The Monthly “Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As” Book Tuning: The Digital Board’s Inquisitiveness Jan., 2018

The contemporary boards lead by questioning.

Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses toward the right direction and achieve expected business results. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must have the agility to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals. Here is the monthly “Digital Boardroom” summary about the digital board’s inquisitiveness.

  

The Digital Board’s Inquisitiveness

Exploring the Boardroom Fundamentals via Inquiries The contemporary corporate board as the top leadership and directorial role plays a significant role in advising and monitoring the organizational management, overseeing the business strategy, guiding businesses toward the right direction and achieving expected business results. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and velocity of the digital era, the directorship in any organization becomes more critical and challenging. However, many BoDs are undereducated about their role and responsibility while the business change is accelerated across global scope and knowledge life cycle is shortened. How to explore the boardroom fundamental via the set of inquiries in order to improve its effectiveness and directorship maturity?

How to Apply Critical Thinking to Ask Good Questions Critical Thinking is the rational analysis (often with creativity embedded in it) and evaluation of the issues in order to make a fair judgment. There is only a very small fraction of true Critical Thinkers who can always dig through the root causes of problems. How to debunk the myth of Critical Thinking, and how to apply Critical Thinking to ask good questions for either problems-solving or making sound judgment and effective decisions timely?

Five Questions to Evaluate The QUALITY of Thinking? Thinking, in general, is more about discovery for either understanding things or creating new things. The thought does not precede the thinker; the thinker precedes the thought and the consciousness of the thinker precedes the fact of his/her being a thinker. Digital professionals today need to learn how to explore and evaluate the variety of thinking in their mind. Here are five questions to assess the QUALITY of your thinking.

Leading Change by Questioning Change is a vital element for the contemporary organization to stay competitive. But most of Change Initiatives fail to achieve expectation. What are the principles and practices, techniques and mechanism shall you use to manage change. Change by questioning, can you frame the right questions and answer them right as well.

The Digital Board’s Leadership, Composition, and Succession Inquiries The contemporary corporate board as the directorial role plays a significant role in overseeing strategy, advising corporate executives and monitoring business performance. The BoDs should also walk the talk to digitize the boardroom with strategic imperative because often the digital tone is set at the top and echo spirally to all levels of the organization.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with 4300+ 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 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 to human progression.

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The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Introduction

The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter 1 Introduction: The Digital Board's Composition Inquiries

The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter II Introduction: The Digital Board's Digital Inquiries

The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As": Chapter III Introduction: The Digital Board's Strategy Inquiries

The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter IV Introduction: The Digital Board's IT Inquiries

The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter V Introduction: The Digital Board's Leadership Inquiries

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Three Highlight on the Roadmap of Digitalization

A clearly defined roadmap with a few notable highlights help us stay focus, be both strategic and tactical, understand how to overcome roadblocks, close blind spots, and make the digital journey both meaningful and delightful.

The digital world is so information-intensive, technology needs will only expand, and most likely expand hyperbolically. Digital transformation is an evolutionary journey. A comprehensive digitalization roadmap with a clear vision and a few impressive highlights helps the business navigate through uncharted water and blurred digital territories steadfastly. Digital leaders are visible, proactive, and innovative, they are able to communicate the roadmap and make sure it is flexible and evolves with the company’s long-term perspective. Here are three highlights in the roadmap of digitalization.

Anchor change as a new opportunity: Digitalization is a radical change. The successful businesses are the ones that can manage change fluently in a structural way. Now with the uncertainty around with the volatile market situations, extreme competition, advanced technology, and globalization, a clearly defined digitalization roadmap is important to steer the business in the right direction, anchor change as a new opportunity, and drive digitalization with a step-wise approach. Understanding the essence of changes and the very goal of digitalization is critical to clarify vision and stay focus. Because sometimes change is the problem, sometimes lack of change is the problem, often the lack of clarity to discern the difference is the problem. The focus of change and digitalization should include the actions designed to drive business growth and sustain performance improvement. Digital leaders need to practice critical thinking and ask deep questions. A good place to start asking questions is those that elicit where/what you are today (current state) and what does "the end of the road" also known as a target state. A digital roadmap with best practices is in place to serve as a framework upon which the business solution can be implemented over time, and change management is built into ongoing business capabilities.

Define more than one way of achieving the goal: The digital world is dynamic, nonlinear, uncertain, and volatile. One of the biggest challenges in this complex digital world is the fact that we need different perspectives, different knowledge and different ways to solve a problem, and take alternative paths for experimenting, adventuring and exploring the digital new normal, and achieve the well-set business goals. For each approach, estimate costs, resources required, timelines, risks involved, and trends. With today’s “VUCA” new normal, to survive the fierce competitions and thrive with the long-term business advantage involve more planning, adjustment, and speed. Because we are not perfect and even our plans will need modification due to unforeseen obstacles. Sometimes there is no "one" answer: there are some or many. Running an innovative business means that an organization can think “out of the box,” figure out alternative solutions from the outside-in lens, build new things based on the business needs, and come up with optimal solutions to either existing or emergent problems.

Satisfy both short-term gratification and long-term business result: Good leaders are the ones who don’t lose the sight of long-term or 'Big Picture,’ but they also spend ' necessary time, efforts, and resources on achieving the short-term goals. They are able to look beyond immediate problem resolution and become an integral part of strategic management to achieve the business’s long-term vision. Be cautious: The organizational management short-sightedness and running the business in a transactional mode only can cause digital ineffectiveness in the long run. To lead change effectively, break the digital journey down into several stages on the roadmap. Each stage is being a point where in business gets the benefit of the activities so far or taken up the activities so far to form a stepping stone for the big step. By focusing forward, we are able to more accurately judge the coming curves and obstacles on the path, and get into action in creative, positive, productive ways that educate, support and celebrate every emotional step of the change curve and take a collective digital transformation journey smoothly.

