Take a Logical Scenario to Drive IT Change Management

Leading evolutionary changes and driving business growth is the never-ending journey which takes planning, methodologies, and practices.

Digital transformation isn’t just an extension of continuous improvement of the current business, but a quantum leap with radical change. It requires a unique vision and the tremendous courage to pursue it. Due to the exponential growth of information and “disruptive power” of digital technologies, IT needs to become a “Change Department” because it is in a unique position to manage business information and capture the oversight of the entire company. Organizations reach the turning point when their top business leaders can think outside the current constraints and comfort zones, empower IT to break down silos, and take the bold move to drive changes in a structural way.

Accomplish change by identifying the pain points and fixing problems through well-developed processes and company-based collaboration: The business journey of moving forward will not always be smooth. There are growth pains, chronicle business downturn pains, as well as unnecessary pains caused by silo mentality or bureaucratic culture. IT needs to engage with the business units to find out what the pain points really are, identify opportunities for developing new products/services or improving/optimizing current ones. More specifically, there should have strong interactions between operations leaders and IT leaders and their teams with feedback mechanisms and willingness to find solutions that can support both the business need and build any ROI required to justify the business case.

To overcome growth pains, people are encouraged to break down outdated rule or silos, brainstorm fresh ideas, and co-solve existing or emerging business problems cohesively and constantly. To deal with chronic business/economic downturn, it’s also important to manage the business balance cycle well by consolidating, integrating, modernizing, and optimizing, To avoid unnecessary pain caused by bureaucratic management style , remove cultural, organizational or systemic obstacles. Few communication activities don’t create that awareness, change management has to become the day to day activities, make continuous communication and deliveries. Sustaining long-term collaboration allows participants to develop subject knowledge over time, focus on fixing existing or emerging problems, and drive digitally enabled innovation and transformation.

IT implementation with change management best practices should aim at improving customer experience: Highly adaptive IT will focus on IT-customer alignment to improve both internal users' and end customers’ overall satisfaction. IT implementation with change management needs to not only empower and engage internal users with powerful digital platforms and efficient tools to enforce productivity and collaboration; but also make a seamless alignment with end customers by understanding their pains and needs; as well as digitizing touch point of customer experience.

The focus always remains on technicalities of preparedness and implementation of business/user community, deploy a range of technologies that focus purely on improving the customer's experience, showing customers that you are making significant investments in delivering the products or services meeting their needs. There are no IT projects, only business initiatives, gain a clear understanding of the monetary benefits the customer is going to realize the intended change. Also, take a serious awareness of the adverse impact (monetary or brand value) due to the failed change. You are doing so to a greater extent than your competitors, you are gaining market share and improve the long-term business advantage.

Outline the implementation process to change with assignments, timelines, and deliverable: The digital ready roadmap of IT Change Management with the step-wise processes from here to there should include the goal clarification, the resources and talent needed, rough timeline and measurable deliverable. Each interim state provides the current state of processes, artifacts, staffing, etc. IT capacity planning needs to be part of the corporate initiatives around continuous business improvement.

 IT resource is limited, resource allocation is critical to IT management prioritization. The resource allocation scenario needs to be transparent, helps IT management take advantage of resources effectively. Keep in mind, due to high business velocity, it’s critical to meet the business’s needs timely, eliminate delayed or missed business opportunities and solutions. Making on-time delivery and continuous improvement are much more critical than discovering elegant solutions.

Organizations large or small are living in the digital sea today, they have to change with the "tide." IT is impacting every business unit and is becoming the driver of business change and digital transformation. They have to lead boldly but manage the change scenario in a structural and cautious way. Leading evolutionary changes and driving business growth is the never-ending journey which takes planning, methodologies, and practices.

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The Monthly “Digital Gaps” Book Tuning: Bridging Understanding Gaps Sep. 2019

Assumptions and prejudices are due to a lack of deeper understanding. 

"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.

                Bridging Understanding Gaps

Bridging Digital Cognitive Gap: From Being Bi-Polar Judgmental to Having Multidimensional Discernment Both businesses and the world has become hyper-connected and overly complex, either for leaders or digital professionals today, to survive and thrive in such the digital “VUCA” new normal, you need to keep growth mindset, updating knowledge, enforcing cognitive understanding, and move up to the next level of discernment and intellectual maturity.

The Gaps Between Knowledge and Insight? Insight is perception through multidimensional cognizance. If knowledge is manpower, wisdom is nature power, then insight is perhaps the bridge between manpower and nature power. There are multi-layer meanings upon insight. The gaps between knowledge and insight are existing, and how to dive into the depth of knowledge sea and climb the insight-wisdom pyramid?

The Philosophical Understanding of Information vs. Knowledge Management The aim of modern Information Management has often been described as getting the right information to the right person in the right format at the right time in order to make right decisions. Digital Knowledge Management is the management system that enables knowledge flow, connect ideas but also people, and crucially management; coach them and many others in organizing their personal knowledge mastery and collectively engaging with others and making decisions. Here are three philosophical understanding of information vs. knowledge.

