How to Creatively and Systematically Solve Problems Really Matter

The matter of fact is that the more complex the situation is, the more creative approaches and role gaming are needed to reach for insightful understanding and effective problem-solving.

Fundamentally, running a business is a change and problem-solving continuum. The world becomes overly complex and paradoxical. Business problems are like jigsaw puzzles, intricated and sometimes make you feel the lack of clues. The assumption that there is a single cause to a "problem" in a complex adaptive system such as today’s business is unhelpful. There are often multiple and inter-related dynamics behind complex problems and you need to be looking for patterns rather than isolating causes for solving them effectively. Problem-solving is both art and science. Can you diagnose the real problem? Does every problem have solutions? How to identify problems really matter and solve them creatively and systematically?

Look uphill to identify the real problems: There are so many things going on these days, the blurred business borders, the exponential growth of information, inevitable changes with increasing pace, and disruptive technologies, etc. That means the more problems will emerge and businesses must overcome the challenges. Businesses have limited resources, time, and talent. Thus, looking uphill can help to identify the real problems that matter, and on a scale that can make a difference. Besides macro and large-scale problems, there are also the intermediate and micro levels of problems. Many problems do exist because they are either ill-defined or the concept cannot be adequately captured contextually. Some problems seem irrational as they are caused by people’s emotional reaction to a set of circumstances or events. This can appear to be illogical. Some problems are the symptoms; when you try to fix them, the real problems will keep coming back. Further, there’s the problem that the same word means different things to different people because they carry different emotional baggage or have cognitive differences to understand what the real problem is. Always remember that problems exist not in isolation, but as an interacting system of problems. In today’s hyperconnected and interdependent business world, solving problems really matter could also mean that there is the opportunity you can take care of a chain of problems, not just an individual problem. But if you spot the wrong problem, it perhaps means more damage than what you think of. For either organizations or individuals, how do you get motivated to be innovative on a daily basis by solving real-world problems large or small, in a creative and systematical way? It’s critical to look deeply into the future which can have a profound effect on where you go, what are roadblocks (those large problems) or potential pitfalls (the hidden issues which perhaps cause more problems later on), and how you get there? A better problem-diagnose scenario that crosses all industries is to keep peeling back the layers to discover the root cause by asking “WHYs,” or taking other system analysis to discover the real cause and address it.

The digital leaders need to be highly capable problem-solvers: Problem-solving is both art and science. It involves breaking down complex problems into smaller pieces, and then take logical steps to solve them in a structured way. High mature digital leaders have strong capabilities to solve critical business problems skillfully; Capability = Capacity + Ability. It’s not necessary or unrealistic to solve every problem on their own, but they should be responsible to ensure that the right people getting the right information at the right time for making good decisions and solving right business problems effectively. High mature organizations have a strong capacity to leverage resources, time, and human capital to solve business problems really matter in both effective and efficient ways. Digital professionals have to leverage both their intuition skills and analytics ability to solve problems. Besides logic, there is a role for intuition in problem-solving as well. Sometimes breakthrough ideas or creative solutions are rarely or never logical in foresight, but they will look logical in hindsight. Do not forget to get the measurement tools to evaluate problem-solving results and make continuous improvements. Keep in mind, learning and having great tools will give you a variety of ways to improve problem-solving competency.

Simplicity: The world becomes more dynamic, complex, and paradoxical, balance is the leverage for the problem-solving and in-depth understanding of economic and social systems. It doesn’t mean that every complex problem will have a complex solution. As Albert Einstein well put, that every solution to the problem should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. It means that a problem has an inherent and irreducible complexity; any attempt to simplify further than that will fail and any complexity added to it is harmful. The logical problem-solving scenario does conform to a sequence, a focus or a goal, a motivation to explore proposals, a willingness to imaginatively explore alternative solutions. You seek for inventions, new designs, creative problem-solving. You should also leverage systems thinking because the system view of the business world are balanced and objective and it is sensitive to the emergent factors; it keeps information and ideas flow and generates a variety of options to deal with complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty of the digital world. In practice, a good problem-solving framework helps to leverage a structured methodology, weight in varying decision factors, and apply efficient tools, which allow you to frame problems systematically and solve complex problems in a structural way.

Either for individuals, organizations, or society as a whole, the problem-solving capability is crucial to surviving and thriving. The problem-solving logic is just so simple - diagnose the real problem and solve it in the right way. However, the problem-solving thought process and practices will not be simple for many of today’s complex issues or vexing problems. The matter of fact is that the more complex the situation is, the more creative approaches and role gaming are needed to reach for insightful understanding and effective problem-solving.

Read More

The Monthly “Digital Hybridity” Book Tuning: The Hybrid Innovation and Digitalization Oct. 2018

The digital paradigm shift includes the perspective of building a scalable innovation environment or innovation ecosystem.

The purpose of the book “Digital Hybridity: How to Strike the Right Balance for Digital Paradigm Shift” is to shed some light on how to strike the right balance of stability and changes; being transactional to keep spinning and being transformational to leap forward for making a seamless digital paradigm shift. Digital organizations should apply the hybrid management approach, focus on building a diverse, networked, and extended modern working environment in which the powerful digital platforms and computing technologies enable seamless conversations, delayer overly rigid organizational hierarchy, inspire idea sharing and brainstorming, and engage employees and partners to achieve the high-performance result.