Looking forward is not always so easy, often it’s cloudy. The forward-looking view of the organization is to determine what the future needs to look like, what the digitalization must look like. When we jump into the digital future of “VUCA” new normal –Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, a clearly defined roadmap with a few notable highlights help us stay focus, be both strategic and tactical, understand how to overcome roadblocks, close blind spots, deal with change inertia, and make the digital journey both meaningful and delightful.

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The Monthly “Digital Master” Book Tuning: The “Hard” and “Soft” Elements to Run Digital Organization Jan., 2018

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. The "hard" and "soft," are not opposite, but the complementary ingredients in running a dynamic digital organization?

 The “Hard” and “Soft” Elements to Run Digital Organization

Tuning Soft Elements in Innovation Management Creativity is, by nature, unique to each person, it is an innate process to create novel ideas. Innovation is to manage novel ideas and generating business value from them. There is no template which you can apply and suddenly have a creative workforce. It has to be done slowly, patiently, and individually. That is why so many companies won't do it. There are both hard elements such as framework, processes or tools as well as soft elements woven together to orchestrate an innovation symphony. Here are three soft elements in innovation management.

Accelerate Digital Transformation via both Hard and Soft Way: Organizations large or small are on their digital transformation journey, although there is no one size fits all solutions to ensure the change success, it is important to take a systematic approach, strike the right balance of “push” and “pull” from multiple directions, and accelerate digital transformation via both hard and soft way.

Making a Leap in Digital Transformation via Mixing Hard & Soft Elements Right? Often, IT is perceived by the business as a big cold, isolated function with monolithic hard boxes and tangled wires, surrounding with IT staff stereotyped as geeks who speak the different language and lack of business acumen to ask insight questions. With emergent digital technologies and increasing paces of changes, forward-looking IT organizations are reaching the inflection point for digital transformation and shift from “T-driven” monolithic type to “I” oriented mosaic style. To soften the"hard image," what are the “soft” IT management disciplines to drive digital transformation?

Three “Soft” IT Management Disciplines to Drive Digital Transformation Often, IT is perceived by the business as a big cold, isolated function with monolithic hard boxes and tangled wires, surrounding with IT staff stereotyped as geeks who speak the different language and lack of business acumen to ask insightful questions. With emergent digital technologies and increasing paces of changes, forward-looking IT organizations are reaching the inflection point for digital transformation and shift from “T-driven” monolithic type to “I” oriented mosaic style. To soften the"hard image," what are the “soft” IT management disciplines to drive digital transformation

Is Digital Leadership more “Harder” or “Softer”? The digital world today is much more complicated and that requires an ability to juggle multiple and competing demands and clear the vision under cloudy climate and uncertain circumstances. Businesses need to recognize the change and help leaders meet the challenge via business savvy and agility. Improvisation, fact-finding, analysis and synthesis, trial and error, all are marks of leadership. However, compared to industrial leadership, is digital leadership 'harder or softer'? How can you get the balance right - Leadership substance, leadership competency and leadership styles?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2+million page views with about #4300+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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 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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Five Elements (AISDE) in Digital Problem-Solving Framework

Building a comprehensive problem-solving framework is about leveraging a structured methodology that allows you to frame problems systematically and solve problems creatively. 

Running a business is fundamentally an iterative problem-solving continuum. Due to fast-paced change, the exponential growth of information and continuous digital disruptions, the problems facing business also turn to be over-complex and difficult to solve. You need to have deep insight, take a holistic approach to complex problem-solving and build a comprehensive framework for both defining the right problems and solving them effectively. Otherwise, the temporary fix will cause you to reconsider the problem statement soon after. Here, we introduce a comprehensive digital problem-solving framework with "AISDE" components.

Diagnose the problem Systematically: Look out of problems before look into the problems in order to make an objective assessment of the problem. The business management should determine why problems happened, how problems escalated, which areas of the organization were affected, and when the problems started. To framing the right problem, you need to step back, or get out of the box, and do not become overwhelmed with trivial details, in order to look at the problem from the different angle or understand the issues holistically via multi-disciplinary lenses. Often, the problem of problem-solving seems to be that a lot of the time the problem definition process is not implemented. Or there are several, even many processes suggested for defining problems. Assessing and defining the problems is usually more important than solving the problem, otherwise, trying to fix the wrong problems will cause more problems later on. Behind every problem is a relationship dynamic out of alignment, thus, understanding human dynamics, systems, and relationships do help to assess the problem systematically, actually understand the problem, and truly understanding a problem is the most critical step in solving it.

Identify qualified problem solvers: Identify the problem - what is exactly wrong, out of balance, unjust, etc., the exact description of the problem. When the problem is well-defined, it is also important to spot the right person (people) with the right mindset and skills to solve it. One of the most important management disciplines today is to put the right people with the right capabilities in the right position to solve the right problem timely. High IQ and EQ are both important for effective problem-solving. Problem-solving is a mindset with curiosity, self-inclusiveness, creativity, and progression, which directly impacts the intellectual sophistication of problem-solving capability. There is as much creative thinking, critical thinking, strategic thinking and system thinking that go into problem identification as well as solution discovery. People who can solve problems in a new way are innovators. Emotional intelligence is also critical for problem-solving because it is the ability to harness positive emotions and apply them to tasks like thinking and problems solving, dispassionately analyze the situation objectively in order to make the sound judgment. Be cautious of those "problem-creating" mindsets, such as silo thinking, polar thinking (we are right, they are wrong); non-critical thinking (reflexive, not reflective), stereotypical thinking (based on outdated perception), small thinking (locally right, globally wrong) or static thinking (we always do things this way), have difficult time to solve tough problems, and continue to argue “it’s impossible.” Therefore, identify qualified problem-solvers are imperative because misfit minds and skills will cause more problems.

