The “Upward” Digital CIOs: Can you Move Up from “Working in IT” to “Working on IT”?

An upward digital CIO has to focus on guiding the company through the digital transformation by working cross-functionally.

The traditional role of CIOs is to manage information, IT systems, and cost, often within the IT as the support function. Thus, IT is perceived as a cost center to “keep the lights on” only. Many of today’s C-suites are unaware of what is technologically possible now or in the future, and how to leverage IT to unleash the full potential of the digital organization. Hence, to improve IT leadership effectiveness and maturity, today’s digital CIOs should move “upward,” from working within IT, only focus on transactional business activities and improve the bottom line efficiency, to working on IT, expand its impact across the business boundary and lead the digital transformation of the company proactively.

The CIO’s role should shift from a tactical IT manager to an outlier digital leader: Traditional IT managers often get stuck in the “comfort zone,” to run IT as a silo function to keep the lights on. Outlier CIOs need to know how to play a bridge between what the business understands and what technology understands. They work on the IT, move across functions seamlessly, rather than just within IT. They would then make sure the two worlds meet to ensure an optimal performing business. Outlier CIOs are the one who can step out of a conventional IT thinking box, or linear patterns. Therefore, they could see things further or deeper. Outlier CIOs have the growth mind, interdisciplinary knowledge, unique insight, creativity, and their imagination are not constrained by the technical knowledge. They can convey a clear technological vision, and lead change confidently and effortlessly. Being outlier CIOs doesn’t mean they couldn't be the handy tactical manager when needed. It means that they are both strategic and creative thinker who dare to ask a deep “WHY” - to diagnose the root cause of problems but also ask the optimistic “Why NOT?" -The refusal to be bound by constraints and limitations and a pursuit of possibilities and discover the growth opportunities for the business. Because digital transformation means you have to make radical changes, that can’t be done by the existing mere management model, you have to adopt a fresh thinking and run IT from outside-in perspectives.

Working on IT also means that IT should shine in both roles as the business enabler and driver: Due to the increasing pace of changes and exponential growth of information, the biggest IT challenge is the pace at which the IT executive's responsibility for business operations, efficiency, effectiveness, and continuity is outpacing his or her authority to make those areas a success. The further concern is whether doing business-IT alignment is mature enough for IT to become a business’s strategic partner. What should be focused on is the integration of IT into the business decisions and processes. Information Management is no longer just IT’s business, but the business of the entire company. The CIO needs to understand the needs of the different business units, and take those needs and translate them into an IT investment to support that vision. An opportunity for the CIO to add a lot of value in the C-Suite is helping C-Level leaders understand the possibilities of how new technologies can enhance the creation or improvement of products and services while balancing the technical and business risks, the investment needed, timing, etc. IT needs to be the spinal cord for the organization, integrating various departments, to simplify and optimize processes across functional boundaries, and often across the entire enterprise.

IT leaders need to work across multiple functional boxes for connecting dots to spur innovation: Simply working within IT is not sufficient to transform IT leader from Chief Information Officer to Chief Innovation Officer. There’s a lot of opportunities to clarify the role of IT in innovation. CIOs can perhaps work within IT to innovate its function, but more importantly, they have to leverage IT to build the enterprise innovation capabilities. Companies are recognizing that IT is roughly coupled to the business strategy as an innovation engine, and it is a very good sign about how the companies will deliver value. The CIO is in a unique position to align process, technology, and people, from generating ideas on applying technology and data assets to drive business value, CIOs need to talk about commercial outcomes, not technical throughput. They should have team leaders partner with and even embed themselves in business functions so they can ensure IT folks understanding the commercial end point of their work. So, the business oversight is needed in managing the full innovation lifecycle.

An upward digital CIO has to focus on guiding the company through the digital transformation by working cross-functionally.  At the very least, IT must be a business partner within the organization. The organization has built highly interactive teams with representatives from each line of business focused on finding an innovative new way to improve the business performance. IT continues to reach a higher level of digital maturity, from alignment to integration, engagement, and optimization.