           The Hybrid Innovation and Digitalization

Hybrid Innovation Hybrid nature of innovation is a combination of something old with something new, with a mixed portfolio of incremental innovations and radical innovation. Innovation is a management discipline, just like many key elements in businesses today, such as leadership, culture, process, or technology, etc, HYBRID is the digital fit style for managing innovation.

Three Hybrid Elements in Running a Digital IT and Organization? With emergent digital technologies, organizations large or small reinvent themselves to become more agile, flexible and innovative. Digitalization doesn’t mean just tear down all the old things in the previous era, in reality, it means to strike the right balance between the new way and the “old way,” the physical building and the virtual platform, the face-to-face communication and the always-on online presence.

The Hybrid Digital Management Disciplines: 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. Digital transformation is the journey for solving problems caused by "conflict," "out of balance," and “lack of logic.” It has to expand into every dimension of the organization with a structural approach. Thus, digital management is a hybrid and holistic discipline with mixed management styles for managing everything that is necessary to get people to adopt new ways of working such as cross-functional communication and collaboration, organizational structure design, change management, talent development, digital business readiness, and stakeholder management, etc.

Three Practices of Digital Innovation Generally speaking, innovation is to transform novel ideas to achieve their business values. It is not a serendipity, but a discipline and a set of practices to achieve business goals. Innovation helps to tackle the complexities of business dynamic in the digital ecosystem, but often within itself, it needs to change and improve as well. Therefore, the digital paradigm shift also includes the perspective of building a scalable innovation environment or innovation ecosystem. It is crucial to fine-tune innovation processes, capabilities, and develop a set of practices to manage innovation portfolio more effectively.

The Five Dimensional Hybrid Models for Going Digital? The digital paradigm has many dimensions. Digital organizations today have the hybrid reality with both physical buildings and virtual platform, the old way and the new way of doing things. It implies the “always on” and hyper-connected business nature, exhibiting digital characteristics in various shades, extensiveness, and intensity. Therefore, the digital management needs to adopt a hybrid model and take the holistic discipline with mixed management styles for managing everything that is necessary to get digital ready.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with about #5100+ 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.

Read More

The CIO as Digital Modernist II

Due to the disruptive nature of technologies and exponential growth of information, IT leadership has to be continually reimagined, refined, refreshed, and re-energized. 

The modern IT is not equal to IT modernization, it goes a step further, becomes the change agent of the company, doing more with innovation and solving problems creatively. The CIOs are digital modernists who lead through influence, not through brute forces; who not only enforce the engineering side of IT but also stimulate the creative side of IT for reaching “the art of possible.” Here are three perspectives of CIOs as digital modernists.

Trendsetter, not fashionista: With“VUCA” digital new normal –volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, business leaders couldn’t predict the future with a certain degree of accuracy. Information and technology play a critical role in leading changes. The CIO is a serious partner in the inner circle to share the technological vision and co-develop the value-added business strategies, enabling deeper insight into the opportunities IT can do. Digital CIOs are trendsetter, not fashionista though. For running a future-driven digital organization, digital CIOs have better sense to capture business trends, move energy to a higher level by offering a clear vision of what is possible, have the insight to understand things holistically; respect the diversified point of view, in order to navigate the business toward the uncharted water and blurred business territories confidently. The CIO as the digital modernist can help to bridge between the innovations of tomorrow with the business realities of today. Running a future-driven organization starts with the growth mindset and follows with progressive activities. Keep in mind though, IT is not just about some shining technology toys, and CIOs are not the fashionista. They should try new technologies when there are clear returns that can't be found in the existing technologies, of course with great care on the potential risks.

Connect the dots, paint colors, and discover their digital formulas as well: Running digital IT is both science and art. The artistic side of engineering is about imagination, innovation, and invention. There are very progressive organizations where IT sparks organizational creativity. CIOs as digital modernists know how to connect unusual dots for sparkling connectivity, as well as paint the colors for creating business values. Many perceive engineering as an art because it involves personalized observation and judgment, design thinking, intuition, and innovation. IT needs to embed art into science to explore the art of possible. Thus, CIOs as digital modernists are the bridge between art and science. Can digital CIOs make abstract impressionism or contemporary art? In fact, the CIO as “Chief Innovation Officer” is never about managing the status quo. IT must be willing to take constructive criticism from customers and turn the beating, lashing, and criticism into opportunities to spark creative ideas. The diversity of thoughts is a facilitator for merging significant building blocks of new and existing ideas and concepts. The digital IT paints an excellent picture of the business interaction and independence of the expanded digital ecosystem. The engineering side of IT also enables it to take a logical path to implement ideas as well as to discover scientific formulas and figure out solutions to most types of problems. The technologist CIOs can summarize digital formulas, not about promoting "one size fits all" solutions, but focusing on setting digital principles and sharing the best practices and "lessons learned."

Creative communicator, art critic and polyglot: Digital IT is designed for changes, understanding and communicating the business strategy is a beautiful thing. CIOs have one of the most influential positions within the business because they oversee underlying business functions and processes. CIOs are the digital modernists to lead changes and drive innovation. They are skeptical about the conventional understanding of the problems so that they examine everything before accepting it for its real truth or advising it to others. They are the fiercest critic to themselves, they are also hunting for constructive criticism and smart skepticism as the hidden gems for themselves and their organizations. Modern digital CIOs have to play different roles and communicate with different audiences such as boards, business partners, customers, and vendors, etc, fluently. Digital CIOs are business polyglots who can speak different business dialects such as business, IT, architecture, finance jargon, etc, in order to act as a business interpreter to bridge the gaps. CIOs who practice creative communication with openness can help others contextualize better as well as demonstrate trust and promote IT as a trustful business partner.

