Change Management Debate: Can the Business Core-Values Change?

Core values and strategic direction are intrinsically bounded.

“Corporate value is the operating philosophies or principles that guide an organization's internal conduct as well as its relationship with its customers, partners, and shareholders. Core values are usually summarized in the mission statement or in the company’s statement of core values.” (Business Dictionary).

More specifically, there are social and strategic core values, both are important, social core values can evolve; strategic core values can evolve or change. Some continuity midst of change remains a golden rule to avoid internal and external disarray. An interesting change management debate could be: Can the business core-values change?

The social core values concern some basics behaviors like respect, integrity, clarity, and collaboration. All these are interlinked and interdependent and must be evident from the top and throughout the organization. Together they become the guiding principles that will deliver shared and sustained success. They are “the way we do things ‘round here”, and they are implemented by the teams and by their networks. The leadership must emphasize, role-model, and commend good behaviors. They are among the intangible resources of the enterprise, important but difficult to assess.
-Respect for the customer, co-workers, and for what we do in a safe and respectful environment.
-Integrity means honesty as well as the constant and honest evaluation of risk versus reward of a decision's impact on the stability, soundness, and strength of an organization.
-Clarity means a clear, constant, and reinforced communication of the values, goals, and objectives. Are we all on the same page?
-Collaboration means to be able to have a cross-functional corporation to make the job well done.

The strategic core values concern behaviors needed to support the strategy and that integrate business models: Such as vision and market forces, mission, and means, as well as fundamental success factors. Unlike the critical success factors that apply to a particular project, the fundamental success factors apply to all facets of the business. You would associate the fundamental success factors with the strategic core values, specific behaviors that are always important to succeed in the strategies. It would be easier to manage if the core values are discovered first then the direction of strategy is decided.

The core values can and do change in organizations - but not easily. Changes in leadership can bring about a change however the real test of change is how it is more involved and complex than just changing the core values after the new leadership team takes control. Getting buy-in from the stakeholders is extremely important, and surely you shouldn’t downplay that component of the change process. The chaos theory suggests there are ripple effects that occur when change happens. One way to overcome the challenges of change is to follow a Plan of Action (PA). The key is that it should change for the benefit of people and keep pace with the challenges of changing times. Organizational values should be made explicit and better means should be devised to evaluate how actual results comport with them. Indeed, it might be more effective to infer and report apparent values based upon behavior and particularly the results it generates. Making changes within an organization can be argued as a needed element in business practice, but only if there is proper planning. Changing or evaluating core values is more than a simple action that can be accomplished through good communication and achieving buy-in because there is a new organizational driver. Spending time designing a PA for integrating the new core value could be identified as an often overlooked, but important start in the change process. Additionally, incorporating key personnel into the change process requires management to conduct an in-depth examination of who really has serious control in the organization. This is something that should not be overlooked.

Core values and strategic direction are intrinsically bound. If the firm must change its strategic direction, are its core values sustaining the new direction? If not, changing core values should be well managed through the right change management. Collectively defining what those values mean in practice, putting them into practice, then measuring and publishing the results is how to inculcate a set of strong core values. It isn't easy to change organizational values and culture, but it can be done. Core values are correctly used when the top executive is aware of the definition of direction and mobilization of resources; it’s the necessity of being a good leader and not merely a good manager.

The correlation between core value and culture of the business. If you really want to know a firm's core values, watch how they respond to a crisis. That is when the culture turns up. It is possible for the leadership with the support to instill in the organization a new core value, but it doesn't happen if it’s not congruent with the mission and direction and not supported by their entire management team - all of which is not easy. Good to know that an initiative is being run of maintaining a repository of core-values of companies. It will definitely help organizations, working, or intend to work on continents. as there is a big difference between ‘espoused values’ (what is said) and lived values (what is actually done in practice).

The core is the core, it takes the time to change the core values of an organization, shows methods to help direct the way people think, the way people behave, and the way people act. Do not forget the impact that the systems of the management, the structures of the organization can have on the management of the strategy fundamentals, and of the style of the leadership.

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Innovation Best Practice: Practical or Contradictory

The winners set the "best" practices and the laggards try to emulate them.

Innovation is how to transform novel ideas and achieve their commercial values. Due to the open nature and “out of the box” thinking of innovation, is it contradictory to do that inside of the constraints of "best practices"? Is there actually anyone using what to be considered the 'best practice' in innovation in reality? Does best practice really improve innovation success rate or increase innovation efficiency?