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 4/28/ 2017

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking, brainstorming, and innovating.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.8 million page views with 3700+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight about digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

  The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 4/28/2017

• CIOs as: “Chief Insight Officer”: What are the Digital Aims of the Organizations: Digital makes a profound impact from the specific function to the business as a whole. Transformation is a leapfrogging change when the final result is not fully defined at the beginning of it and with the expectation to reach the next level of progression. IT plays a crucial role in digital transformation because it is in the unique position to oversee the underlying business processes and functions. Hence, in order to clarify the digital aim and lead change more effectively, CIOs as “Chief Insight Officer” should continue asking: “Why do you need to change?” “What is your digital aims of the organization?” “Who are your change agents?” “Have you reached the inflection point of change yet?” And“How to get the destination with faster speed?”

• The New Book “Digital IT - 100 Q&As” Quote Collection III: The purpose of “Digital IT-100 Q&As “ is to summarize 100+ classic and emergent digital debates about digital IT leadership and management, brainstorm how to run a holistic digital business from multidimensional lens, share digital holism and strategic insight, keep IT digital fit, deal with both IT management dilemmas and innovation paradoxes effortlessly, guide today’s digital leaders and professionals to learn the valuable lessons across industrial and geographical boundaries, develop the best and next digital practices to tailor their needs, set the right priorities to achieve high performance, and build a solid digital brand, with the goal to accelerate digital transformation.

• Digital Boards with Vision Inquiries The contemporary corporate board as the top leadership team plays a directorial role in envisioning the future of the business and overseeing corporate strategy. Because leadership is about future and change. Vision is not the “Nice to have,” but “Must have” quality for top leaders in order to direct the organization toward the uncharted water or blurred territories in today’s “VUCA” digital dynamic. Vision is basically a qualitative statement defining the "perception" of the organization, and the effective board provides the guidance about what core to preserve and what future to stimulate progress toward. Here are a few vision inquiries of digital boards.

• What are the Biggest Barriers to Digital Effectiveness in Organizations? Digital transformation is the rough road with all bumps and curves on the way. There are a number of challenges common in transformation programs, such as having a clear vision, getting the right strategies, execution, a forward-thinking leader to convey the transformational vision, and a broader view of customer demand, etc. More specifically, what are the biggest barriers to digital effectiveness and how to overcome them for improving the digital business performance and maturity.

• The Multifaceted Creativity Creativity is the most needed skill in the 21st century, because digital is the era of innovation. Creativity is both an innate capability and a nurtured skill. Developing creativity requires both internal motivation and self-awareness. Being original and being yourself is the first step, breaking down the convention thinking box, and practicing out-of-the-box thinking are the mental activities to stimulate creativity as well. Here is the further understanding about the multifaceted creativity. ?

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

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The New Book “Digital IT - 100 Q&As” Quote Collection V

A high-mature digital organization is shifting from “pushing” stuff to the digital channel into “pulling” resources up for problem-solving.

The purpose of “Digital IT-100 Q&As “ is to summarize 100+ classic and emergent digital debates about digital IT leadership and management, brainstorm how to run a holistic digital business from multidimensional lens, share digital holism and strategic insight, keep IT digital fit, deal with both IT management dilemmas and innovation paradoxes effortlessly, guide today’s digital leaders and professionals to learn the valuable lessons across industrial and geographical boundaries, develop the best and next digital practices to tailor their needs, set the right priorities to achieve high performance, and build a solid digital brand, with the goal to accelerate digital transformation.

101 The “Art of Possible” can only be achieved through visionary IT leadership, as well as the art and science of modern IT management.

102 Communication, collaboration, and creativity are the keys to run IT as a better business partner.

103 The best way to promote IT is to communicate proactively with critical thinking and creative thinking.

104 High-mature IT has a high trustful business-IT relationship, it is highly responsive to changes and proactively manages innovation.

105 The best or next digital talent management practices should encourage innovation, inspire learning, take a structural approach to make the digital transformation.

