The Best “Anthropology” Quotes of “Digital Master” Oct. 2019

Think through the anthropological dimension means to wonder everything relating human beings: Anthropology has radically enhanced the way to discover life with curiosity and more patience.

"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 “Anthropology” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Everything has layers, anthropological mind helps us look at things from a multiplicity. Anthropology provides a holistic perspective of digging into the dynamic human interrelationship.

2 Anthropology presents every aspect of human life and elucidates the cultural traits, complexes, and motive of specific human behavioral aspect.

3 Anthropology helps us connect the wider dots to spark creativity, and creativity will add enriched content and unconventional wisdom to anthropology as the knowledge domain, they mutually reinforce each other.

4 Anthropology can help to discover our place in the world as regards our culture, world conception, style of life, mythology and the common points among societies.

5 People with anthropological perspective are able to experiment with different ways of doing the same things and more tolerant of cultures and customs other than one’s own.

6 Thinking through anthropological dimension questions one’s assumptions, which tend to oversimplify about other cultures and individuals, past and present.

7 Think through the anthropological dimension means to wonder everything relating human beings: Anthropology has radically enhanced the way to discover life with curiosity and more patience.

8 An anthropological mind opens one’s eyes to a spectrum of things with so many different shades and colors of the same world; expand one’s vision of society, cultural diversity, and human potential, to achieve the art of the possible.

9 The anthropological mind can help us shift the thinking to a variety of perspectives and enables people to navigate a variety of cross-cultural situations and has greatly helped in developing tailored products and solutions.

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Enterprise Learning Principles

 It’s important to build a set of enterprise learning principles and a series of learning practices for building a learning organization.

Variety, complexity, diversification, and collaboration are the characteristics of the digital ecosystem. High organizational learning relates to high response in recognizing and addressing system constraints. Collective learning is the secret source to foster a culture of innovation and drive a company’s long-term success. High organizational learning relates to high response in recognizing and addressing system constraints. Here are a set of enterprise learning principles.

Have a clear goal: Either individually or collectively, the goal of learning is to sharpen skills and build professional competency. A goal is a driving factor, an ambitious goal setting stretches up the team and boosts employees' energy to learn, comport a vision for a better state. Organizations attach great significance to learning and training go a long way to become the digital leader in their industry. Goals win the game - the end objective. A good learning goal should have a timeline, resources, benefits, and beneficiary. Having a clear learning goal allows the organization to embed learning into the organizational culture, integrate information and knowledge management, and align learning culture with strategic business goals seamlessly.

Encourage active learning: With rapid change and exponential growth of information, be open to learning and sharing new knowledge. Making learning a priority and encouraging active learning help with succession planning and knowledge transfer. In a positive working environment, people focus on the learning opportunities offered by assignment, rather than on the status quo that goes with them. A focus on learning and development reduces attrition and has a great quantitative ROI. Unfortunately, in reality, many organizations still take a very reactive attitude to learn and manage knowledge. Adapting learning and continuous improvement culture involve gathering information, analysis, defining areas to be improved and a measurement scale for the culture improvement.

Enforce reciprocity: More often than not, learning is a collective activity. Learning from each other, listening-hearing model, feedback-forward, etc, are all part of learning scenario. Reciprocity is an important part of building trust, improving learning agility, and allows predictability and stability in the relationship. Reciprocity works because of shared learning goals, which creates less stress on the relationship. Building a creative environment with a learning culture and a trustful relationship means that people can take responsibilities for failures, learn from it, be inclusive, and focus on learning and experimenting with better ways to do things all the time.

Motivate diverse ways of learning and master the full learning cycle: Learning is situational, and learning styles can be rationalized and diverse, it could be multidimensional, dynamic, interactive and integrated. With rapid change, it's critical to manage the full learning cycle - learning, unlearning, and relearning all the time. The emergent digital technologies and platforms provide a flexible way to learn, share and collaborate, with the very goals to groom future leaders or digital professionals, build high performance teams, and foster employee engagement and development. The future of learning will require us to break away from the current one-size-fits-all mold and move to a customized learning platform and diverse ways of learning, to really encourage people in strengthening their strengths and pursuing their interests.

Learn from right resource: For improving learning agility, it’s important to be resourceful and objective. Being resourceful provides one angle to show that you have the ability to learn, know how to learn, and become learning agile. Knowledge assets are a blend of resources, not a single asset. The key to ultimate business success today is intangible knowledge assets. The resourceful people are not those that remember every detail but those that know where to look for knowledge. The effective resource allocation scenario helps to take advantage of resources effectively and improve learning intelligence.