An Understanding Mind Knowledge is attaining facts, information, and skills by an individual gained through experience, education or a combination of both. Knowledge and wisdom have a long history of philosophy and philosophers. From Aristotle to Descartes to Nozick have defended theories of wisdom that require a "wise person" to have knowledge of some sort. However, one must understand before one becomes knowledgeable, what’re the further perspectives of an understanding mind?

The New Book “Digital Gaps” Chapter 1 Introduction: Cognitive Gaps Cognition is the mental process of acquiring knowledge through thoughts, experiences, and senses. It is a perception, sensation, and insight. People are different, not because we look differently, but because we think differently. Cognitive gaps enlarge problem-solving gaps because it will cause the blind spots for either defining the real problem or solving it. Cognitive gaps cause innovation gaps which disconnect many things that are supposed to be interconnected, it becomes a barrier for connecting the dots to stimulate creativity. There is a multitude of perspectives on the cognitive gaps, as well as how to close them.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6000th 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 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.

"Digital Gaps" B&N Order Link

"Digital Gaps" iBook Order Link

"Digital Gaps" Amazon Order Link

"Digital Gaps" Introduction, Slideshare

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 1 Cognitive Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 2  Leadership Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 3 Management Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 4 Capability Gaps

"Digital Gaps" Chapter 5 Professional Gaps

Conclusion: Bridging Gaps to Catalyze Digital Maturity

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The Best “Human Capital” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2019

Human Capital is always the largest intangible asset of a company which has to keep investing in to ensure the long term prosperity of the business.

"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 “Human Capital” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Human Capital is the "big umbrella" concept which could include all people, processes, systems related to employees. Human capital is the knowledge, skills and abilities that add value to an organization.

2 Human Capital does make sense within the context of the goals of a company, especially when you consider Human Capital is the largest intangible asset of a company.

3 Traditional organizations think people as human cost or resource. The term “Human Capital” makes sense to convey the vision of running an organic digital business which needs to keep investing, nurturing, and growing.

4 Human Capital is always the largest intangible asset of a company which has to keep investing in to ensure the long term prosperity of the business.

5 Human Capital is about potential, if unleashed, can bring a quantum leap in the business growth, and societal advancement.

6 Human capital is the skills, knowledge, and experience gained in an organization by people that represents a value investment or resource to that organization.

7 Human capital is the base on which Innovation, Operational Excellence, Customer/client relationships, Corporate/brand reputation & others are built on.

8 Without the right people, excellence cannot be achieved. Human capital makes or breaks a company therefore should be given highest priority

9 As always, talent is the most significant asset in any organization today. However, many businesses still treat their people as cost or resource only, lack of vision to think talent as capital to invest in; and lack of integrative approach to manage performance and potential; knowledge and culture in a holistic way.

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In Search of Business Architecture Totality to Drive Transformative Change

Business architecture seeks to represent the architecture of an organization in terms of information, performance, process, and capability, either as it exists or as it is intended to be.

The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. It implies the full-scale changes in the way that the business is conducted. Business Architecture contains the organizational context and is strategic in that it gives direction to the business design and transformation. Forward-thinking organizations are in search of business architecture totality, reimagine the future of business, and consider designing the new structural model to embrace high velocity and drive transformative change.

Organizational Alignment: The digital organization is a self-adaptive system which is able to re-configure its own structure and adjust its own behavior for adapting to continuous environmental changes in striving as the high performance business. Business Architecture input can be used into where to direct resources and attention to strengthening business capabilities, and how to fine-tune organizational structures and define the scope of responsibilities in alliance with business ventures. The challenge of Business Architecture is to build an organization that in times of change and times of relative status quo remains. Business Architecture can be invaluable for performing a wide array of services, including segment analysis, strategic positioning, process optimization and measurement, as well as a wide array of other business functions. Technically, Business Architecture should have abilities to transform the manual process and the business requirement to process design and process governance, improve structural flexibility for the system to not collapse and present the business agility for adapting to the changes so that the organization’s vision, mission, and goals can be realized seamlessly.

Interrelationship orchestration: Digital companies are outside-in and people-centric. The enterprise as a whole is more about people, process and technology. The future of workplace will be shaped by changes that take place in the way people relate to themselves and to the experience of their environment and others around them. The digital workplace needs to be designed to help employees at all levels within an organization (from top leaders to front-line employees) understand and develop their creative capacity to solve problems and explore opportunities in new and innovative ways. .Digital organizations need to manage multi-layer and multi-dimensional business relationships such as cross-functional relationships, customer relationships, vendor relationships, etc, effectively. Business Architecture is a great tool for business leaders to orchestrate the organizational interrelationship between people and process. It brings the systems understanding of how relationships, ecosystems, market dynamics, and the connections between related business units . It helps to orchestrate organizational interrelationship by bridging gaps, enforcing communication, fostering collaboration, building trust, and ultimately leading to greater autonomy and "self-generated" engagement. People, process, and technology are all part of the enterprise body, The beauty is in harmony, and only through coordination or corporation, the full business potential can be unleashed.

