Digital Master Tuning #112: How to Manage Capability-based Digital Strategy Effectively

An emergent digital strategy has to incorporate disruption.

Digital strategy is a type of business strategy, enabled by information science and technology, so once that is understood, it is always going to be driven top down, especially for a large enterprise. The key question is how much to anticipate disruptive digital business strategy by investing in information technology without either constraining the thinking or ability to pivot, which investment will tend to do or wasting that investment when the game changes. And what are important success factors in managing digital strategy more effectively?

C-levels has to lead the effort by convincing the shareholders and management team about the core direction. Once this is done, it will be easier for functional leaders to define the sub-strategy and plan the implementation. The psychological and organizational factors that get in the way of understanding that critical dimension of true 'digital strategy' is about disrupting the conventional ways of creating value within established markets. So rather than how do we use information related science and technology to 'organically' make things better, 'digital strategic' thinking is more about the big 'WHY' about digital transformation, how do we use it to change the game!

An emergent digital strategy has to incorporate disruption. The focus is on why companies focus on evolution (perhaps, digitally-enabled extensions of existing operational capabilities) vs. disruption (tear up the road map.) It's tough to plan for disruption because what's disruptive is inherently unexpected. It's very much like positioning yourself for playing a game. You can get caught playing for one move when your opponent makes a different one. Alternatively, you can choose a conservative position that should allow you to react and respond to a number of different moves and still get beaten. Every company has to decide what strategic framework to employ and architect the enterprise, its processes, and infrastructure consistent with the plan they derive from it. A valid strategy that has existed for some time is 'second mover,' in which a company validates the viability of a new (possibly even disruptive) technology before employing it, themselves. Failures in some percent new technology-enabled business models are guaranteed and sometimes, waiting for a little maturity can put later adopters on a preferable learning and cost curve.

Building a set of digital capabilities is the preparatory steps in Digital Strategy Management:  There may be many elements of digital infrastructure that are foundational to almost any foreseeable digital strategy so implementing them could be viewed as a valid preparatory first step in readiness for a strategic opportunity when it is recognized. Maybe you have identified a characteristic of disruption--a discontinuity between the operational processes that can be supported with the existing structure and architecture and new ones are required to adapt to the changes.  'Digital infrastructure,' whether this might, for example, include establishing a data analytics capability or change/innovation ability, in any case, to monitor or seek disruptive opportunities requires something more like a digital capability than infrastructure only.

Embed the startup culture to accelerate innovation: For an existing organization to successfully progress almost any kind of discontinuous, or indeed truly innovative strategy, it somehow needs to embed a start-up culture. This can and has been achieved by establishing a kind of parallel organization within the organization that is able to field and move new ideas forward rapidly without the kind of psychological and process barriers. The corollary perhaps is that without such a mechanism, 'digital strategy' typically ends up as business as usual, IT related evolution with a fancy new title.

IT's a balancing act. It always was and always will be. IT is a significant component of core business capabilities. Building flexibility, agility, sustainability and performance into applications and systems infrastructure is expensive. Building reusability into components is, likewise, expensive. The offsetting benefits for these incremental investments come only when planned-for scenarios are realized and the capabilities in which you invested get you to a desirable state more quickly, at lower cost and with less disruption than you might have otherwise. If the world doesn't cooperate or you've missed the boat on events, you may have made an unnecessarily large investment and get nothing in return.

Digital Strategy Management is an iterative continuum, managers need to have admirable core strengths and highly effective people skills to lead, influence and empower others. It is not only about how much they know, but it is also about what they can and do that really matters. Therefore, setting the right priority and delegation is very important to improve management effectiveness and ensure first doing right things, and then doing things right.

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Three Guidelines in Innovation Management

Innovation must have an end result. It starts from managing business goals transparently together with innovation.

Innovation Management is an important pillar of strategy management. With today's emphasis on innovation per se and its importance to corporate survival, perhaps innovation is so important that the semantic should be recognized as such. So how to identify the gaps and manage them seamlessly? Are there truly bad or wrong ideas? Or merely poorly executed ones? Can we unilaterally pick "winning ideas" or is that subject to interpretation and ultimately implementation/execution? Gaming as it applies to innovation is intriguing -- to truly have the impact it MUST capture both the fuzzy front end and the strategic back end of innovation, what are the further aspects of Innovation Management?