Due to the disruptive nature of technologies and exponential growth of information, IT leadership has to be continually reimagined, refined, refreshed, and re-energized. Every CIO is different and whatever the management team needs or wants at the time out of the CIO will also be different, and by type of business needs will be different. But generally speaking, CIOs are no longer just glorified geeks, they are business savvy strategists and open-minded digital modernists. Digital-driven CIOs are the vanguard and innovative leader to make things better and advance, focus on solving problems effectively for leading the business’s digital transformation journey systematically and effortlessly.

Read More

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 10/25/2018

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with 5000+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 25 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight of digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Five Steps to Achieve Digital Breakthrough Today’s organization is an organic living thing thriving at the expanded business ecosystem. Digitalization disrupts not only the functional and business boundary but also industry and geographical territories. Digital management is responsible for designing, enabling, energizing, and enforcing a collaborative, innovative, intelligent, inspiring and inclusive working environment. With increasing pace of changes and frequent disruptions, making incremental improvement only is perhaps not fast enough. Here is the five-step scenario to make a leap for achieving the digital breakthrough.

Reinforce Digitalization in the Boardroom The new paradigm arises out of new knowledge, the emergent trends can shape the behavior of future enterprises and some have been happening already. BoDs as top leadership roles need to envision, proactively influence changes, reinforce digitalization and lead the organization towards its future confidently.

Five Drivers of Organizational Changes Change is inevitable and the shift to digital cuts across sectors, geographies and leadership roles. The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. The most successful businesses are the ones that have learned why to change, and how to implement change time after time after time. Change is never for its own sake, here are five drivers of organizational changes.

Three “Soft” IT Management Disciplines IT is impacting every business unit and is becoming the driver of business evolution and digital transformation. With the fast pace of changes, old IT thinking simply cannot move fast enough in the era of digitalization. IT management is multidisciplinary; it not only includes “hard” components such as IT operation and portfolio management but also has some “soft” touch elements. Digitalization means business fluidity. Often, soft overcomes the hard and gentle overcomes the rigid. Here are three “soft” disciplines to improve IT management maturity.

The Monthly “100 Creativity Ingredients” Book Tuning: The Creativity Leap Oct. 2018 All humans are born with raw creativity ability. Creativity has many dimensions, with multi-faceted truth and myth, manifold knowledge and multidimensional insight. Creativity is wings of our mind and the tempo of our heartbeat. Creativity is a constructive disruption, not so bad addiction, and a sensational phenomenon. The purpose of “100 Creativity Ingredients - Everyone’s Playbook to Unlock Creativity “is to classify, scrutinize, articulate, and share insight about one hundred special creativity ingredients, to paint the picture with them, to add colors on them, to embed the music into them, and to make the story via them, in order to unleash our collective creativity potential.

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.

Read More

The Popular Quotes about “Creativity & Digital Fit” in “Digital Master” Book Series

“Digital Master” is the series of guidebooks (25+ books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” Digital organizations are always on, interdependent and hyperconnected, people are always the most important asset in any organization before, today, and future. However, compared to a traditional industrial workforce, the digital workforce is a new breed -it's the super-connected generation with a multitude of varieties - multi-generations, multi-cultures, and multi-devices. More specifically, what are the new characteristics of the digital workforce? Here is a set of quotes about creativity, change, digital fit.


89 “Without constructive skepticism, without human progress.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone's Playbook to Unlock Creativity


90 “The ultimate aim of assimilating knowledge is to create new ideas or gain wisdom.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone's Playbook to Unlock Creativity


91 “Dissatisfaction with status quo is the psychology behind creative disruptions.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone's Playbook to Unlock Creativity

92 “Creativity is a higher level of thinking because it often imposes a higher cognitive load as you think “harder” via different thought processes.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone's Playbook to Unlock Creativity


93 “Creativity is not a “thing,” it’s a process that happens as a proactive mental activity to a problem.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone's Playbook to Unlock Creativity


94 “Creativity requires openness and growth mind to new experiences and explore new possibilities.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone's Playbook to Unlock Creativity


95 “Thinking out of the box means you are in a continuous learning mode.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone's Playbook to Unlock Creativity


96 “Insight is the deep intuitive understanding of things, and it often breaks through the conventional wisdom.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone's Playbook to Unlock Creativity


97 Being confident means you know who you are, your strength and your limitation.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone's Playbook to Unlock Creativit


98 “A curious mind enjoys inquiring, experimenting and discovering.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone's Playbook to Unlock Creativity


99“A learning mind has more dots to connect for sparking innovation.”

