Critical thinking & Decision Management

Critical thinking is crucial for dealing with the uncertainty and complexity of today’s digital dynamic. You should apply it to have clear discernment and make sound judgment.

Critical thinking has been described as “thinking about thinking.” It is an intellectually disciplined thought process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information in order to make effective decisions. 

Real Critical Thinking is hard but a great cognitive skill to deal with the multi-logical situations and multi-culture today, which are complex with many moving parts; it requires having multiple valid viewpoints and interdisciplinary skills to make effective decisions and solve hyper-complex problems facing businesses and our society smoothly. Statistically, only a very small percentage of the population is truly critical thinkers. The real critical thinkers are good decision-makers and logical problem-solvers.

Independent thinking and creative thinking are important ingredients in critical thinking: True critical thinking and constructive criticism are very important for improving the decision effectiveness of the business. Real critical thinking has creativity embedded in it. Creativeness derives from one's ability to let go. Let go of assumptions and stigmas we place on objects, ideas, function, practice how to perceive things differently and empty your mind of how things are "usually" understood or solved. Think out of the box, and make decisions in an intelligent manner. You also need to be good at independent thinking, not always following conventional wisdom or others' thoughts, continue learning and updating kowledge, and shape your own thoughts and opinions.

Most decisions on problem-solving are based on “logic” which is a key component of the process of critical thinking generally. There are multidimensional thought processes behind effective decision-making, especially at the strategic level. Without independent thinking, it surely has blind spots in such thought processes; without creativity, you can't connect unusual dots to think differently and think critically, ask open questions which lead to uncovering situations others do not see at first, discover hidden connections, and make sound judgments.

Critical thinking as an iterative thought process leads to a series of refinements based on learning and experience: The real critical thinking far more outweighs the conventional critical thinking techniques, such as reasoning, logic, calculation, and it’s a multi-threading thought process leading to a series of refinements and the conscious weighing of expected outcomes. Critical thinking helps to avoid the trap of emotional turbulence or individual perception, really dig beneath the superficial layer, and has a vision of purpose besides what is already obvious. In the ever-evolving business world, at least, you can’t always wait for the “best” decision to emerge. You have to make the best decision you can, based on an iterative thought process and have the gut to admit when a mid-course correction is in order. An effective decision is usually based on the right mix of analysis and intuition by “thinking fast and slow” accordingly.

Collectively, practice deep listening skills, understand the circumstance profoundly, make room for others to discover their own insights; or give room for their perspectives to emerge in order to improve team decision maturity. From a problem-solving perspective, more often than not, you need to allow a “bottom up” approach to collect sufficient information and leverage collective wisdom. And then, you can proceed to environmental, organizational and sociological factors that define the environment in which the decisions are made and complex problems can be solved radically.

Decision-making is an analytics-synthesis continuum; analytics and synthesis both are crucial ingredients in critical thinking: Analysis is about understanding the thing by examining it as parts. Synthesis is about understanding a thing by examining it as a whole. Both processes are crucial elements in critical thinking, and thus play important roles in making strategic decisions. Analysis is necessary to have knowledge of an argument, a situation, a problem. Synthesis is necessary to summarize understanding of it and to transfer information about it to others without “lost in translation.”

Either for making decisions or solving problems, in any case, analytics-synthesis are the two ends of the line between understanding the parts and understanding the whole, very different, but also complementary, equally and inextricably linked to the process of understanding the problems, see the trees and forests. They are invaluable intellectual processes for improving decision-making effectiveness.

Critical thinking is crucial for dealing with the uncertainty and complexity of today’s digital dynamic. You should apply multidimensional intelligence to have clear discernment and make sound judgments by respecting cognitive differences and overcoming unconscious bias. You have to envision the future trends and gain a long-term perspective, challenge the conventional wisdom, identify gaps, be able to imagine or remain open to considering fresh views for making strategic decisions and solving large, complex problems skillfully.

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The Monthly “100 Creativity Ingredients” Book Tuning: Uncover Thoughts Behind Creativity Aug. 2020

 Creativity is the mental process to generate novel ideas. 