Business transition: The ultimate goal of Business Architecture is to architect business in transition to the strategic state defined in the enterprise Strategic Plan. Digital organizations have to adapt to the continuous changes and business dynamic with a high degree of unpredictability and uncertainty. As an effective communication and governance tool to blueprint the future of business, Business Architecture is not just for knowledge collection, but more about capturing business insight/foresight and do it within the boundaries of the enterprise business model. The role of Business Architecture in designing and planning future enterprise is both interesting and challenging for helping the organization make transition from inside-out to outside-in, from static to dynamic; from industrial-segregation to digital modularization. It guides the business scaling up, optimizing organizational processes, developing business competencies, transforming the underlying organizational structures and functions to ensure the business as a whole presenting the differentiated business competencies.

The exponential growth of information and the probability of surprising emergent properties bring both unprecedented opportunities and risks to organizations across industrial sectors today. Business architecture seeks to represent the architecture of an organization in terms of information, performance, process, and capability, either as it exists or as it is intended to be, Thereby, it helps to facilitate the varying business dialogues, as well as the planning and communicating of business change initiatives, guide and orchestrate the radical digital transformation seamlessly.

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The Monthly Insight of Information Management: The Characteristics of Information Management System Sep. 2019

Information Management is a system with interdependent processes, technologies, and a set of interdisciplinary practices for moving the business to a dynamic, iterative, integral and interactive digital flow.

The aim of modern Information Management has often been described as getting the right information to the right person, in the right format and medium, at the right time, in order to make the right decisions. The value of information is qualitative, measurable, and defined uniquely by an organization.

     

The Characteristics of Information Management System

Three Characteristics of Information Management System A system is a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole. A system has a purpose to perform a set of functions to achieve well-defined goals. A system which is composed of interacting and interdependent pieces has a specific structure which is defined by its components and processes - the interrelationship between components. Managing information and the information position of an organization is what ought to be called Information Management. Information Management is a system with interdependent processes, technologies, and a set of interdisciplinary practices for moving the business to a dynamic, iterative, integral and interactive digital flow.

Is IT a System A system is the part of the world which has to be of interest to us on the basis of a certain purpose. Only then you think about the other properties (interaction of elements, environment, etc.). A subsystem correctly defined is, in any case, a system. A model is something different though and has to do with our knowledge about a system and its functioning. Is IT (Information & Technology) a system, though?

Dots Connection: Information System (IS) vs. Information Technology (IT) An information system is an abstract view of an activity system focusing on the gathering, processing, distribution, and use of information. It provides the information needed for the decisions that are part of the activity system. The Information Technology system supports the information system. It encapsulates hardware, software, data and communication technologies. It provides data to be used by people as information.

CIOs as Chief Improvement Officer: What are the signals of Dysfunctional IT Systems Today’s organizations are far from perfect, there are ineffectiveness, dysfunction, overlapping, complication, silo, gaps, infighting, and inefficiencies, etc., all over the place. IT is in a unique position to oversee the underlying processes, build capabilities, and orchestrate the digital transformation, CIOs as IT leaders and Chief Improvement Officer: Can you identify the signals of dysfunctional IT systems - not just through the symptoms on the surface, but digging into the root causes, and fix them smoothly to improve the business agility and maturity?

How Important an Information System can be in Digital Business Success? In the industrial era, the majority of IT organizations are supporting functions to keep the business light on; the cost center to maintain legacy applications and infrastructure, and the gatekeeper to control the status quo. Nowadays IT and its value implication to the business have changed drastically; information becomes the lifeblood of digital business, and digital technology is lightweight but more powerful than ever. The question is –How important an information system can be in today, can you separate technology from an information system in order to achieve the intended results? And how to make Information Management as 'powerful' and 'worthy' to an organization as possible?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6000th 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 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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An Influential Corporate Board

Highly influential corporate boards are heterogeneous, inquisitive, intelligent, effective, innovative and influential. 

People tend to make leadership very complex, but in its most simple form, leadership is an influence. With rapid changes and exponential growth of information, the command control style of management is gradually losing its steam. Digital leadership needs to be highly intelligent and influential, to lead through influence, not brute force. The corporate board as one of the top leadership pillars must influence and exemplify progressive leadership and help to shape an ultra-modern digital organization effortlessly.

Influential Intelligence: A mindset could be called influential intelligence if it can discover the patterns of inter-relationship among different disciplines, understand the mindsets of all members of the group. The insightful board leaders has the ability to influence peers or management team as they undertake a broad range of crucial decisions involving issues such as strategy, performance, branding, technological vision, finance, talent management, etc. They do not dominate discussions, instead, they encourage open critical debates, encourage fresh perspectives, and appreciate the collective insight from peer board directors as well as various stakeholders. To "influence" means to be able to shape other people's views or opinions towards one's own views or perspectives. With influential intelligence, the contemporary corporate board can inspire, innovate, improve, interact, interpret, exemplify, encourage, and orchestrate change. The corporate board leaders with influential intelligence have adaptability, consistency, profundity, and empathy to steer the business in the right directions under business dynamic and lead the business forward smoothly.

