The Best “Intelligence” Quotes of “Digital Master” Aug. 2019

 Intelligence is a fundamental building block in making effective decisions. Intelligence is the capacity to understand and apply wisdom to the knowledge you are exposed to.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + 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.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Intelligence” quotes in “Digital Master."

1 Intelligence has been defined in many different ways such as in terms of one's capacity for logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, emotional excellence, knowledge, memory, planning, creativity and problem-solving.

2 Intelligence is goal- directed and purposeful, that means all intelligent activities are planned to reach a self-determined goal.

3 Intelligence is a fundamental building block in making effective decisions. Intelligence is the capacity to understand and apply wisdom to the knowledge you are exposed to.

4 There are as many different ways to characterize intelligence as there are different types and forms of information implying on our senses.

5 The people with what being referred as highly intelligent have a strong aptitude to understand the "complexity" of the given problem. Some people get the whole picture as opposed to others that can't seem to get a grasp on the problem.

6 Intelligence is the ability to break any complex thought or problem to the most rudimentary parts whereas they either can be acted on or dismissed.

7 The intelligent things may not always be complex, but a critical level of complexity is required for intelligence to appear.

8 An intellectual mind is contextual. Whether someone is "intelligent" or not depends entirely on what you are asking them to accomplish with their brain.

9 Either individual or business, contemporary intelligence is contextual and multidimensional. It goes beyond IQ and EQ only, there are strategic intelligence, creative intelligence, decision intelligence, judgmental intelligence, paradoxical intelligence, social intelligence, etc.

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Leverage Digital Framework to Address Business Perspectives and Practicalities

The digital framework provides guidelines, checklists, standards, processes, tools and building blocks, do & don't practices, to address diverse business perspectives and practicalities.

The digital world is so information-intensive and the digital transformation is multidimensional. A solid framework is needed to address the mechanics of getting the work done and varying business factors associated with the digital paradigm shift that must take place within the organization at all levels. The framework enables the organization exploring the digital way to run the business by providing the following perspectives and practicalities.

Imply structured processes or methodologies, roles, and rules, standards, definitions both from a business and technical perspective: Due to the increasing pace of change, the exponential growth of information and continuous disruptions, digital businesses are like the complex system which needs to be elaborated in a well-organized effort to enable emergent business changes in its own behavior, functions, and structure. The digital transformation goes beyond applying the latest technologies, it’s a multidimensional business expansion and multifaceted management discipline. A well-developed digital management framework helps the business take a structural approach with all important business elements such as principles, processes, methods, rules, roles, etc, to intersect and interact with its digital ecosystem, facilitate a structural strategic planning process and a healthy management cycle to benchmark business operations, as well as improve the overall management maturity.

Add value for implementations of the patterns to avoid having to reinvent the wheel: The businesses as systems don’t exist independently and that there are interactions between systems such as system overlaps and real in-and output dependencies. To put simply, the digital organization is the system. System = Pattern; or the systematic view of Information Technology. A well-developed framework adds value for implementations of patterns; while pattern language helps you understand the framework. If you look at patterns, you will find that they are containers for articulating relationships. It helps to figure out better solutions by peeling back the layers to find the root causes and address the issues systematically without reinventing the wheel all the time. Thus, it’s important for business management to tie pattern thinking and systems thinking together and apply the transformation framework to either solve business problems, manage innovation or lead digital transformation.

Harnesses cross-functional communication: Digital means the increasing speed of changes, exponential growth of information, shortened knowledge cycle, as well as multi-generational and multicultural digital workforce. It’s a mix of order and chaos, innovation and standardization, growth and stability, learning and action, etc. A well-developed framework helps to reduce business tensions, frictions, and conflicts that arise to enforce trustful business communication, relationship-building, and collaboration. Define and implement frameworks which can articulate the big why behind business initiative clearly, and explain the strategic rationale behind the business venture. Digital adaptation is faster if made with the full involvement of people in organizational change by leveraging an effective digital management framework, powerful communication platforms, channels, tools, and a feedback mechanism.

Manages a portfolio of relevant cross-border business competencies: Developing a unique set of core business competencies is a strategic imperative to build an ultra-modern digital organization. The right set of scalable, coherent, and impactful capabilities directly contribute to business quick win and long-term winning proposition. A fine-tuned digital management platform enables systematic changes, develop core business competencies, and produce business results that are reliable, repeatable and fully distinguishable. With a well-designed framework, the business can re-purpose well-designed systems and components for change purpose, to ensure that change can be accomplished timely and consistently. The underlying structures and processes are dynamic and flexible and the business capabilities can be recombined and integrated without reinventing the wheel to expedite strategy execution cycle.