106 Hire mindset and capabilities, train for specific skills.

107 Don’t be afraid to look above, below, and outside of the talent pools that you see, to explore the alternative digital talent pipeline.

108 The nonlinear capabilities and unique competency-based on the cohesive set of capabilities will give the digital professionals the advantage to compete for the future.

109 Digital business becomes always on, borderless, more hyper-connected, and interdependent than ever.

110 Figuring out what employees are not saying might be the start point to greater retention and a more engaged workforce.

111 The business leaders must work with the right mindset to create an inclusive organization with every dip in the business life cycle.

112 Workforce performance improvement must take the long-term view and require a core DNA transplant.

113 The effective vehicles for retaining the top talent are effective leadership, agile mindset, the culture of learning, robust processes, and cool technology tools.

114 A high-mature digital organization is shifting from “pushing” stuff to the digital channel into “pulling” resources up for problem-solving.

115 You should always leverage performance and potential, look at the overall success of the company for the long run.

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Digital Organizational Design vs. Business Changeability

The digital transformation won’t happen overnight, and organizational structure optimization takes planning, experimenting and scaling up.

The very characteristics of digital are the increasing speed of change and hyper-connectivity. Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business both horizontally and vertically. Forward-looking organizations leverage the latest technologies to fine-tune the organizational structure and improve business changeability. Organization design is the vehicle through which the business strategy is executed and defines the business environment in which the digital organization can reduce the organizational culture friction, improve the business changeability, maturity, and unleash its full potential.

The digital workplace is fluid, live, informative, creative and productive, flatter structures will help to speed up organizational response to changes: The goal for optimized organizational design is to improve cross-functional communication, mass collaboration, and bold innovation through less hierarchy, cross-functional collaboration. So large groups of people can interact and be able to divide and conquer a complex challenge to accelerate the solution in forming collective capabilities. The digital workplace needs to be designed to help employees at all levels within an organization, from top leaders to front-line employees, understand and develop their creative capacity to solve problems and exploit opportunities in new and innovative ways. Everyone has a valuable contribution to make at whatever level in the formal hierarchy they happen to be placed, and adopt the robust processes designed for improving responsiveness and harnessing communication, and increasing business agility via reducing process redundancy or resource wastes. Organizational structure and its impact on efficiency could play either a positive or negative impact. The bottom line is how well the organizational structure is being influenced by factors such as communication effectiveness, information fluidity, customer centricity, etc, to ensure the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces. Limited hierarchy works best in a creative environment where the free flow of ideas and their prompt implementation is a key element of business success.

Digital organizations have to adapt to the continuous changes via self-adaptability, self-renewal, and maintain the digital balance: The self-adaptive system is a system able to reconfigure its own structure and change its own behavior during the execution of its adaptation to environmental changes. Self-adaptation is faster if made with the full involvement of people in organizational change, without just making "big plans" or "blueprint,” but starting from relations between people. It is possible to see what enables a self-adaptive organism is an information-driven process and the fine-tuned capability to sustain it. It is important to turn organizational “theories” into tangible management processes that use “relations between people” as the loom on which to create management structures and processes that support self-adaptive problem-solving and build “recombinant” business capabilities. The challenge for organizations is to manage its portfolio of relevant cross-border strategic synergies and organizational interdependence with the appropriate mix of enabling organizational elements, engaging digital talent and balancing effectiveness and efficiency. Or to put simply, maintain the right level of digital balance. In fact, striking the right digital balance is a never-ending business lifecycle.  

Digital organizations need to continually fine-tune a successful structure for improving people-centricity: Digital blurs the functional, organizational, and even industrial borders nowadays. Traditional hierarchical lines will phase out and a collective of business partners will emerge working collaboratively to set strategy and achieve organizational goals. The challenge for any business is to find a successful structure that helps to empower people, enforce iterative communication, and harness cross-functional collaboration to deliver better business results and unleash the full digital potential of the organization. New generations of digital technologies such as a social platform or other collaboration tools are enabling not only the structured processes of the past but also the unstructured processes of the hyperconnected digital enterprise. Because digital technology is highly powerful but nimble and lightweight, as the “superglue” to weave all necessary business elements into the building blocks of business capability and highlight the characteristics of “Changeable Organization.”