All humans are born with raw creativity ability. Creativity has many dimensions, with multi-faceted truth and myth, manifold knowledge and multidimensional insight. Creativity is the wings of our mind and the tempo of our heartbeat. Creativity is a constructive disruption, not so bad addiction, and a sensational phenomenon. 

The purpose of “100 Creativity Ingredients - Everyone’s Playbook to Unlock Creativity “is to classify, scrutinize, articulate, and share insight about one hundred special creativity ingredients, to paint the picture with them, to add colors on them, to embed the music into them, and to make the story via them, in order to unleash our collective creativity potential.   

            Uncover Thoughts Behind Creativity

Inspire Creativity via Multidimensional Thought Processes Creativity is a complex, multidimensional thought process, it is infused with an inner cohesiveness and comes from a vision of uniqueness. Creativity is the "soaring factor." We all should broaden our points of interest and try new things to extend our thinking box and inspire creativity via multidimensional thought processes.

The Dot Connection of Creativity vs. System Thinking Creativity is about connecting dots to generate novel ideas; to dig into the mindset level, it’s a system thinking process. Systems Thinking is about seeing interrelationships rather than isolated things, understanding patterns, focusing on the nature of relationships rather than just on separate entities. What’s the further understanding of creativity and Systems Thinking?

Five Thinking Forces Behind Creativity Being creative is the kind to "think outside the box" for idea generation and problem-solving. The most important characteristic of being creative is to act without fear and let you self-conscious express itself. Being innovative is a mindset and a prerequisite to doing sustainable business these days.

A Connective Mind Sparking Creativity Human minds are perhaps one of the most powerful but mysterious things in the universe, as they continue to imagine and invent things for changing the world. The fact is that the world now becomes more advanced, complex, hyperconnected, and dynamic than ever. Creativity is about connecting unusual dots, the connective mind is in demand to spark creativity and foster innovation.

Creativity and Psychology Creativity is the mental process to generate novel ideas. What fuels creativity? It is a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. What is the psychology of creativity? On one hand, we have the level of curiosity, desire to learn and there is natural ability to maintain an open and inquisitive mind, and on the other hand, we have the conditions of the environment in which we operate, with all restrictions, needs, gaps, and pressures that might push our creative minds to soar.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #7000th 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 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 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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Leadership Sophistication and Maturity

Digital leadership sophistication is based on a unique combination of the leadership mindset, attitudes, and behaviors that develop and achieve high quality and meaningful results over a sustained period of time.

We slowly, but steadily move to the era with an abundance of knowledge and rapid change, it has raised the bar of leadership significantly. Digital leadership is sophisticated because there are many variables in it, and there is a delicate mix of expertise, interpersonal skills, along with a lot of different attributes. Sophistication implies intelligence, uniqueness, unban fit, and complex problem-solving, and the following aspects.  

Leadership sophistication is on versatility and flexibility in response to unpredictable or unanticipated circumstances: The “VUCA” new normal acknowledges that we can never know about an issue or a business completely; it requires us to look beyond what might be the known facts to consider of what’s not known (“knowing unknown, or unknown unknown”), etc. Thus, digital leaders, today should become more future-oriented, set a clear vision, have the breadth of leadership skills and depth of insight to handle many intricate situations, be versatile and flexible in response to unpredictable circumstances, solve problems and drive change relentlessly.

Great leadership is a good combination of mindsets, attitudes, expertise, insight, and behaviors, etc. it’s about trying to determine which competencies or capabilities should be used in which combination, and with what level of weight for each, for different situations, in order to improve leadership maturity. Forward-looking companies should keep leadership substance on checking: identifying and articulating digital paradigm shifts, setting trends, not a fad, molding leaders that go out and promote changes in people’s mindsets, make influence through vision and insight, and lead transformation smoothly.