Select Problem-Solving Tools, Methods, and Practices: The business or societal progress is made via a healthy cycle of problem framing and problem-solving continuum. Problems that arise in organizations are almost always the product of interactions of parts, never the action of a single part. Thus, Systems Thinking is an important problem-solving tool. Complex problems often do not have simple solutions, some may look simple, but there is a lot of collective effort need to put in. It is important to select a set of tools, develop the tailored methodologies and practices for problem-solving. For example, Systems thinking provides the tools and methodologies to define the problem under uncertainty because it helps you actually understand the problem, and understanding a problem is the most critical step in solving it. So, the goal is to take multidisciplinary approaches, select tailored tools, methods, and practices to pursue an optimal solution. The main emphasis is in doing better pre-work, such as defining the situation and the "success criteria," take consideration of the range of options, rather than the traditional "jump to solution" problem-solving method. Healthy process for problem-solving goes between flexibility and hard processes, with the ultimate goal for effective problem-solving.

Discover or design Creative Solutions: Out-of-the-box problem solving is about how to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective for either defining or solving existing or emergent problems. Being creative is about how to solve a problem in an intelligent manner. Creative minds have the ability to reframe the circumstances or conditions around a problem and solve it creatively. “Out-of-the-box” problem-solvers usually can think both creatively and critically, ask open questions such as “What If,” or “Why Not,” to stimulate deep brainstorming, embrace broad perspectives, and collect relevant information, in order to think about alternative solutions. Also, it is important to apply creativity in a recursive way to the creative process for both problem identification and problem-solving. Designing a creative solution is about how to establish the framework to apply creativity for problem-solving in an intelligent manner, to push the envelope, to go beyond what is expected, with the goal to deliver the excellent solution.

Evaluate outcomes: The evaluation of problem-solving is to ensure the real problems have been fixed and cause the least side effect as possible. It is important to keep track of the outcome of problem-solving: Has the problem been fixed permanently? Does the solution cause any side effect, or cause more serious issues later on? Who are the real problem-solvers? Find the factors involved in the final "incorrect" outcome. See if you can measure or weigh each factor's contribution to the result, or the description of the unit of measure. Build a hypothetical equation that describes your "incorrect" outcome. See how changing any of these gets better or worsens that outcome. Taking a systematic approach to measurement can avoid blind-spots in problem-solving management. The organization that didn't have a systematic approach to measurement and analysis at both the strategic level and operational level has a giant blind spot that is impairing their performance or problem-solving effectiveness. Having the appropriate performance indicators is very important. But acting on what those indicators are telling you is vital to sustaining and improving problem-solving capability at the business level.

Building a comprehensive problem-solving framework is about leveraging a structured methodology that allows you to frame problems systematically and solve problems creatively. In most cases, you don't understand your business environment because you have never looked outside the boundary of the problem. It is important to discover the containing system has social, ecological, economic and political elements and you must advance the development of all of these factors in order to solve the problems in a holistic way.

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The Focal Points in Digital Management

Digitalization is about hyperconnectivity, interdependence, people-centricity and information savvy. 

The digital ecosystem expands when the digital business territories blur and the business communities broaden their scope and consume all sorts of resources. The digital paradigm has many dimensions. it is like to solve a jigsaw puzzle with thousands of pieces, easy to get lost when trying to capture the big picture. Here is the multitude of digital management to unlock business performance and unleash its full potential.

Digital strategy management: A digital strategy is not just about the plan to design a pretty website or marketing strategy, it is an integral component of the business strategy. The goal is to transit from the current state to the strategic state defined in the enterprise strategic plan of digitalization and do it within the boundaries of the enterprise business model. The larger the organization is, the greater the challenges would be. The goal of the digital management is to build an organization that in times of change and times of relative status quo remains: Robust - able to recover quickly from adverse and unpreventable conditions; innovative -transform novel ideas to achieve high business value; flexible -able to figure out the alternative way of doing things; resilient - well positioned to exploit new opportunities, improve and deploy countermeasures against threats. Also, address the external and internal factors within the environment that might prevent the organization from achieving or over-achieving, in order to reach the high-performance business result.

Information management: The abundance of data and information bring both significant opportunities and enormous risks in business today. Therefore, IT continues to grow in importance to organizations, both operationally and as a competitive advantage. Information Management is to connect people with the right information at the right time and location, to ensure that accurate information is accessible and shared within relevant business units. In the business environment, often the organizational data is fraught with inconsistency, redundancy, and multiple data and knowledge platforms. Thus, the responsibility of modern IT management is to provide information accessibility and availability, ensure transparency and visibility, enable trust and reliability, and offer integrated data lifecycle management solutions to capture business insight and creating a cohesive information management structure that continually delivers what the business needs and takes further steps to maximize business potential.

Innovation Management: Innovation shouldn’t be the serendipity. Innovation is a high mature digital capability which needs to be built via disciplines, structures, processes, and practices. Digital leaders must realize that proactive innovation management and continuous adaptability are necessary for a rapidly changing world. It starts with innovation strategy defines "WHAT does the organization innovate" or "where should it innovate" to support the overall strategy. An enriched digital innovation ecosystem enables systematic innovation management disciplines. A well-defined innovation framework and fine-tuned structure are essential to managing innovation in a corporation, but there's no single structure that will work in every organization. Every organization must explore their own tailored methods and practices for achieving innovation excellence

Business relationship management: Digitalization is about hyperconnectivity, interdependence, people-centricity and information savvy. Thus, organizations need to manage multi-layer, and multi-dimensional business relationships such as cross-functional relationship, customer relationship, vendor relationship, etc, effectively. From a Systems perspective, it’s about understanding how relationships, ecosystems, market dynamics, and the connections between business units are related. Also, take a holistic approach to look at the purpose of the business (who are customers, what they want, what’s the value to them and how they want it delivered), processes and structures required, resources, authority of the system, and leverage management discipline to enforce business relationship and run a frictionless digital business.