Organizations need to have an in-depth understanding of the gains and pains of organizational design and development. Very few organizations understand all the gains they will enjoy such initiatives in their organizations. Gains in profitability, changeability, learning agility, business growth, and innovation enforcement. The digital transformation won’t happen overnight, and organizational structure optimization takes planning, experimenting and scaling up. But it is the journey worthy of the effort to improve the overall business’s performance and maturity.

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The Monthly “Leadership Master” Book Tuning: Creative Leadership Apr. 2017

Digital is the age of innovation.

Leadership is complex yet simple: Complex in that there are so many traits and characteristics that are considered when evaluating a leader. Simplicity in that the substantial of leadership never changes, it’s all about future and change; direction and dedication; influence and innovation. The purpose of the book: Leadership Master - Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity is to convey the vision of digital leadership, share the insight about leadership maturity, and summarize five emergent digital leadership trends Here is the monthly tuning of digital leadership.

       Creative Leadership as the Digital Trend

“Leadership Master” Book Introduction Chapter 2: Creative Leadership: Digital is the age of innovation. And creativity is the #1 wanted skill in the 21st century. Therefore, creative leadership has also emerged as one of the most important digital leadership trends to improve leadership effectiveness and accelerate business & society advancement. But more specifically, what is creative leadership all about, and who are creative leaders.

Blogging, Thinking, Brainstorming, Envisioning, and Innovating? It’s the time to celebrate the 3700th blog posting. The intention of creating the “Future of CIO” blog is to sow the innovation seed, share knowledge & insight, make continuous communication, and create a unique digital landscape for accelerating business transformation and leadership maturity.

Innovative Leadership: Three Elements in Innovative Leadership Creativity is the most wanted skill for digital professionals today, and innovative leadership is also in strong demand to bridge cognitive gaps, amplify collective creativity, inspire the culture of learning, and accelerate digital transformation. What are the top traits in innovative leadership, and how to cultivate more world-class innovative leaders?

Is Digital Leadership Constructively Disruptive? Many think digital is the age of innovation. Digital is a disruption with rapidly increasing speed and hyperconnectivity to break down silos and rigid hierarchy. Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way business is conducted so that simply adopting a new digital technology may be insufficient. You have to transform the company's underlying processes, cultures, and organization as a whole with adjusted digital speed. Otherwise, companies may begin a decline from its previous high performance. Digital border is not made of sharp lines, but cursive dots need to be widely connected to spark the next level of innovation. And in order to lead more effectively, does a digital leader have to be constructively disruptive.

Practicing Digital Leadership with Continuous Deliveries: The substance of leadership will never change, it is the vision to make the positive influence, to lead forward, not backward. We all lead at the different level as digital is the age of people. And the emerging digital trend is the constructive disruptor for broadening leadership touch point and deepening leadership cognizance. Digital leadership is no longer just a status quo with command & control style, but a journey of continuous learning and influencing via continuous delivery.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.8 million page views with about 3700+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.

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The New Book “Digital IT - 100 Q&As” Quote Collection IV

Keep in mind, measurement is not just numbers, but stories.

The purpose of “Digital IT-100 Q&As “ is to summarize 100+ classic and emergent digital debates about digital IT leadership and management, brainstorm how to run a holistic digital business from multidimensional lens, share digital holism and strategic insight, keep IT digital fit, deal with both IT management dilemmas and innovation paradoxes effortlessly, guide today’s digital leaders and professionals to learn the valuable lessons across industrial and geographical boundaries, develop the best and next digital practices to tailor their needs, set the right priorities to achieve high performance, and build a solid digital brand, with the goal to accelerate digital transformation.

79 Keep in mind, measurement is not just numbers, but stories.

80 IT assessment is a great way to help identify what is right and wrong in your IT environment.

81 IT metrics need to evolve to something that matters to the business audience, at the same time that “business sentiment” needs to get put into something more tangible.