Leadership sophistication is on framing the right problems to solve and solving them innovatively: Many of today’s business problems are complex, it requires leaders leveraging multidimensional mindset, taking systematic views, having sophistication and creative abilities to reframe the circumstances or conditions around problems, and solve them innovatively. It’s about having multi-dimensional competencies to formulate creative, or unconventional solutions to resolve problems cost-effectively.

Creativity becomes significantly important because leaders of the future will not be mere automation, but continue to discover, explore, improve, and achieve “the art of possible.” Digital leaders with systematic views can encompass the impacts and consequences of their thinking and actions, distinguish interconnections and interdependencies of situations, embrace diverse points of view, make wise choices, and premium decisions consistently. They do this by challenging themselves and staff to find optimal high-value solutions to provide clarity on high priority objectives, criteria, quality, and results. Collaboratively, leadership teams with cognitive differences can shape a broader view that is not possible via linear thinking, and have the better capability and complementary skills to solve problems creatively.

Leadership sophistication is based on making continuous progress, rather than perfection: Leadership competencies are interrelated with traits and expertise. Neither one overshadows the other, they complement each other. Digital leaders envision changes, keep learning agile, grow relentlessly with continuous delivery. They should have an in-depth understanding of how to motivate multi-generational and multicultural workforces through inspiration, positivity, and co-creation, less focus on “command & control,” more focus on “peer-to-peer” collaboration.

Digital leaders with high sophistication can keep building their professional competency, orchestrate strategic changes, and achieve high quality and meaningful results over a sustained period of time. Great leaders are also great coaches who demonstrate unique insight and expert power to instruct and influence, show the team how to explore their skill sets, talents, and strong stregth, taking into account their own objectives in line with working needs. The qualifications, if well managed, are needed in every society, ensuring respect for the leader’s influence and maturity.

 There is NO one single attribute to digital leadership; there is a good combination of hard and soft skills, enriched experiences, and high professionalism to become a great leader. Moreover, the use of these skills and attributes happens in different proportions for each major undertaking in order to improve overall leadership sophistication and maturity.

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Business Workforce Optimization

Organizational workforce optimization takes planning, experimenting, and scaling up.

The digital workforce has a multitude of varieties. In reality, people are always the weakest link in organizations for either strategy management or change management. Individually, as a person, you need to be optimized with a growth mind and updated skills. People optimization is more holistic than talent management as it plays an important role in determining what energizes the individual at the most. At the organizational level, business workforce optimization helps to gain predictive insight of talent demand, develop in-demand skills and capabilities, navigate through the future of the workplace, measure workforce capacity, and reach the next level of organizational maturity and societal progress.

Envisioning futuristic trends, and making proactive workforce planning: Because the digital environment is dynamic and uncertain, with the exponential growth of information and frequent disruptions often led by digital technologies. Business growth and innovation today are heavily dependent on having the best people with critical thinking abilities and professional competency to solve the right problems. Envisioning future trends and forecasting knowledge and skills are required to ensure you have the right people with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time, and for the right cost, not just keeping the light on today, but competing for the future.  

To make proactive workforce planning, business management must first assume the goal is to find the right person who not only fulfills the required needs of the work at the moment but also has the collective potential to lead organizations up to the next level of the business growth and maturity. In practice, talent managers start using data not just to monitor employees’ behavior, but to ask and answer some hard questions that are at the heart of how employees contribute to business performance, what their professional potential is and how to align their career goals with the strategic business goals, predict employee preferences and behaviors and tailor next practices to attract and retain talent effectively.

Enforcing workforce deployment and development: Compared to the industrial era with knowledge scarcity and silo setting, the digital era upon us is information-rich and technological advanced. Knowledge workers today are more purpose-driven and self-motivated. Enforcing workforce deployment and development makes sense to convey the vision of running an organic digital business which needs to keep investing, nurturing, and growing their people and optimize workforce to meet the needs of business growth.

It is great when the organization provides support and empowers its staff by showing respect and offering talented people opportunities and efficient tools to achieve more. Make sure the work environment encourages creativity and collaborative thinking, helps employees at all levels within an organization to think out of the box, take reasonable risks, go beyond their defined roles and keep updating their skills. The transparent management to optimize the workforce is to transform the organization into the system approach, not through the command-control hierarchy only. You could supervise with control to enforce management discipline, but it has to be implemented systematically.