Innovation is a management process, not just serendipitous magic: Originally, all best practices were industry-specific and evidence-based, meaning they were based on data. And practice is always a combination of (1) people and (2) how they are used to doing things. More and more firms are learning and implementing best practices in innovation, perhaps it is a better approach to strive for using good practice - good for a certain organization and for the specific situation and challenges that are faced and that actually requires different priorities as compared to others. Not every innovative company uses every best practice. Not every authority agrees on every best practice. Some "next practices" continue to emerge - after all, the people who use today's best practices are innovators. Still, there is a recognizable core of approaches and activities that produce profitable innovation, and there are companies that use them.

One size doesn't fit all: The best practice is more about setting principles and standards. Markets change and shift and for each company attempting to deal with these changes, there is a different path to follow. The practices that are "best" today are almost always not "best" in the future since practices, as well as technologies and markets, are constantly morphing under pressure from the waves of creative destruction that keep business in innovation mode. Thus, the innovation best practices are not for making static or rigid processes, but more about setting the principles and standard to achieve innovation management excellence with agility and flexibility. Keep the old quote on the mind to understand one size doesn’t fit all: “if all you have been a hammer, you tend to hit everything as if it is a nail”.

The key is 'context': If the best practice you want to adopt is to be implemented in the same context, it could work. If the context is different, it is worth understanding how that difference could impact the so-called best practice. It may actually lead to a better solution for your environment. Learning from own or others’ experience will never be as long as we know how to transfer it into our actual context. The real challenge is to understand where and how we can and should improve to get the biggest effect. With effective tools or methodologies, it can be used wisely and with the expertise to really add value or drive innovation.

The best practice and next practice: One of the benefits of the phrase "best practices" is that it is aspirational. Every organization should strive to explore the "best practices" throughout their organization. These practices might be different across organizations, across departments, divisions, and affiliates within an organization and can change over time. In fact, they should change and evolve over time. Organizations change, new practices continue to be developed and there should always be an objective to become even better. Interestingly, while people may disagree as to what best innovation practices are, they generally recognize poor innovation.

The best practice to improve innovation efficiency: Best practices should get their claim from being the method that takes the least amount of time and resources to deliver a product or service while still meeting acceptable quality standards. Perhaps some industries are less rigorous than others. Every activity takes time and resources and must meet quality standards. Whatever the activity, there is one best way of performing it; one way that uses the least resources takes the least time and still meets quality standards. That method is the best practice, the practices when they see them. This should give implicit support for the idea that there are "better" innovation practices, even if one does not buy into the idea of "best" practices.

The winners set the "best" practices and the laggards try to emulate them: Winner companies cite many more sources of advantage (resource control, customer captivity, first-mover advantage, coordination, moral force, economies of scale), But the laggards only try to emulate, there is a risk to that because when you emulate your competitor you start looking like them. You may cut their lead but also risk eroding what makes your business special. This is when people started talking about "core competencies" and "capabilities." People began to see that companies differ and what is best for one business, may not be good for the other one. 

Innovation is the management discipline to reduce business complexity or increase revenue, the best practices may help businesses to manage innovation more systematically, but they shouldn’t be static or rigid, and there’s no one size fits all.

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Is your company "agile" only when it's convenient

Agile is a Mindset.
Agile is an emergent mindset and PM methodology. However, there are many roadblocks on the way: Some say not only is Agile used when convenient, but Agile is often misused ('Agile means no documentation') and it gets blamed when projects fail. The phenomenon where agile is fine as long as things are moving along at a steady state but when the chips are down and the cards are on the table; when the big contract or the must have project is at stake; agile goes out the window and the waterfall mentality wins the day. Is your company agile only when it’s convenient?

Leadership: Many managers claim to be "Agile" as that is what is expected, yet they are not. Sadly, it is common where managers are not leaders. Leaders do the right things to deliver on a value such as customer satisfaction; whereas managers do the things right to push for "on time, on-budget delivery". Scientific Management and Taylor-ism is so entrenched in management training, with a little education on leadership. Most managers fail to see the difference between leadership versus management. 

Mindset: This phenomenon (the company is agile only when it's convenient) is clearly a symptom of lack of Agile mindset. Agile mindset embraces three Is: Improvement, Interaction, and Incrementalism. Trying to practice Agile without the Agile mindset is like pouring water over an inverted glass. It's pointless. It is a big convenience for many companies as it is the right thing to say. The actions are however in total contradiction to the practices. 