Expertise influence: Top board leaders need to have broader business acumen, deep expertise, transdisciplinary knowledge, cross-functional experience, and leadership skills. As a senior leadership role, corporate board directors should be the specialized generalists with “T” shaped expertise, and they are able to embrace the seemingly paradoxical point of views in order to gain a deep understanding of varying strategic topics holistically. Most of the board directors are top seasoned executives with decades of experience. Collectively, the digital board with a blend of expertise and capabilities can foster a culture of innovation and improve boardroom decision effectiveness and leadership maturity. To reach the state of knowledge proficiency and spread expertise influence, it is also important to identify and close the gap between knowledge and insight in the boardroom. Board directors are not just the follower to chase the tidal waves blindly, but able to capture the invaluable business insight to make sound judgments and effective decisions in a consistent way.

World class leadership influence: The ultimate criterion of "high-influential leadership," is the ability to create more leaders, to spread leadership, or more precisely, to groom more authentic leaders with the ability to think differently, independently, and innovatively. To amplify leadership influence, digital leaders including corporate board directors need to be constantly visible by sharing vision and enabling others to share it. Their leadership influence is made based on the leadership substances such as vision and purpose with effective digital leadership styles such as participation, coaching or delegation. The corporate board’s global leadership influence is based on their world-class leadership competencies such as self-regulation, social judgment skills, empathy, motivation to work in a global environment, cultural cognition, acceptance of complexity and its contradictions, the tolerance of ambiguity, flexibility, and learning agility. Their leadership influence must be built on the foundation of the moral competencies such as wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance.

Highly influential corporate boards are heterogeneous, inquisitive, intelligent, effective, innovative and influential. Open leadership, humble attitude, adaptability, creativity, sound judgment, inclusiveness, and fact-driven communication, are digital leadership traits to make profound leadership influence. Highly influential leaders understand themselves and have a story to tell, they develop an authentic leadership brand, and encourage others to do the same.

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The Enterprise’s Innovation Appetite, Attitude, Aptitude

With the right innovation appetite, attitude, and aptitude, the organization is on the right track of developing innovation as a business-wide unique competency.

Digital is the age of innovation, Innovation is always a tough journey, not a flat road. Digital innovation is coming at seemingly much faster paces, and there are more potential disruptions, with a broader scope, scale, and impact on the business’s long term surviving and thriving. Companies have to be prepared to lose some to gain more for the longer term. They need to make an objective assessment of their innovation appetite, attitude, and aptitude, and manage an innovation portfolio strategically and systematically to achieve great business results for the long term.

The innovation appetite: There are always risks involved in managing innovation. The innovation appetite of the business directly impact on how aggressively the company can manage innovation and the time-frame they focus on. Breakthrough innovation has greater ROI but with much bigger risks and often takes longer time to achieve. The variety of research identifies innovation initiatives that ultimately break new ground frequently are fraught with uncertain on many dimensions such as technical, market, resource, and organizational uncertainties abound. Innovation is risky because money and resource spent on R&D is not necessarily a good indicator of future innovation performance. Therefore, innovation leaders with the right dose of innovation appetite can manage a healthy innovation portfolio with the right mix of incremental innovation and breakthrough innovation, to reap the short-term gain and long-term innovation benefits. The shareholders who highly value innovation would value organizations with bigger innovation appetite and devote more resources towards future breakthrough innovation more than those that only manage short-term incremental innovation.

The innovation attitude: Innovation is high-risky because more often you are doing something that hasn't been done before. Innovation risk would broadly need to consider both endogenous and exogenous drivers. It is the common knowledge that innovation management requires the highest risk taking at a strategic value chain, including organization, investments, and assets. From a financial management perspective, consider what capital you are prepared to risk in making the innovation- never let this be too much that losing it will cripple your business. The differentiation between a good innovation and bad innovation is the innovation leader’s attitude toward risk. The job of innovation management is to help when a failure happens to turn it around as a team. The good innovation leaders have excellent attitude toward innovation, demonstrate rational risk management skills and are able to shift from “risk-avoidance” to “risk-intelligence” mentality. The great attitude towards innovation is about taking calculated risks to inspire good innovation initiatives for capturing growth opportunities, being cautious about obstacles or pitfalls, staying focused, weighing risks and rewards, taking prudent risks and discovering better ways to mitigate risks rather than eliminate it. De-risk the introduction of innovations into the market, protecting existing operations and brands and establishing clear proof-of-concept before making investments to launch and scale.

The innovation aptitude: The good or bad innovation would depend on the business’s aptitude to manage innovation. And the innovation aptitude is based on the overall business competency to manage innovation with a set of tools, structures, and talent. Highly innovative organizations are better equipped to manage innovation by allocating time and resources to the people in charge. Innovation fails because many organizations lack a cohesive strategy or a systematic approach to manage both opportunities and risks in a structural way. Innovation success depends on many factors. From budget management perspective, since part of innovation is not knowing how and for what you will use the budget; and some innovation needs to be fed with resources while others get better by starving them. It’s important to design a flexible strategy as a compass to help innovation management adapt quickly and cost effectively to unpredictable changes in the environment, with the goal to manage a healthy innovation portfolio and build innovation competency to reap higher-than-expected business benefits.

With the right innovation appetite, attitude, and aptitude, the organization is on the right track of developing innovation as a business-wide unique competency. A leading digital organization with innovation competency can handle innovation streams for different goals and different time frames and manage a balanced portfolio including both radical innovation and incremental innovation, hard innovation and soft innovation seamlessly.