People Management: People are always the weakest link in organizations. The part of the digital transformation journey is to prepare people for the new structures and to recognize this is a crucial step. The digital ready people are those who can think differently, work independently, present excellent problem-solving skills, well disciplined, have a "customer focus," and bring positivity and creativity to the workplace. However, in many digital lagging organizations with the traditional business setting, businesses still treat their people as cost, headcount or resource only. Old line leaders expect command-control, young people demand engagement. Thus, organizational development and people management need to manage the conflict between classic style and digital style of management. The 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.

Digital management is both science and art. The art of management is how to manage those “soft” business elements such as communication, culture, business relationship, leadership etc. well. The scientific part of management helps to set the policy, guidelines, IT, structure, and methods, stay focus, close the gaps between classic management and digital management in order to enforce cross-functional collaboration and improve business effectiveness and maturity.

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The Monthly “Lesson Learned”: Digital Management Pitfalls Jan., 2018

Digital transformation is a thorny journey, there are multiple roadblocks and numerous pitfalls along the way.

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. Digitalization is the thorny journey and digital management is both art and science. What are the pitfalls on the way?
      

Digital Management Pitfalls  

How to Close Blind Spots? “Blind Spot” is not a new topic, everyone has some, but some with more, some with less. The root causes of blinds port are often the people’s mentality such as ego or bias, thought processes such as lack of “whole brain” thinking, or lack of knowledge or insight. The blind spots, either strategic one or operational one, are perhaps inevitable, the point is how business leaders or professionals learn to deal with them and close blind spots seamlessly.

Doing the Wrong Things Differently Isn't Transformation Organizations large or small are at the journey of digital transformation. However, statistically, more than two-thirds of these programs fail to achieve the expectation. What are the root causes? Do you agree: Doing the wrong things differently isn’t transformation. That is the importance of good transformation practice within a motivated change culture oriented to the right work for the right reasons. But what are the logical steps to follow during the transformation to ensure you are doing the right things, before doing things right, also improve organizational maturity from efficiency to effectiveness to maturity?

The Gaps Caused by Silo-Thinking Silo is a universal problem facing businesses, especially for large mature organizations or our society as a whole today. And most people don't realize which gaps it is causing, how much pain it is bringing or the cost to the organization. Nowadays, businesses are moving into the hyperconnected, accelerated digital continuum, how to break down silo thinking and embrace holistic thinking in building a high-performing organization.

How to Avoid Micromanagement Pitfalls Micromanagement generally has a negative connotation, it means the managers put too tight control on their employees or team or insignificant details, it perhaps causes more damage than benefit. And many management experts thought that micromanagement is indeed one of the most destructive patterns a leader - middle or senior - can have. And from a culture perspective, ”not being micromanaged" almost always comes up. So why does micromanagement cause problems, and how to avoid such micromanagement pitfalls?

The Symptoms of Ineffective Team or Organization? Change is never for its own sake. The true reason behind the change is either due to the ineffectiveness of teams/organizations or the inefficiency of processes or practices. There are many common success factors in effective team or organization; perhaps every failure has its own causes but generally speaking, what are the symptoms of dysfunctional management?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2+million page views with about #4300+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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 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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How to Embed Prioritization Mechanism into The Multitude of Digital Management Disciplines

The challenge of digital management is to set the priority right in strategy execution and manage the tactics with efficiency.

Modern businesses often get trapped into “busyness,” overwhelmed with too many business initiatives, and overloaded with short-term business concerns and continuous digital disruptions. The reality is that there are a lot of things that can go wrong and it is not always easy to identify what is important.

To enhance its business effectiveness and maturity, how can organizations embed prioritization mechanism into the multitude of management disciplines to improve organizational responsiveness and overall business maturity?

The organizational structure management: Flatter structures will help speed up organizational response to changing markets and enable the business to break down the silo, and prioritize works more effectively. High mature digital organizations integrate organizational design (OD) into the process design and organizational re-engineering, embed the prioritization mechanism into performance management, to enable employees to do their work more productively. Tuning the organizational design and structure to achieve a high level of autonomy is the symbol of digital maturity. From a prioritization management perspective, the effective reorganization should dig through the real issues need to be addressed, or the real causes of changes, and prepare the change following the following logical steps “look, listen, question, understand, plan, test and collaboration,” and provide a more effective way for cross-functional communication and cross-project collaboration. Digital makes an impact on the speed to run the business, the empathy to their people, the prioritization skills to get important things done, and the orchestration of their capability in high mature digital organizations. Ideally, the physical organizational structure, relationships, and virtual platforms and social connections wrap around each other to ensure clear responsibility, smooth information flow, and engaged workforces who can set the right priority to accelerate performance.

Innovation management: Organizations have limited resources, but there are so many things that need to be achieved. Many businesses took a big bite of resources to keep the lights on, only left very little for doing innovation. Thus, resource management becomes an important prioritization management discipline to improve innovation effectiveness and efficiency. The resource needs to be assigned scientifically, to make sure that the company can manage people, assets, and resources to meet the business goals for innovation. Prioritization is also a sort of “balance” skill, to know when to take the gas pedal to harness innovation and when to take the brake to control the risks. Embed prioritization mechanism into digital innovation management is about how to strike the right balance between increasing productivity and encouraging innovation; between setting the standard and let “out-of-the-box” thinking flow; between risk management and risk tolerance; between discovering the new way to do things and “we always do things like that;” and it’s about optimizing control and improving working performance.