Trust: Trust is the two-way street and key successful factor in Agile: Do the managers trust the team? If they do they won't intervene. If they don't trust, then when they see bigger risk, they will intervene.  On the other side, how can the team get greater trust from the management in such circumstances? It helps if the team understands, and can demonstrate an understanding of, the risk, and explain why their approach addresses the risk.

Stretch, not stress: A lot of managers believe that the way to get more out of a development team is to put them under pressure. They like to have long-term estimates in place so they have some baseline to apply that pressure against. In sunny time, this is not such a problem. But, when the pressure is on, they often revert to problems. The root cause of the problem is that a lot of managers are successful because they work hard and often long hours. They project this behavior on to development teams and assume it is necessary for success.

It is subjective and dependent on the market or industry. Some claim agile fame only to satisfy executive missive rather than truly use it. Others hybrid it and call it agile to whatever sense they can, while a few truly run agile efforts consistently for the right projects. There are however many good companies where they are truly agile and work in an agile way.

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Digital Talent Management Capability

The HR capability is about taking an enterprise-wide view of Human Resources, all the processes, and systems that being used in employing and managing people.

People are still the most invaluable human asset and capital investment in any business, as digital is the age of people. The digital transformation means that companies need to infuse digital into every aspect of the business, shaping the enterprise-wide digital capabilities and overall ecosystem which include people, process, and technology. From talent management perspective, how can businesses build cross-functional people management capability and HR capacity in unleashing talent potential and improve digital competency?

A holistic view of HR: The HR capability is about taking an enterprise-wide view of Human Resources, all the processes, and systems that being used in employing and managing people. Some of the challenges that are able to address within HR include taking an enterprise view of people assets, because, in large organizations, there can be significant inefficiencies which have arisen through siloed approaches practiced in the industry age, people have been treated as resources to plug in, especially in prudent, regulatory compliant organizations. And there are also differences between the process is seen from the bottom and the process seen from the top as well. Holistic HR view ensures the collective human capability is optimal than the sum of pieces.

Coherent design thinking: In addition, the first step in taking an architectural approach to a nominated system-of-interest is to consider the broader "containing system" in the entire organization, its goals, objectives, and strategies, and ensure that the HR system-of-interest is well designed to meet these broader needs. For each of these entries, one can then assess:
a) capability condition in the context of future demands
b) current allocation of responsibilities between executives, line managers, HR function and external providers
c) system dependencies and condition
d) priorities for improvement

Capability integration: There are some of the issues where must be aware of integration of a single HR capability into an enterprise HR capability across all enterprises, arising from particular organizations may not be applicable to other organizations. In addition, national legislative and cultural differences may also lead to different approaches and hence varying capability scopes. The entire HR process is unlikely to be assigned to any one person or group. Therefore, the process will be split as needed depending on the size and scale of the organization. Any attempt to state that there is one and only one way to do this is a futile effort. Further, digital talent management capability needs to have the new digital dimension to handle digital new normal, for example, where there is a global roaming issue and "crowdsourcing" agenda for skills and business advantage - then the talent management task is a lot more strategic and complex...

HR activities: Processes underpin capability. The HR processes only exist to support the managers and employees to carry out their employment contracts and develop employees’ skills, knowledge, and experience. The activities of a manager are clearly supported by many functional departments. These activities are about planning, organizing, resourcing, integrating, measuring, and developing people:                                                                                                                          
-Recruitment
-Employment contracts
-Health, safety, and well-being
-Learning and development
-Performance management
-Workforce and industrial relations
- Organizational development
- Workforce planning
- Policy, procedure, and guidelines
- Personnel and workforce information management

Intertwined capabilities: In organizations with largely automated processes, it is a moot point as to who is functionally responsible. The processes and supporting systems are designed to meet business requirements, implemented and proceed into operation, with minimal human intervention. It may well be that a particular process triggers all subsequent processes and that the "trigger" event varies. No doubt this situation arises and is applicable to other business functions or business capabilities, especially where the business process ownership is separated from the business process execution. Hence, HR capability needs to be well integrated with other key business capabilities of the organization.


Talent Management is the key business capability in digital transformation, it has to be built upon all the dimensions such as scope, alignment, design, execution, governance, metrics, etc. to enforce cross-functional collaboration, and to embed agility into the process of adapting to the changes.

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Is Artificial Intelligence good or bad for Mankind

It takes sound strategies for dealing with inevitable rise of AIs with both opportunity management and risk management.