Enhancing the analytical workforce performance and optimization models and mapping with returns: The basic fact is that the workforce optimization and performance management system are working tools that improve organizational performance/productivity/potential. In many traditional organizations, performance management turns out to be some practices to monitor people's daily behaviors or an annual routine to focus mainly on past performance. From a workforce optimization perspective, it’s important to identify performance bottlenecks; when productivity is low, further analytics is needed for an understanding of the cause whether it is due to the change or learning curve, inefficient practices or processes, or the culture complacency, in order to fix problems smoothly.

The multifactor workforce productivity analysis would examine the process to determine what elements of production made the employees more productive to achieve the expected performance results and make continuous optimization. The one way to find out whether the performance measurement and management are effective or not is by looking at the behavior and culture theater the KPIs are driving. Businesses have become very adept at measuring the result. Workforce optimization and performance management need to be transparent and objective, understood by the entire organization. To enhance the perception of better ROI, visualization of insights & graphical data representation of analytical results to stakeholders is key.

Today's digital workforce is a technology savvy new breed, with the very characteristics of multi-generation, multi-culture and multidevicing. Organizational workforce optimization takes planning, experimenting, and scaling up, building a creative workplace and high-performance workforce- preparing people to get digital ready psychologically and professionally, in order to unlock business growth and improve organizational maturity.

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The Monthly “Change Agent CIO” Book Tuning: Drive Change and Improve IT Maturity Aug. 2020

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.

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?

      

Drive Change and Improve IT Maturity    

Use IT Architecture as a Practical Tool to Improve Organizational Maturity Due to the pervasive technology update and information penetration, businesses today not just use IT as a digital extension, but leverage IT across the company to maximize the business value. IT architecture has two purposes: one is to support the “maintenance” by describing how IT should be in its current states to “keep the lights on” efficiently; the other is to describe how IT enables business change, especially the large scale digital transformation when the well-defined vision is implemented and in the various stepping stages on the way to reach the higher level of organizational maturity.

How should Executive Teams Provide Input Upon Varying Issues for Improving IT Maturity? Organizations across vertical sectors declare they are in the information management business. Many think the new way of running a high-performance business is a set of interdisciplinary management principles and practices through the Information Technological lens. Highly innovative companies must leverage IT and encompass all of the relevant disciplines in place and actively monitor emerging business opportunities in order to recognize and act on them in a time frame that will yield strategic advantages.

Running Logical IT by Evolving Five-Step Digital Flow IT is an engineering discipline, as always, but adding a more enriched digital context for the paradigm shift. IT can be used as a tool, an enabler, a catalyst, and a digital platform to orchestrate change and facilitate idea creation and implementation, to meet the ultimate goal of an organization's short, medium, and long-term strategic goals. It’s important to take a structural approach to run logical IT by evolving a five-step digital flow.

Transforming IT from Monolithic Hardware Oriented to Mosaic Software DrivenWith 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 the bits & bytes information-driven? Inside-out operation-driven or outside-in customer-centric? Transaction or transformation focus?

Take a Logical Scenario to Drive IT Change Management 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 the “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.

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 #7000 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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“Quantity” Quotes of “Digital Master” Aug. 2020

 The innovation performance of the company depends on the quality and quantity of ideas entering the “innovation pipeline.”

"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 “Quantity” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 To break down silo mentality and traditional talent management techniques, workforce planning and management have to become more dynamic, analytic, and systematic, engaging workforce planning, deployment, and development based on performance both qualitatively and quantitatively.

2 By sharing a simplified table that identifies the drivers and trends underlying each scenario using a high/medium/low quantity measure, the comparison can still be made to your quantitative plan around specific assumptions.

3 Innovation performance indicators need to focus on measuring quality, quantity, time, cost, revenue growth, profit improvement, margin targets, product variety for stability, turnover, shareholder/owner return, and talent sustainability, etc.