Innovation ecosystem and governance are very important: It is a piece of common knowledge that innovation management requires the highest risk-taking at a strategic value chain; including organization, investments, and assets. Create a disciplined, managed space for developing and testing new models, products, and business approaches, shielding innovation teams from the organization’s dominant logic and established standard operating procedures, which can stifle new thinking and approaches. It’s also important to highlight the benefits of "interaction." Innovation is a non-linear process much akin to evolution. Seeing innovation as a complex adaptive system one can easily see the value of placing ideas into an environment of interaction/ collaboration where they can be tested and are have the opportunity to evolve.

Close three gaps in innovation management: idea gaps, collaboration gaps, and implementation gaps: This differentiation helps delineate the problems and opportunities for innovation. Build a heterogeneous team with a diversity of thoughts is the best way to close idea gaps; modern technology has made collaboration increasingly easy and seamless. The gap between collaboration and innovation is a big issue, especially in the booming world of collaboration software. Even after implementing a company-wide social collaboration platform, it hardly never affects to your innovation development directly, true collaboration doesn't happen as often as we'd like and people are sometimes afraid of letting go regarding of their title or whatever... It is also more difficult to just create human contact when the teams spread globally and/or if sharing values are still poor due to organization belonging importance. What also vexes most companies (and "innovators") is an implementation (commercialization of new ideas). That is why most innovation initiatives fail. People need to learn how to incubate and commercialize ideas more successfully. And in today's go-to-market business environment - the art of commercialization is becoming increasingly complex.

Innovative organizations have deployed a range of different management, technology, process, and structural solutions:

• Earlier commercial involvement in project decision making, in an effort to enhance focus on commercially relevant compounds

• More rigorous procedures for portfolio management and more stringent criteria for the adoption of new projects

• Clearer guidelines for the handover from discovery to development, and for the integration of basic laboratory research with clinical trials and other applied research

• More sophisticated and comprehensive incentive and reward structures

• New structures that enable more external partnerships for discovery and the outsourcing of “non-core” activities

Innovation must have an end result. It starts with managing business goals transparently together with innovation. If social collaboration, innovation management, and development processes are driven by clear strategic goals, the risks are easier to manage. This also enables co-creative processes not only to innovation but to business development overall. Achieving the above objectives requires a contracting process with clear stages, performance thresholds, and decision-making parameters combined with an iterative, experiential learning process that supports wide-ranging exploration at each stage.

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Leadership Training: Is It Worth the Effort

Attitude and culture shift first, tools and techniques training then delivers more.

Leadership is a life-long learning journey. That learning comes in many forms, classrooms, study, service work in the field, moments of triumph and life experience. It is spiritual, intellectual, and mostly in the trenches. It is a cognitive, cultural, behavioral, and systemic issue as to why we are not getting the impact we need. Obviously if companies don't do ROI beforehand this development training just becomes a 'nice to have' rather than a 'business need.' Overall speaking, is leadership training worth the effort?

Leadership is both nature and nurtured. Leadership is a diamond to be found in coal...not in a lab, the leadership landscape is littered with ineffective training programs. Leadership development must be integrated into the regular talent development scheme that is on-going and deep. True, the applicability of the competencies needs to be connected to business goals. That makes the competencies real to the participants. In addition, most leaders need remedial work on what makes people tick. Leadership is neither a franchise to be sold as a package, nor a skill set but a complex mix of a growth mindset,  innate capabilities, finely tuned communication and strategy skills, and vision of purpose...and, of course, a purpose worth following. Leadership training programs begin with an inner fire and a passion for navigating life. Begin from the inside out and be completely honest about your fears, weaknesses, misgivings and shortcomings. Do everything you can to build up your courage, wherewithal and confidence from the inside out. Do not expect the external world to solve your problems. Abandon all sense of ego, arrogance and entitlement. At that point, you will be ready. A leader is just as likely to bring unwanted change to an organization as they are likely to bring wanted change. Leaders are not controlled by command structure or corporate organizational boundaries. What companies also need are highly skilled (hard and soft skills) managers who buy into the culture and purpose of the organization. o if there is no clear linkage between leadership development and achieving real work outcomes then it’s hard to find time for your own development.