There are fiery debates in professional BI /Future Trend communities as the distinguished physicist Stephen Hawking warned about the potential threats that the Artificial Intelligence might bring to the mankind and humanity may face an uncertain future. It is indeed a good suggestion that “all of us should ask ourselves what we can do now to improve the chances of reaping the benefits and avoiding the risks" in the development of AI.

The Problem with all new inventions is that they always have two sides. They were invented for good, but can be turned into bad as well. The benefit of intelligence is proven as important tools to make business or society more progressive and smarter; to diagnose the problem and learn from mistakes; to predict, plan future action and to foresee the consequences that the planned actions will have; to capture the trend, but leave out what is no longer relevant. However, the major problem at artificial intelligence is that humans might not be able to recognize if it turns into bad as if artificial intelligence is really intelligent, beyond the manipulation of human beings.

There are two mindsets in this world as well: Adventure and control. Throughout history adventure has taken mankind to wonderful new levels of advancement technologically, economically, psychologically and methodologically. Thus, it is important to grasp new possibilities, and welcome the constructive creativity, but manage risk intelligently (shall you have to apply intelligence in managing AI as well). Hence, people with the talent to do critical, creative and possibility thinking need to step up and solve real challenges. It's a matter of always asking the big WHY question at each iteration of AI, the WHY we need AI is clear- the parameters that AI would need to complete its purpose.

There is the realistic potential for malicious artificial intelligence to wreak havoc on humanity's way of life. Stephen Hawking is advocating policies to prevent malicious AIs from being created, to develop means to detect them early in their development cycle, and to identify and track them after they have acquired a lot of resources. And there is the need to elevate public awareness of upcoming AIs prosperity to mitigate the "storm-the-castle-with-torches-and-pitchforks" response from the human races. Thereof, it takes sound strategies for dealing with inevitable rise of AIs with both opportunity management and risk management.

"Machines don't abuse data, humans do"! Even our perception of time is thought by some to be a limitation of human perceptual ability. Machine intelligence can complement human’s wisdom. In other words, with a different brain structure, we should be able to envision 'forward' as well as remember backward. Paraphrasing Asimov; "any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic". We should prepare ourselves for the magic show once AIs begin evolving, blooming as well as overwhelming.

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The Pros and Cons of Advisory Boards

 It is all about talent with (KEP) facts, execution and collaborative teaming on everyone's part.

In the large organizations, besides corporate board, there are multiple advisory boards or steering committees, which act either as strategic advisor or governance body, however, there are also controversial perspectives upon their performance, are they truly effective in purpose, or do they just add more layers of hierarchy in decision making or leading to micro-management as well.

 The positive aspect is that the advisory Boards do provide the collective insight and expertise for the subject matter. None of the decision makers have all of the required KEP (Knowledge –Experience- and Performance) for every subject they deal with. So having the cross-functional team that can provide the expertise and fills the gaps is of monumental value. The effective advisory Boards would roll up sleeves and help management understand and explore markets, business operations, geographies, etc., and act as sounding boards for big, risky or speculative ideas that aren't yet ready for the senior executive team to present to the Board.

The negative aspect is that ineffective committees are typically triangulating things and create more problems than solutions. Management typically feels board committees or advisory boards are dealing with operational issues already delegated to them, and they micro-manage sometimes. When such micro-management happens, it gives management a pass on accountability. For example, one committee makes this recommendation, the other makes another recommendation, which creates operational issues due to non-compatibility or operational conflicts that they cannot see by operating in silos.

Advisory Boards serve a fundamentally different role than true Boards: It is important that the role of the board and the direction of the board are carefully defined. Committees usually reduce the Board's “30,000-foot view” by breaking up the information they need to have to make strategic leadership decisions and delegate oversight responsibilities for the organization. However, it's important to be careful for a corporate board to rely on an advisory board or committee too much because they need to spend the time educating themselves so that they can have sufficient knowledge on strategy oversight. It's also important for a board to make effective governance, not allow management to use an advisory board, committee or consultant to shift operational responsibility. Boards should be willing to spend the time to be competent enough to develop the strategy and oversee operational performance as well.

The trick is planning, strategies, choosing the right people and managing them coherently. If done right, the advisory committees can be very effective in plotting new directions and providing multi-stakeholder perspectives. The collaboration between these leadership teams needs to boil down to assurance that personal bias is eliminated, group polarization is analyzed, they are not ego driven and that the unmet or unidentified needs of the employees - customers are met; and in the end, they provide the shareholders the best possible result for their investment. It is all about talent, with (KEP) facts, execution and collaborative teaming on everyone's part, as it is a lot of hard work to complete all that is required to achieve "Best In Class" business performance.