4 Being innovative is a state of mind, it is a cultural thing. Thus, innovation efforts cannot be measured the same as other types of business initiatives via a quantitative manner only.

5 The innovation performance of the company depends on the quality and quantity of ideas entering the “innovation pipeline,” how well it can convert them into the desired output, propositions, or process improvement, etc, with measurable business benefits.

6 Both quality and quantity measures are important because shipping the wrong products on time and within a budget doesn’t benefit anybody, particularly the organization.

7 Quality is the quantity measured from both technical view vertically and user view horizontally.

8 The management needs to clarify how you can design metrics to measure what changes and how these changes are measured. What are the relevant metrics of IT performance related to changes and how can they be quantified and validated? Whatever the measurement system is, it needs to be consistent, repeatable, and as unbiased as possible.

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Various Aspects of Business Capability Development

Organizations should enforce various management disciplines, deliberately make the close alignment among the company’s strategic direction, its most distinctive capabilities, to achieve strategic goals in a step-wise manner.

Today’s business environment has a high degree of unpredictability and uncertainty, digital organizations have to adapt to the continuous changes, they should be reconfigured in a way to increase variety, and build a set of dynamic business capabilities systematically. 

It is important to look at dynamic capability from a quite different perspective, apply a capability map to identify critical patterns, business components, and the following management disciplines for making holistic investment decisions, expediting the capability delivery cycle, and building differentiated company advantage smoothly.

Resource allocation and level of balance in capability management: Organizational capabilities continue being considered the market-relevant bundles of resources with the potential to drive business competitiveness. In practice, resource management is an important aspect to develop business capabilities. Oftentimes, the enterprise capability design and configuration is uniquely challenging because of resource limitations or other business constraints. Resources include technological, financial, reputational, market structure and institutional assets, etc. Business management needs to make an objective assessment of their resource availability and allocation by asking: how many resources will you need and to what extent are these resources available to build desired capabilities, seek to determine whether the deficiency derives from any particular dimension - different resource types, etc. At the program level, executives are sufficiently aware of the "general condition" of the various capabilities to input into a qualitative assessment, allocating resources effectively, and making the level of balance in fine-tuning capability portfolio.

To improve business agility and shorten development cycles, companies focus on shaping dynamic capabilities as the strategic business routines by which firms achieve new resource configurations as markets emerge, collide, split, or evolve, etc. With ever-evolving business dynamics, when you want to make a change to one of those capabilities or build a new capability to execute strategy, then your model/map assists with a high-level impact assessment and delivery approach. Resource management is an important discipline in capability development. The capability is a firm-specific asset that is difficult if not impossible to imitate for achieving a certain mission/purpose. Often, capability cannot be transferred because of the degree of organizational learning, unique culture ingredients, or management expertise that the organization goes with.

Processes Management as a “constructor” to build capability portfolio: Processes underpin capabilities. Capabilities are processes and competencies viewed strategically. Any business practice today is always a combination of people, process, and technology to develop business capabilities. One capability may be implemented by multiple business processes for multiple products and services. High performing businesses depend on their differentiated sets of dynamic capabilities which are underpinned by the well-managed business processes matrix within the organization.

From a business process management perspective, the fundamental difference between capability and process is "What vs. How." Adding inputs and outputs to a capability (a“what”) turns it into a process (“how”) In a nutshell, Process Design is described as the larger activity of leveraging design thinking to create new processes or improving on existing ones for developing LEGO-like digital capabilities. The simplified, end to end processes that enable speed of execution and enable the organization to act in a coherent manner.

Governance is needed to manage risks in capability development: There are gaps existing in capability development because there are no mechanisms to handle risks or uncertain situations, the unrealistic designs that could not be implemented in the organizational system. Thus, for every corporation which should work and be efficient, you need strong GRC disciplines that help executives and management perform a risk analysis, harness connectivity (communication, coordination, and control), raise visibility and awareness for many things that are captured at the different levels of the organization.