― Pearl Zhu, 100 Creativity Ingredients: Everyone's Playbook to Unlock Creativity

Digital Master refers to those high-performing, highly innovative and high-mature (less than 15%) digital organizations; they have both clear digital vision and well-crafted digital strategy; they are courageous to be in the vanguard of digital transformation with a quantum lead. But they also proactively develop more advanced and unique digital capabilities step-by-step and build a digital premium into their very foundation of business, such as digital thinking, culture, agility, intelligence, and structure, and they achieve high performing results through strong digital governance discipline and reach its zenith as the digital world continues to expand and diversify. At the individual level, Digital Masters are those cross-generational digital professionals who are equipped with advanced digital minds and build a unique set of digital capabilities, climb to the top of Maslow’s Pyramid 2.0.

Read More

The Excellence of Silo: Is It the Building Block or the Roadblock to Achieve Digital Excellence

Digital paradigm means holism, hyperconnectivity, interdependence, integration, and harmonization. 

Silo is perhaps one of the most paradoxical symptoms in running the business in the industrial era. There are different definitions of the silo, by nature, it’s about isolation. The segmenting or sectioning of work by knowledge, skills, or type, etc, it is a necessary component of complex work or large workplaces. However, silo often causes miscommunication and reduces a sense of belonging and connection to the organization's larger mission. As we are stepping into the hyperconnected digital new normal, business leaders need to ask themselves and others: Is the excellence silo the building block or the roadblock to achieving holistic digital excellence?

Is silo still efficient? The functional silo in the traditional organizational setting brings a certain level of business efficiency. Good functional leaders share just enough 'outside the silo' to keep them involved and invested in the greater purpose or vision, but not too much that it slows them down on what they really focus on doing to maximize the silo tasks and objectives. However, the symptoms such as silo thinking or bureaucracy caused by overly rigid hierarchy become the roadblock for organizations to achieve the next level of business performance or make the business solution less optimal and sometimes a burden. Therefore, the digital nature of hyper-connectivity and interdependence makes it inevitable to break down silos (not just functional walls, but the walls at the mindset level as well) and ensure the business as the whole is superior to the sum of pieces. Silos self-perpetuate because that is the business culture we consciously encourage individuals to pursue. Silos have individual goals, but strategic goals need to be shared and common to ensure the entire organization accomplishing the high-performance business results. Sometimes we need to go back to basics, realign and refresh the purpose and maintain the correct direction of the team's basic leadership. Business leaders need to ask: Who are the ideal talent to bridge silos or functional gaps? Organizations hope they actually have a generalist who rises up can interface effectively with all the specialists. But the world is increasingly complex and fast-changing the need for specialization is likely to increase. So the point is that the greater specialization does not need to lead to silo thinking or working. The specialized generalists with interdisciplinary knowledge and expertise are in demand to bridge silos and contribute to cross-functional communication and collaboration because today’s digital business is always on and hyperconnected.

Can you strike the right balance between centralized and decentralized efforts: Digital means the increasing speed of changes. It means that the management needs to challenge convention and break down silos as well as people’s natural resistance to change or to new ideas; and helps to deliver incremental improvements over time. Forward-thinking organizations also keep tuning their organizational structure for improving business effectiveness and efficiency. Often, centralized or decentralized business capabilities are the perpetual dilemma as paradoxically. Companies migrate back and forth between centralized efforts and decentralized efforts for exploring the better way to operate and collaborate. It always depends on several factors like the firm’s culture, strategy, budget, maturity and so on. Limited hierarchy works best in a creative environment where the free flow of ideas and their prompt implementation is a key element of success. Centralizing & standardizing what makes sense enables flexibility without chaos. High mature organizations are moving solidly from doing digital by applying digital technologies to going digital and being digital by expanding both horizontally and vertically, across all business dimensions to optimize underlying functions and processes, building business competency, improving both organizational flexibility and strategic responsiveness. As Peter Drucker, an American management guru wisely pointed out: "There is no one right organization structure. Rather the task, it is to select the right organization for the task and mission at hand."

What is the state of the organizations, what is the life cycle stage of the product or program? It can make sense to create a silo to protect an embryonic program. A mature organization is a different story in optimizing the structure and improve performance. Silos are opposite of the strategic alignment; a systematized management model requires to achieve its vision, its mission, and its goals. Many think silo happens when the business operates from a fear standpoint - fear of rejection, fear of invisibility, fear that other peoples' accomplishments will somehow diminish your own, etc. In order to survive and thrive amid rapid changes, companies must reclaim the right balance of stability and change, standardization and flexibility. The management must share the holistic view of a living digital organization that promotes a deep understanding of core processes, risks, and transformational opportunities. If you find that you need to organize in silos in order to be effective, and then, there's a good chance, you don't have an overall organizational strategy. At the heart of digitalization, it is PEOPLE. Customer-centric enterprises' vision, strategy, and governance model should enforce the alignment of various silos toward customer-centric products and delivery mechanisms.

Digital paradigm means holism, hyperconnectivity, interdependence, integration, and harmonization. Therefore, it is critical to break down silo mentality and apply a holistic management discipline which can break through the industrial constraints and limitations in pursuit of possibilities rather than impossibilities, All the members are working towards common goals and objectives, with a passionate desire to see the organization succeeding for the long term and reach the high level of business maturity.

Read More

The Monthly “Digital IT” Book Tuning: The CIO’s Debates to Foster IT Innovation Oct. 2018

Debating is not for stimulating conflicts, but for brainstorming better ways to do things.

Due to the changing nature of technology, IT leadership role also continues to involve & shift the focus, to move up the maturity level. More and more CIOs are requested to take more responsibility and many CIOs present the breadth of leadership competency. The proactive IT debates help IT leaders to brainstorm better ways to do things and improve management capabilities. Here are the monthly CIO debates collections.