Leadership development training has its place in introducing leadership theories that can provide a framework to the skills a leader wants to develop. Skills themselves are going to be highly personal depending on the leader and are best learned through continual practice. Most leadership initiatives are a waste because most of Leadership Programs are not well-developed and highly effective. There is a great opportunity for leadership development to understand their business better, consult better and design better holistic and journey based solutions reinforced by other company systems and processes. Often organizations rely too heavily on the sporadic one-day training to develop and equip managers and directors and leaders. Everyone is different - so the 'classroom' alone is not enough to make lasting changes and get a good RoI. But will the coaching after the training individualized application is possible and highly beneficial. We need to create a business environment that allows for mentorship and mistakes to truly groom great business leaders. It is about leader training (enhancing human capital) rather than leadership training (enhancing social capital). Although in both cases abstract conceptualisation through training is not a waste of time if you engage in the active experiential bit and the reflective bit as well. For individuals with a strong preference towards theoretical learning styles then the course aspect will hold more value.

Attitude and culture shift first, tools and techniques training then delivers more. Authenticity and candor are fundamental in a trainer being effective. Companies throw people into training, giving the trainers the mandate to "fix them." That's where one of the major flaws hides - the top of the organization needs improvement most. Without upper management practicing the tenets of effective leadership. To encourage the development of a corporate leadership or a cultural model you need to work on communication. Training is important, but the creation of a collective image in which people can aggregate their mind is the essential key to success. Leadership training helps tremendously if you are lucky enough to be a part of a mentorship program designed to craft you into a competent leader. Leadership means work! No real, genuine work and experience living in the trenches yields no admiration and no willingness to follow. Ultimately, leadership is a humbling experience. What we have learned from neuroscience is powerful as it helps give understanding to the process of making real changes in patterns of behavior. Developing a new neural pathway in the brain takes time, awareness, and a skilled professional to help you become aware of when the behavior is still in charge. Emotional regulation begins with self-awareness and an intention to change. Overall, the trigger for the behavior can vary which makes it difficult to catch, this is why some of the training doesn't "stick" long after the program.

Leadership development is about change. Saying that one approach is the only solution is no longer the pathway forward. Hence, leadership training approaches need to be vertical and developmental moving forward ... not horizontal and behavioral like the old days. We need to train the culture we want to cultivate and we need to train management skills. Saying that leadership training is a huge waste is like saying that going to school is a huge waste since anyways you are going to learn more in the job. Training isn't going to make you, but it will certainly help you to be more knowledgeable, and think about what you are currently doing. In essence, Leaders need to engage their people so that this improves company performance and everyone knows that they have an impact/stake in the business in making it grow. This also comes out of ensuring that any type of leadership program is based on sound vision and values which lead ultimately into the business overall mission, integrated into talent management practices. This then will impact the bottom line profitability and sustainability.

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Is Uncertainty Problem or Opportunity

When business is for people uncertainty is an opportunity, when people are for business it’s a problem.

Uncertainty and ambiguity are a key challenge for business leaders today. In the past, many business leaders believed their organizations’ long-term goals could wait until they had dealt with the current crisis. In the current business environment with “VUCA” characteristics, this is no longer the case. The rate of change has accelerated, indicating that business leaders must learn how to strike a balance between managing complex issues today and predicting the uncertain issues of tomorrow. So is uncertainty the biggest problem in business today? And is it affecting business in setting long-term strategies and are forced to concentrate on short term goals? And further questions include - how can the soft signals of contextual changes be best determined? How do you structure information systems to deal with uncertainty - in the era of Digital?