Embed digital cultures into the very fabric of the business: It is important to note that within the organizations, the large business transformation is a team effort, often across multiple organizational silos. Each function is not a silo by itself and it draws its energy from within the organization. Thus, a well-designed framework helps to set underlying rules, fine-tune organizational structures, and put the right business culture elements such as beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors together to nurture a creative business environment and embed digital cultures into the very fabric of the business. A high mature digital organization is usually outward-looking rather than insular, it’s critical to leverage a framework approach for incorporating multiple and diverse components such as value, trust, communication, collaboration, simplicity, adaptability, and continuous improvement, etc, into the business culture cross functional disciplines and embed change management mechanism into the corporate DNA.

The digital framework provides guidelines, checklists, standards, processes, tools and building blocks, do & don't practices, to address diverse business perspectives and practicalities, define or develop business competencies, to manage a high-performance digital organization. The broader you can oversee and the deeper you can perceive the holistic digital impact, the further you can reach the digital vision and the pinnacle of digital transformation.

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The Monthly “Principles & Practices" Summary: Setting Principles to Drive Digital Transformation Aug. 2019

Digital transformation is rarely a straight line. It is all about interaction, incrementalism, and innovation.

A well-defined set of digital rules are not for limiting innovation, but for setting the frame of relevance and guide through changes and digital transformation. The purpose of “100 Digital Rules: Setting Guidelines to Explore Digital New Normal “ is to establish digital principles and update business policies that can be applied holistically and guide the digital transformation systematically. Here is a set of digital principles to drive digital transformation.

         Setting Principles to Drive Digital Transformation 

Setting Digital Rules to Guide Digital Transformation Digital transformation is rarely a straight line. It is all about interaction, incrementalism, and innovation. The journey is far more important than the destination. Digital organizations have to adapt to the continuous changes and are able to follow digital principles, revise business rules, reconfigure organizational structures and change their own behaviors for its adaptation to environmental changes and business dynamic, to get digital ready.

Three Principles to Practice Expertise Power Power has many different formats; some visible, some invisible; some are earned, some are given; some are delightful, some are intimidating. There are three powers either as visible or invisible hands in an organization: Structural power (the position with the organizational hierarchy), expert power (business and technical knowledge), and connection power. Due to the exponential growth of information and the shorten knowledge cycle, expert power is perhaps more powerful than other types of powers in the digital era because the brainpower can stimulate all kinds of creativity; and the knowledge power is the key for any sort of human progress. Here are three digital principles to practice expert power effectively.

Applying Strategic Thinking Principles to Drive Digital Transformation In the digital era, any business can be at risk for survival at any minute due to continuous digital disruptions and change as the new normal with a faster pace and broader spectrum. Digital leaders and professionals must be comfortable with “VUCA” reality, apply strategic thinking principles to broaden their outlook, envision the bigger picture, keep the end in mind in order to drive digital transformation in a structural way.

Three Measurement Principles to Accelerate Stellar Business Performance? Enterprise Performance management is a holistic management discipline involving development, enablement, and enhancement. One of the biggest pitfalls for performance measurement is about measuring the “part” with ignorance of the “whole.” Thus, outcome-based measurement practices are important to focus on the performance of the entire organization by taking a multidimensional approach to connect all important dots with multifaceted perspectives. In practice, the more meaningful and important things you want to assess, the harder it is to measure objectively. Here are three measurement principles to accelerate steller business performance.

Setting Digital Principles to Guide Through Digital Transformation Credo is a Latin word that means "a set of fundamental beliefs or a guiding principle." For a company, a credo is a set of well-defined principles based on its management philosophy. Principles are general rules and guidelines, intended to be enduring and seldom amended. Philosophy is the history of ideas and an ongoing inquiry into the nature of things based on abstract reasoning rather than empirical method. Digital means flow; digital organizations have to adapt to the continuous changes and business dynamic to get digital ready. The challenge is to prioritize what you know about and keep an eye open for signs of things you don't know about. Therefore, it is important to develop your own company tailored credos to inspire change mentality, motivate positive attitude and good behaviors, and to generate winning concepts for digital transformation on a consistent basis.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #5900th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 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. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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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The Best “Right & Wrong” Quotes of “Digital Master” Aug. 2019

A sound judgment about right and wrong based on whether it is an absolute right and wrong, or is it a continuum of more right or more wrong in comparison to the alternatives.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + 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.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Right & Wrong” quotes in “Digital Master."

1 Sometimes right and wrong mean correct and incorrect; sometimes they mean accurate or inaccurate; sometimes they mean morally/ethically good or bad.

2 People always look at the world the way as to how they want it to be, so anything that is not matching their way of looking at the outer world, they consider it as wrong.

3 Philosophically, there isn't always a right or wrong choice in any situation and there are a lot of grays.

4 There is nothing called right. But then, the impact of our deeds is spread across primordial cycles of cause and effect, often, coming back to us beyond the boundaries of our memories.