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What are the Pitfalls in Measuring Innovative IT Effectively?

The intersection of Information, Technology, and People is where innovation happens!

IT as an enterprise group is in a bigger identity crisis than ever, the industrial mode of IT running as a cost center no longer satisfies stakeholders and business partner anymore; the digital mode of IT means speed, agility, and innovation. IT needs to become a business’s innovation engine, as the intersection of IT and people is where innovation happens! Companies need to invest in IT necessary to make the business advances through either incremental or radical innovation! However, what are the pitfalls in measuring such innovative IT effectively?

Bottom line thinking is one of the great limitations of modern IT organization: The true IT value is hard to derive from support services since measuring productivity can be elusive and difficult to quantify. In addition, CIOs need to translate business speak and tech speaks fluently, as more often, the channels of communication are further muddied because of the language barrier associated with IT. The hypothesis is that whatever new service or solution IT provides, it needs to result in a business value which in most of the cases is tangible; it means either top line growth or bottom line profitability increase. Unfortunately, the stove-pipe functional silos are still prevalent and all too often fighting for who owns what versus, who should and runs it best.

IT performance metrics alone is not sufficient in communicating IT effectiveness: It is true that the majority of IT organizations still cannot articulate their economic value to the board or shareholders in a language they understand and performance metrics alone will not solve the problem. Costs are part of the solution, but they need to be understood in terms of usage or volume patterns, and they need to be distributed across often very complex revenue models that are in a constant state of flux. There is also a bit of a political battle that goes on where IT claims it's a proportion of revenue value, even when far more precise mappings exist between costs and revenue. Once it plays that game, IT matures beyond being a cost center and acts more like a business partner, or business within a business, because its value proposition can be backed up with something approaching empirical evidence and analytical clarity as opposed to gut instinct.

"Measuring up" is intriguing: Taking the time to do all metrics up front and treat a project as a static amount of work is a toxic illusion. Can any IT manager provide clear metrics up front? Only a small part of IT is predictable, and it is often a commodity. Most of the IT has to continue working together with business to find out what they need and developing tailored solutions side by side to advance the company. IT is mad when the business keeps changing its mind and is not happy with what they ordered, and on the other side, the business thinks IT is expensive and has no understanding of changing business needs. How does valued IT change and technology advancement happen? From fostering the spirit and value of collaboration across functional lines to speaking each others' language and knowing enough to understand the business impact on all sides of the house helps break that down.

In the end, the business expects ROI: The answer upon how to measure properly is somewhere in the middle. Bottom line ROI and financial analysis are a great way to evaluate a new product or change to an existing system. But it is very difficult to measure the value of many of the IT maintenance type expenditures. It is more important to measure return on innovation accordingly. Overall, the value a change has brought to the company is the measure of success. Although the consumerization of IT changes the way to run IT and business, there is still an IT element necessary to make all those pieces connect and run - not just once, but sustainably, and of course, adapting on-going as things continue to develop. That said, it is critical in investing IT in innovation for opportunity management, sometimes more is learned and gained from failing. The key is to fail fast. Opening up a spirit and opportunity for people to stretch and try new things will, in the end, generate many more returns than whatever thought possible!

When IT executives move beyond commodity management and begin to show higher level strategic value and dedicate more resources on innovation, then all that's needed is an open and receptive, collaborative C-Suite. IT is the key component in building up differentiated business capabilities nowadays. You need to attribute business value to your company in building close companionship with your business peers, customers and partners, also in developing multi-dimensional views of KPIs that show how IT is improving business and enforcing business capabilities.

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Is Big Data for Everyone?

Fit-for-Purpose approach is the right way in Big Data initiatives. 

Big Data does impact everyone’s life, hence, there are all the bells, hype and whistles. However, it doesn’t mean every business must pour the huge amount of resource into it. The Big Data question is ultimately- what is the ROI? Some companies can say right now that for them, it's great, and they're happy. In general, it seems businesses are best in an evaluative repose. It's all about "show me the value!". And it is tactical that each company must evaluate the ROI for their company on Big Data projects.

Fit- for-Purpose approach. Any big data or data initiative must start with a clearly articulated business purpose. That purpose must be rooted in cost avoidance or revenue increase. There must be a path to operationalize the analytic as well and that is where people and process are in play. Big Data success is beyond a POV or POC project and is rooted in real business value which can be implemented in a timeline that can show the value. Otherwise it is a science project. The fact is, much like Cloud, big data technologies are ready for tactical applications and are delivering real value. They aren't right for every job of course, which is why firms are adopting a Fit-For-Purpose approach.