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The Monthly “Dot Connections”: The Vision Dot Connection Sep. 2019

Vision is where or who you want to be and strategy is how you can achieve or reach your goal. 


The effects of an increasingly digitized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Organization of the Future is an organization designed openly for anyone with ideas on how human organizations ought to be contrived in the face of the strategic imperatives of the digital era. The work is not the place you go, but a live organization and an experiment lab you can connect the dots to explore the art of possibility.

 

     

The Vision Dot Connection 

Vision vs. Insight As businesses and the world move deeper and deeper into the digital world of VUCA -volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, one of the most desired traits for leaders is VISION, because leadership is all about direction, it shows people where to go; and the other equally important leadership trait is INSIGHT, because it brings up the big WHY - why do you go where you are going and how to get there. So more specifically, what are apple to apple comparisons between vision vs. insight?

Vision vs. Strategy Vision is where or who you want to be and strategy is how you can achieve or reach your goal. An unclear vision leads to defective strategy. Visions inspire; strategies compel; vision comes first, but sometimes vision appears and gets clear by working on the strategy. A vision describes the desired future position of the company. A strategy is an action or ways chosen to bring about the desired future, such as achievement of a goal.

Digital Journey: From Vision to Orientation? The roadmap is a commonly used tool to communicate long-term thinking effectively. Strategists, planners, and architects use road-maps to communicate their vision of strategic capabilities and competencies. From vision to orientation, it is a logical step for organizations to prepare for their digital journey.

The Future-Driven Leadership - Vision vs. Leadership The substance of leadership never changes. It’s all about making the positive influence, and providing direction, both for oneself and others. Leadership is about CHANGE. It is a basic human ability to inspire self and others to look beyond limitations and make continuous improvement. This ability becomes a capability if we constantly nurture our basic human instincts of HUMILITY, CURIOSITY, and CREATIVITY. Fundamentally, leadership is more about future but starts at today.

Three Dot-Connections in Leadership Vision A Vision is to zoom into the future as if it were closer. Top leaders are supposed to be the guiding force in the organization or even with a broader scope, envisioning and leading it towards its future. Every C-level leader must participate in creating and shaping a company's vision. A visionary changes the course of business by seeing beyond what all other see or by charting new revenue or growth through the creation of a new product or market; or share their perception of future trends of business such as digitalization, innovation, or globalization. Here are three dot-connections in leadership vision.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6000th 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 “Flexibility” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2019

Flexibility means less rigid processes, well-known practices, or “right vs. wrong” polarity.

"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 “Flexibility” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Technically, flexibility is about figuring out alternative ways to solve problems; psychologically, being flexible is simply an ability to learn and adapt to changes, an intelligence to explore new possibilities, take further responsibilities but also and above all, in the effectiveness of its initiatives.

2 Though the meaning of the word flexibility, in general, more refers to physical movement capable of being bent without breaking. Flexibility is a mental process which results in an action that tests a possible solution.

3 Flexibility means less rigid processes, well-known practices, or “right vs. wrong” polarity.

4 A flexible mind loves choices, enjoys making differences; feels comfortable to be unique and innovative, and welcomes the diversity of thoughts as a fountain of creativity.

5 Unlike the closed mechanical system, digital organization are like the living system, spontaneously self-organizes, generates patterns, forms structures, initiates business activities, and above all, creates novelty over time. Achieve strategic flexibility by developing the proper module design architecture, with reusability and process flow:

6 A flexible workplace is open, inclusive, and innovative for coming up with best business solutions all the time.

7 The culture of flexibility advocated by effective leadership is about bringing out the best in others, to make people feel comfortable with being who they are and taking the necessary risks to solve tough problems.

8 Flexible leadership means the vision to foresee the future trend ahead, and the creativity to solving the problem on the way.

9 A flexible organization is a complex social system starting to appreciate such attributes as 'readiness,’ 'ownership,' ‘integration,’ 'full open communication,’ customized structuring as well as developing 'partnerships.’

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Create Digital Indexes to Improve IT Management Maturity

 IT management needs to create important digital indexes, leverage good mechanisms, and discover both the art and science of holistic digital management discipline.

IT is the business. The management of IT is the integral management discipline to ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces. IT leaders need to manage various conflicts between classic style and digital style of management. The Digital Index is a collection of digital policies and initiatives to enforce digital management disciplines. IT leaders can create digital management indexes to improve the management maturity and reinvent IT as an energetic business partner to delight customers and lead digital transformation seamlessly.

 IT value index: Each organization has a set of capabilities that enable it to achieve successful business outcomes, whether financial, brand or double bottom line, IT is like a linchpin for integrating all different business elements into a unique set of business capabilities. IT is the means to an end, not the end itself. It’s important to triangulate IT value from the business lens such as a strategic competency, operational excellence, and business agility, create an IT value index in building a more comprehensive IT value proposition. IT is the steward of one of the most important business assets - information. The information that IT delivers is what gives executives, managers and staff details every employee needs to make the right decisions in their position at the right time, for improving overall business speed and competency. There are tangible (cost savings, efficiency, etc.) and intangible (brand equity, sales enablement, etc.) components of IT value. To improve IT organizational maturity from a support center to a strategic business partner, IT investment is more effective in improving business profitability by increasing revenue than by decreasing operating expenses. The well-run IT organizations can demonstrate agility by being responsive to tactical business opportunities to the degree possible while remaining focused on developing and executing a longer-term strategy. The better integration between business and IT, the higher level of agility for both will be achieved.