Respect diverse talent: The organization’s learning culture is the basis of the company diversity of staffing. We can learn a lot from different mindsets (thought processes), cultures and positions, so organizations as a whole can be competitive enough to keep surging further. Having an inclusive culture always helps us learn from diverse people. So, the competitive advantage can be created by bringing together diverse groups of people whose mindsets, experiences, preferences, skills, and capabilities are additive to one another. Focus on cognitive differences, skills, abilities and the wealth of ideas since the value lies in the contributions of the individual to the organization.

Keep learning, keep inspiring: Continuous learning and training become highly important in the digital era due to increasing paces of change and the exponential growth of information. Collectively, developing people's capability and systems capability raise different "learning" issues. Learning organizations are comfortable with complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty, paradoxes and they have a penchant for candor. In the digital age, knowledge is dynamic and multidimensional. It’s not just spoken or transferred in hard-copy, it’s also transferred visually and through emotions or feelings. High organizational learning relates to high response in recognizing and addressing system constraints. Learning and doing are an iterative continuum, to ensure the organization knows the tasks and knowledge required to sustain itself and create an environment and business systems to support those tasks being done and build the organizational competency.

The emergence of potential opportunities for exploring digital is likely to follow a nonlinear pattern with accelerated speed. It’s important to build a set of enterprise learning principles and a series of learning practices for building a learning organization. Unlike the closed mechanical system, the digital organization keeps growing, generates patterns, tunes organizational structure, initiates business activities, and above all, creates novelty and builds knowledge over time.

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The Monthly “Problem-Solving Master” Book Tuning: How to Create Multiple Pathways for Problem-Solving Oct. 2019

The purpose of “Problem-Solving Master - Frame Problems Systematically and Solve Problems Creatively“ is to throw some light on how to understand, frame, and solve today’s multilayer, interdependent, and over-complex business problems effortlessly. Digital leaders and professionals should self-aware of their role in problems, show professional maturity, and develop a good reputation as the problem-solver.

     

How to Create Multiple Pathways for Problem-Solving

How to Create Multiple Pathways for Problem-Solving Fundamentally, the business or societal progress is made via a healthy cycle of problem-framing and problem-solving continuum. There is no magic formula for problem-solving, With the increasing pace of changes and shortened knowledge cycle, the best practices are outdated sooner than ever and “commonly known” methodology could be no longer working anymore when the circumstances change dramatically. You can't always wait for the "best" solution to emerge. It is important to experiment, explore, engage, and create multiple pathways to solve problems creatively.

Flexible Problem-Solving Fundamentally, every work is to deal with problems big or small both from long-term perspectives or on a daily basis. Problems become more complex in today’s changing dynamic and "VUCA" digital new normal. Problem-solving is a critical skill for both life and business. There is no magic formula for problem-solving nowadays, individuals or businesses must take their own unique approach, be flexible, be learning agile, and develop their own problem-solving methodologies and practices.

“Out-of-the-Box” Problem-Solving? Every mind has a certain box, some smaller, some bigger. the commonality is that "the box" tends to be what people with certain experience in the topic can identify as being "commonly known." It can also mean "solutions/answers" they have heard before. It is usually about how to fix problems in conventional ways. On the opposite, Out-of-the-Box” problem-solving is about continuing to break down the old box or known method, and shape the new box thinking to discover alternatives and solve complex problems via creativity and collaboration.

What’s the Logical Problem-solving Scenario to Solve Problems Creatively? Creative problem-solving is about how to think unconventionally or from a new perspective for either defining or solving old or emergent problems. There is always a well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong. Problem-solving is both art and science. It is about seeing a problem, discovering the root cause, and actually finding a solution to that problem, not just the band-aid approach to fixing the symptom. Sometimes lack of creativity has become the problem. What’s the logical problem-solving scenario to solve problems creatively?.

Tailor Solutions to the Real Problem People have to deal with large or small problems on a daily basis. Especially at today’s “VUCA” digital dynamic, problems have become over-complex and interdependent. Can you diagnose the real problem? Does every problem have solutions? What is the best way to handle a problem? How can you tailor the best solution to the real problem?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 6100+ blogs 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.

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The Best “Digital Fluidity” Quotes of “Digital Master” Oct. 2019

"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 “Fluidity” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Digital means flow, data flow, information flow, knowledge flow, mind flow, and business flow. Organizations, like individuals, need to be in flow to operate smoothly

2 Knowledge Management is a process to manage known from flowing. there is a shift from traditional, often static knowledge management approaches to techniques that involve enhancing the "flow" of knowledge within an organization to improve access and use.

3 An organization can approach the flow zone when the positions in its hierarchy have clear, accountable tasks.

4 Digital fluency is interconnected with digital fluidity. Digital means flow, data flow, information flow, knowledge flow, mind flow, and business flow.

5 Mindset is at the heart of our belief system. The mind shift from mindset to mind-flow is a significant perspective of digital transformation.