Big Data is much more than just Hadoop. It is a common mistake to equate the two concept. Second, Hadoop is not "a platform of files", but a distributed file system that stores data on commodity machines, providing high aggregate bandwidth across cluster, and it has a massively parallel processing system that understands a programmatic approach to working with data. The reality is that these technologies are here, being well utilized, and are going to cause a permanent change on how you design and architect solution going forward. Just implementing a Hadoop infrastructure doesn’t mean that anything valuable is being done on it. The ability now available to capture structured and unstructured data from any source will enable big data results. And more business will spring up to enable the utilization of big data. It is also a mistake to think these technologies are only useful in large data sizes. Most projects start with modest data sizes with the flexibility, or scale of compute is the driver rather than data size.

It is not a "binary" consideration. In general, people are not very good at being neutral, or objective. So with Big Data, some people tend to polarize - move towards the extremes. Some think that Big Data will be for everyone and every industry that is the reason for the hype; others think Big Data is just a fad, would fade away soon. The point is Big Data does affect everyone’s life, however, you do not have to analyze your data requirements up front to be impacted by or get impact from big data.

Therefore, focus on the value proposition of Big Data. Big Data, the term, may be overused or over-hyped. But what it represents is real and impacts everyone, whether they want it to or not. Those who choose to believe that big data is not relevant to them simply will not be competitive when moving forward. The key to maximizing deployment success is to understand where you're headed with your data, and taking a disciplined approach to investing in an understanding of your true data needs first. Keep in mind, Big Data is means to the end, not the end.

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Windshield or Rear Mirror: Which is more Important to Leaders?

Fundamental to all leadership is vision!

Every leader is unique,and they may also have different leadership style: the pivotal leaders are pathfinder to look forward, and discover the new trail to let others follow through; the seasoned leaders have plenty of experience, look back with rich and invaluable leadership lessons to learn from. Forward looking or with an eye on the history and culture - both could be essential.What kind of leader do you prefer? Which leadership style do you have?

Fundamental to all leadership is vision. Vision, is the ability to see beyond what is to what could be. It is the synthetic view of ‘looking forward” and “looking behind”; “looking beyond”, and “looking around”; leaders understand that the first element of vision is a realistic, meaningful understanding of what is. This demands both situational awareness for current circumstance as well as certain knowledge of history to evaluate how we get where we are and what lessons have been learned along the way. With that cognizance, leadership means to looking forward, to first envision the future that is improved or "better" in certain way from the present, then to communicating that vision to others, developing team level commitment to achieving the vision, engaging strategically and tactically in the elements needed to make the vision possible, these are all supporting components of effective leadership. 

Forward thinking leaders always look and move forward. They say your windshield is larger than your rear view mirror for a reason. When we jump into the digital future of VUCA –Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity, looking forward needs AAA –attitude, aptitude and altitude. Forward thinking leaders always look and move forward. Like the car analogy, one should use the forward view to state where we are going and while using the rear view perspective as a risk analysis tool. Further, it's a bird's eye view that is needed. You can't just look behind you, because you can't affect the past even if you can learn from it. You can't look ahead only, as you'll repeat past mistakes. The great leaders stand up as high as they can and look in every direction they could to view the landscape, seeing the world as it is, where it's moving, but also where it could be, then they sit down and drive with purpose

Historical lessons are important as well -“those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." For every individual, back view mirror is very important to learn from errors / mistakes / short comings or whatever we can call. A leader must have a solid grasp on what has been tried before and analyze why those initiatives didn't succeed. Have the right staffs been chosen for the task? Were they given proper resources? Was there organizational buy-in from senior management as well as affected departments? Was it the best solution to reach the goal? The rear mirror is the tool to make sure we understand where we are, any immediate gaps or dangers that make the forward view unrealistic. We must see where we are going. We need to see what is behind us, but not at the cost of losing our visibility forward. The past is in view only to allow us to recognize possible conflicts that could approach from where we have been. By focusing forward we are able to more accurately judge the coming curves and obstacles in our path. Be careful, there are still some blind spots on the way. After that analysis, the leader can assess the current environment, be forward thinking and develop sound strategies to achieve positive outcomes.

Lesson - Keep your focus in the direction of your destination and only glance at the past necessarily to stay aware of where you have been. Too often, looking at the past inhibits forward progress. If you focus too long, too much on the past, you will not be prepared to react when potential obstacles enter you path ahead. Although they are both needed, in life one must look back to recognize life transitions whether positive or negative. Positive transition would be the windshield to our future. Negative is the rearview of our past. Everyday is a new day and it is time for the team at hand to tackle the future and move toward it confidently.