    

 The CIO’s Debates to Enforce IT Innovation

Unconventional CIOs: How to Play Odd Balls for Running Innovative IT? Digitalization is driving hyperconnectivity and unpredictability, demanding more rapid deployment that can quickly adapt to the changes and adjust to the new market conditions. Digital power is the combination of the power of knowledge, the power of information and technology, the power of people, and the power of creativity. Traditional IT in the industrial age is often blamed as the controller and change laggard, but nowadays, all leading companies across the vertical sectors declare they are in the information management business, IT needs to become the linchpin of digitalization and innovation engine of the business. To be creative, you must do something different, creativity is all about change. CIOs should take bold leadership, practice unconventional thinking and run innovative IT to get digital ready.

CIOs as “Chief Initiative Officer”: How to Take Initiatives on Change, Innovation, and Digital Transformation? In practice, the CIO role should transform from a reactive IT manager to a proactive digital leader; from a controller to a change agent Thus, the CIO as “Chief Initiative Officer” has become necessary or even imperative to manage strategic digital alignment and orchestration from concept to post-implementation of all initiatives from the C-level to the front lines, focus on changes and innovation. CIOs are also quite eager and enthusiastic to drive challenging transformation initiatives, to reinvent IT as the information hub and the business growth engine.

Can Money Buy Innovation? It is very important to recognize that innovation is an essential factor for a company success. Organizations need both: out of the box and in the box/core innovation; both breakthrough innovation and incremental and evolutionary innovation, how to accomplish this balance is a crucial issue for organizations. From innovation management perspective, what’re the resources and key success factors to lead innovation success, can money buy innovation?

Startup or Bellwether: Who are the Better innovators? Innovation is the light every business is pursuing, however, for most companies, innovation is more as serendipity, rather than a systematic business capability which can be built upon; in particular, startup business or industry bellwether, who are the better innovators?

Is IT at Cross-Road? IT organizations are facing significant transformation, perhaps crossroad is an appropriate word to articulate IT position since CIOs seem to fall into two camps. The first is the "utility" CIO who competently manages a complex technology infrastructure but is not on the "go to" list for implementing the strategy. The latter is "value" CIO who has delegated infrastructure management and well articulate how information and technology can accomplish the company strategic and tactical objectives. So what is next for CIOs beyond the crossroads? How can CIOs enable high performing organizations, and in return, their organization's leverage high-performing CIOs?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.5 million page views with 5000+ 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. 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.

Amazon Book Order List

B&N Nook Book Order List

Apple iBook Order List

Google Book Order List

Introduction

Chapter 1 Digital IT Leadership Q&A

Chapter 2 Digital IT Fitness Q&A

Chapter 3 Digital IT Innovation Paradox Q&As

Chapter 4 Digital IT Management Dilemmas

Chapter 5 Digital IT Potential Q&As

Chapter 6 Digital IT Priority Q&As

Chapter 7 IT-Business Gap Q&As

Chapter 8 Digital IT Performance Q&As

Chapter 9 IT Branding Q&As

Chapter 10: Digital IT Talent Management Q&As

Read More

Reinforce Digital Competency in the Boardroom

Organizations of the future are increasingly exhibiting digital characteristics in various shades and intensity. 

The new paradigm arises out of new knowledge, the emergent trends can shape the behavior of future enterprises and some have been happening already. BoDs as top leadership roles need to envision, proactively influence changes, reinforce digitalization and lead the organization towards its future confidently.

Reinforce the digital mindset: The digital fit mindset is about how to think forward, strategically, creatively, positively, and systematically. This is particularly important at the board level. The board directors are senior leaders who can step out of a conventional box or linear patterns, so they can see things further, mine future openly, and share their vision generously. Digital Boards are getting better as the digital awareness grows of how important board composition is in order to lead in today’s digital dynamic. As different generations grow up with different beliefs and perspectives. Thus, the conditions of the economy, the state of the world, technology, and social trends all impact the overall behavior of the generation and shape the future of the organization. The key to organizational success is to integrate the next generation of leaders, tap into their way of looking at the world, solving problems in a very collaborative working style. To effectively respond to digital dynamics. It is time to reinforce digital thinking in the boardroom by breaking down silo mentality, pre-conceptual bias or bureaucracy. The BoDs must begin thinking about ways with strategic planning to broaden their ecosystem viewpoint by capturing emerging trends, monitoring digital performance, and setting tones for digital transformation. In addition to the set point changing, the ecosystem perspective as the digital shaper allows the organization to explore digital in all directions, grow the company as a living thing, and perceive the business through multidimensional lens such as the lenses of information technology, sociology, psychology, the economics of education, the anthropology of cultures, economics, organizational and communication sciences, poetical science.