6 Knowledge is the key to changing mindsets and wisdom helps mind flow, grow and mature.

7 Forward-looking organizations experiment with different management approaches, business structure design, and problem-solving disciplines to build digital multiplier and improve business fluidity.

8 Organizations need to be in flow for communicating fluently and operating smoothly.

9 Digital fluidity enables free thinking and intuition. On the navigation dimension, a connecting mind, or collective minds in a business setting with digital fluency have more antennae focused on the trends and what’s going on in the world, or what it will impact the next generation, and what group will have better cognitive diversity with different opinions, and creativity sparkling.

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Present IT Value Proposition as an “Asset Under Construction”

 IT must invest in and leverage appropriate technologies and solutions to generate invaluable insights and create differentiated business value. 

Forward-looking organizations transform IT from a cost center to a value generator, IT management has to learn and explore different methods to set better performance metrics, play the number game wisely, present IT value proposition as an “asset under construction,” or the crucial investment expecting the return.

IT investment justification: IT must invest in and leverage appropriate technologies and solutions to generate invaluable insights and create differentiated business value. IT investment is both risky and costly, it’s important to invest in IT as an “asset under construction,” make IT investment justification to ensure that IT spends the money in the right way, help the business open up new channels of revenue and monetization within the enterprise and their ecosystem, and get the right business results. IT leaders must learn how to leverage reliable information for helping business leaders demystify the IT investment puzzle, enable them to decide whether or not an IT investment is worth-making. Keep in mind though, there’s the difference between business requirements and IT requirements, IT has to oversee the full set of business requirements to ensure the cohesiveness and to determine all the customers, users, and stakeholders and obtain their involvement, to make better IT investment justification and run IT as a business inside the business.

Building consistent IT delivery ability as the soft asset: With rapid change and exponential growth of information, IT needs to shorten its product/services delivery cycle for speeding up and improving business adaptability. Business leaders should be aware that in the digital arena, IT application and its dynamics have a significant difference compared to the previous age. IT applications blended with current digital technology trends can deliver significant benefits to business growth. If you can present the IT portfolio in a manner similar to a business investment portfolio, it makes instant conceptual sense to the corporate board and C-level executives. To delight customers and optimize the customer's experience, IT needs to build consistent IT delivery ability as the soft asset and champion intuitive and easy to use customer-tailored solutions to achieve specified goals and optimize the customer experience in a continuous delivery way.

Review ROI: Return on Investment - ROI, is a ratio, a percentage of the dollar amount your company gains from IT investment effort over what it initially spent in simple terms. Return on Investment tells the business management how well an IT investment repays the company. The IT Return On Investment value proposition should be an overall measurement based on the combination of cost, schedule, quality, performance, and satisfaction of the customer, users, and stakeholders. IT executives should also continue to review upon the ROIs of existing IT investment, In IT management meeting, the focus point should shift to which IT-led business initiatives provide the greatest return; and which should be invested in the future. To gain IT reputation as a business partner, IT leaders should convey a data-based presentation to the board and top executive teams in looking and appreciating IT strategic value to the business.

You should spend to make a return. IT is the core of most parts of the business today and must, therefore, be visible and present all the time. IT leaders need to perceive IT as an “asset under construction,” or the crucial investment expecting the return, so the CIO is on the right track for becoming an enabler and architect of new business values.

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 10/25/2019

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 6100+ 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.

Three Accomplishments Imply You are Perhaps at “the End of the Beginning” for IT-Led Digital Transformation Digital transformation is a long journey, and the path for digital transformation can be iterative, evolutionary, revolutionary, or disruptive. Information Technology is often the driving force behind digital transformation as IT continues to grow in importance to organizational growth and as a competitive advantage. IT-driven digital transformation inspires growth mindset, catalyzes innovation, and unleashes organizational potential. It’s a long journey, here are three accomplishments imply that you are perhaps at the “end of the beginning” for digital transformation, and reach the inflection point to accelerate transformative changes.

Three “G” Practices in Corporate Boardroom With rapid change and exponential growth of information, how successfully organizations can handle continuous digital disruptions depends on how fast and capable they can adapt to the ever-changing environment. The senior leadership of the organization such as BoDs, like the steering wheel, needs to navigate companies through uncharted water, to ensure their ships are moving in the right direction.

Systems Thinking and Problem-Solving Systems Thinking is about understanding interconnected relationship between parts and the whole. The business problems today usually have many causes and can be very complex. Leveraging Systems Thinking to problem-solving includes framing the right problems, understanding the interconnected relationship between different problems, as well as figuring out potential solutions.

Digital Workforce as Learning Master People are often the weakest link but one of the most critical success factors of the organization. Modern digital technologies bring unprecedented convenience for people to learn and collaborate, improve their productivity, learning agility, and innovativeness. Digital workforce is a technology savvy new breed and learning master.

