure that the business stays ahead of the curve-business environment today is extremely dynamic. Technology brings enormous advantages to the table! However, there is a gap between capability and harnessing that capability for business use. The CIO has to play this role and channelizes the advantages to ensure that the organization stays relevant. This is probably the most difficult task -one needs to balance the technological investments made, the risk associated with new technology adoption. It is more important for IT leaders to persuade their fellow leaders, partners or workers to achieve the business vision via polyglot's empathy, with an in-depth understanding of IT.

Read More

What are the Goals to Choose the Right KPIs

Selecting the right measure and measuring it right are both art and science. And KPIs influence management behavior as well as business culture.

Choosing the right KPIs is crucial. The challenge is that people have their own take on KPIs. KPIs must be aligned with the corporate goals and objectives - but should also be directly relevant to the activities that businesses are attempting to manage (process execution). If you only select KPIs based on outcomes without managing the processes that contribute to 'good and bad performance', you will continue to be out of control. However, it is equally dangerous when you focus on 'process execution' without understanding if the process is delivering the desired 'outcomes'. Perhaps the greatest challenges are not about 'data management' - but 'relationship management' within the organizations.

What are the business goals for KPIs?

·        - To provide objective evidence of current performance towards achieving agreed goals.

·       -  To drive positive culture and behaviors

·      -   To empower delegation and decision making, while managers are accountable for the results of their actions (evidence-based decision making)

·         -To build 'management competence' and reinforce positive management behavior 

·         -To facilitate its own validation against measures

·         -To prevent, detect and mitigate gaming of the system for personal gain or political advantage

What are the KPI principles?

- a KPI must measure end-goals (effectiveness) and process execution (efficiency).  
- a KPI must be translatable into other KPIs that can be attributed to departments down in the company hierarchy.
- a KPI must be relevant to the hierarchy of the company.  
- a KPI must show what is important to pursue executing the company strategy 
- the group of KPIs must prevent making it a KPI game 
- a KPI must act as an early warning system that the strategy is not on track 
- a KPI must empower people/teams to do "the right thing" 

There must be an understanding of both outputs /process and outcomes. The problem with many frequently used KPIs is that they are not related to the process people are actually attempting to manage - and the result is that people become de-motivated and frustrated by 'arbitrary targets'. If you want "early warning that the strategy is not working" - you must recognize and monitor the potential causes of failure - which may include 'process execution' (controllable) and 'environmental factors' beyond your direct control.

Drive the positive culture and behaviors. It is clear that people need measures that enable them to make better - evidence-based decisions - and the hierarchy of KPIs should reflect the processes individuals are trying to control. When senior managers routinely demand 'operational data' and start to micromanage the organization, it becomes counter- productive - because people spend their time trying to second guess what ''they' want' rather than understanding the causes of variation and driving sustainable business improvement. 

The struggle for KPIs is that they sometimes need a number of measures around the same issue to gain a complete picture, but then there is a danger that the volume of KPIs becomes un-manageable. One way of mitigating against the effects of this could be to use them in a hierarchical fashion, senior managers can drill down when required - but should not destabilize the process by over-correcting (interfering without enough understanding) or crushing the creative thinking of the people they employ.

Selecting the right measure and measuring it right are both art and science. KPIs influence management behavior as well as business culture, and poorly designed or implemented KPI's can be very damaging the "culture of the team" and the quality of business execution.

Read More

IT Skills Gap

Truly treat talent as a human asset and capital to invest in, not just a human resource to plug-in.

According to industry surveys, IT skills gap is a significant challenge facing IT leaders today, what are exactly the skills gaps and what are the resulting symptoms? For example, businesses have job openings, but cannot find people with the right skill set; or the talent people they currently have do not have the right competencies to adapt to the changes; or their business partners do not understand IT. Sometimes, the gaps people usually pick are not root causes, they are symptoms of specific best practices not being used. So what are the organizational best practices/ways that have been deployed to close the gap?