5 Sometimes there is an obvious right or wrong solution to a problem which you have. But when someone else looks at the problem from their perspective, they may come up with different ideas as to what is right or wrong.

6 The problem of questionable RIGHT or WRONG comes when they are based on beliefs, which are developed by human thinking.

7 A sound judgment about right and wrong based on whether it is an absolute right and wrong, or is it a continuum of more right or more wrong in comparison to the alternatives.

8 Most of the people have been using the words right and wrong in the moral/ethical sense. In that sense, some human actions are objectively and absolutely right or wrong. Other human actions are either subjectively right or wrong or relatively right or wrong.

9 Ask yourself whether there is an objective truth to some actions where we can say they are right or wrong, regardless of public opinion, laws, culture, etc, and whether there is a subjective truth to somewhere they are right or wrong depending on how society defines them.

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It Takes Innovation to Measure Innovation Performance

Innovation is neither a serendipity nor a pre-described management practice.

Innovation is about making differentiation. Forward-looking companies will spend more resources on innovation investment and take a scientific approach to decode innovation serendipity. Innovation as a management process needs to be measured for making continuous improvement in order to reap the fruit for gaining long term advantage. Innovation measurement is challenging, it takes innovation to measure innovation performance.

Measurements provide necessary feedback: You can only manage what you measure, there is no exception for innovation management. Organizations usually look for KPIs measuring business value generated by innovation effort. Innovation measurements provide necessary feedback which helps the business keep improving the innovation process or drive early success to create a positive spiral. Thus, metrics management is a critical component of innovation management. It’s important to select a right set of KPIs by deciding which are seen as critical to make the trackable progress. The fewer, the better, but they have to be credible and relevant in the eyes of the stakeholders. Because metrics are part of transparent visual management allowing the business pulling resources and assets together for orchestrating an innovation symphony and delivering better business results. More specifically, innovation performance of the company depends on the quality and quantity of ideas entering the “innovation pipeline,” how well it can convert them into desired output, propositions, or process improvement, etc, with measurable business benefit.

What gets measured, gets managed: Choose the right metrics by deciding which are seen as critical to making progress in order to deliver better innovation performance. The innovation measurement should be oriented to justify innovation that the organization needs. The innovation management selects KPIs by deciding which are seen as critical to make the true progress. Unfortunately, most innovation indicators are flawed and present limitations. The well-selected measurements help to clarify some critical issues such as the revenue generated by innovations launched in a certain time frame; what’s the tangible value have innovative products/services/processes/business models brought to customers, or the causes of some innovation failures, etc. Metrics are not the end-all solutions to management, but simply another set of tools, data, and information sets to help the business make continuous improvement.

Set guidelines for developing customized innovation metrics: Do not measure innovation only based on lagging indicators such as short-term financial metrics only. The goal of innovation measurement is to keep track of innovation management effectiveness, not just about the quantitative data which sometimes can mislead the management with a short-term perspective. Select the right leading KPIs by deciding which are seen as critical to deliver either direct or indirect business results such as improving revenue growth, nurturing a culture of innovation, or building strong innovation competency. Just measure those business results objectively and effectively. Also, innovation metrics can help you get some objective perspectives on what you are trying to manage, but they need to be crafted and interpreted well.

Innovation is neither a serendipity nor a pre-described management practice. It involves experimentation, trial, error, systematic analysis, applying structured methods or tools, reviews, and performance measurement, etc. Without a positive culture of innovation, measuring of innovation is nothing! It takes innovation to measure innovation performance. So keep the measures simple and understandable.

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The Monthly “12 CIO Personas” Book Turning: CIO as “Chief Improvement Officer” - How to Improve IT Maturity Aug. 2019

The digital CIOs have to wear different colors of hats and master multiple leadership personas and management roles effortlessly.

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. The important thing is that CIOs as the top leadership role must have a strong mindset, a unique personality, and a clear idea of what needs to be done, yet creative enough to not hold the company back from growth. Regardless of which personality they have, digital CIOs need to be both transformational and situational, innovative and tactical, business savvy and technology insightful, communication-effective and operation-efficient. Here is a set of blogs to brainstorm CIOs as “Chief Improvement Officer.”

CIOs as “Chief Improvement Officer” - How to Improve
IT Maturity

CIO as Chief Improvement Officer The “I” in the CIO title is full of imagination; the "Chief Improvement Officer" is a right fit for the modern CIO role. CIOs need to have unique business insight, technological vision to understand the business not only from the inside-out viewpoint but through outside-in customer’s lens. With that knowledge, CIOs can drive innovation to improve the hard business process and soft organizational culture by implementing the technical solution and improve IT and overall business agility and maturity.