The Best “Differentiation” Quotes of “Digital Master” Oct. 2019 "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 “Differentiation” quotes in “Digital Master.”

lBogging 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 “Kindness” Quotes of “Digital Master” Oct. 2019

 Kindness goes with compassion and empathy. Compassion touches the heart, but empathy connects the minds.

"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 “Kindness” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Kindness is a state of mind, flows from within, not floating on the surface.

2 Kindness often starts as a thoughtful mind and deliberate action, but enough of it, and it becomes a habit.

3 The true value of kindness is its consistency, to convey a person’s high quality as a human, the high professionalism as an employee; and the true nature as a creature.

4 You plant an apple seed and you're not going to get an orange tree. Kindness is exactly the same, it's a seed. Plant a lot of kindness and watch what happens to your experience of the world.

5 Real kindness requires thoughtful mind and consistent good behavior. Being kind doesn’t mean you cannot be tough, Being thoughtful takes wisdom, and having consistent action requires commitment.

6 If you are not committed to the practice of kindness, kindness is more or less a random action instead of a way of being.

7 Kindness goes with compassion and empathy. Compassion touches the heart, but empathy connects the minds.

8 Though being kind doesn't mean you can’t make tough decisions or challenge conventional wisdom, if only you think it’s the right choice to sow more seeds of kindness for the long run.

9 Kindness, empathy, and cooperation are innate differentiating characteristics of human beings, and it is a healthy and progressive mindset.

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Improve User Experience via Empathic Design

Delivering great experiences starts with empathetic design, research and strategic insights, with the ideas flowing through conception, design, development, production and quality assurance.

The digital era upon us is people-centric. Being customer-centric becomes the mantra for forward-thinking digital organization to out beat competitors. It’s very important to consider user experience (UX) in the designing process. Empathic design is a user-centered design approach that pays attention to the user's feelings toward a product or service, incorporate user experience at both strategic and design level to present great business value, delight customers and build the company brand cohesively.

The idea is to understand the Customer Experience in order to refine the Customer Journey: Customer Experience is how you feel about the whole process of being a customer. It is the sum of all thoughts, attitudes, experiences, feelings, reactions, etc, The Customer Journey is a representation of the touch points a customer engages with a brand. You might produce the most-sophisticated-in-the-market products, but no one needs and buys it. That will waste the talent and resource. Therefore, you have to put the customer and the employee at the heart of everything that you do as a business. To improve customer experience, the customer (including prospects) should be studied and observed and gain insight upon, to gain an empathetic understanding. Customer Experience is not just the sequence of events, but a seamless continuum. It provides the “WOW” concept as the necessary success factor to ensure you stay ahead of the game, particularly with your peers in business.

Always train to take a step back, put yourself in the customers' shoes and think as they would like to have: After understanding of customer needs; you need to show design-driven empathy to dig beneath articulated solutions, recognize underlying needs and wants. You can also look at the company’s technical capabilities to optimize customer experience and build unique organizational competency. Train to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. You should always listen and build understanding by imagining what it could feel like, and acknowledging that experience - especially when it is much different than your own. Empathy needs to be foundational in the design thinking process, ask insightful and compelling questions of the people. Your design will serve as you seek to understand their wants, desires, and needs. It’s about the technical abilities to weave the architecture of empathy for self, others, and nature into a vibrant and coherent whole.

Customer Journey Map: The human-centered design begins from deep empathy and in-depth understanding of needs and motivations of people from different perspectives and applying design to increase the level of empathy in customer experience. Customer Journey Map is a visual interpretation of individuals’ relationship with an organization, service, product or brand over time and across channels. 

You need to understand the journey before you can focus on the experience. The journey is the path customers take; the journey is for awareness, the journey is for service received, and the journey is for retention, etc. The customer experience is the fulfillment of a need that keeps them on the path to you. The deep look of customer journey uncovers the nuance and emotion of each touch point and the transitions in between. The way that the strategy and findings during discovery phases and customer journey map can be applied to not only creative but possibly other customer touch points in the business.

The good Customer Experience management is a norm, but a great Customer Journey with exceptional Customer Experience offers the 'WOW.” 'The empathize mode is the work you do to understand people, within the context of your design challenge. Delivering great experiences starts with empathetic design, research and strategic insights, with the ideas flowing through conception, design, development, production and quality assurance.

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The Monthly “Digital Boardroom” Book Tuning: The Corporate Board with Digital Acumen Oct. 2019

At the dawn of the digital era, the forward-thinking board sets the tone of changes in their organizations, and insightful BoDs are the mastermind behind the digital transformation.

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 with digital acumen.