When business is for people uncertainty is an opportunity, when people are for business, it’s a problem. This is where the mission of the business at the core is tested, how much the team is aligned to the mission is tested. Uncertainty could be an opportunity enabling to foresee possibilities and probabilities that might crop in our way of progress. As we all know the only "Certainty" or a "Constant" is "CHANGE." Business is only an extended part of our life and all businesses have to accept change to survive. Strategic planning is paramount but, in these uncertain times, this should go hand in hand with contingency planning around “what if” scenarios. Uncertainty is only certain and the best opportunity in business or any field. If there is no uncertainty then there will be a monopoly, in fact, anarchy. Uncertainty per se is not a problem, it poses a risk for those who have a fixed mindset and creates opportunities for those with a growth mindset. We can not predict anything beforehand but can imagine with many experiences involved in current or in the past. As uncertainties are a common occurrence in any walk of our progress, be it social, professional or personal life. We can make provision to meet any eventuality.

The way to effectively deal with uncertainty is to reduce it by getting information. Yes, the challenges, competition & complexities may be in on the increase but along with it there comes the increase in opportunity as well and in the form of demand. Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created. The ability of companies to consume and make sense of the information that is available (and necessary) to make good decisions is becoming a nearly insurmountable challenge. The problem to be solved is to deal with this mountain of information with both technology and human know-how, then to convert this information into valuable knowledge in handling business uncertainty more effectively. That is why good strategic planning is based on good information about the customers, competition, internal capabilities, and costs. While there is always some remaining uncertainty, reducing the uncertainty, particularly if one broadly involves the organization, leads to better decisions / strategic plans and better implementation. This does not ensure success, but it does raise the probability of success. If uncertainty is the biggest problem for a company and it keeps them from running a business productively they should not be in business. There is no guarantee of success in business. Without a positive proactive approach, there is no positive result.

Setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are useful and relevant to the organization – whether that’s the number of new customers acquired in a month, units sold, phone calls made, the number of web visitors or any other measure. Monitoring KPIs on a regular basis should ensure an accurate picture of what’s happening in the business as well as giving you the chance to be flexible and make changes based on real information rather than assumption. Monitoring KPIs will enable the business to spot an opportunity or downturn and take action accordingly. Strategic planning, KPIs are all lagging indicators. In the current dynamic world, real time data (leading indicators) and empowered employees who can respond to challenges are key to success and not some central Head Office strategy making.

Uncertainty in the business or in any situation is a smoke cover for the opportunist to take the risk to advance in the direction of the goal. The business starts with simple values and when it starts growing, to maintain their standards and brand image etc., etc., they float with time and money leaving behind their value systems and they don't maintain the same simplicity. They forget long term planning, so when business people focus only on business and keep anticipating about future hurdles or complications then they need to worry even in uncertainties. The business plans should be long term. For most of the organizations, we still do have contexts of relative certainty, while simultaneously having contexts reflecting both complexity and chaos. Each of these contexts requires a different management approach. The traditional scientific management theory still assumes relevance in contexts of predictability, yet complexity theory would appear to be more effective for dealing with emergence and uncertainty. A problem is often the lack of management understanding of how to apply complex adaptive systems theory in contexts of unpredictability. History has evidence of this.


Life is uncertain. We still have to get up every day and make the best of it. We plan for gloom we get gloom. Reach for the stars and fly. The business leaders and their team cannot afford to be unprepared for the challenging task of facing an uncertainty. The problem is not uncertainty rather it is unpreparedness towards the efficient handling of uncertainty. The task of business is to deal with the uncertainty while moving forward. The greatest indicator of success in the era of social technology will be an open mind control that let you go at the right time, the right place, in the right doses. Who leads the organizations must find within him/herself the emotional stability and greater safety because an open and global leadership first requires discipline, structure, constant effort. The uncertainty will be the new normality and the leader must act with speed but quietly, he/she will need stability, must be safe and aware of itself. The leader of the future is no longer the charismatic prophet capable of seducing the masses, but scientific guidance for individuals. Science has created the world where individuals play the role that was once entrusted to the community. For the leadership of the future is not enough natural talent. He/she must become aware of its own resources, to achieve behavioral strategies effectively and have a path of personal and professional improvement, a great preparation, vision, intuition, perseverance and the ability to work hard.