Make Radical Shift to Improve IT Organizational Maturity Information Technology is permeating into every corner of the organization and continues to grow in importance to the company across the vertical sectors. The increasing speed of change forces IT leaders to get really creative on how they architect and implement change, make broader, deeper, and bolder impact, and ensure that IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next, in order to drive change and lead the digital paradigm shift seamlessly.

Five “Missing-Links” to Stop IT from Reaching Next Level of Maturity Nowadays, information and technology become the creative disrupter to business growth and industry evolution. IT is no longer just an enabler of the business strategy, but becomes an integral part of the strategy. However, in many companies across industrial sectors, IT is still perceived as an isolated support function and reactive service provider. How to identify and strengthen those missing links in order to run a high mature digital IT organization?

Setting High Standard to Run High Mature Digital IT Organization Organizations across the industrial sectors are relying more on information technology, IT organization has more to overcome. It’s simply not sufficient to run IT as a support function only. IT can provide the business ability to explore new business models by knitting all important components seamlessly or delight customers by providing them with digital options. IT organizations can bring up business benefit by mixing diverse business elements to create great products, services, or processes which generate differentiated value for the long-term growth of the business. It’s time to set a high standard to run high mature digital IT organization.

Five Characteristics of IT Maturity Compared to the considerably static industrial age, the digital environment is complex, uncertain, unpredictable and unrepetitive. Organizations rely more and more on technology, and IT needs will only expand. Thus, the CIO’s ability to build fundamental business competency is now greater than ever. How well an IT organization can adapt to the dynamic environment directly affects the future of the business. IT maturity is proportional to overall business maturity. IT touches both hard business processes and soft human behavior. Here are five characteristics of IT maturity.

Modern organizations have their own sophistication with silo functions, the sea of information, and the pool of talent. The CIO is an inherently cross-functional role, to bridge the business and IT; the data and insight, the business’s today and tomorrow. The digital CIOs have to wear different personas and master multiple leadership and management roles effortlessly. They need to lead at the strategic level for conducting a complex digital orchestra; they should be handy managers to plumbing information and keep it flow smoothly; they also have to be like the diligent gardeners, to build a unique IT landscape via tuning technology, removing waste, nurturing culture, and empowering people.

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The Best “Attitude” Quotes of “Digital Master” Aug. 2019

Digital attitudes are about curiosity and humility. Being experimental and persistent.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + 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.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Attitude” quotes in “Digital Master."

1 Attitude is the compilation and quality of thought transposed to the brain of its personality and mindset, which is moving through human existence.

2 Attitude manifests itself through one's behavior. It can be changed for sure only if one is willing to accept and give 100 percent to changing oneself.

3 Attitude is a vibration...a frequency our human personality carries within it that it exudes around and then affects the world outside through the frequency of this vibration.

4 Attitude is a way of thinking and a way of looking at the problem. Attitude manifests itself through one's behavior.

5 The differentiator between a digital leader/professional and a laggard is not about the title and authority, more about the digital mindsets and attitude: the intellectual curiosity, risk tolerance, persistence, creativity, learning agility, humility. Etc.

6 We all try to 'close' the system, so to say, to reduce its complexity. But the adaptive attitude is to manage its complexity via agility enhancement.

7 Digital attitudes are about curiosity and humility. Being experimental and persistent.

8 Professional competency is built through both attitude and aptitude. Competency is related to the performance and the outcome.

9 With overwhelming information and abundance of knowledge, one of the true tests of a professional is to know when you don't know, cultivate healthy digital attitudes to practice a profession and improve professional quality.

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Five Pillars of Organizational Maturity

At the heart of digital, it is people and how to build a customer-centric organization. 

Today’s business world is dynamic, volatile, uncertain, and hyper-competitive. Every business is different, they are at a varying stage of its business life cycle and different level of organizational maturity. Many companies may be in business for many years but has not matured its management disciplines. But surviving and thriving in today’s business dynamic requires structural flexibility, cross-functional collaboration, inter-relational process to reduce business fricitions and deal with conflicts or disruptions that arise, to shape a people-centric organization from functioning to delight. Here are five pillars of organizational maturity. 

Leadership maturity: Many say the spirit of the organization comes from the top. Due to the speed of changes and abundance of information, leadership in itself is a constant learning process that requires leaders to have open and growth mindset, humble attitude, gain a great understanding of people and group dynamics, share insight and build experience. Due to the complexity and ever-changing business dynamic, sound judgment is a hardcore leadership competency which often does not come from “gut feeling,” but based on growth mindset, updated information, solid knowledge, and contextual understanding. High mature leadership is one of the strong pillars to build a high mature digital organization. More specifically, the maturity of digital leadership depends on a number of factors such as the purpose to lead, leadership intelligence, emotional intelligence, confidence but not arrogance, the mix of knowledge and experience, the quality of information they receive and their collective leadership ability to accelerate business performance and improve organizational maturity.