82 The successful enterprises have IT systems that are not cumbersome but enabling.

83 IT leaders must keep in mind which KPIs best measure IT ability to deliver business value.

84 IT metrics have to evolve from being a cost center to becoming a revenue generator.

85 Each organization has specific, measurable goals and objectives they have to hit through investing in IT.

86 First, measure the right things, and then measure them right.

87 IT is a key enabler to build almost all differentiated digital capabilities nowadays.

88 The software can be measured in the “hard” way accordingly.

89 People do what you inspect, not what you expect.

90 Enterprise Performance Management is an overarching umbrella for the variety of management discipline.

91 Metaphorically, if the enterprise is a vehicle, Enterprise Performance Management is like the gas pedal with speed scoreboard.

93 Enterprise Performance Management is an overarching umbrella for the variety of management disciplines.

94 The key challenge of IT branding is to demonstrate what your provide can help customers achieve some critical purpose of theirs.

95 To reimagine IT, IT branding needs to be part of IT transformation effort.

96 Today IT is so integral to the business that it is the part of the business.

97 IT brand identity should be supported by the message you create and how to distribute to your customers.

98 The data shows a disturbing gap between IT perception of itself as reasonably innovative and effective, and non IT’s lukewarm view.

99 Business and IT need to focus more on being objective in approaches and allow for the ever-changing markets and the environment.

100 In order to demonstrate IT value, organizations need to first know wherein lies the IT value.

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The Digital Board’s Inquiries about IT

Technology is often the disruptive force of the digital transformation. Information could be one of the most time intensive pieces to innovation puzzles.

Digital disruptions are inevitable, and digital transformation is unstoppable. It seems that the industry sector is already the outdated concept. All forward-looking organizations claim they are in the information management business. The Board's role, in large part, is to make good decisions that enhance the value creation for the organizations. BoDs are perhaps not interested in data itself, but surely they would be interested in the V factor -VALUE it can bring to the table. Hence, to gain digital insight and lead business transformation effortlessly, BoDs need to become more information savvy and IT-friendly. They should concern about the potential opportunities and risks the digital technologies could bring to the company. Here are a few digital board’s inquiries about IT.

Are information, functional or business silos likely to be hurdles as we strive to become more digital? Information grows exponentially, organizations shouldn’t just respond to them in a reactive way. The aim of modern Information Management has often been described as getting the right information to the right person, in the right format and medium, at the right time, in order to make right decisions. Information abundance can bring new ideas; ideas have always driven business success. Technology is an enabler of any great ideas. Hence, BoDs as key strategic decision makers in the organization need to understand the information potential and become the IT advocate for accelerating changes. The volume of information collected is used for market evaluation, customer experience management, and strategy management coupled with the real world requirements that support and facilitate the overall operational management. Functional silos often hurdle information flow and stifle innovation. Information is also something that can hinder the achievement of strategic objectives. Unstructured data based decision-making by senior managers has been poor because of the intrinsic value of information reduces decision effectiveness. The value of information technology is a crucial success factor for the digital organization. However, considering many businesses which make a huge investment on sophisticated technology tools that are greatly wasted, because the appropriate processes to leverage those tools are not implemented or adopted. Hence, the board’s oversight of information management can make a significant impact on both business’s bottom line survival and top line growth.

Do we have an incentive structure that promotes collaboration to streamline information flow and achieve its business value? Information potential directly impacts the business's potential of the organization. Information does not live alone but permeates to everywhere in the businesses. Thus, the value of information is not isolated. To gain the business insight, the information management is the business competency of aligning the use of information through the management, assurance (accessibility, reliability, etc.) and exploitation (Collaboratively enabled and fully support the business objectives). The board’s oversight of information management can highlight the importance of information flow, set the tone for building the culture of information-based decision-making, also empower IT leaders to co-create business strategy. IT should first work to identify how information is associated with the valued tangibles of businesses; products and resources; like information flows in processes, and leverage the latest digital technologies to optimize business processes and structures that promote collaboration and streamline information flow to unleash the full digital potential.