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What Positive Policies Look Like?

The positive policies make the right things easy to do by everyone and the wrong things hard to do by everyone.

Generally speaking, the policy is a set of principles for decision making or guidelines to drive behaviors. A policy is implemented via a protocol, process or practice, etc. When having positive policies, what do they look like, and how do they affect organizational performance and maturity?

Policies need to serve a purpose: Just because a policy exists, doesn't mean they will be effective or followed - that takes leadership and commitment. There are some organizations out there that have a plethora of policies and many of them are nothing more than that, just a policy. Stagnant documents filling a binder or a folder on a hard drive do not assist the organization in moving forward. Organizations need to do what their policies say or have the policies say what they do. If not, then the policy is more than likely not needed.

We do need to not just develop positive policies and align actions and attitudes with them: Policies are communication from the top. Owners and Management need to take responsibility and take their leadership position seriously with the educated intention or step into the background out of leadership roles. The sticking point is "not focus on energy on those that don't fit"? Avoid the misleading simplistic view of the corporate culture. It is much more complex than that and problems with culture are driven by many more things than any human "Host." The other sticking point is the misinformation that the problems of the organization are because of one person or one department and if we just surgically remove or extract that culture-killing virus, the organization will be cured and everybody can just go back to normal/status quo. But often the problems that catch our attention in organizations are symptoms of a deeper problem, so just treating the symptom doesn't get to the root cause of the problem.

Culture is the policy: We have to shift gears and mindsets to see the culture of an organization as a collective whole living breathing, a human system composed of uniquely diverse people who have much to offer to grow and develop the culture and the organization. If leaders, do not care about positively growing and developing the people within the organization and act in alignment with that, then no amount of writing positive policies will cure the culture; and the organization will continue to be unhealthy. Band-aids/quick fixes never cure a virus. The cure comes from within the people/ organization- the collective whole, whether individual or a group that we want to change from how they are working by appreciating the right things they are doing and during any discussion maintain the self-respect of the individual and their opinions irrespective of how much we disagree with it. Instead, ask how it will serve the purpose that we are trying to serve. By focusing on the issue instead of the individual, we become a team, an ally to solve a problem. And focus more on the right people and not to waste energy on the wrong people who are contaminating and polluting the true culture. In other words, along with containing/eliminating the virus, our major focus should be more on the health promoters.

What do positive policies look like in action- they look like making the right things easy to do by everyone and the wrong things hard to do by everyone because everyone is on the same playing field despite differences in roles/job titles and such. The policies when based on the purpose of what value the organization delivers to the customers and supported by appropriate systems, technologies, and support to the people, it thrives.

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Can you “Move out of your Comfort Zone”

It takes courage, motivation, discipline, and persistence to get out of the comfort zone.

Change is the new normal. Change is situational. It happens when something starts or stops, or when something that used to happen in one way starts happening in another. But acceptance of change is transitional, and “moving out of your comfort zone" can be used at all levels and as a starting point for change. It might sound like a cliche, the trick is understanding that moving out of a comfort zone leads to the creation of a new comfort zone which in turn will require you to move out "of" it again. This continuous moving "out" of your comfort zone is complemented by the cycle of self-development. There is a classic fable about a lion and a gazelle to analogize such a "surviving and thriving cycles": The lion wakes up and starts running otherwise it will not catch lunch. The gazelle does the same but, in this case, to avoid becoming lunch. Either way, you have to move to survive. This principle can be applied in a physical sense as well. The human body is designed for motion and physical effort.

The most general term used in science that identifies circumstances when resistance occurs is inertia: It applies to both matter and energy everywhere in terms of movement. Resistance only - and always - manifests when the state of inertia changes. So replacing resistance with inertia helps talk about change with far less emotional contamination, including placing covert “blame.” It's more the natural way things work. In science, resistance takes different forms based on what is affected. For solid objects, it is usually friction or external force. For electricity, it is ohms. In deliberate social matters, there is always some response to shifting in the inertial state as well, but it is not always direct resistance. What people “resist” or favor or foster or encourage is based on the values we hold. What is better or worse is – barring physical threat from others – can be viewed as progress or regression. Progress is a concept that is not only conceived by humans, but it also applies only to outcomes of human (or human attribution about) behavior. The same “change” may be lauded by some and vilified by others based on how similar and deep the values they hold are.  