Innovation competency: Innovation is the most wanted changes, innovation competency is one of the solid pillars to build high mature digital organization and the key differentiator between the digital leader and the follower. Innovation can happen anywhere across the organization and its ecosystem. To develop the organizational level innovation competency, it’s important to build a powerful innovation navigation system that involves tapping the organization's ecosystem for capturing opportunities to innovate, develop tailored innovation principles, methodologies, practices, and manage a balanced portfolio of innovations across the matrix of different types of innovation (process, product/service, business model, etc) and different degrees of innovation (incremental, substantial, breakthrough) A leading digital organization with innovation competency can handle innovation streams for different goals and different time frames, create new value, even become a game changer, position a strong business brand, and reach the next level of organizational maturity.

Operational excellence: Achieving operational excellence is fundamental to build a high mature business. It’s challenging because business management needs to ensure they have enough resources and necessary skills to implement the business strategy; the risks and assumptions are understood and manageable. It’s also important to keep trimming wastes and redundancy, set priority to bring transparency and keep optimizing business structures and processes. “Keeping it Simple” should always be one of the guiding principles and management cultures for running digital organization to achieve operational excellence. It requires some kind of re-tuning corporate processes and re-combining the business capabilities into differentiated business competencies. When the business operation is refined to the point that they are nimble, can adapt to changing business demands in a timely fashion, the organization reaches the inflection point to achieve high-level business maturity.

Information Technology Synchronization: Information is one of the most invaluable assets besides people in modern businesses and technology is the driving force of digital transformation. The power of information is to empower the business with real-time insight across the organization in ways never possible before. Inconsistent or broken business processes result in significant information inconsistencies and business deceleration. Thus, IT is one of the strong pillars for building a high mature digital organizations. The real-time information can bring business insight and foresight, enable organizations to see the future clearly; the emerging digital technologies significantly improve business productivity, efficiency, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction. Information Technology synchronization is the prerequisite to run a real-time, high-mature digital organization. The insight-driven digital powerhouse can create the business synchronization of all functions running at the multiple levels of the organization seamlessly. It provides the quality of information for effective decision-making and high business responsiveness and adaptability.

Workforce proficiency: Organizations are complex adaptive living systems, which are comprised, in part, of people. People-centricity is one of the most important digital characteristics. Workforce proficiency is a strong pillar of building a high mature digital organization. In an ideal digital workplace, talented people are encouraged to learn, grow, and prosper by continually learning, innovating, evolving and adopting. Whenever people feel respected and needed in an organization, they are highly engaged in their work, encouraged to participate in creative activities, motivated to change, and contribute to achieving strategic business goals, It’s also important to bridge the gap between knowledge and insight, to ensure digital leaders and professionals can make information-based decisions and reach the state of knowledge proficiency collectively. Psychology, sociology, technology, anthropology, and philosophy, etc interdisciplinarity must be applied for improving talent management effectiveness and maturity.

At the heart of digital, it is people and how to build a customer-centric organization. Organizations today need to build dynamic business competencies and develop solid pillars to shape a high mature business which is sophisticated for complex problem-solving, adaptive to rapid change, innovative to create unique business value, flexible to provide alternative solutions, energetic to perpetuate business improvement, and resilient to fail over and fail forward.

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The Monthly “Digital Hybridity” Book Tuning: The Hybrid Models of Going Digital Aug. 2019

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.

 

TDigital 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.
he purpose of the book “

The Hybrid Models of Going Digital

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, 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.

Improve Digital Maturity by Pursuing “Hybrid Truth” Digital organizations are all about information savvy, adaptation, innovation, people-centricity, high-performance, and speed. They are expanding both horizontally and vertically. The high mature digital organizations are highly conscious about what’s happening in their environment, take a holistic understanding of relationships between parts and the whole, strike the right balance and leverage the pairs of business factors for pursuing the “hybrid truth,” to improve the overall organizational digital maturity.

The Hybrid Digital Management Disciplines The digital paradigm has many dimensions, it is like solving 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.

Digital Workforce Hybridity As our digitized world becomes hyper-connected, over-complex and interdependent, digital system themes with all the aggregates-spanning business challenges, paradoxes and opportunities bring organizations further towards the challenges of constructing and enacting "hybrid realities" across individuals, teams, looser groups, organizations, network-enterprises, and holistic digital ecosystems. The digital paradigm that is emerging is the sociological organization which is alive, holistic, vibrant, energetic, responsive, fluid, innovative and resilient with hybridity of knowledge, processes, workforce, and competencies.