Governance is steering. The higher the complexity of the organization and the complexity of the environment in which it operates, the higher the requirement for GRC disciplines to shape differentiated capability, meet performance baselines, and generate value. However, in many organizations, much of GRC is reactive in the sense that there is a lot of rushing around trying to fix problems instead of preventing risks. It’s important to instill GRC discipline in organizational culture, embed the GRC mechanism in the key business processes, and enforce GRC practices at daily business activities. Focus on proactive planning and process optimization for collaboration, accountability, and integration in order to improve the success rate of developing differentiated business competency.

There are many "ingredients" in business capability development such as people, processes, technology, and other intangible and tangible resources, etc. Organizations should enforce various management disciplines, deliberately make the close alignment among the company’s strategic direction, its most distinctive capabilities, to achieve strategic goals in a stepwise manner.

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The Monthly Insight of Information Management: Raise “Digital IQ” of Organizations Aug. 2020

The very characteristics of digital organization with high digital IQ are about understanding the value of information, fine-tuning smart processes, developing the intelligent workforce, and achieving measurable business profitability.

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. In fact, Information Technology is the nerve system of contemporary companies and directly decides the "Digital IQ" of the organization.

     Raise Digital IQ of Organization  

Raise the Digital IQ of the Organization With rapid changes, the exponential growth of information and continuous disruptions, the beauty of the digital landscape is the fresh insight of the great architectural design and business ecosystem dynamic. Organizations today need nothing less than a paradigm shift in their thinking about the fundamentals of how organizations work, as well as how to build an ever-evolving digital organization with high digital IQ - understanding the value of information, fine-tuning smart processes, developing the intelligent workforce, and achieving measurable business profitability.

Philosophical and Conceptual Understanding of Information vs. Knowledge The digital era upon us is about the exponential growth of information, abundant knowledge, and the rapid pace of changes. While information is an ingredient of knowledge; in order to interpret information, you need knowledge. Both information and knowledge are not equal to insight, but they are the foundation to capture insight and allow people to make the right decisions at the right time. Here is the philosophical and conceptual understanding of information vs. knowledge.

The Potential Value of Information Data is raw, unorganized facts that need to be processed. Data is simple, random, and unorganized; on the other hand, information is processed data. Information is structured and presents facts in context to targeted situations and conditions that facilitate business in making the right decisions at the right time. Given this assertion, there is no limit to the value of information in the digital economy.

Information System vs. Digital Ecosystem Information is permeating into every corner of the business and becomes the lifeblood of the digital organization. Digital technology is lightweight but more powerful. The Information Technology System is the "nerve system "of the digital business which is like the switch connected to the dynamic ecosystem continually evolving and expanding in the modern world.

Knowledge as the Business Consciousness and Intangible Asset of the Organization Knowledge is power; knowledge is more intangible, complex, and dynamic compared to the physical asset. Due to the exponential growth of information, the multitude of information formats, and risk/compliance concerns; managing knowledge becomes more challenging but critical for running a smart business. Knowledge Management should take a holistic approach by thinking knowledge as the business consciousness and treating knowledge as an intangible asset of the organization.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #7000th 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 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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Character is an “Innate Thing”

Trials and suffering- does not build character as much as it exposes- one's character for- who they really are. Character is - the backbone of- mental toughness, professional fitness.

Character is human's blueprint,

like the seed-

with the uniqueness,

and color theme.


Character is the mirror of -

your soul,

consciousness,

subconsciousness,

superconsciousness;

and an innate self.



Trials and suffering-

does not build character

as much as it exposes-

one's character for-

who they really are.

Character is -

the backbone of-

mental toughness.

professional fitness.


Character is from-

the heart and spirit;

skill is from -

the mind and ego.

Character sustains leaders about-

who they really are;

Skill helps to build up capability.

Character is more about the future-

the strong will to -

achieve the “art of possible”;

skill is about today -

to survive with technique “know-how.”