A highly diverse group almost always accelerates innovation dramatically as well as spurs general creativity: Variance by personality, function, industry experience, role, and audience (customers, suppliers, resellers/retailers, regulators, insurers and the like) allow for superior need discovery, ranking and business model creation, assessment, and validation. Managers are taught to manage processes and resources effectively. Often conflicting goals within the organization, for example, increase resources to accomplish goals, yet cutting costs to remain viable. A very simple way initially to improve innovation in almost any organization is to simply broaden the audience, and it's diversity for solving challenges. That's something anyone can do except in the most dysfunctional of organizations. The fact is that people's belief system on a subconscious level is slowly "adjust" to a new set of rules rather than the conscious level. In any case, behavioral change in organizations happens on a group level and a person's "resistance" is just the symptom of an "organizational allergy" to the loss of the previously set operational equilibrium. Most of the time, in fact, even while advocating change, management are the custodians - indeed the strong defenders of - the status quo. Even while advocating (certain limited) change, the reins are held tight. Is it any wonder people are resistant?

Delivering a change management training to a large group of people: It increases the group's ability to get through the denial and resistance phases easier. People exposed to several undergoing psychological stages by which they come to terms with the new situation. Although the original model of transitions was based on five stages of grief, people exposed to change undergo similar stages. When faced with change, we all go through the phases - denial, resistance, exploration. and acceptance. So it is important to try to find ways to make people feel involved in the design and implementation of the change. Change requires the management of people’s anxiety and confusion or conversely their excitement and engagement. These are emotions most managers try to deal with or address. Managing the change process and transition emotions are fundamental to the success of a change-oriented project. Many people are inherently cynical about change, many doubt there are effective means to accomplish major organizational change.

Adopt effective Change Management models and tools: The model has evolved into a change management tool with one popular version consisting of different phases of individual transition and managing transition: Identify who’s losing what, and discuss it openly. Organizational change often goes against the very values held dear by people. Resistance is a natural defense mechanism for those losing something. Accept the reality and importance of subjective losses; acknowledge the pain people will go through, openly and sympathetically. Don’t be surprised about overreaction take it in your step. Expect and accept the signs of grieving. Compensate for the losses by showing staff the benefits of the future. Give people information and do it again and again and again and again. Define what’s over and what isn’t. Mark the endings; make sure there are actions or activities that dramatize the processes, systems, cultures and that reflected the old ways. Let people take a piece of the old way with them; endings occur more easily if the people can take a bit of an old way with them. Show how endings consist of what really matters, what must end.

Applying visualization techniques for folks that resist change: That usually helps. if the person in question is resisting change you have to change his/her frame of vision. The sailboat analogy is a popular one: The ship is the company, the sea is the environment, the old world is the past, and the New World is the future. The ship or the company must get to the New World to grow. The only way to get there is to be a proponent of change. If you want the boat goes toward the right direction, you must adjust your sails with the direction of the wind to get you to the New World. You don't have many choices but to change your sails to move forward; You cannot go back to the old world as it is the ship going to the New World and the only way to get there is by using change techniques. If the ship remains idle, then the boat or the company stagnates. If you stagnate you don't grow and your company doesn't grow. For this growth to happen the whole team must ALL be on board. Change has to be anchored in and set in movement by ALL parties. The only way out would be to jump off the ship because change is happening no matter what. The art of sailing depends on knowing how to manage the wind. When very fortunate the wind is blowing in the direction you want to go. For a longer voyage, the likelihood of this happening is 1/360 of the time. The worst condition is if the wind is blowing 180 degrees opposite your intended destination. In this and all other situations, navigational skill is required.