Motivation: At the core of all learning is motivation. The skill many companies and IT fail to recognize is the ability and desire to learn. Instead, they look for so many years of experience with a specified version of the certain product. Every true IT pro is behind the curve on specific skill sets and wants to learn new stuff. You can't teach someone to ride a bike if they don't want to learn; look for strong evidence of a desire to learn and to grow. In business, the value of your contributions and your ability to deliver value is frequently more important than technical expertise. IT people are accustomed to having to learn new things. If companies would embrace the idea of constant learning and invest in it and really encourage learning instead of giving it lip service, there would be no skills gap.

Problem-solving: The talent that has demonstrated he/she can solve complex problems is on demand. Businesses become over-complex these days, more often than not, the skills gap is caused by candidates not having the appropriate balance of the right technical skills with business/management acumen, or lack of system, critical and creative thinking, interpersonal skills, as at the end of the day, it all means how to solve business problems. The bottom line is: Realistic expectations and focuses on fit, career development, and succession planning will go a long way to recruiting and retaining employees with the right attitude and aptitude to adapt to changing requirements.

Self-learning: It needs to be a job requirement, and it means that the core skill to look for is someone who is an effective self-learner and deep thinker! Overall, technology tends to be more dynamic (in a company as well as across the industry) while leadership/management/industry changes more slowly. The key is to recognize that they both change and demand everyone to continuously maintain and grow their expertise/skills and that the IT job market for candidates with the right skills is growing. The responsibility to maintain/grow one's expertise (technical and management/ leadership/ industry) has always largely fallen on the individual employee; albeit it is great when the organization provides support. For example, most great programmers have done everything from Assembler to C to Java, to Perl, to Python..... and- they keep adapting!

IT Leadership: The lack of skill sets in IT leadership is perhaps the root cause. Often times IT leaders look narrowly at specific problems and projects developed to solve those business problems, partly because that is the way funding is allocated rather than having a broad view of their enterprise and the longer term strategy for the organization. They fail to develop talent strategy and keep up with standards within their domain that can lead to the holistic enterprise viewpoint and execution of IT strategies that fit within that enterprise viewpoint. Often time projects are not cohesive and create more problems, as their mindset, knowledge, or skills acquisition issue is a systemic problem. So the proposed solution scenario is 1) first, understand the problem (either skills gap or other IT issues) by going to the root cause beyond the symptoms. This is because true understanding is a life-changing for any decision maker. 2) When you do understand; you’ll know what you need (even if it is a vague idea), and 3) then what will be left is to mainly know how to get it, and then, leadership can be applied concretely by showing the direction. So the only way to solve this is to have CXO who has the courage to learn and make real changes. You have to fix the IT leadership skills gap first.

Next practice in HR and talent management: Every organization must address their common and unique IT skills requirements and map that out through some sort of skills/competency matrix within their organization. Too often, leaders are allowed to complain generically about what they mean by skill and competency gaps and often they pick the symptom, not digging through the root causes. Ensure that the hiring managers understand how to effectively perform their job, and develop the best practice and next practice, to make sure that you don't hire a hammer when you actually need a wrench.

As the saying’s going -hire for character, and train for skills. IT skills gap can be bridged through futuristic IT leadership, the culture of learning, next practice in talent management, and look for the traits such as intelligence, motivation, problem-solving, self-learning and communications, etc., truly treat talent as the human asset and capital to invest in, not just human resource to plugin.

Read More

How to Handle Governance on Agile Projects?

Agile is not lack of discipline, but takes more management, engineering and governance disciplines.

Agile is methodology and a set of guidelines. Agile software development is not lack of discipline, but needs more management and engineering disciplines; it also takes stronger governance disciplines to ensure Agile project success. Here are a few perspectives on Agile governance:

Strong governance team: You need to ensure that the business and the delivery team relevant stakeholders are represented in the governance team. The need to deliver value and products that the business need as quickly as possible would require some strong support and guidance from the leadership, and continues cross-functional collaboration which helps put in place without compromising any of the other agile principles.