Are our information processes and systems compatible with each other and the technologies enabling digital? Information and technology catalyze today's digital businesses. Information brings about business ideas; business ideas generate lots of information. Information Systems are the backbone of the digital business. IT also shifts from "T" driven, a monolithic hardware-based support center to "I" oriented, an information oriented, mosaic nimble digital engine. Today’s digital technologies are more powerful, also lightweight. Information is growing exponentially, and it is humanly impossible to explore all of the "art" out there around a subject or technology. And IT plays a significant role to add those critical pieces properly. IT organizations need to switch from “keep the lights on” survival mode to “doing more with innovation” thriving mode. The BoD’s IT oversight would help to shrink the gaps between business and IT, ensure IT systems compatibility and technology enabling digital, and catalyze IT to reach the high level of maturity from a back office support center to the digital engine of the company.

Technology is often the disruptive force of the digital transformation. Information could be one of the most time intensive pieces to innovation puzzles. The value of information is qualitative, measurable, and defined uniquely to an organization. If done well, information can unleash the business’s full potential and maximize its multidimensional values. Hence, the digital boards today should put IT management oversight on the top agenda. Great boards are heterogeneous, inquisitive, intelligent, effective, innovative and influential, they have to focus on both performance and compliance. All of these require thinking, learning, asking questions, to sharpen “directorship” for getting digital ready.

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The New Book “Digital IT - 100 Q&As” Quote Collection III

Silos build the wall in people’s minds and tie the knots in their hearts.

The purpose of “Digital IT-100 Q&As “ is to summarize 100+ classic and emergent digital debates about digital IT leadership and management, brainstorm how to run a holistic digital business from multidimensional lens, share digital holism and strategic insight, keep IT digital fit, deal with both IT management dilemmas and innovation paradoxes effortlessly, guide today’s digital leaders and professionals to learn the valuable lessons across industrial and geographical boundaries, develop the best and next digital practices to tailor their needs, set the right priorities to achieve high performance, and build a solid digital brand, with the goal to accelerate digital transformation.

56 Organizations today are inundated with the sea of information. Prioritization starts with a right mindset.

57 The requirement management is a good starting point and one of the significant step in managing IT initiatives effectively to achieve its business value.

58 By setting the right priority and focusing resources and budget on the most critical areas, IT has the opportunity to not only be responsive but ultimately be the strategic business partner.

59 Reimagine IT via doing more with innovation, and rebrand IT via building the solid IT value proposition.

60 The challenge for the IT leader is to set the right priority, manage the limited budget and resource, to “Do more with innovation.”

61 A value driven IT needs to understand stakeholder’s expectation and propose a service/solution portfolio that corresponds to both demand and cost drivers with a focus on business priority.

62 Setting priorities to leverage limited resources and talent to maximizing business value is an important step in climbing the organizational maturity.

63 The priority has to be set for lifting IT and overall business maturity from efficiency to effectiveness to agility.

64 It is time to “align IT to the customer” rather than “align IT with the business.”

65 Building a digital-ready IT roadmap is a proactive approach to well prepare for the digital transformation.

66 A digital-ready CIO is a visionary and transformational leader, not just a transactional manager, for the long term.

67 Bridging the gap between IT and the business are really issues of all about change.

68 The “artificial gap” between business and IT can be bridged via effective leadership, profound understanding, continuous learning, and improvement.

69 Silos build the wall in people’s minds and tie the knots in their hearts.

70 More transparency in the IT value proposition to the business plus more engagement partnership with the business is needed for running a high mature digital organization.

71 IT and business must be partners, must be able to speak the same language, finish each other’s sentences, to solve the well-defined business problems.

72 The “disconnect” is the single largest problem in the business-IT world today.

73 IT is part of business, and business is becoming IT.

74 Metaphorically, IT is the nervous system of the enterprise body.

75 Organizational success comes when IT and business act from “IT vs. business” to IT is business” - a true partnership.

76 People tend to have a high expectation of digital flow, very little patience with technology issues.

77 The true IT-business partnership is not only possible but the “most have” goal for building the high-performance organization.