               The Corporate Board with Digital Acumen 

Develop the Corporate Board with Digital Acumen Digital organizations are complex systems that are dynamic, self-evolving, self-adaptable, and self-perpetuating. Digital dynamic with “VUCA” characteristics create many blind spots in decision-making and generates quite a few gaps for change and digital transformation. Thus, digital corporate board directors with strategic acumen are in strong demand for helping the business in strategy development and performance monitoring..

Enforcing Digital Acumen in the Board Modern corporate boards as the top leadership team play a critical role in overseeing strategy, advising management practices and monitoring corporate performance. At the dawn of the digital era, the forward-thinking board also sets the tone of changes in their organizations, and insightful BoDs are the mastermind behind the digital transformation.

The "Digitizing Boardroom" Book Tuning: BoDs with Digital Acumen As a Board of Directors is responsible for the oversight and direction of a business, a Board in a high-level leadership position should be managing for the long term and play a crucial role in business advising and monitoring, as well as setting key digital tones in driving changes. From the leadership perspective, besides years of experience and vertical expertise, BoDs also need to have digital acumen in order to lead digital transformation effectively.

Five Trends to Shape Up the Digital Board Businesses large or small across the industrial sectors are on the long journey of the digital transformation. Metaphorically, the company is like a ship, the sea is the ecosystem environment, the old world is the past, and the new digital world is the future. The corporate board takes tremendous responsibilities for steering the business ship through uncharted water, so you don't have any choice but to change your sails to move forward in the right direction. The path for digital transformation can be iterative, evolutionary, revolutionary, or disruptive, can you predict the future trends and catch the upcoming tides, shape up the digital board for leading change confidently?

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 6100+ 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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The Best “Polarity Thinking” Quotes of “Digital Master” Oct. 2019

 Overly rigid polarity creates blind spots in decision making and causes management pitfalls to stifle collective progress.

"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 “Polarity Thinking” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 In the industrial world with silo and knowledge scarcity, the majority of people were used to binary thinking with rigid polarity, take the side without deep understanding.

2 Overly rigid polarity creates blind spots in decision making and causes management pitfalls to stifle collective progress.

3 Collectively, group polarization has become one of the biggest pitfalls in decision making. Based on the varieties of industry studies. Group polarization means that a group of people can make a more extreme decision than an individual.

4 The leaders or business professionals with polarity or binary thinking are resistant to listen to the diverse viewpoint; have no intention to understand the other side of the coin; push the people to take the side, many times, they become the part of problems which they try to solve.

5 To put simply, a binary or a polarity thinker is a lack of balance to understand things in a holistic way.

6 To avoid polarity or thinking extremely, you have to practice multi-dimensional thinking processes such as critical thinking, creative thinking, systems thinking, analytical thinking, synthetic thinking, holistic thinking and more.

7 A binary or polar thinker is often embracing the two opposite sides of viewpoint, and take the two-dimensional lenses to perceive the multi-faceted world, they perceive things either good or bad, right or wrong, black or white, there are no shades in between.

8 Either you call it “extreme thinking,” “binary thinking,” or “bipolar thinking,” such mind is too rigid in the outlook; too judgmental in managing relationship; too static to sense the change; too silo to think big picture, and too linear to fit in the non-linear digital world.

9 It is important to encourage digital leaders or professionals to understand how polarity or “extreme thinking” can build the wall at the peoples’ heart, damage relationship building, and make it hard for them to adapt to the hybrid “coopetitive” (competition+cooperation) digital environment.

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Three Critical Puzzle Pieces of the Digital Transformation Game Leaders Must Learn to Play Well

Going digital and running an intensive, effective, and cohesive digital organization takes dynamic planning, dedicated execution, and holistic digital management disciplines.


The digital paradigm shift is inevitable, the ultimate goal of running a successful enterprise is to achieve high-performance business results and reach high-level organizational maturity. Digital organizations need to keep evolving, renewing, and achieving the state of dynamic balance. Here are three critical puzzle pieces of long-term game the digital leaders must learn to play well in order to build differentiated business competencies and develop solid pillars to shape a high mature digital business.

 

Simplification has to be part of the long-term game that digital leaders need to play: The Digital organization is a complex ecosystem with the blurring line between functions, organizations, and geographic locations. Try to analyze what the impact of complexity is on a system (such as process, customers, business); also look for the impact of removing some of the complications. In fact, part of the digital journey is about eliminating unnecessary complexity via continuous consolidating, rationalizing, integrating, and optimizing. Because progress is in simplification which often follows complexity.

 Simplicity has a multitude of perspectives. From problem-solving perspective, when pioneering and solving problems, initial solutions are often more complex than required, and then adoption and progress come with simplification. From an organizational structural perspective, silo functions, redundant processes or overly rigid organizational hierarchy stifle change and decelerate business flow. It's worthwhile to actually consider changing the structure model to meet what the future may bring.