Three Aspects of Running a Hybrid IT and Digital Organization We live in the world with both “old” and “new,” embracing digital is inevitable as that is now part of the reality. In order to lead change and drive digital transformation, IT should combine the old way to do things, and the new way to explore, the next practices and the best practices, take the balance of traditional hierarchy and flatter structure; keep the lights on,” and “doing more with innovation.” Either from management, technology or talent perspective, Is HYBRIDITY the right way to move forward with the right speed?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #5900+ 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 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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The Best “Silo” Quotes of “Digital Master” Aug. 2019

The solution to breaking down silos is to apply bigger thinking -to implement an effective cross-silo strategy, better integral process, and collaborative communication.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + 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.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Silo” quotes in “Digital Master.’

1 Silo thinking builds the wall in people’s minds and sets barriers in the human's hearts.

2 At their heart, silos are not a structural issue, they are the result of poor thinking; or lack of holistic thinking, systems thinking, and strategic thinking.

3 Silo mentality is fundamentally about keeping the mind static and keeping the people separate rather than keeping work separate.

4 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.

5 With silo mentality, organizations lose their collaborative advantage as they are being over managed and under led.

6 Silos happen when the "Why?" in business is not properly communicated from the senior level management down through business units.

7 Silo sets the barriers to real problem-solving because people are not comfortable to go across the territories for digging into the root causes, they just get stuck at “we always do things like that” mentality.

8 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. Silos are based on a culture of self-protection and judgment

9 The solution to breaking down silos is to apply bigger thinking -to implement an effective cross-silo strategy, better integral process, and collaborative communication.

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Setting High Standard to Run High Mature Digital IT Organization

IT needs to continuously try to improve, develop, and change everything in a prioritized order as long as it creates a more long-term business advantage. 

Organizations across the industrial sectors are relying more on information technology, IT organization has more to overcome. It’s simply not sufficient to run IT as a support function only. IT can provide the business ability to explore new business models by knitting all important components seamlessly or delight customers by providing them digital options. IT organizations can bring up business benefit by mixing diverse business elements to create great products, services, or processes which generate differentiated value for the long-term growth of the business. It’s time to set a high standard to run high mature digital IT organization.


It’s the breadth of vision: Nowadays, technology is often the disruptive force behind digital transformation and information can be refined into business foresight and customer insight. It’s the breadth of vision differentiates a great CIO from an average CIO. Reimagining the future of digital business is exciting. IT can become the driving force for business growth. It takes visionary leadership to create a blue ocean for providing a competitive advantage. To lead effectively and become value-added, IT leaders should learn the business, set high standard, grasp opportunities to participate varying digital dialogs and get their voice heard, and implement strategic goals to achieve high-performance results. IT needs to permeating into the business functions and ecosystem, and invite customers and partners to provide feedback for improving their products or services. An aggressive IT organization can explore new ways to create business value aggressively by leveraging emerging trends and applying lightweight digital technologies. Strategic CIOs are proactive, energetic, engaged, decisive, seek to engage others, and have IT and business collaborate as equal partners so that strategies, people, processes, technologies, etc, work in harmony to accelerate performance.

It’s about catalyzing innovation: Traditional IT organizations act as the controller to avoid risk. But risk is part of innovation. Innovation is the only path to create long term business advantage. It is important to make sure that the management is forward-thinkingl enough for “doing more with innovation. IT leaders understand that technology-led innovation is not only for figuring out a better way to run the business today but also building business competency for the long run. They should set a high standard and take the step-wise approach to leading changes, catalyzing innovation, and driving digital transformation. The science of innovation is to manage innovation lifecycle and executes it in a systematic manner that provides sustained competitive advantage. IT leaders should apply the outside-in business lens to innovate at the organizational level and across the entire business ecosystem. IT plays a significant role in adding all critical pieces which are needed for accelerating validation of facts about business ideas, definition, benefits and shortcomings, applications, and competing technologies. IT can also help to fine-tune light-weight processes which allow creativity flow, channeled and nurtured so that innovation will succeed more often than those organizations do not have such processes and capacities.

It’s for continuously delivering high performance business results: Setting high standard is also about following the progress principle to keep improving IT performance and maturity. Or put simply, make continuous improvement more than discover an elegant solution. IT maturity is not based on how many years IT organizations have been around and keep running to support the business; but about how well IT can provide innovative solutions to reach higher-than-expected business results and delight customers.  IT-driven digital transformation is the journey of continuous delivery and improvement. Great IT leaders have to be prepared to constantly realign technology against the enterprise's business needs and measure things really matter to the business's success in the long run. The high mature digital CIOs are not only passionate digital visionaries but also cool-headed business executives who can play the number game wisely by managing budgets, setting measurement and achieving high performance business results consistently. The business benefit can be measurable in dollars, employee engagement, customer satisfaction, quality, etc.

Driving business growth and leading evolutionary change are the never-ending journey. IT needs to continuously try to improve, develop, and change everything in a prioritized order as long as it creates a more long-term business advantage. The forward-thinking organizations have to set high standards, empower IT to take charge and take a structural approach in building organizational level changeability for thriving in the “VUCA” digital new normal and bringing up substantial business benefits.