If skills are building blocks,

Character is like the silver lining-

gluing them into solid capabilities

and strong discipline;

Character enforces competency,

Competency strengthens character.

Character instructs behavior;

Behavior reveals character.

Character is not Charisma;

Character is a substance,

Charisma is a style.

Character is an innate thing,

with a unique personal touch.


Character is a life-long journey;

skill is stage-lasting performance.

Being a good judge of character-

that's where the real skill gets tested,

the value gets rooted,

the performance gets achieved.


Character is neither stubbornness

nor inflexibility...

Character means many things,

which is inbuilt-

the individual's

authenticity,

intelligence,

consistency,

sharpness,

determination,

and dynamism;

with the combination of-

values,

attitude,

and integrity.

Character is an innate thing,

but can be strengthened.


Understanding character is-

very relevant and timely to -

overcome mediocrity,

seeking a unique path to-

maximize potential.

Collectively,

Character, like yeast-

lifts up the team spirit,

shapes up a strong community

builds up a progressive society.

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Identify and Bridge Soft Gaps to Build “Hard” Capability

Soft gaps often generate the deepest chasms and hardest challenges to drive people-centric digital transformation.

Due to rapid changes, the exponential growth of information, and continuous disruptions, modern organizations are complex systems that tend to be non-linear and hard to predict the upcoming changes and there are both promises and perils on the way to go digital. 

Besides hard barriers such as outdated infrastructure, processes, or technology, there are also quite a few “soft gaps,” which cause change inertia and stifle innovation. 

Too often, leaders are allowed to complain generically about what they mean by skill and competency gaps and they pick the symptoms, not dig through the root causes. Believe it or not, the soft is perhaps the toughest throwing the management a challenge. Forethoughtful leaders need to identify and bridge the following soft gaps, continue building and optimizing differentiated competency to achieve the desired business effect and performance results.


Confidence Gap: We slowly, but steadily move to the digital era with an abundance of knowledge and flow of information and ideas. Diversity is the hotbed of creativity. Digital professionals with confidence dare to be different, think, and work independently, well-disciplined, have effective decision-making and excellent problem-solving skills, build differentiated capabilities, and make continuous improvement. Confidence shines through character and is based on intelligence and expertise. Digital leaders today should lead by influence, not via brute force. Be confident, not arrogant. Digital professionals need to demonstrate confidence based on their fitting mindset, professional competency and have the right dose of ego. Digital professionalism in itself is a constant learning process that requires talented people to build competency and share insight to overcome common challenges.

Many times, the “soft gaps” are the real cause of numerous intricate human problems and generate negative energy in the surroundings. character and confidence often go hand-in-hand. Confident people are more comfortable to receive constructive feedback and ignore the destructive negative ones. Confident people can step out of their “comfort zone,” and are more adaptive to changes proactively. Many say that people’s intelligence is tested by their changeability, and their professional quality is also proved via their changeability. Similarly, people’s confidence is based on their knowledge, insight, and capability. “Hardening” the soft, quantifying intangible, and making "invisible visible" is the right approach to encourage true understanding and build professional confidence.

Communication Gap: Organizations are social realities that emerge from the communication patterns of people. communication keeps the digital business flow and brings harmony. Communication, whether verbal, non-verbal, or digital, is the coordination mechanism that makes a group of people as a cohesive team to achieve more. Communication clarity directly impacts on the business effectiveness and organizational maturity. There are both hard communication barriers such as out of date processes, procedures, information technology, practices, and soft gaps such as outdated knowledge, culture, politics, or "comman&control" leadership style, etc. In many circumstances, miscommunication is caused by perception gaps because people have a different knowledge base and cognitive understanding to articulate things with symptoms such as misinterpretation, out of logic, rumor-mongering, etc. Communication gaps create business performance bottlenecks, discourage creativity, and decelerate organizational speed. 