In fact, the dynamic digital organization needs to be simplified and elaborated in a well-organized effort for adapting to emergent business changes in its own functions, structures, and behaviors. The organizational design needs to consider the nature and culture of the organization, the stage of the business maturity, and the extent of rapid changes within the digital ecosystem, with an ultimate goal to accelerate business performance and unlock its potential.

Build long-term viability to win the strategic business game: Digital transformation is a long journey, with fierce competition and continuous disruption, digital leaders must present that the organization is for “playing to win,” not just trying not to lose. Design a viable digital organization for enjoying a powerful tailwind to improve business performance and speed. A viable digital organization can deliver impressive business outcomes and unlock its performance by improving manageability and developing organizational competencies.

 The growth of business creates more value than running a business but is much riskier. It’s important to build the digital premium into the very foundation of their companies such as digital thinking, culture, structure, processes, etc. They can also develop a creative workforce to maintain viability and deliver high-quality business results for strategic effect. It’s in their own benefit to build long term viability via building the horizontal organizational interdependencies for business exploration and expansion, to achieve better to market, accelerate business speed and reach high-performance business results.

Move the needle of diversification: Digital organizations are diversified with a multigenerational, multicultural workforce using multidevice to do multitasking. Diversification is the hidden dimensions to spark innovation, reach the next level of business growth and organizational maturity. 

All ambitious businesses strive to unlock their business innovation performance and unleash their full digital potential by enforcing diversification and collaboration. Keep in mind though, there is a significant difference between cosmetic diversity makeup and the essential diversification movement. The emergent digital technologies and practices make it possible to expand the talent pool and discover professional competency based on their mindset, expertise, social influence, and digital footprint. 

Hyperdiversity includes cognitive differences, levels of capabilities, complementary experiences, the spectrum of skills, unique competencies, cultural perspectives, and personalities. Thus, organizations need to move the needle of diversification, bring in fresh ideas and new perspectives to make creations and build a better future together. Then, diversity will be transcendent to the next level of organizational maturity and human advancement when having a common purpose.

Going digital and running an intensive, effective, and cohesive digital organization takes dynamic planning, dedicated execution, and holistic digital management disciplines. There are some critical puzzle pieces that digital leaders must play well to improve long-term business competency and reach the next level of business maturity.

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The Monthly “100 IT Charm” Book Tuning: From Monolithic IT to Mosaic IT Oct. 2019

 The role of IT in the current business environment should become strategic, enable business outcomes, build organizational competency, and catalyze business growth.

The purpose of the The purpose of the book “100 IT Charms: Running Versatile IT to get Digital Ready“ is to articulate different flavors of digital IT organizations and brainstorm the best and next practices for running highly innovative and high-performance IT. Digital charm is not based on the style presented on the surface but on a set of unique competencies to make IT shine through as a business differentiator.

      

  From Monolithic IT to Mosaic IT

Transforming IT from Monolithic Hardware Oriented to Mosaic Software Driven With overwhelming growth of information and rapid changes, the role of IT in the current business environment should become strategic, enable business outcomes, build organizational competency, and catalyze business growth. IT leaders need to make an objective assessment: What’s the focal point of IT- monolithic hardware oriented, or bits & bytes information driven? Inside-out operation-driven or outside-in customer-centric? Transaction or transformation focus?

Why is INFORMATION -Driven IT a Strategic ShiftThe tension between 'business' and IT has been around forever, but instead of getting better, it has gotten worse in the last couple of years. The reason is that digital has become ’normality,’ and almost everyone now feels at ease with digital technology. In other words, the natural knowledge advantage of the IT department has eroded. So what’s the digital advantage? Why is information driven IT a strategic shift? How to shift IT focus from "T" - technology-driven to "I" focus, and how to run a high-effective and high performance digital IT?

Running an “I” driven Digital IT Organization Digital means the rapid change, with an unprecedented level of unrepeatability and unpredictability. The ability of companies to consume and make sense of the information that is available to make good decisions or capture business insight for enforcing innovation within today’s digital dynamic is becoming a nearly insurmountable challenge. IT as the information steward, how to manage information well and unleash the full digital potential of the business?

The New Book “100 IT Charm” Introduction: Chapter II IT as an Information Broker Nowadays information is the lifeblood of the organization, all forward-looking organizations declare they are in the information management business. IT needs to shift from “T” driven operation focus to “I” information, insight and innovation centered management. Slideshare Presentation

CIOs as “Chief Information Officer”: How to Unleash the Full Potential of Information Forward-thinking IT organizations are shifting from “T"-Technology-driven to “I” information oriented. The most powerful and differentiating tool in all of today's businesses is INFORMATION and that is provided by IT systems. 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. If done well, information can unleash the business’s full potential and maximize its multi-dimensional values. On the flip side, information is also something that can hinder the achievement of strategic objectives, having it unavailable or compromised. Therefore, Information Management is one of the most important management disciples and best practices in the digital organization. So going back to fundamental, CIOs as “Chief Information Officer”: How to unleash information potential, and the full potential of the business?