It takes courage, motivation, discipline, and persistence to get out of comfort zone, so humanize change management and remind leaders that the people they are trying to change have hearts and minds, doubts and fears - you have to bring it back to the fact that resistance to change has root causes in fear-driven by evolutions. When someone is resisting change, it is usually because one or more of the elements is missing for them. Look at the issues from their perspective. Gaining their buy-in to the change, switch the conversation to goals- innovation, excellence flexibility, responsiveness, etc. and use analytics to support change and manage transformation.

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Three “V’s in Running a Digital IT

Digital IT is becoming more visible and transforming from a back-office cost center to a front office innovation engine.

IT provides competitive leverage to business’ long-term growth: Because more often, technology is the cause of innovation disruption and information is the lifeblood of business; How to run a digital IT which understands stakeholders’ expectations and propose a service/solution portfolio that correspond to both demand and cost drivers with a focus on business priority, and develops the professional competencies needed for successful business solution delivery? There is an “alphabetic soup” in running a digital IT which must lead in reaching high-level performance and maturity; besides triple “I”s - Information, Innovation, and Integration, triple “A”s - Automation, Analysis, and Agility, triple “C”s - Change, Collaboration, and Cloudification, triple “P”s - Principle, Process, and Performance, triple “E”s Enablement, Exploration, and Effectiveness & Efficiency. Here we introduce triple “V”s in running a high-performing and high mature digital IT:

Vision: Technological vision & problem-solving skills are about in-depth understanding both technology and business, and have genuine empathy with the users of technology. IT needs to have a clear vision and roadmap to which CIOs expect the IT department to deliver. To build and demonstrate IT success, IT leaders need to focus on the business -IT roadmap; that is how IT supports business objectives and processes leveraged by IT and an effective IT strategy as an integral component of business strategy. With a clear vision, passion follows. In order to drastically change IT landscape, you must have passion and drive at the core along with these qualities--Genuinely curious about Information. A great CIO should be able to not just understand business objectives and priorities, but also be able to break these down and cascade them downstream to his/her team in an IT-comprehensive format. It’s about having problem-solving skills and technological understanding  that give you the ability to invent new ways to create or manage information effectively to drive business growth. It is about determining what Information you need to make a difference, what data and what process is necessary to instrument that information and putting the data capture and information instrument processes in place. The common pitfall for IT leader is to fail to make the connection between IT and the business, lack the cognizance of how it will actually impact the company's top line and bottom line growth and, therefore, cannot be the enabler that companies need.

Value: Digital transformation starts with mind shift, business value has to be driven, indicated and understood at all levels of the organization. This is accomplished through establishing strong interdependent relationships, the shared vision and wisdom, the frictionless business culture, the re-framed processes to bridge silo, and the optimal sets of business capabilities to delight customers. IT value is multi-faceted and it’s interesting to see how IT value is in the eye of the beholder. IT value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like collaborative value or collective advantage and multi-layer ROIs. IT value is demonstrated through the rate of productivity increases, the rate of new product development, the rate of market share gains, the rate of customer approval and satisfaction gains, the rate of sales gains, etc.  There’s inspiration from prior design patterns, no value chain possible without UX perspective (at least according to the UX person), risk management perspective has made its appearance, as it has sunk cost, and (IT has no value if there are no improvements. In reality, it's a combination of all of the above. What combination is important in a given organization depends on who is beholding that value. One can start with a standard set of these metrics, but ultimately, only metrics that are worthwhile to the stakeholders should be employed. Triangulate value from different value lens in building a more comprehensive IT value proposition. There are tangible (cost savings, efficiency, etc.) and intangible (brand equity, sales enablement, etc.) components of value. Each IT organization has a set of capabilities that enable it to achieve successful outcomes, whether financial, brand, or double bottom line. So it needs to create the alternative IT value index- comprising of value lenses such as strategic imperative, operational excellence, and business agility.