Personal Innovation-index (PÏ): Forward-thinking organizations introduce the Personal Innovation-index (PÏ) to drive growth, catalyze creativity and innovation within a company.the PÏ index will indicate the contributed economic value of each employee, including both executive/management and professional/expert, in relation to their innovative initiatives and personal activities, commitment, influences, impact, and contributions. More specifically, the Personal Innovation Index represents the innovation maturity level of employees based on their personal impact and influences on innovation-their ability to innovate, their ability to network externally, their ability to collaborate and facilitate innovation success. Generally speaking, the more innovative the employees are, the less tolerant of structure (policies, rules, and paradigms) and less respectful of consensus one is. Innovators often prefer to “do things differently.” Therefore, select for empowerment, select for curiosity, select for learning agile, and select for breakthrough.

The Barrett Values Index: It is a quantitative, qualitative and inclusive measurement tool for gauging organizational culture. The variety of industry research clearly indicated that the carefully crafted and well-intended strategy fail in the execution phase if culture is weak because the shared value and buy-in at all levels of the organization are misaligned. A good culture can perhaps make an average strategy working, but a bad culture will fail a good strategy. The strategic alignment happens as a by-product of culture tuning. The Barrett Value Index center on three questions that all employees should ask themselves:

(1) what are your personal values

(2) what do you see as the company's current values

(3) what do you believe the future company values should be

Directing energy and attention at measuring and improving culture will yield synergistic results in desired change. Or use the synthesis of Socio-Technical Systems (STS) Analysis to measure change-readiness against the contexts of goals, people, processes, procedures, infrastructure, technology, and culture.

Digital IT is impacting every business unit and is becoming the very driver of business change. With emerging lightweight digital technologies and overwhelming growth of information, IT management shouldn't just practice transactional activities, it needs to create important digital indexes, leverage good mechanisms, and discover both the art and science of holistic digital management discipline.

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The Monthly Organizational Structure Tuning: Fine-Tuning a Vital Digital Organization Sep. 2019

Organization design is the vehicle through which the business strategy is executed and defines the business environment in which the digital organization can reduce the organizational culture friction, improve business changeability and maturity,

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. From an organizational structure perspective, how can you fine-tune the digital dimension of your organizational development to harness innovation and build a vital digital organization?

Fine-Tuning a Vital Digital Organization 

Fine-Tune a Vital Digital Organization The digital transformation means that companies need to infuse digital into every aspect of the business, expand to every dimension of the organization. Forward-thinking organizations today aim to move into a more advanced stage of digital deployment by tailoring their own unique strength and business maturity. They need to have both interdisciplinary knowledge and in-depth understanding of the organizational hyperconnectivity and interdependence in order to optimize organizational structures, improve business strategic responsiveness and fine-tune a vital digital organization.

Fair Reasons to Fine-Tune the Organizational Structure The digital organization is an integral business system with policies, cultures, work climates, people (employees, customers, partners, etc.) and processes. To keep digital fit, the organization has to keep optimizing its functional or structural design and management pyramid to achieve a high level of autonomy and the state of digital equilibrium. The whole business ecosystem needs to communicate, negotiate and cooperate with each other for catalyzing changes and harnessing innovation. Here are some fair reasons to fine-tune the organizational structure for streamlining digital flow and improving the organizational maturity.

Three Aspects of Designing a Viable Digital Organization Digital organizations are the complex ecosystem with the blurring line between functions and geographic locations. Going digital is a long journey with all sorts of barriers and pitfalls on the way. You have to strike the right balance between order and chaos, change and stability, innovation and standardization. Viability is one of the very characteristics of the digital organization. You may leverage design thinking to reinvent an organization which can enforce collaboration and harness innovation by creating business synergy, maintaining viability, and making strategic effects.

Heralding an Ecological Digital Organization Digitalization makes a profound impact from a specific function to the business as a whole, building an organization of the future is not too far away. Digital organizations are hyperconnected and interdependent. They need to have an in-depth understanding of gains and pains of organizational design and development. They should also renew themselves periodically to cope with the change effectively to the best of their ability. Heralding an ecological digital organization need to emphasize participation, relationships, communication, and collaboration and unlock business performance and potential continually.

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6000+ 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 “Learning Agility” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2019

Learning agility means to learn, de-learn and relearn all the times; and then apply those lessons to succeed in new situations.

"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 “Learning Agility” quotes in “Digital Master.”


1 The mind with learning agility likes to experiment and comfortable with change.

2 Learning agility can help a digital professional to move out of his or her comfort zone, take risks, learn from mistakes, and grow to a lifetime learner.