Performance management: Organizations need to both “keep the lights on” and focus on long-term business performance as well. The best way to find the balance between working on the business while doing business is to optimize the process - create a rhythm of meetings that establish clarity around the top priorities of the company. Embedding prioritization mechanism into performance management is about how to take a well-defined approach to define strategic goals and measurements, cascading them out to frontline teams, using clear methodologies and personnel to effect improvements, making regular reviews to chart the progress and fine-tuning efforts, and then review those priorities on a regular basis. The pitfall is that often the top managers haven’t done enough to set the right priority and communicate strategies thoroughly with employees. Without effective communication and prioritization skills, the gaps only enlarge. More specifically, the Balanced Scorecard Framework is a great prioritization mechanism for selecting, scoping, and aligning specific business initiatives to overall strategic objectives and the budget. It is also very useful for facilitating discussions and ensuring management for understanding the various trade-offs, put these key success enablers in the spotlight for all team members, and unify their efforts to achieve the common performance goals.

The challenge of digital management is to set the priority right in strategy execution and manage the tactics with efficiency. Prioritization management is not so easy. From a change management perspective, it is difficult to take the decisions in which order do the changes and prioritize between changes. It is important to prioritize things, make use of clear targets, communication and embed prioritization mechanisms into the multitude of management to unlock performance and unleash digital potential.

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The New Book “12 CIO Personas” Quote Collection V

Digital CIOs should have multifaceted personals, to practice the situational leadership accordingly.

The book “12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO’s Situational Leadership Practices” is the extensive brainstorming and logical content expansion of my book “CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of IT,” to reimagine and reinvent CIO leadership via practicing multitudes of digital influence.

89 Running IT as a business begins with understanding the true business needs, strengthens the weak links in the organization, and improves the business top-line business growth.

90 Integration is not always cost-effective, but to ensure that the application ecosystem offers real value and future perspective.

91 IT is the superglue to integrate the business as a whole and the linchpin for connecting the wider dots to stimulate innovation.

92 It is important to strengthen the weakest link, to ensure all important business elements integrated and knitted into ongoing organizational capabilities and unique business competency.

93 IT management philosophy is transforming from “Built to Last” to “Wired to Change.”

94 Today’s digital organization is more like an organic living thing thriving at the expanded business ecosystem.

95 The digital IT should follow the well-defined set of principles: Order over control; innovation over status quo; people over process; and the business as a whole over the functional silo.

96 A high mature digital ready IT organization is a threshold business competency and the catalyzer of digital innovation.

97 Digital management is responsible for designing, enabling, and enforcing a collaborative, innovative, intelligent, inspiring and inclusive working environment.

98 A digital CIO has to be a digital visionary, a transformational leader; an empathetic communicator; a good facilitator, a great listener, and an excellent digital game changer.

99 CIOs are in the unique position to oversee the business from different angles, they can have the multitude of business views to lead changes and enforce leadership influence.

100 High mature CIOs are high influencers through their breadth of business knowledge and the depth of IT insight.

101 Leadership is not a setting-hour work, but a continuous self-awareness, self-motivation, and self-mastery journey.

102 Prepare, listen, question, and participate. IT plays a critical role in taking the organization to the next level of digital maturity.

103 Amplifying digital leadership is not about how loudly you can speak, but how profoundly you can think.

104 Today’s CIOs have multiple rules to play and take broader leadership responsibilities in transforming their organization.

105 Digital leaders who have multi-layer, multi-level quotients and skills can amplify their leadership influence.

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How to Reach Digital Maturity From Functioning to Firm to Delight

Organizational maturity is assessed based on the overall business effectiveness, efficiency, operational excellence, responsiveness, performance, innovation, intelligence, resilience, and people-centricity. 

The organization or company may be in business for many years but has not matured its management disciplines and structural flexibility. Companies need to embed digital into the very fabric of the business, explore digital management practices in a structural way in order to make a seamless shift from functioning to firm to delight, and reach the higher maturity of the business to get digital ready.

The state of digital flow: Digital means flow - mind flow, energy flow, information flow, idea flow, and business flow. The classic organizational management usually enhances silos and overly rigid hierarchy. But digital organizations, like individuals, are living things, need to be in flow to operate smoothly and to exercise for keeping energized and achieving the state of delight. From information management perspective, a highly intellectual and highly effective digital organization has a higher level of responsiveness because information can flow into the right people to allow them making right decisions at the right time to bring better result and accelerate digital speed. In fact, in this information-abundant digital age, there isn't really much of an enterprise without the massive oceans of information that flow through the enterprise at any given split second. It is so critical to streamlining information flow across functional boundaries because information brings about business ideas and insight to enable organizations grasping business growth opportunities and preventing potential risks, to build a people-centric organization. Information flows and penetrates through the business to make the digital organization more responsive, dynamic antifragile, and therefore, delightful.

The full spectrum of digital innovation: Digital is the age of innovation. Innovation is to have a new perspective on things and gain the benefit by doing something different. Leading only through operational considerations is not the way forward. in most organizations, innovation is still a serendipity. When organizations just follow the old rules, have “we always do things like that” mentality and less appetite for change, they are getting stale, without maximizing its full potential. Digital organizations should build innovation as a differentiated business competency, learn how to solve problems creatively and manage a balanced innovation portfolio systematically. Innovation follows basic rules, which are adapted depending on the company's situation and ambition. Digital innovation has a broader spectrum, it can be categorized as empowered innovation (creative disruption), sustainable innovation (better version of product/service) or efficiency innovation (process improvement), and soft innovation (management/communication/culture rejuvenation). Innovation is one of the core activities of the digital revolution and societal progress, in order to move up the digital maturity from functioning to delight.