Variety: Digital IT is dynamic, with a variety of teams to run the variety of IT portfolio. IT has to adapt to changes via managing a healthy portfolio via continuous consolidation, simplification, integration, modernization, cloudification, innovation, and optimization. Otherwise, the spread of applications can quickly get out of control. Often applications that once added significant value to the business remain in the portfolio, being supported and licenses being renewed, when they have been superseded by a 'better' alternative. Unused or under -utilized applications that consume a disproportionate amount of resource when compared to their value, need to be addressed.  Once you start treating projects that way and measure success of business projects as a whole, rather than keeping technology ones separate with silo thinking, and ensure that all business units required for the success of the project have requirement clearly defined with engaged stakeholders and with senior business leaders on the steering committee, you will see success of all projects increase. It takes holistic thinking and planning. The variety of IT portfolio is to build a unique and varying set of business capabilities, to enforce agility, harness innovation, and improving IT maturity.

The bonus "V" is Visibility - at industrial age, IT is invisible when the light is on and everything is normal; however, digital IT is becoming more visible and transforming from a back-office cost center to a front office innovation engine. And digital IT has visibility to both influence corporate strategy and culture and touch customer experience and employee engagement. Compared to traditional service- driven IT, a value driven and capability-based digital IT has clear VISION, laser focus on business goals, and multifaceted VALUE delivery, running a VARIETY of IT portfolio to build a unique set of business capabilities, and improve IT maturity from efficiency to effectiveness to agility; from functioning to firmness to delight.

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The Talent Management Brief of the “Future of CIO” Oct. 2015

People are always the most invaluable asset of organizations in the past, today and tomorrow.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1 million page views with about #2275th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates.

People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses. “Hiring the right person to the right position at the right time,” is the mantra of many forward-thinking organizations. The question is how would you define the right people? How do you define wrong, average, mediocre, good, great or extraordinary person? Or put simply, for what should they be right?

The Hot Debates of the“Future of CIO” Blog Oct. 2015

• How to Embed Leadership Development in Talent Management? Leadership development is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses today because leadership is about change. Leadership is both nature and nurtured, some can be trained, some can not. Leadership is also about values and beliefs, future and direction; discovery and dedication, how can you embed leadership development in cultivating high potential talent to achieve career success and growing a business from built to last and good to great as well?

• How do you take long term view for workforce performance? Performance Management is a significant management discipline in the business system. It’s the management practice that does not have hard coded programming like other business systems but directly drives corporate mindset, attitude, and behavior. How to drive workforce performance? Is it a one-time thing or continuous effort, how to reward strong performance consistently? Do you only measure performance quantitatively, or how to measure it qualitatively, in order to improve corporate culture and building a high-performing and high-mature organization?

• Can your Culture Help People Become Who They Are? There are many different perspectives of culture presented along with diverse ways and means of dealing with it. At high-mature digital organizations, culture management, talent management and performance management have been integrated into a holistic people management approach. What's your culture readiness, how shall you assess culture? Is one of the goals behind building a great culture about whether your culture can help people become who they are, to create synergy and accomplish the business purpose?  

• Can HR Navigate Digital Disruption via Deploying Talent Management Analytics: Disruption is often defined as 'an event that results in a displacement or discontinuity,' 'disturbance or problems that interrupt an event, activity, or process,' and you easily see that events, activities, or processes have impact on other events, activities, or processes. It is a constant condition of change. Nothing stays the same. The rest is a matter of degree, not a question of whether it's changed or not. Does change beget change? Can HR lead organizational changes by navigating the digital disruptions and deploying talent management analytics?

• What is Attitude? We all have been using this word ATTITUDE so frequently that we take it granted that we can define attitude perfectly, but when we have to put in writing, it appears to be quite difficult. The simplest definition of 'Attitude' would be one's "Settled Mode of Thinking": Attitude manifests itself through one's behavior. It can be changed for sure only if one is willing to accept and give 100 percent to changing oneself. It's a process one will have to go through and takes time. All this is at a time when it is difficult to understand between right and wrong, and thereafter from the choices one makes. Basic nature too plays a role. Perhaps we can add belief about oneself into the mix. How we feel inwardly about ourselves contributes to the overall way we handle our personal interactions with others. Our subconscious judgments about who we are in the sense of a personality and mindset.

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