Reinforce digital principles: You cannot make a true digital paradigm shift without breaking some old rules, and reinforce the digital principles. The board of directors plays a critical role in setting policies and principles for changes and digital transformation, accelerate business performance, and improving organizational maturity. Digital principles and rules are statements of belief that reflect the values, culture and real-world concerns of the organization. They normally have a longer shelf life than objectives, strategies, etc Overcoming complication and managing complexity become one of the biggest challenges in business today. The digital principles as a compass will guide all levels of the organization to operate more as the human body operates with the cells (employees) and organs (functions) of the organization, being able to make a decision in a very organic relationship with its dynamic environment. By following the digital principles and rules, the business lifecycle could be viewed as resulting in emergent means of reorganizing, refocusing, rebalancing resources, and redirecting people to understand the whole, in terms of its inner processes, its interactions with external systems, its components, the specific interaction among them, etc, to ultimately achieve the seamless digital flow and high-level digital maturity.

Reinforce “lessons learned”: Digitalization represents the next stage of business maturity, which is not only about technical excellence or process efficiency but also about being able to get all the way around the task and rethink the alternative ways to solve today’s complex problems. Board directors are seasoned executives who can provide invaluable insight based on their enriched experience and reinforce “lesson learned.” Digital transformation cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished, it has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the digital organization. Learn from the past problems and challenges along with encouraging others to learn from the problems that have happened. Also, they can contribute to the unique viewpoint as the business outlier because they don’t evolve in the everyday business. Keep in mind though, your windshield is larger than your rearview mirror for a reason. Sometimes looking at the past too long or too much inhibits looking forward and make the progress. This is particularly important for the senior leadership team such as BoDs. Any lessons learned are helpful in future progress. However, when experience saturates your mind, you are not open to understanding beyond what you’ve already known, such an experience trap will make your knowledge stale and stifle innovation. It’s always important to develop the next set of practices for fitting your organization's circumstance and growth needs. Organizations strive to adopt the"best practices" for digitalization throughout their organization, they also need to explore the next practices for riding change curves and reaching the next level of business maturity.

Digital organizations are complex systems that are dynamic, self-evolving, and self-perpetuating. Thus, the directorship in any organization must be able to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate. They should be able to see further and perceive better than others in order to steer the business on the thorny journey of the digital paradigm shift. Sharpening “directorship” and reinforcing digitalization are imperative for setting the top leadership tone to make a seamless digital paradigm shift.

Read More

Gaining Insightful Understanding of Digital Characteristics

In today's global economy, that will need a new model of leadership in which openness, innovation, flexibility, transparency, science, and connectivity become necessary features.

The digital organization is a complex ecosystem with the blurring line between functions, organizations, and geographic locations. The forward-looking view of the organization is to determine what the future needs to look like, what the digitalization must look like, and how digital leaders can navigate digital new normal and thrive in the exponential digital era. How insightful digital leaders understand the digital characteristics and how skillful digital leaders swim in the rough sea of information will decide their leadership effectiveness and maturity.

Uncertainty and unpredictability: Digitalization means rapid change, with an unprecedented level of uncertainty, unrepeatability, and unpredictability. Uncertainty is essentially a lack or void in the current knowledge base. We cannot predict anything beforehand but can imagine with many experiences involved in current or in the past. There's nothing to be done about uncontrollable situation although a good plan can identify the external factors, and the good process can enable a company to work around the externals. Thus, leadership plays an important role in dealing with uncertainty. If you can plan beyond the first point of uncertainty in a project, if you cannot see past that point, but admit to this helps to reduce the risk of uncertainty. It’s also important for the leadership team to mitigate the impact of uncertainty or risk by enabling a team to encounter uncertainty and deal with them strategically and systematically. The approach to deal with uncertainty and unpredictability also include planning in a short time and take incremental effort, allowing the acquisition of new information along the way. In the past, many business leaders believed their organizations’ long-term goals could wait until they had dealt with the current crisis. In the current business environment, this is no longer the case. Business leaders couldn’t predict the future with a certain degree of accuracy, but the rate of change has accelerated, indicating that business leaders must learn how to strike a balance between managing complex issues today and predicting the uncertain issues of tomorrow.

Interdisciplinarity & nonlinearity: The hyperconnectivity nature of digital breaks down the functional, geographical, or even organizational border, businesses today become much more nonlinear, interconnected and interdependent than ever. Human society gets more and more complex, the very natural attempt of humans to take the very powerful techniques of mathematics, such as techniques of linear mathematics or logic and apply it to the world very quickly come up against insurmountable difficulties for managing today's dynamic digital business. Applying interdisciplinary management to gain an understanding of nonlinearity as the very characteristic of the digital organization and business ecosystem could be at the tipping point for the digital paradigm shift. It means that the radical shift from a silo and linear classic management style to holistic and nonlinear management discipline. There are two important things that will be important in interdisciplinary management. First, it is gaining the knowledge necessary to understand and manage holistic digital ecosystems. Secondly, it is to understand how the people factor affects the business system, and then managing the complex system and the people of the complex system. The digital organization as a whole has to function more holistically and coherently in order to achieve high-performance business results.

Ambiguity and risk: Imagine the complexity that comes in due to the characteristics such as, less structure, fewer rules and regulations, diversification, ambiguity, unpredictability, lack of linearity and increased flux. Ambiguity is the dissonance between ideas, and it’s the haziness of reality, the potential for misreads, the mixed meanings of conditions, or cause-and-effect confusion. Ambiguity can be understood as being similar to business ‘risk,’ a term used to describe a circumstance in which an investment is made, but the outcome is uncertain. The value of managing ambiguity and risk could be in better management decisions, improved operations, greater resilience, improved reputation, as well as increased confidence in management, etc. So programs carried out in the field should be able to achieve highly tangible benefit. Leadership, strategic planning, and process play a role in reducing risk and dealing with ambiguity. It also requires cross-functional collaboration and interdisciplinary knowledge sharing to overcome the challenge.