The delightful working environment with harmonized minds, hearts and hands: Statistically, there is the very low employee engagement rate in many organizations across the industrial sectors. There will be better business results achieved if it's a place where people look forward to coming to work, know that they are appreciated and trusted, have work that interests and challenges them, and have some fun. It means the challenge for today’s business management is how to win hearts, minds, and profits to improve the top line business growth. Build an open environment to encourage inquisitiveness and inspire innovation, push teams to “think in the bigger box” and develop a culture of learning and creativity in the workplace where the only thing you get fired for not asking hard questions. In the high-mature digital organizations, thinking differently is the foundation to build an inclusive and innovative team and one of the key determinants of whether an organization can move to new digital structures is the development level of the people, either at the cognitive level or skill/capability level. In practice, creating positive change and building a delightful working environment is a joint effort and co-responsibility of management and employees. It needs to involve your entire team at all levels, exhibit positive thinking and proper behaviors at all times. Shifting a team's focus to bigger picture objectives is key and that managers are the owners of this messaging. The goal is to overcome the barriers and roadblocks that have so far hindered people engagement and harmonize minds, hearts, and hands to unleash collective human potential.

Organizational maturity is assessed based on the overall business effectiveness, efficiency, operational excellence, responsiveness, performance, innovation, intelligence, resilience, and people-centricity. There are different types of organizations and different cycles in their business maturity, equally, individuals have their own learning, growth, and maturity cycles as well. In practice, the journey of digitalization is to improve business maturity from functioning to firm to delight.

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From Problem-Solving Conundrum to Solution-Driven Digital Continuum

Digital management is responsible for designing, enabling, and mastering collaborative, innovative and intelligent problem-solving.

We are experiencing the major paradigm shift from the industrial machine age to the post-industrial information/ knowledge /insight/ digital ages at the societal level. These changes and transformations are reshaping our thinking and recasting the way we view ourselves, the systems of which we are the part, and the way how we live, think and work. Running a business is fundamentally a problem-solving continuum. With lightweight digital technologies and well-educated digital workforce, can organizations today move from problem-solving conundrum to a solution-driven digital continuum?

From unstructured problem-solving to systematic problem-solving: Compared to a couple of decades ago, today’s digital business ecosystem has become more complex and dynamic, interdependent and hyperconnected. it does make a smaller world, but also make businesses and the world super complex and full of uncertainty and ambiguity. Problems become much more complex than ever, therefore, problem-solving must be both systematic and innovative. It is important to apply System Thinking to gain the in-depth knowledge of the interdependence of things, understand the problem, and follow systems principles for solving them in a structural way under complex, uncertain and ambiguous circumstances. In order to solve both strategic and technical problems facing in businesses and our society, the interdependent thinking should be practiced. It is about how you apply Systems Thinking to view the thing as an interconnected and interdependent whole; and how to follow systems principles for solving problems under complex, uncertain, and ambiguous circumstances.

From seeking best practices to developing tailored solutions: In the considerably static industrial age, perhaps businesses can follow industry best practices for solving some of their problems. However, with increasing pace of changes and continuous digital disruptions, 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. 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 so-called best practice. 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. Improvement in practice can be achieved through many different means- self-reflection, sharing of experiences, or comparison with a framework. The best practice is more about setting principles and standards, rather than specific “how” to solve problems. Best practices should get their claim from being the method that takes the least amount of time and resources to deliver a tailored solution. Never think there is a short list of solutions you can pick from. With a greater understanding of the problems, the trick is to increase the influence and be part of the solutions.

From pursuing the perfect solution which perhaps does not exist to making continuous adjustment and improvement: Problem-solving is a multi-stepped process that includes both problem resolution and solution implementation. All stages must be handled with attention and proficiency to ensure success. The intention is not about finding the perfect solution but making progressive problem resolution. There's the word difference between the noun 'perfect' with the implication of a 'perfect' entity and the verb ' perfecting.' The problem with perfectionists is that they don't have room for experimenting and looking behind or beyond the borders. It’s limiting innovation because they are too involved in making every detail perfect. It's important to explore the new solutions and pursue "perfecting" via making the continuous adjustment. This often means taking holistic thinking and customized approaches that may apply differently to each problem, and it involves people, process, and technology. The journey of problem-solving is not to pursue a perfect solution, but keep exploring a better way to solve the problem and make continuous improvement.

Digital management is responsible for designing, enabling, and mastering collaborative, innovative and intelligent problem-solving based on cross-siloed or cross-divisional collaboration and run a frictionless, immersive, and relentless digital business.

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The New Book “12 CIO Personas” Quote Collection IV

The book “12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO’s Situational Leadership Practices” is the extensive brainstorming and logical content expansion of my book “CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of IT,” to reimagine and reinvent CIO leadership via practicing multitudes of digital influence.
69 CIOs need to be IT evangelists, learn to sell and speak business, but it’s a two-way street.

70 It is strategic imperative to re-invent IT reputation from an isolated support function to a business growth catalyzer via communication, collaboration, and innovation.

71 Having healthy debating enforces critical thinking principles - increased perspective, less prejudgment, and looking at things from different angles.

72 CIOs need to leverage different conversations tyles to construct the collaborative vision and deliver high performance IT result.

73 The great communication is not to create more gaps but to bridge differences and encourage creativity.

74 Intrapreneur leaders present solid leadership attributes such as “full open communication,” “creativity,” “confidence,” “resourcefulness,” “decisiveness,” “ownership,” “digital readiness,” “self-adaptation,” and “resilience.”