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6100 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.

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Three “G” Practices in Corporate Boardroom

Contemporary corporate boards nowadays have many responsibilities, but also face various distractions.

With rapid change and exponential growth of information, how successfully organizations can handle continuous digital disruptions depends on how fast and capable they can adapt to the ever-changing environment. The senior leadership of the organization such as BoDs, like the steering wheel, needs to navigate companies through uncharted water, to ensure their ships are moving in the right direction.

Growth mindset shaping: The digital era upon us is multifaceted, non-linear, unrepeatable, and unpredictable, with exogenous drivers which couldn't be controlled completely. Leadership in itself is a constant learning process that requires the leader to build experience and to share insight. Thus, it’s critical for senior leaders such as board directors, to make a shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, gain and share insight from the sea of information and the abundance of knowledge.

The difference between knowledge and insight is thinking, and especially lateral, nonlinear or multi-dimensional thinking, a holistic view. It's critical to examine the current board make-up, identify who (mindset, expertise, creativity) is currently sitting at the board table, how to develop the corporate board with a growth mindset and bootstrap their members to raise themselves to the level of knowledge and sophistication required to fill the board oversight and fiduciary responsibilities.

Gap-minding: The corporate board’s role is supposed to be the guiding force in the enterprise, envisioning and leading it towards its future. Compared to other junior level management position, the BoDs needs to spend significant time on making strategic decisions. Hence, sound judgment skills are important to enhance leadership effectiveness and improve decision-making maturity. Foresightful BoDs should always look for the complementary mindsets, diverse experiences, and differentiated skill sets so that collectively, they can avoid groupthink, mind leadership gap, make sound judgments, and provide invaluable advice to senior management.

Today’s digital board simply just can’t stand still. Bridging the gap of opportunity between where you are and want to become is a welcomed challenge. More specifically, bridging leadership gap is about filling innovation gaps, change gaps, and talent gaps. Gap-minding leadership practices are important in the boardroom because if you are not taking steps now to shrink that leadership gaps, you will not be prepared to lead digital transformation seamlessly. The corporate boards can make significant contributions to set the digital leadership tone for advancing and inclusiveness.

Governance enforcement: Governance is all about conforming to regulation and performing well to achieve business goals. Governance is fundamentally about having a systematic approach to making decisions within the corporate entity and taking an oversight of assessment.

The corporate boards play crucial roles in practicing governance disciplines. Good governance must create good performance, especially for the business growth in the long run.

In practice, governance is a “framework” for policies and processes and it enables the board to govern and report to shareholders and stakeholders. More specifically, the governance disciplines in the board level include, but not limited to gauging conditions and choices; taking an oversight of appropriation and accountability, matching priorities, and balancing resources -scoring activity and net results. Governance is a sophisticated process that if well executed, will lead to better decisions and performance. It will allow not only to protect the existing value but also to create new value for its shareholders.

The digital ecosystem is just like the natural ecosystem which keeps the dynamic balance of order and chaos, patterns and diversity. Contemporary corporate boards nowadays have many responsibilities, but also face various distractions. They need to shape growth mindset, have multi-intelligent wisdom, understand things and circumstance in a holistic way, bridge varying leadership gaps in order to steer the business in the right direction.

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The Art and Science of Creative Disruption

 Virtually all real economic growth or societal progress is driven by some sorts of creative disruptions.


There is no doubt we are moving from a static and linear business world to a dynamic, hyper-connected, and interdependent digital era. Innovation is the result of some kind of disruption; it can be defined as the collision between different perspectives, mind-states of possibility and thought patterns that result in creative ideas and solutions. Virtually all real economic growth or societal progress is driven by some sorts of creative disruptions.


Disrupt the outdated mindsets, systems, processes, cultures, business models, or practices: Organizations today are the business system with a mixed bag of old and new. When a system produces "bad" side-effects, we may wish to intervene. Often, creative disruptions are inevitable. In fact, innovation is all about disrupting outdated thinking and old ways to do things, such as silo, status quo, dysfunction, complication, rigidity, or bureaucracy, etc. “Disruption” and “stimulation” makes sense, taking into consideration that many businesses do not seem to be satisfied with the current circumstances because there are not enough innovations happening in their businesses to disrupt outdated mindsets, systems, processes, cultures, business models, or practices. It’s critical for organizations to make creative disruption for awakening innovation, make a seamless transformation from the closed and silo system to a cognitively open, hyper-connected, and intra-active ecological systems.