·         Servant leadership: The agile approach to governance is that of empowering the teams involved in the project, while the servant leadership approach does eliminate the perceived bottlenecks commonly associated with the traditional governance concept. Overall, through continuous collaboration and focus on the solution that is fit for business, the team take responsibility for delivering on time and to budget quality solution that meet business value. It is the way that the team will do the right thing.

Agile GRC: Addressing risks, issues, concerns and communicating actions are of critical importance in ensuring project success and should be major concerns. Trust the SCRUM Master to manage the team and focus on achieving the definition of done. Don't overdo documentation, but document what ought to be documented. Stay positive, flexible, and don't turn sprints into mini-waterfalls. Let the shareholders set direction and excite them with working software. Don't let process become impediment to project progress. Consideration of all team members via continuous collaboration.

Governance framework: Most important, keep eyes on context changes and agree on which of the levers, scope, time, cost or capacity need to be adjusted, and advise the teams on re-planning accordingly. It should definitely be people over process, but also people using the process of governance to enhance the delivery of business value on time in tranches that meet the business needs. An appropriate governance framework is even more important for disciplined Agile delivery environment, where to address the full delivery life cycle involving agile and non-agile teams, several core methods are combined, or a few “traditional” practices (such as doing some up-front requirements and architecture modeling tailored to reflect agile philosophies etc.,) are adopted to round out the overall solution delivery process. In these environments, appropriate procedures for managing cross-teams dependencies, issues and risks are integral success factors.

Agile needs agile governance, simplicity is the key, make it simple but mature, practical with agility.

Read More

When should the CIO take The Initiative to Promote Strategic Business Transformation?

 CIOs can convey the vision at the front, but lead the change from behind.

Either fast-growing businesses or well-established organizations have to continuously adapt to the numerous changes and well chart the path to significant business transformations such as digitalization or globalization, should CIOs take the initiative to promote such strategic business initiatives, if so, shall they promote at the front or lead from behind? Are they more as idea initiator or governance champion? And what’s the best scenario to take such transformational leadership?

The simple answer is "it depends": It depends on the CIO persona, the proposed transformation, the organization undergoing the transformation, the CIO's C-level colleagues, etc. Certainly, there should be no innate issue with the CIO leading transformation per se, no more so than for any other executive. The CIO should be considered alongside all their C-level colleagues and external resources to find the most appropriate lead.

• Transform = to change shape or change to another form 
• Change = to alter or make the difference

CIOs can convey the vision at the front, but lead the change from behind: CIOs are uniquely placed to influence change through the expansion of domains of automation and the use of new technologies to provide a competitive advantage, open new channels to market, retain and grow the customer base. However, without business involvement, it’s not going to work, and in business, there are egos and empires to consider, so it’s perhaps best if CIOs convey the vision at the big table, but lead the changes from behind. What it means presenting a change in such a way that it is seen as a business initiative for which they need IT support. All executives need to be agile. But if the CIO is agile and promoting the rapid transformation of the organization, while their C-suite colleagues are of a different mindset, the change is likely to suffer, if not fail completely.

Only the paranoid survive: It is healthy to have an organizational fear of change, as long as that does not paralyze the business. Fear of change results in the appropriate management of risk and application of governance. However, what makes agile businesses different is the approach they take to manage risk and govern change. In the current climate of accelerating opportunities and risks, decisions need to be fast and governance light. So a CIO might need to play the paradoxical roles, the strategic initiator, the idea instigator, but also the disciplined engineering manager and governance champion.

Make a comprehensive assessment: Whether a CIO should take the lead in strategic initiatives is predicated on whether they are a trusted source of cross-discipline information. If not, it may be anywhere from difficult to impossible for them to lead any strategic initiative because they are not strategic. If the strategic initiative has a strong technology component to it and the business is driving the initiative, you must get involved to make sure the technology selected will actually work and can be supported.  Given all the factors and others listed below, then you have to decide whether to throw your hat into the ring to lead the strategic initiative:

1     (1) Perception: How do the other executives perceive CIO? As technologist or a strategic partner? Likewise, how much do you trust your fellow executives? 