75 The payoff of IT digital transformation is not just for the quick win, but to build the long-term business competency.

76 The creation of corporate entrepreneurship is to cultivate the culture of innovation and build business competencies.

77 Innovation is an important business capability to catalyze the business’s long-term prosperity.

78 Practicing entrepreneurship in IT starts with the outlier leadership and builds an innovative culture - the collective attitude to experiment better ways to do things.

79 It’s not enough for IT to only focus on the bottom line “keep the lights on,” it has to contribute more to business growth.

80 Running IT as a business is about focusing on innovation, growth, and tangible performance result.

81 IT leaders have to practice transformational leadership, situational leadership, and innovative leadership all the way in order to lead digital transformation seamlessly.

82 Assessing organizational personality, managing company performance and maximizing business potential are all important digital management scenarios to build the high-mature digital organization.

83 Performance metrics are number in context, results related to the strategic goals of the business.

84 Hard business assets keep the organization lights on, and soft assets of the organization enable the business to unlock its potential.

85 Take multi-phased approaches to building a more transparent IT for achieving people-centricity.

86 Applying the right procedures and policies to asset management allows IT to create a realistic budget with few surprises, and keep best practices to adapt to “continuous changes.”

87 Outside-in IT performance perspectives and outcome-based measurement practices are important to improve IT maturity and focus on the performance of the entire organization.

88 CIOs have to reimagine IT on how to unleash the full potential of running a digital organization via management innovation with some necessary “DE” effort.

89 Measure the CIO’s success on value creation, and you’ll get the kind of performance you need out of IT.

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Three Barriers To Innovation and Digital Maturity

Digital is worth its weight when all parts of the choir sing their respective parts in harmony to achieve a higher purpose and make a unique impact.

Digital paradigm means holism, hyper-connectivity, integration, interdependence, and innovation. Digital transformation is the journey for solving problems caused by "Conflict," "Out of Balance," “Lack of Logic,” or “Too much complexity.” Therefore, it is critical to break through the industrial constraints and limitations, overcome roadblocks to change and digitalization, and improve the overall business responsiveness and maturity. Here are three barriers businesses must overcome in order to accelerate the digital paradigm shift.

Nearsightedness: Digital is full of uncertainty, velocity, complexity, and ambiguity, but those shouldn’t become the excuse for the business neglecting long-range planning. In fact, the organizational management short-sightedness and running the business in a transactional mode cause digital ineffectiveness for the long run. The digitalization is a long-term journey; to move up the organizational maturity level, businesses need to shift from transactional mode to transformational mode. In practice, too often, transformational change is acted on the basis of improving one part of an organization at the expense of other parts of the organization. The main reason is that up to this point in time, most leaders have been silo managers and don't really have the business skills or personality traits to lead change and transformation. From top-down, an organizational structural perspective, people at the different level of the company should be on the same page of change and innovation. Often, the middle management with “transactional mentality only” is the bottleneck of the business effectiveness and the very reason of change inertia. Digitalization takes a holistic approach and the broader perspective, if the management neglect long-range planning and keep silo thinking, change effort is doomed to fail.

Bureaucracy: One of the biggest obstacles to stifle digital flow and innovation is bureaucracy which is criticized for its inflexibility, inefficiency, silo, stagnation, unresponsiveness, or lack of creativity, etc. Generally speaking, bureaucracy is a system based on a hierarchy of authority and division of workforce functioning in a routine manner. Although organizational bureaucracy inherited from the traditional management discipline brings a certain level of business efficiency. In today's volatile economy, nothing impedes progress more than protective silos which are simply a form of bureaucratic management hierarchy designed to preserve the status quo. With hyperconnectivity and increasing speed of changes, it becomes the barrier to change and innovation. It generates negative energy which stops organizations from moving forward. Bureaucracy is often caused by “command and control” leadership style, overly rigid structure and business processes. Digital management requires a different kind of 'control,' for example, the control on desired outcomes, keep the end in mind, not overly control the process of “HOW.” They do not focus on hierarchy but on ideas, information, creativity, flexibility, openness, and curiosity. An organization can approach the flow zone when the positions in its hierarchy have clear, accountable tasks, ideas are shared and managed effectively, and processes are streamlined to improve organizational performance seamlessly.

Disengagement: Statistically, more than two-thirds of employees do not engage in the work they do. What’re the root causes that employees are not engaged fully and not spend so much time chasing and trying to treat the symptoms? This requires that you start with a complete and accurate diagnosis of the organization's current state, identify any barriers to excellence that may exist, and then develop strategies for lowering or removing those barriers to improving productivity and employee satisfaction. The digital organizations should be a complex, but flexible social system starting to appreciate business attributes such as readiness, ownership, creativity, integration, open communication, customized structuring, and multifaceted partnerships. It is important to build a culture of learning, encourage people to get out of the comfort zone and overcome complacency. Organizations and individuals that are complacent do not look for new opportunities or hazards. Leaders often miss the big picture and become complacent. Thus, complacency can lead to mediocrity which further causes digital stagnation. Digital leaders and professionals must keep learning and explore the better way of running the business, make learning-doing as an iterative continuum to improve the overall business maturity.

There is no “one size fits all” approach to managing a high-mature digital organization. There are numerous barriers and pitfalls on the way. Every business evolves digital transformation at different speed. Digital is worth its weight when all parts of the choir sing their respective parts in harmony to achieve a higher purpose and make a unique impact, to accelerate change and innovation, and improve business performance and maturity.