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Business Process and Organizational Design in Digital Transformation

An integrated approach is typically best because one without the other is less likely to be successful.

Digital becomes the very fabric of modern business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-look digital organizations today. However, there are many tough challenges ahead, and numerous roadblocks around, such as how to digitize, optimize or innovate business processes, what’re the fresh perspectives of organizational design (OD) by taking advantage of digital technologies? Where is the dividing line between OD and process? Should there be a handoff from process to OD, and where should that occur? Or should they work together from start to finish, which rarely occurs?

Enforcing mutual respects between process and OD can lead the effective digital transformation. Mapping the flow of work, data and information starting with customers and going all the way inside the organization usually trigger organization design. Process people are best suited for flow mapping, but OD people and senior management are best suited for realigning functions and management. In creating an "outside in" business, it is a question of re-engineering people, process, and technology. The most successful transformation involves total BPM, with a substantial review of OD.

An integrated approach is typically best because one without the other is less likely to be successful. The reality in most organizations though is the process which is forcibly jammed within an existing organizational design. It has to be an integrated approach and not involve handoffs. Using the strategic framework to look at key strategic business elements, and transform companies from product centric to customer centric with step by step, integrated approach.

Integrating organizational design (OD) into the process design and re-engineering. In reality, fewer companies are truly using OD resources. But more often, the successful process improvement initiatives shall have representation and input from OD people management. It helps establish early buy-in and support through analysis of how the "initiative" impacts the people in the organization. Besides, the processes should be there to support the people -the most important asset of any organization, and not the other way around.

Both organizational design and process are important elements in digital transformation. The leadership team must understand that the road to achieving an effective and efficient business model is business process management with a representation of OD people management, and reach the ultimate goal to build a high-performing, anti-fragile, and customer-intimate digital business.

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Itmanagementskillsfornonitexecutives

Conceptual thinking, sound judgment and complexity mindset are three skills enabling IT-Business harmony. 

More often than not, technology is the driver for change, digitalization, and business innovation. However, the difficulty exists in organizations today where the senior executive team does not know how to interface and leverage their IT investments; they do not understand the role that they should play in important IT initiatives. This pervasive problem is with organizations of all sizes around the globe. So what are the most important IT management skills for non-IT executives today?  Or to put another way, what do the non-IT executives need to understand about IT?

Ask tough questions: Encourage non-IT executives not to be afraid of asking questions about technology and invite them to participate in problem-solving. It was not long ago when organizations did not see the opportunity for IT to enable the business strategy, let alone actually drive the business strategy. Thus, in order to adapt to the frequent digital disruptions facing in businesses today, it is important and likely more important today than in the past that the non-IT executives have some understanding of IT and how it relates to their organization.

The Non-IT executive needs to understand how to build a close relationship with the CIO and vice versa. Together as a team, they can achieve a synergy that cannot be achieved as individuals. The skills can be learned, but it all comes down to relationships and what is best for the organization. Since, in most organizations, business and technology are forever interwoven, so should the CIO and the non-IT Executive team. In a perfect world, CIOs and IT would be asked to the table in strategy planning. Not the case right now in most places, it isn't a peer relationship right now until that perception is turned around.

The involvement of the non-IT executive in IT initiative is essential: At least as a sponsor or champion, and perhaps more importantly, when considering that the value of an IT initiative does not come from the IT change unto itself, but how the business changes what they do to leverage the IT change, This becomes even more important as IT initiatives become critical to the business including revenue-generating projects. For these initiatives, what is the most important IT management skill that the non-IT executive would require ensuring the business attains demonstrable value? Generally speaking, more right brainers or whole-brainers are needed; they need to be a good judge of character. They need to be independent of the subject but bring outside-in view and business perspectives. Of course, this is necessary for any senior executives. Furthermore, when it comes to measuring the value of IT investments, there's really no fundamental difference between an IT investment and any other kind of investment. Before the investment is made, the requestor should be required to identify specific measurable results from the investment, the dates by which the results will be achieved, and the specific method to be used to measure the results.

CIOs hope that their business peers or internal customers are truly experts on their lane of responsibility. It is important that the customers or peers understand the subtle nuances of their business line in a way that allows them to formulate statements about how they need to better measure their current velocity, impact, quality, and to determine whether there are opportunities to optimize their entire value chain. At the same time, each executive would also likely understand or desire to understand important considerations regarding the other business units, especially in how they relate to theirs.