        (2) Culture: What is the culture of the organization like? Is it very team-oriented and collaborative, or is it hierarchical and siloed, in which case the organization tends to pick whoever is best to lead a new initiative.
(3) Strength: Is the proposed solution in your wheelhouse? Do you have a lot of experience in this particular area, that some of the other executives don't? 
(4) Change Curve: Where is the organization on the technology or process adoption curve? Is the organization a pioneer, mature adapter, or laggard? A strategic change for one type is perhaps old news for another. 
(5) Alliance: Who are your supporters and who will be your detractors? And how do you overcome the objections or roadblocks that will inevitably raise? Who will work with you to overcome the problem, and who will try to kick you when you're down? 
(6) Risks: How much risk are you personally willing to take? Being a change agent is not an easy role, and with any strategic initiative, there can be a high risk of failure. 
(7) Measures: Set the milestones and measure the result accordingly.

More often than not, technology is the driver of business change or digital transformation, therefore, CIOs as IT leader will play a more proactive role in driving changes or leading transformation. In particular, many organizations are at the journey of digital transformation which is catalyzed by digital technology and information explosion, CIOs have to become digital leaders to advocate the digital initiatives, also practice the engineering and management disciplines in making sure it is successful.

Read More

Is Efficiency Stiffling Innovation

Balance is the most challenging continuity regardless of the strategic emphasis. 

At many organizations, in pursuit of operational excellence, there is such an emphasis on efficiency rather than innovation or creativity. Companies are focusing on improving margins by reducing the bottom-line rather than increasing the top-line. The improving bottom line takes little creativity and risk, while working on the top-line takes risk and creativity, as it is not a sure thing. Does that mean efficiency killing innovation?

Efficiency and innovation just have to learn to live and function together. An obsession with the rigidity of efficiency stunts the innovation creation process. Innovation is fluid and should not be straight-jacketed. Efficiency may easily kill the nascent and very vulnerable child of innovation not quite ready to be analyzed for its profit margin. Many process innovations will be concerned with increasing and optimizing efficiency and maintaining existing skills and linkages. "The greater the efficiency of an organization, the greater the need is for creativity. Efficiency will extract the maximum benefit from a new idea. If an organization is inefficient, it will be inefficient with new ideas. Efficiency and creativity complement, not oppose, one another." - Edward de Bono

Balance is the most challenging continuity regardless of the strategic emphasis. The search for efficiency is also a concern for the strategic view about improvements to "Operational Effectiveness", such as new processes or workflows propagate throughout the industry, are easily replicated and will likely result in competitive convergence. Efficiency and short-term goal orientation often divert focus from innovation in general; and innovation that will benefit in the long range, but lower profitability in the short-term: How do you address this problem as you develop a strategic plan? How do you balance the short-term and long-term innovation /opportunities? It is the art of balance and continuity regardless of the emphasis.

Obsession is the killing agent. As processes yielding results, innovation and efficiency can complement and enhance each other. We have to understand that the world has become multidimensional. Innovation is definitely key in global competition, but not sustainable without a significant transformation in the organizational control thinking. A company can still create a product (empowering or sustainable) along a single dimension and drive towards commoditization, but only so many customers will be attracted to that product. When apply the systems thinking the concept, where multidimensional and the non-linear view is of the interconnectedness among the elements are taking in the account, obsession will become a limiting factor.