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The Monthly Insight of “Digital Balance”: Interdependence as the Digital Characteristic Jan, 2018

We are experiencing the dynamics of the most significant business transformation since the industrial revolution. The majority of us will work in an organization that is somewhere between old and new; at both industrial speed and digital speed; It is more critical than ever to maintain the right level of digital balance. In fact, striking the right digital balance is a never-ending business life cycle.

 Interdependence as the Digital Characteristic

The “Interdependence” Characteristic of Digital Organizations Digital makes a significant impact on almost every aspect of the business from people, process, to technology, both horizontally and vertically. It does make a smaller world, but also makes businesses and the world super complex and full of uncertainty and ambiguity. Due to the latest digital technologies such as social and mobile, the business and world are always on and have become hyper-connected and interdependent. What’s further understanding of interdependence as one of the significant characteristics in the emergent digital era?

Three Digital Characteristics to Accelerate Change Digital makes a significant impact on almost every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. The purpose of such radical digitalization is to make a significant difference in improving organizational efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness, and maturity. There are three needs in an organizational setting which are embedded in the format of digital “characteristics,” to accelerate business transformation.

Digital Master Tuning #57: The Digital Dimensions of Organizational Structure: Digital means change, choice, speed, and customer-centricity. One of the key business competencies is agility, which is the capability to adapt to the changes; and the ability to manage complexity more effectively than competitors provides a competitive advantage. From an organizational structure perspective, how can you fine tune the digital dimensions of your organizational development?

The Interdependent Thinking: What’s your System Thinking of the World One of the significant characteristics of emerging digital era is interdependence, due to the latest digital technologies such as social and mobile, the business and world have become hyper-connected and interdependent, it does make a smaller world, but also makes businesses and the world super complex and full of uncertainty and ambiguity. Hence, in order to solve both strategic and technical problems facing in business and overcome the challenges facing mankind, the interdependent thinking shall be practiced, it is about how you apply system thinking to viewing the world and an interconnected and interdependent whole; and how to follow systems principles for solving problems under complex, uncertain and ambiguous circumstances?

CIOs as "Chief Insight Officer": The Modern CIOs’ Digital Mantra - Go Deeper to Lead Forward? Organizations large or small are stepping into the deep, deep digital new normal with the overwhelming growth of information, continuous technological disruptions, as well as the VUCA” digital characteristics. The pace of changes in IT would force more CIOs to shift into transformation-oriented digital leadership roles because IT plays a significant role in driving the digital transformation of the company. Contemporary CIOs need to have multiple personas, explore the breadth and depth of the role and go deeper in order to lead forward.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2+million page views with about #4300+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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 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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“Coopetition” as the digital Characteristic

Competition to catalyze digital innovation is great. Competition to further the world of pursuing superego is unhealthy. 

Competition is part of the natural dynamics of life. In nature, competition is for evolution; in business, competition is for surviving and thriving. In the silo industrial age, the competition is about commanding and controlling to keep the status quo; and now we are stepping into a deeper and also far more advanced digital era steadily, the goal of the healthy competition in the human society is to encourage innovation and accelerate the speed of progression.



Differentiate positive competitions from negative competitions: Competition has different connotations and meanings under different situations or context. Competition is part of the natural dynamics of life. 'Competition' in biology means the cutthroat struggle for life's essentials. It is part of the genetic bias of every living thing in nature as a survival-seeking mindset. There are ample examples of competitive behaviors in the animal world. That is the basis for their survival and thriving lives. However, humans are intelligent beings, and digital is the age of abundance and choices. If we really are as intelligent as we claim to be, we can build principles and disciplines to discern the positive motivation or negative energy behind the competition. Competition, in and of itself, is not inherently bad. The goals of competition can be bad and the competitive arena can produce a myriad of unwise mentality and negative externalities. Thus, encourage the healthy competition for harnessing innovation, but discourage unhealthy competition via unprofessional way.

Competency at all levels: Healthy competition is important for either change or innovation. But too often transformational change is acted on the basis of improving one part of an organization at the expense of other parts of the organization, it will stifle innovation and decelerate the speed of digitalization. Workplace competition is not always positive, sometimes politics or unprofessionalism suffocates the business' changeability or diminishes the brightness of their true talent. If the majority of organizations at the industrial age are manipulated by silo thinking and hierarchical styles, which often cause unhealthy internal competitions for limited resources, organizations lose their collaborative advantage as the whole. Competency at all levels of the organization can create unhealthy rivalries that result in productivity decrease and employee discouragement. One of the key determinants of whether an organization can move to the digital new normal is the digital maturity of its people. If the digital organization is a living body, every individual is like an active cell to keep growing and flowing, it is important to run away from the shadow of unhealthy competitions, and thrive on healthy competitions.

"Coopetition”: At the business level, silo creates barriers that surface between departments within an organization, So, it easily creates the gaps and often leads unhealthy internal competitions for the limited resources, causing people who are supposed to be on the same team to work against each other. Many organizations today are running in between - the mix of old and new; the different departments or divisions within an organization evolve changes with different speed. Coopetition (cooperation + competition) is perhaps the right approach for running a highly energetic and highly collaborative digital business. To encourage positive competitions and discourage negative competitions, the digital rule of thumb is that how to leverage energy in the more meaningful way; not just for beating down the competitors, but for living with purpose, strengthen the strength, unleash talent potential, and run a successful business.

Ultimately, competition or cooperation can be used for a greater purpose/cause to elevate individuals as well as the entire society. Or they can be abused or misused to cause severe issues, unnecessary pains, and significant problems. Competition to catalyze digital innovation is great. Competition to further the world of pursuing superego is unhealthy. With today’s digital hyperconnectivity and interdependence, it is time to step into the new hybrid era of corpetition (cooperation + competition) and reach the next level of digital harmony.

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