3 Leaders and digital talent who are learning agile continuously seek new challenges, solicit direct feedback, self-reflect, self-motivated, and get jobs done resourcefully.

4 An individual’s learning agility is a fundamental digital capability block through which she or he can further build more advanced professional capabilities and better fit in the digital dynamic we live in.

5 Learning agility means to learn, de-learn and relearn all the times; and then apply those lessons to succeed in new situations.

6 Learning agility is not only the very quality of digital leaders but also the fundamental requirement for all digital professionals, in order to keep the mind open; make the skills updated and continue to build the dynamic digital capabilities to compete for the future.

7 Learning agility will directly impact the speed of digital transformation, the effectiveness of digital leadership, the creativity of the workforce, and the overall organizational maturity.

8 At the individual level, learning agility differentiates high potential from mediocre; at the organizational level, learning agility directly impacts on the top line business growth and the strategic capabilities such as change and innovation.

9 It is important to cultivate the learning agile culture that has awareness and understanding the importance of learning in order to build a high-innovative and high-mature digital organization.

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What are Key Differentiators between Top Performers and the Rest in the Digital Organization?

Top performers are perceived as modern, open-minded, informative, creative digital leaders and professionals.

People are always the most invaluable assets in organizations but often the weakest link as well. Due to the fast update of technology and the accelerating speed of business changes, among the most pervasive and persistent concerns from organizational leaders are talent gaps. The true value of people, especially today’s knowledge workforce includes many tangible and intangible factors, It's a total of what the employee brings to a business (quality, creativity, and productivity), Either individually or collectively, what are the key differentiators between top performers and the rest? And how to unleash collective human potential to unlock business performance?

Strategic thinking: ”Strategic Thinking is about getting the best information you could and continuously update, uncovering options, thinking long term, not just immediate goals. To put simply, Strategic Thinking is about “keeping the end in mind. Top performers today are usually great strategic thinkers because strategic thinking means change. While most people don’t like change, but top performers often have high adaptability to thrive in the digital dynamic. Either individually or at the organizational level, the biggest mind-shift in moving from operation-driven to strategic-oriented is to switch from focusing on activities to thinking about outcomes. Top performers with strategic thinking are able to gain an understanding of the past and the perception of the future. They are able to view the complete business as an ecosystem with all its dependencies and interconnections. They are also able to tie all important things together in order to develop actionable plans and sustain actions over an extended period of time.

Digital literacy: Digital is fluid and also complex. It becomes complex if things do interact, particularly in the case of "nonlinear" interaction, you can't separate things properly, and you cannot predict the actual effect of interaction straightforwardly. The top performers present multidimensional intelligence, interdisciplinary knowledge and show the digital literacy to understand business context, read between the lines, and demonstrate the ability to effectively navigate, evaluate, and create information using a range of digital technologies and abundant information. At an enterprise level, the linear business perception needs to be replaced by the adaptive digital system viewpoint. Digital literacy requires cross-functional communication, collaboration and interdisciplinary knowledge sharing. It requires information management capabilities, business learning, growth, and innovation competencies, etc, of the company to manage their strategy smoothly.

Collaborative problem-solving and team-working: Many of today’s business problems are complex, and solving complex business problems requires deep thinking, multidisciplinary knowledge, and collaborating. Top performers have both open and growth mindset, enjoy both independent thinking and teamwork, keep updating their knowledge, have intellectual curiosity to dig into the root cause, also show the flexibility to pursue alternative solutions. Complex problem-solving requires collaboration. Collaboration is at its essence, the intellectual harmony between humans. Collaboration is a fundamental part of what ultimately fuels inspiration, imagination, and innovation, and create a sense of belonging enjoys understanding the complexity and guides people through it. Top performers have a collaborative spirit to initiate digital dialogues, brainstorm ideas, turn around the tough situations, and skillfully assign their talent, resource and time carefully to solve problems really matter.

Entrepreneurship: Top performers demonstrate entrepreneurial traits such as open-mindedness, creativity, self-adaptation, flexibility, and resilience, etc.They can break down outdated rules, present accountability which is a type of cognitive fitness to show the ownership mentality, deploy new ideas, new processes, new adventures to adapt to change, doing things innovatively and wish to make great achievement as well. Top performers with entrepreneurial traits can bring optimism to influence the organization’s culture, break down the negative thinking box, linear knowledge, and mono-color culture. At the organizational level, entrepreneurship has been recognized as a potentially viable means for promoting and sustaining organizational performance, renewal and corporate competitiveness. Corporate Entrepreneurship is embodying risk taking, proactiveness and radical changes.

Customer-centricity: Top performers won’t just wait for the customers’ requests to solve their issues; but work closely and proactively with users and customers, to identify the real problems and solve them effectively. They are willing to listen, ask questions, and probe to identify the goal of the customer experience improvement, constantly looking at the business through the lens of a target customers. At the business level, it is very easy for an organization to become inwardly focused and fall into an operational mindset, get so focused on internal components and forget about the very reason a business exists in the first place. Top performers sincerely care about customers, and keep building differentiated business competencies to create value for them and build a customer-centric business.