Education and skills development need to go beyond just understanding the CIO. Too often that non-IT executives do not understand, and often ask what their role should be to ensure the initiative delivers the intended value. In addition, there are too many initiatives where IT is the sponsor, and often the champion of the business. This can be problematic when the value from the initiatives does not come from IT unto itself, but how the business changes what they do to take advantage of the IT. By proactively engaging with IT, those business functions do not need to build out their own shadow IT to ensure project execution achieves desired outcomes. That by leveraging cloud services orchestrated by IT, they can take advantage of purchase power to achieve corporate efficiency often impossible to realize when investments are made in silos, especially with regard to technology. Business should know how to express a problem in the desired end state with elements of performance sampling points that could be leveraged to determine whether the effort is moving in a positive or negative direction. They should possess knowledge regarding peer, or similar efforts internal or external to the corporation to provide examples of how solutions are realized.

Three skills enable non-IT managers to understand IT with empathy: First, conceptual thinking: The ability to see the impact of actions before it exists. It can also bridge the difference and unify the common view between business and IT. Second, sound judgment: Non-IT Executives collaborating with IT must create an environment where they will apply conceptual thinking in such a way, that they can look at "the idea" and determine from multiple angles, whether such an idea will succeed. And third, complexity mindset-willingness and ability to ponder complexity: As say’s going "if you can't say it simply, you don't understand it." The interrelated world we live in is increasingly complex. Not every solution involving IT is "simple". The idea might be, but accommodating every nuance of failure is certainly not. Business managers must have such complexity mindset to understand IT and digital business as a whole with a circular lens and ambidextrous capabilities.

Be transformational! IT is an integral part of the business, as business manager, think IT as your strategic partner, grow the necessary skills, build the trust, collaborate seamlessly, and ensure business as a whole will be optimal than the sum of pieces. 

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BALANCE as the Key in Strategic Planning

It would be great if so-called strategic plans actually had a STRATEGY in it.

Crafting a good strategy is indeed challenging, as a strategy needs to have the “vision thing” to inspire the team; but also, be detailed enough for execution. To put simply, you must have balance - and this is often where businesses fall down. 

The vision thing: Organizations should not spend more time on strategizing than on taking care of today's business, but certainly they need to spend enough time. The hard part is the "dreaming" or the vision thing. A good strategy shall be foreseeable enough to zoom into the future, bring the excitement to inspire the team, aggressive enough to stretch out the goals and agile enough to adjust to the changes. However, some hold an idea that strategic planning is only about dreams and aspirations. It is not that dreams and aspirations are bad; it's just that they aren't powerful enough to overcome the inertia of the status quo without logic to support or roadmap to reach it. 

 Decision Intelligence: Decision modeling has a profound impact on strategic planning. Focus on the outcomes that the organization wishes to achieve, determine the decisions that can impact the outcomes. Incorporate external factors and wire everything together so that the impact of decisions made in the strategic plan on the future outcomes is clearly understood. Periodically, you should start with a blank sheet to do strategic analysis such as SWOT: What are your current strengths, how is the market developing, what are your weaknesses etc. If you don't, it might be that you are very good at something for which the market has no demand anymore. Even if you're not really into "the vision thing", you can get a fairly good strategic plan with a well-informed assessment of how your environment is likely to change and what capabilities you will need to succeed in the face of that change.

The better approach to strategic planning is to actually do strategic planning - far too many businesses are really focused on the tactical approach about fixing issues. At present many businesses are strongly in the 'cost cutting' mode - which will damage them in ways unforeseen, as that perhaps includes a reduction in the ability to chase opportunities - you have cut costs, therefore, you have cut resources, therefore, you have fewer people to chase opportunities. The blocking factors to a good strategy include: 
1) It is easy to look like you are making progress by focusing on the tactical issues.

2) It is very much harder, and requires a degree of bravery, to really tackle what is wrong at the strategic level. Because to really achieve this requires the massive transformation in most cases, and a great many unpopular decisions!                                                                                        
3) With regard to strategic thinking, most executives are open to doing a better job of it. However, they are a little reluctant to have process and methodology in supporting it, often, their aspirations are disconnected with the competitive challenges of the business.

It would be great if so-called strategic plans actually had a STRATEGY in them. It is about the vision thing, and it is also about business discipline to diagnose the business issues, the processes in setting a series of choices and the scenario to taking action effectively. By striking the right balance, the strategic planning is gaining ground.

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