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 8/22/2019

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 5900+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 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.

Cultivate a Dynamic Digital Innovation Ecosystem Everything is interconnected and the business ecosystem becomes so interdependent and dynamic. Innovation also becomes so complex and has a lot to do with external environment while people tend to focus on internal circumstances. Innovation nowadays is critical for the company’s survival and thriving. Thus, organizations need to awaken the ecosystem consciousness, start thinking about ways to innovate, influence, and cultivate a dynamic innovation ecosystem,

The Monthly “Digital Boardroom” Book Tuning: Constructive Criticism in Boardroom Aug. 2019 Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in 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 are the multiple perspectives of shaping a strategic boardroom.

Cultivate a Culture of Innovation Although everyone talks about innovation and many companies intellectually understand innovation, they don’t really know how to build innovation into their culture. In many cases, companies of all sizes, especially large corporations have become too dependent on satisfying corporate regulation or protocols, and get sucked in innovation management. In essence, innovation rejuvenation is truly about how to cultivate a culture of innovation and manage a balanced innovation portfolio.

Fine-Tune Organizational Changeability to Get Digital Ready Compared to the business world decades ago, the speed of change is increasing, and digital ecosystem has become so complex and dynamic, to put simply, change itself changes. Change Management also turns out to be a holistic and multifaceted business discipline. Organizations across vertical sectors realize that one of their greatest strengths will be their change capability. Successful businesses are the ones that have learned how to strike the delicate balance and implement change time after time and build it as a solid ongoing business competency.

The Monthly “Digital Gaps” Book Tuning: Identify and Fill Multitude of Skill/Talent Gaps Aug. 2019 "Digital Gaps -Bridging Multiple Gaps to Run Cohesive Business” is a guidebook to help digital leaders and professionals today identify, analyze, and mind multiple gaps with the multidisciplinary insight and holistic understanding. Today’s digital organization simply just can’t stand still., bridging the gap of opportunity between where you are and want to become is a welcomed challenge, it is important to identify and strengthen the weakest link and take a step-wise approach to make a leap of digital transformation.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking about 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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The Best “Scorecard” Quotes of “Digital Master” Aug. 2019

The scorecard allows you to focus on. Without scorecards, it will become like searching for a needle in the haystack.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + 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.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Scorecard” quotes in “Digital Master."

1 A scorecard assesses the progress of the set goals and provides the business management a wider perspective on its strategic decisions about digital transformation by considering the impact on finances, customers, internal processes and employee satisfaction.

2 The goals of applying scoreboard are to translate the vision and strategic planning into operational goals; communicate strategy and link it to individual performance.

3 With a balanced scorecard, management can become more confident and accurately judge the coming curves and obstacles on the path.

4 Scorecards translate your strategy into concrete terms and help you track its implementation.

5 Scorecards make the meaning of success tangible for the organizations; one of the strengths in the scorecard is that they enable practical use of the success factors and performance management concepts.

6 The scorecard allows you to focus on. Without scorecards, it will become like searching for a needle in the haystack.

7 When considering a scorecard, the main part of the challenge lies in building an adapted structure, in line with business objectives. Make sure that the management of your scorecard does not become an industry in itself.

8 A balanced scorecard is very useful for facilitating discussions and ensuring decision makers understand the various trade-offs and make the overall strategic balance, business dependencies, and constraints between components, individuals, and overall risk exposure.

9 A well-balanced scorecard measures key strategic measures along with the things that drive those measures. The well designed balanced scorecard with well-selected metrics can harness information-based communication and lead to continuous improvement.

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Discover What is at the Heart of the Problem

Discovering the heart of problems starts at the mindset level and takes both strategy and methodologies. 


We live in the world with all sorts of problems, even though we understand all different forms of thinking, the problems facing the planet don't seem to be reducing. Many problems exist because they are either ill-defined or the concept cannot be adequately captured contextually. Trying to fix the wrong cause of a problem will waste time and resources, increase anxiety and even cause chaos. Therefore, the deeper you understand the problem, the easier you could frame the problem, and the better chance you could solve it effectively. But more specifically, how to discover what is the heart of the problem?

Wrap the mindset around the problem: With “VUCA” new normal, problem-solving thought-processes and practices will not be simple for many vexing problems. The more complex the situation is, the more different approaches and role gaming is needed to reach for in-depth understanding. A logical problem-diagnose scenario that crosses all industries is to keep peeling back the layers to discover the root cause. Thus, it’s critical to leverage different thought processes for thinking about the specific issue and common challenges from different angles, and solving problems analytically and systematically. The problem-solving thought processes involve many forms of thinking such as temporal, inductive, deductive, analytical, system, abstract, historical, mathematical, and other forms of logic. Getting input from a broad range of personalities and cognitive difference between people on the particular matter. Collectively, people should bring different perspectives and the boundaries might have changed based on open conversations and continuous debate and brainstorming. You don’t need to always agree with each other, but it’s always critical to gain empathy, capture insight and come up with a fresh perspective on getting to the heart of issues before putting effort to solve it smoothly.