Top performers are perceived as modern, open-minded, informative, creative digital leaders and professionals. They can broaden their outlook, envision the bigger picture, build differentiated professional competencies, inspire creativity, improve professionalism, and unleash their full talent potential.

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The Monthly “Change Agent CIO” Book Tuning: IT Led Digital Transformation Sep. 2019

 To run a high performance business for the long term, companies must learn how to master information technology, make proactive preparation for dealing with continuous digital disruptions. 

Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice within an organization, but too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crisis, and demands. This is the bureaucracy’s way of meeting the challenges. A digital transformation is achieved via dynamic Strategy-Execution-Change lifecycle management, though it is not all linear steps, but an iterative, ongoing and upgoing change continuum. What are digital CIO’s profiles and how to reboot IT to get digital ready and cultivate the culture of learning and innovating?

      

  IT Led Digital Transformation 

Master IT to Lead Digital Transformation Today, the emerging technological trends and overwhelming growth of information make significant impact on how we think, live, and work; disrupt not only the business boundary but also the industrial boundary and geographical boundary. IT matters more not only because it’s pervasive but also because it continues to advance and its nature of the "constructive disruption.” To run a high performance business for the long term, companies must learn how to master information technology, make proactive preparation for dealing with continuous digital disruptions and adapting to the digital new normal with high velocity and fierce competitions.

Three Aspects of IT Led Digital Transformation Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing businesses, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. To stay competitive, companies must go beyond just experimenting with some digital technologies and commit to transforming themselves into a fully digital business powerhouse. IT also plays a pivotal role in leading a digital transformation in their organizations. Because IT oversees business processes, it can help to weave all these important business elements such as people, underlying processes, and functions into the building blocks of business capabilities and manage the business strategy effectively. Here are three aspects of IT led digital transformation.

The Promises and Perils of IT-Driven Digital Transformation In today's world, information & technology is driving the digital paradigm shift. Unlike previous eras during which business transformation was driven by business ideas. This is a golden opportunity for CIOs to lead the way by enabling change, optimizing business processes, catalyzing digital transformation, and governing risk management that's going viral in the enterprise. The journey will not be so smooth, there are many curves and bumps on the road, and here are the promises and perils of IT-driven digital transformation.

CIOs as Digital Leaders: Three IT-Led “Digital Charms” Digital transformation is the unstoppable trend. Digital charm is not based on the style (fancy web presence or fashionable gadgets) only float on the surface but based on the set of unique business capabilities. Because fashion will fade away, but the trend will turn into reality. Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way business is conducted so that simply adopting a new digital technology is insufficient. You have to transform the company's underlying functions and organization as a whole with adjusted digital speed. Because often technology is the disruptive force of digital innovation, and the information is the gold mine organizations need to dig for capturing the next business growth opportunities. Hence, Information Technology should be seen by any business as a “digital transformer” and strategy enabler. Here are three IT-led digital charms.

Shaping IT from a Change Laggard to Digital Trendsetter Traditional IT organizations are often inside-out operation-driven, mechanical and monolithic, it’s perceived by business as a controller and change laggard. Because in many cases, the business continues to evolve faster in grasping the market share and winning new customers, but sometimes failed due to lack of real-time information to capture business foresight and customer insight. With the exponential growth of information and often technology-led disruptions, IT has evolved significantly in running the business today, IT also faces an unprecedented opportunity to refine its reputation from a change laggard to the trendsetters of the digital organization.

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 minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6000 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. 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.

Read More

The Best “Sophistication” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2019

Sophistication often implies intelligence, profundity, uniqueness, urban fit, and multidimensional understanding.

"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 “Sophistication” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Sophistication is an interesting word which is different from complexity. Complexity which often describes the things or systems, can be managed and optimized from a technical perspective. And sophistication which describes either a person or a thing via the multidisciplinary lens needs to be cultivated with both soft touches and hard disciplines.

2 In today’s “VUCA” digital new normal, leadership and management practices are sophisticated. Sophistication often implies intelligence, profundity, uniqueness, urban fit, and multidimensional understanding.

3 From survival instincts to thriving sophistication, it’s not a quantitative accumulation, but a digital quantum leap.

4 Digital leadership sophistication is crucial in complex problem solving, understanding context is often the first and important step in leadership perception, create the relevant context to make a more lasting solution, not just fixing the symptoms.

5 The emphasis of leadership sophistication is on trying to determine which competencies or capabilities should be used in which combinations, and with what level of weight for each, for every different situation, in order to improve leadership effectiveness

6 Sophistication is also about the multi-dimensional competencies to formulate creative, unconventional alternatives or solutions to resolve problems, to show versatility and flexibility in response to unpredictable or unanticipated circumstances.

7 All businesses have certain capabilities, what matters is digital capability sophistication (hard to copy, uniqueness, complexity) and maturity (efficiency, effectiveness, and agility).

8 Decision making is one of the most important and sophisticated activities for business leaders and professionals today, and at the strategic level, the outcome of decision making will directly make an impact on the survival or thriving of the business.

9 Digital Ecosystems generally do not ‘think’ in the way we understand thinking; ecosystems are complex systems, behaving by way of interactions among the various constituents, it follows from this hypothesis that sophistication appeared rather suddenly within the history of human evolution.

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