Perhaps innovation and innovators can flourish or flounder depending on the culture- the risks/rewards, the constraints, the opportunities. Leadership tends to focus on culture, structure and metrics when in reality they should focus on improving communication and elaborating insight. You can't change an organization without insight, the organization adapts exclusively to the insight you provide to it. The search for the key to the "sustainable innovation holy grail" requires a specific understanding of innovator motivation. It is not a one size fits all, culture heaped in control but an open blended culture heavily oriented toward autonomy with control applied sparingly. Most organizations want both innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit in concept or words but are not set up to deal with the personalities of these free thinkers via talent empowerment. People must enjoy the journey just as much as the final stage of completion, and must receive all the encouragement and support available from their peers if they are to be truly inspired to do and create innovative things. And most of all, they must always keep their minds focused on the objective and stay positive.

Both innovation and operational excellence are integral components of the digital strategy. The world of strategic planning is about to change completely. Ambidextrous organization separates the exploitation of the existing methods and technologies from the exploration of the new radical or potentially disruptive innovation. Strategic planning needs to become, continuous, dynamic, circumstantial and multidimensional. In other words, the strategy is no longer something you plan for, the strategy is something you exercise every single day to well leverage innovation by managing operational excellence.

In summary, the balance of efficiency and innovation is the most challenging continuity regardless of the emphasis. Innovate as early as possible. Get everyone on the same page. Think it through. Execute the process efficiently. Fine-tune the cycle along the trail. Orchestrate the harmony! And maintain the humor.

Read More

Problem vs. Decision

Problem: You need to do something; Decision: You can do something. 

Problems generally initiate decisions but decisions aren't always due to a problem. You can have either without the other. A problem is a situation that needs to be solved. Decisions are not always made to solve a problem.

A "problem" is perceived as something negative by most people - whereas an opportunity is not. The awareness of both leads one to think that one needs to make a decision (and the lack of awareness of both leads to us being trapped in ruts). On the other hand, a decision is a plan to change something in your current situation.  A"decision" has lots of connotations of finality. What seems to mark those good problems solvers out from others is their ability to frame issues, problems, and decision options and turn them into shiny opportunities, tangible outcomes, and inspirational change.

Problem: You need to do something; Decision: You can do something. The decisions to act or not and how, are by fully understanding the situation, and using a combination of the 'least bad' solution compared to effort and time availability. If the issue is small and the effort to deal with it big, then resolution maybe not justified while if the problem is big and the resolution easy, then doing that is worthwhile. The three questions on what is a problem and needs problem analysis to solve it: 
1. Is there a deviation from the set expectations (should)? 
2. Is the cause unknown? 
3. Do we need to know the cause to take meaningful action? 
If all questions answered by "yes", then you have a problem. 

"Business problems" are usually difficult. Indeed, part of the difficulty is that businesses often try to use decision-making processes to define the problem, and in doing so often fail to really define the problem. The problem then just becomes the output of decision-making processes. You then try to solve that problem - using more decision-making logic and wonder why the actions we have taken have made the situation worse. The questions to check: Do you distinguish between decision making and possibly 'problem defining' processes? Or does your decision-making processes inherently include a phase for 'problem defining'? Or is it jumbled together and thus confusion is the result? There is some research that indicates groups should separate the 'exploration/discussion' phase from the 'decision-making phase' as the logic being applied is inherently different and mixing the two will cause confusion.

 The distinction is between recognizing an opportunity to influence reality by taking a decision ( the choice), and the process of selecting that choice (the decision). "An opportunity to influence reality" might be a problem; something causing us pain, or it might be an opportunity to increase satisfaction in some way. In either case, the foundation step is in framing the opportunity or problem, or issue. How you frame the question or decision largely determines the kinds of alternatives that will emerge from the choice process of decision analysis. Usually, the two steps are quite distinct. Until you have made the first cut at defining the opportunity, issue or problem that needs a decision ("Framed the Issue"), you are not ready to start on decision making. An essential part of the 'Framing process' is to understand what your high-level outcomes are related to the issue, opportunity or problem. You cannot choose between alternatives without being clear about your desired outcome. So half the battle is framing the question appropriately.

Without problems, the decisions may never turn to be significant; without decisions, the problems may never get really solved.

Read More