Leverage Systems Thinking to understand the “scope” of the problem: System Thinking is about seeing the inter-connectivity of parts and the whole. It helps to see a complex issue as a larger system with interactive pieces and “conflict” goals; understand the interdependent pieces, provide insight into the emergent properties, gain an accurate understanding of the overall situation and hence, it helps to better defining the real problem structurally. The more complex the situation is, the more important to leverage systems thinking, critical thinking and many other multidimensional thought processes to see underneath the symptoms, dig into root causes of the problem and see around corners without ignoring some pieces of important information. Systems Think helps to focus on relationships between things rather than characteristics of things, understand the outcomes of various relationships/actions in order to solve the problem thoroughly with less side effect. More specifically, leveraging Systems Thinking for problem-solving is about unfolding systemic relationships, telling stories to others, and soliciting their feedback. Systems Thinking practitioners can see the inter-connectivity between the different problems as well as the different part of the problems, diagnose the root cause of either old or emerging problems and solve them effectively.

Explore different ways of understanding and doing things: To discover the heart of issues and solve it effectively, digital leaders and professional should change their “we always do things like that mentality" by exploring different ways of understanding and doing things. Think both in macro and micro way, critically and creatively, assume that every problem has multiple solutions, always explore different choices, ask open questions to themselves and others to explore new possibilities. Until the underlying problem is addressed, the symptom or result will continue to return. Thus, people are encouraged to think differently, challenge old assumptions, update their knowledge, pull the necessary resources to experiment with different ways to handle problems, drive improvement, figure out better solutions and make them stick. 

Running a business is an iterative problem-solving continuum: Framing the right problems, assessing the right people with the right mindset and capability, and solving the problem effectively are all critical steps for developing problem-solving competency and improving business performance. There is no panacea for fixing all sorts of business problems. Discovering the heart of problems starts at the mindset level and takes both strategy and methodologies. Problem-solving masters are those individuals or businesses who are equipped with the digital mindset, accumulate sufficient information and knowledge, leverage the powerful digital technologies, avoid pitfalls and roadblocks along the way, build the differentiated business competency, and develop their own set of problem-solving principles, methodologies and practices.

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The Monthly “Digital Boardroom” Book Tuning: Constructive Criticism in Boardroom Aug. 2019

Criticism shows portrayal of ideas, concerns, directions, and attitudes.

Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in 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 are the multiple perspectives of shaping a strategic boardroom.

                 Constructive Criticism in Boardroom 

Constructive Criticism in the Boardroom The corporate board plays a crucial role in overseeing business strategy and driving business transformation. Criticism shows portrayal of ideas, concerns, directions, and attitudes. Asking good questions to management or the board members themselves is not the “wasting time” activity, it can help to clarify the vision and bring new insight about how to steer the company in the right direction.

Communication Competency of BoDs Communication is the key to improve leadership effectiveness and improve business fluidity. Either at the boardroom or the different layers of the business hierarchy, effective communication is like the thread to connect all important business gems, for building the trustful relationship, enforcing collaboration, and improving digital readiness and manageability.

A “Skeptical Board” to Advocate Innovation The Corporate Board plays a critical role in business strategy oversight, monitoring execution, advising digital transformation, and setting tones for talent management. The boards are also transforming from compliance-driven to performance oriented to get digital ready. In practice, the board's role is to pull management out of the trees to see the forest; to understand the business landscape and how it will address it; to continue questioning on important issues where the management's answers do not make sense, and to show the constructive skepticism for brainstorming changes and advocating innovation.

How to Close the Feedback Gaps Nobody is perfect, we should always self-aware, strengthen our strengths and improve our weaknesses. We need always to welcome the constructive feedback which helps improve our professional growth and personal maturity. However, how can you discern which feedback is constructive, and how can you bridge the feedback gaps in order to shape the growth mindset and achieve professional advancement effortlessly?

How to Bridge Insight Gaps in the Boardroom Leadership is about envisioning and leading the business towards its future. Top leadership roles such as board directors are supposed to be the guiding force in the enterprise. In practice, the digital era is volatile, complex, uncertain and ambiguous. Many say that the multitude of gaps (thinking, knowledge, innovation, strategy execution, etc.) are enlarged because different industries, organizations, functions, and individuals evolve with varying speed. To lift up the board leadership maturity, minding the insight gap is challenging, but a critical step for improving leadership effectiveness. Leadership is an influence, influence comes from progressive mindsets, profound insight, and step-wise actions. Insight is an understanding of cause and effect based on the identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 5900+ 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 for human progression.

The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Slideshare Presentation

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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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