Everything is interconnected and the business ecosystem becomes more interdependent and dynamic than ever. The exponential growth of information and the increasing pace of changes also create characteristics such as uncertainty, volatility, complexity, unpredictability, and ambiguity. In today's global economy, that will need a new model of leadership in which openness, innovation, flexibility, transparency, science, and connectivity become necessary features. To thrive in the exponential digital era, digital leaders must see possibilities before others, and they can also tackle great challenges with grand consequences over long time spans.

Read More

The Popular Change Quotes of “Digital Master” Series V 2018

With change as the new normal, people’s intelligence is tested by their changeability and their quality is proved by their changeability.

"Digital Master” is the series of guidebooks (25+ books) is to perceive the multifaceted impact digital is making to the business and our society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the digital journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” Here is the set of popular quotes about change and change management.

Change Insight: Change as an Ongoing Capability to Fuel Digital Transformation by Pearl Zhu

With change as the new normal, people’s intelligence is tested by their changeability and their quality is proved by their changeability.

― Pearl Zhu, Change Insight: Change as an Ongoing Capability to Fuel Digital Transformation


Do not get stuck at the crossroad; keep building the “changeability.”

― Pearl Zhu, Change Insight: Change as an Ongoing Capability to Fuel Digital Transformation

It is nevertheless true that the change itself has become unpredictable and evolutionary, as compared to treading through carefully.

― Pearl Zhu, Change Insight: Change as an Ongoing Capability to Fuel Digital Transformation

Create and nurture an environment in the organization where curiosity is encouraged, humility is appreciated, creative thinking is recognized, and the calculated risk is tolerant.

― Pearl Zhu, Change Insight: Change as an Ongoing Capability to Fuel Digital Transformation

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

― Pearl Zhu, Change Insight: Change as an Ongoing Capability to Fuel Digital Transformation

“With proactive support and full engagement of top leaders, Change Management can become an enjoyable voyage to discover the new landscape of businesses.”

― Pearl Zhu, Change Insight: Change as an Ongoing Capability to Fuel Digital Transformation

“For humans to move to higher ground, we must have different views, but share the common ground as well.”

― Pearl Zhu, Change Insight: Change as an Ongoing Capability to Fuel Digital Transformation

“Mindset is the “software,” and software is eating the world. Deal with changes at the mindset level.”

― Pearl Zhu, Change Insight: Change as an Ongoing Capability to Fuel Digital Transformation

The value of an individual is measured based on productivity, creativity, and contribution to the organization today and tomorrow.

― Pearl Zhu, Change Insight: Change as an Ongoing Capability to Fuel Digital Transformation

Read More

The Monthly “Performance Master’ Book Tuning: Multidimensional Performance and Measurement Oct. 2018

Performance metrics are numbers in context, results are related to your strategic goals.
Corporate Performance Management is a management control from strategy till shop floor. "If you can't measure, you can't manage," legendary management guru Peter Drucker once asserted. Managing performance means understanding results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to ensure it happens. It takes multifaceted approaches from multidimensional perspectives to unlock digital performance and catalyze change.

 

          
Multidimensional Performance and Measurement

Three Dimensional Performance Measurement Performance management should take a multidimensional approach, to connect all important dots, with multifaceted perspectives. Hyper-connectivity and interdependence are the digital characteristics, it is important to understand that digital business development and transformation is the paradigm shift which takes multi-viewpoints, multi-discipline, and multi-stage approach.

Five Aspects to Unlock Digital Performance? Performance Management a holistic management discipline which needs to connect many relevant dots to involve development, enablement, and enhancement. Enterprise Performance Management is a multidisciplinary management discipline. It is critical because new competitive challenges and active market changes underscore the strategic imperative of managing performance more than ever.

Assessing IT Performance vis Multidimensional Lenses 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, such as optimize processes, or improve productivity. The various activities needed to manage performance— STRATEGIC and OPERATIONAL plans, innovation METRICS, day-to-day decisions.

The Performance Quadrants of Running the Digital Organization? Performance metrics are numbers in context, results are related to your strategic goals. Forward-looking organizations are on the journey of digital transformation. Digitalization is not a single dimensional effort to using the cool digital technologies, but a multi-dimensional pursuit to embed digital into the very fabric of the business, and run a high-effective, high-responsive, and high mature digital organization.

Three Metrics and Measurement Aspects of Shaping IT as the Growth Engine of the Digital Business? Forward-looking IT organizations re-invent themselves from a cost center to the revenue generator. A measurement system is a necessary foundation for making continuous improvement and building a strong IT value proposition. However, the fact is that many IT organizations are not even trying to address measuring their value to the business as they simply have not employed the methodologies to enable it. The good metrics can help you get some objective perspectives on what you are trying to manage, but they need to be crafted and interpreted well. Here are three aspects of metrics and measurement management to keep IT on the right track of becoming the growth engine of the digital business.

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.7 million page views with about #5000 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. 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.