78 Trust means how to strike the right balance upon what IT can give up control, and what IT needs to control.

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The Multifaceted Creativity

Creativity converges with the concept of innovation that is the management discipline to transform innate ideas and achieve its business value.

Creativity is the most needed skill in the 21st century because digital is the era of innovation. Creativity is both innate and a skill. Developing creativity requires both internal motivation and self-awareness. Being original and being yourself is the first step, breaking down the convention thinking box, and practicing out-of-the-box thinking is one of the mental activities to stimulate creativity as well. Here is the further understanding about the multifaceted creativity.

Creativity is all about change: To be creative, you must do something different. To be creative, to re-frame, first, you need to embrace the unknown (think outside the box). Second, you need to challenge the known (probe the paradoxes). Many people always live with conventional wisdom - the box they are familiar with. But being creative requires you to break down the outdated rules or concept, or the little box which restricts your thinking. Fundamentally, the "box" is the set of "rules" you are abiding by at any moment in time. There are likely multiple "boxes" that you try to stay within. Working within multiple sets would create an "intersection of sets." The complexity of life comes from the myriad of intersecting boxes you try to live within. Fundamentally creativity is about changes, to pursue progress or discover a better way to do things. Thinking outside the box is all about "rule breaking"; the more "unruly" you are, the more creative you become. After breaking the outdated rules, you are "outside the box." Or more precisely, creating a new box that could be used for thinking inside the new box, but out of the old box (for one or more class of problems). You step out of your logical thinking minds to create something new; or more often, you blend different types of thinking processes to see things differently, to stimulate creativity, and reach the “Aha” moment, like the switch is on to turn on the light bulb.

Creativity is a process: Creativity is a thinking activity. Most creativity theories, see creativity as a process through which the individual finds a relationship with the environment. The reason creativity is serendipitous because it is the nonlinear multidimensional thought processes, and it evolves conscious, subconscious, and even superconscious brain activities. There are interdisciplinary approaches to articulate creativity: For psychoanalysis, this is a neurotic function; for humanistic psychology, it is a sign of health. Creativity needs a balance of divergent and convergent thinking, the latter isn't valued enough. Creativity encounter with, and merging of divergent information. Without divergent thinking, perhaps your box is just not big enough to connect all important dots. With this wide divergence, the only seemingly obvious conclusion is that the substance and source of creativity still elude discovery. Creativity is a talent and learning activities which help to shape up creative ideas; creative process fusion. Creativity process could be sophisticated, but creativity is never for making things complicated, the opposite is actually true, creativity is to advance, but also simplify things. When pioneering and solving problems, initial solutions are often more complex than required, and then adoption and progress come with simplification and intuitiveness. Progress is in simplification, which often follows complexity. We are able to see creativity's effects, feel its inspiration, and use it in a myriad of ways.

Being creative is about how to solve a problem in an intelligent manner: So, every person has the ability to be creative, just tearing down the mental barriers they have and tapping in their inherent abilities. There are times when we feel driven by forces that we don't understand, creativity is just like the fountain flow from the within. The ideas come and go and, above all, we must instead leave them free, do not be afraid to say what we think or make a fool, do not let that stop, be fooled if we must. But ultimately, creativity needs a problem to solve, and creative people need a purpose. To nurture creativity, it is important to get out of the "fear" that blocks our own genius, learn how to liberate the imagination and come up with a new approach to the world. Therefore, it is important to create conditions so that the creative potential can manifest and being creative is about how to solve problems in a fresh way and an intelligent manner.

Digital is the age of innovation. Organizations starve for creativity. Creativity converges with the concept of innovation that is the management discipline to transform innate ideas and achieve its business value. Creativity has many forms and manifestations. By manifesting creativity from an individual endeavor to a team activity and a collective effort, the horizon of creativity is expanded and the collective creative potential can be unleashed to solve complex problems or overcome the common human challenges.

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