Disrupt and then reconstruct: The highly innovative companies usually have a powerful innovation navigation system which involves tapping the business ecosystem for a collective perspective on where to disrupt or where to reconstruct. When systems are bad, silo thinking is propagating, functional gaps are enlarged, you know some breakdowns are needed to stimulate innovation. When people are not working via the system to solve the real problems but play the system or create frictions to changes, or when systems beat good people every time, you know the systems are “bad,” you acknowledge that the system is dysfunctional, and creative disruption is a strategic imperative. When organizations only seek examples to follow, rather than develop their own tailored solutions to emerging problems, you know some simulations are needed to first disrupt, and then reconstruct, integrate all critical business elements into unique innovation competency.

Information Technology catalyzes constructive disruption: Historically, technology indeed stimulates mankind's imagination, to make constructive disruptions and achieve the “art of the possible” continually. Organizations today can leverage lightweight, powerful and intuitive digital technologies to make constructive innovation. The exponential growth of information brings new opportunities for companies to capture business insight or forecast customers’ demands. To make creative disruptions, organizations depend more heavily on their technological knowledge and market capabilities to experiment, learn and innovate. Information Technology matters not only because it’s pervasive, but also because it continues to advance, and its nature of the "constructive disruption." At the highest level, Information Technology needs to become the game changer for the business. Make people feel more comfortable with the digital new normal - chaos, uncertainty, and ambiguity. It’s also important to build a risk-tolerance environment, allow time for playing and exploring, stimulating creative thinking, and catalyzing disruptive innovations.

Creative disruption is both art and science. It could make previously valued skills or competitive advantage less demanded, with potential of becoming obsolete. On the other side, it’s exciting because often it could bring something new to the party - something that couldn’t have been possible. Creative disruption can lead to breakthrough innovation. So you will get very great chances and opportunities to change your organization in many fields and lift up the organization to the next cycle of growth and maturity.

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The Monthly Organizational Structure Tuning: Tuning the Learning Organizational Structure Oct. 2019

The digital organization keeps growing, generates patterns, tunes organizational structure, initiates business activities, and above all, creates novelty and builds knowledge over time.

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 dimensions of your organizational development to harness innovation?

Tuning the Learning Organizational Structure 

Tuning a Learning Organizational Structure To survive in the “VUCA” digital era, dynamism consists in being able to break away from being static, and becoming proactive to ever-evolving changes. The more difficult challenge is not just launching successful teams, but maintaining their motivation and focus, tuning an organizational structure and creating a dynamic environment in which learning is the new norm and happens the whole time. Unlike the closed mechanical system, the digital organization keeps growing, generates patterns, tunes organizational structure, initiates business activities, and above all, creates novelty and builds knowledge over time.


How to Fine Tune a Digital Learning Organization Digital means the increasing speed of change and hyper-connected, always-on businesses. Change Management in high mature organizations are no longer just a one-time business initiative, but an ongoing business capability. Change Management and Strategy Management need to go hand-in-hand. But more specifically, how to manage change effectively to improve its success rate, and how to fine-tune a digital learning organization?

Does a Flat Organization help or hinder Talent Management Due to the hyper-connectivity and "always-on" nature of digitalization with the emerging digital technology trend, the functional borders are blurring and organizations have become flatter and dynamic, does such structure help or hinder HR? And how can a highly-effective HR catalyze business's digital transformation?

Develop a Learning Organization and Build Breakthrough Innovation Competency With the increasing pace of changes and cutting throat competitions, to effectively respond to the digital dynamics, companies must begin thinking about ways to build their innovation competency, broaden their ecosystems and revenue streams. In reality, the true innovation always spurs certain disruptions otherwise it is not innovation. Nowadays innovation can occur anywhere in the organization, and frankly, it has to occur in every aspect of the organization, information is the most time-intensive piece of digital innovation. How can companies develop a learning organization and take a structural way to manage innovation, especially breakthrough innovations which are disruptive and will change their organizations in many fields? You need new technology, new processes, new knowledge, maybe a new business model. All that makes them very risky but on the other hand, you will get very great chances and opportunities for achieving leapfrog results.

A Learning Organization A learning organization is one in which the majority of the employees at all levels are open to new ideas, experimentation with new ways of doing things, learning from instead of condemning or punishing mistakes, errors and, perhaps most importantly, where knowledge is shared instead of hoarded, thus, expanding power instead of confining it. What Systems Thinking models are called up when organizations "learn"? Can you recognize the interconnectivity between employee learning and organizational learning? What are the characteristics of a learning organization? And does "Learning" trait differentiate Digital Masters from the digital laggards?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6100+ 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.

Read More