The "Performance Master" Book Amazon Order Link

The "Performance Master" Book B&N Order Link

The "Performance Master" Book Introduction Slideshare

The "Performance Master" Book Preview

The "Performance Master" Book Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 1 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 2 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 3 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 4 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Chapter 5 Introduction

The "Performance Master" Book Conclusion

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection I

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection II

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection III

Read More

The CIO as the Digital Solutionist: How to Take the Logical Scenario for Problem-Solving

Keep in mind, problem-solving is about seeing a problem and actually finding a solution to that problem, not just the band-aid approach to fixing the symptom.

Problem-solving is about seeing a problem and actually finding a solution to that problem. Imagine the digital dynamic that comes in due to these characteristics (less or hybrid structure, fewer rules, and regulations, diversification, ambiguity, unpredictability, nonlinearity, increased flux, and unprecedented digital convenience working and impacting together), business problems become more complex and intricated nowadays. CIOs need to have a strong business orientation and the ability to leverage IT for solving business issues innovatively. Digital CIOs are business solutionists who should apply interdisciplinary knowledge, practice expert power and take the following logical scenario for solving complex business problems and improve IT value proposition.

What is the problem? Assessing and defining the problems is usually more important than solving the problem, It is fundamental but critical to figure out what is exactly the problem. Generally speaking, a problem is a difference between an expectation (vision or intention) and the actual situation (current reality) coupled with a negative feeling. More specifically, the business management should determine why problems happened; how problems escalated; which areas of the organization were affected; and why the problem started. The logical scenario to diagnose the problem include: Identify the problem, what is exactly wrong, out of balance, inefficiency, etc. Any problem depends on your perspective. Thus, ask for others’ feedback in what they believe the problem to be but also be prepared to hear something you might not like or agree with. Seeing the context you are part of, allows you to understand the problem with context, identify the leverage points of the systems and then, choose the decisive factors. Embracing the multidimensional viewpoints means that digital CIOs are skeptical about conventional understanding of issues so that they examine everything before accepting it for the real truth or advising it to others. Besides applying critical thinking to assess the real issue, it’s also helpful for leveraging Systems Thinking to identify multiple, perhaps interconnected problems, so later the business can figure out the holistic solution to fix them without too much side effect.

What are the root causes of the problem? Statistically, around 20 percent of IT problems are caused by technologies, 40 percent are caused by people and 40 percent of them are caused by processes. In practice, it’s imperative to dig into the root cause of the problem. Because trying to fix the wrong cause of a problem will waste time and resources, increase anxiety, decrease productivity, and even worse, cause more problems later on. Until the underlying problem is addressed, the symptom or result will continue to return. CIOs are in a better position to oversee the underlying business processes and gain the contextual understanding of key business issues and diagnose the real root cause underneath the symptoms. In reality, people have a tendency to try to fix a symptom which results from the actual cause of the problem. When they do this, they allow problems to grow under the surface, out of sight, out of mind, until it’s too late. Thus, it’s important to leverage five WHYs or other critical thinking and analytics techniques to discover the real cause and address it. CIOs need to listen to a wide range of opinions and multidimensional viewpoints in order to make sound judgments based on unbiased fact, make a deep analysis, take the identification of the facts and root cause and mold into a solution based on the objectives and other extenuating circumstances.

What are alternative solutions: When you encounter a tough problem, often you need to solve it in a creative way. Creative problem-solving starts with creative communication and set alternative choices. 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. Both creative and critical thinkers live out of the box, ask open questions to collect relevant information, and think alternatives. Do not get trapped in the same old box when trying to figure out the solution. Understand the situation, understand the people working with you as well as the people receiving the "solution," understand expectations from each group involved, understand motivation drivers, understand how different perspective is integrated into the solution. Otherwise, even you have a good intention and work hard to fix the issues, but perhaps cause more serious issues later on. From business management lens, companies should always explore the alternative organizational structures, alternative recruiting pipelines, alternative communication channels, and alternative ways to solve either emerging issues or existing organizational challenges.

What’s the best way to solve the problem? Evaluating which alternatives might work better than others - that is the realm of logical analysis within systems understanding. If you have to make the best decisions you can, take a structural way to make inquiries, a sound process to identify and prioritize alternative solutions, and test every assumption if possible. Encourage learning but also be practical. Make a better choice and have the gut to admit when a mid-course correction is in order. Instead of action-reaction, creativity is often the secret sauce for problem-solving by assessing what is your current situation and what is your fundamental choice. If you try to impose solutions or structures that are too far ahead of the curve, the result is alienation and rebellion rather than problem-solving. A healthy process for problem-solving goes between flexibility and hard process, with the ultimate goal for effective problem-solving, to make a smooth transition from pursuing the perfect solution which perhaps does not exist to making continuous adjustment and improvement.

How to keep track of results? Besides defining and solving problems, building transparent problem-solving processes should also include measuring the achieved business results. 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. Effective measurement enables improving problem-solve effectiveness. Taking a systematic approach to measurement can avoid blind-spots in problem-solving, having the appropriate performance indicators is very important. And acting on what those indicators are telling you is vital to sustaining and improving problem-solving capability at the business level. 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. 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 and efficiency.

Problem-solving is both art and science. Keep in mind, problem-solving is about seeing a problem and actually finding a solution to that problem, not just the band-aid approach to fixing the symptom. The problem-solving thought process and practices will not be simple for many of today’s complex issues or vexing problems. Thus, it’s important to take a logical scenario for solving them systematically, holistically, and creatively.

Read More