Communication is complex because there are differences in goals and contexts, especially strategic communication. Listen, brainstorm, or question...Communication effectiveness can be improved upon when the hard barriers are broken down and soft obstacles are overcome. Bridge communication gaps by leveraging diverse viewpoints, updating knowledge, and deal with"Lost in Translation" syndrome. Keep in mind, communication is not for its own sake, It’s the tool to solve problems, and languages are the tools to make communications. The great communicators know why to communicate, what, how, when, and who to talk, and they can communicate objectively with strong logic, clarity, and understanding to solve problems either at strategic or tactical level effectively.

Trust Gap: We live in the urbanized world with hyper diversity and workforce fluidity. There is overloaded information and knowledge seems to be only a click away. But misinformation or lack of true understanding often make human society more divisive and less collaborative. Further, mistrust is also caused by a lack of contextual understanding, pre-conceptual judgment, random assumptions, or unconscious bias. The trust gap creates innovation barriers and makes businesses or society as a whole getting stuck at a low level of maturity.

In the physical or business world, most relationships are nonlinear, change is continuously happening and spiraling up in such a dynamic environment. Today’s business leaders and professionals need to be open-minded, resourceful, and learning agile, harness communication, and build trustful relationships to overcome common challenges. They need to be discerning, but not overly judgemental in managing relationships; be flexible, but not too rigid in the outlook or too static to sense changes; be truly curious about cognitive difference or culture diversity, not getting stuck with conversational wisdom. Build trustful relationships by touching the hearts and connect minds via empathy, positivity, and multidimensional intelligence.

Soft gaps often generate the deepest chasms and hardest challenges to drive people-centric digital transformation. Today's leaders and professionals should develop the full set of digital mindsets, attitudes, and competency to mind gaps, gain a contextual understanding of situations and problems, demonstrate high professionalism to come up with innovative solutions, and maximize collective human potential.

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The Monthly “Decision Master” Book Tuning: Understand Thin Lines to Step into “VUCA” New Normal Aug. 2020

Making sound judgments and effective decisions become the core capability to differentiate the digital leaders from laggards. 

Decision Masters” refer to the digital leaders or professionals who can leverage multidimensional thought processes, information and intuition, and take a step-wise scenario for making effective decisions consistently. 

Decision Masters also refer to the businesses or organizations that follow a set of well-defined principles, leverage fine-tuned decision processes, efficient information management system, decision frameworks, tools, and metrics to enable people across the organization making effective decisions collaboratively.

Understand Thin Lines to Step into “VUCA” New Normal 

Understand These “Thin Lines” Well to Step into “VUCA” New Normal Wisely The digital era upon us is about hyper-connectivity, over-complexity, interdependence, diversification, and nonlinearity, it blurs the functional, organizational, industrial, geographical, and knowledge domain border. Forward-looking companies across vertical sectors are at the inflection point of digital transformation. It takes a lot of effort and resources to make change happen, and it takes even more effort to sustain changes. It's important to understand the following “thin lines” well, in order to step in the“VUCA” new normal and drive transformative changes smoothly.

The Conceptual Basis of Contextual Intelligence Many think the digital era upon us is about algorithm, raw data from machines needs to be processed into information that is further refined into intelligence. There are as many different ways to characterize intelligence as there are different types and forms of information implying on our senses.

A Set of Questions for Shaping Strategic Decision Making Making the right decision is both art and science. The effectiveness of strategic decision making directly impacts the long term business competency. It has to weigh in multiple factors and needs to search for profound business insight.

Five Causes of Ineffective Decision Making Due to the overwhelming growth of information and unprecedented uncertainty, either at the individual or the organization level, making sound judgments and effective decisions become the core capability to differentiate the digital leaders from laggards. However, across the sectors, the high ratio of strategic decisions have been made poorly and cause the catastrophic effect. And the individual’s bias or poor judgments diminish the trust, enlarge the creativity gaps, and tarnish the corporate reputation. Ineffective decision making is, unfortunately, pervasive and caused by varying factors, here are five causes of ineffective decision-making,

The Digital Evolution at the Mindset Level What is truly making a human as an intelligent being is our thinking capability. Our mind is a complex system of complex systems and many of them are very difficult to understand and grasp. They shape our thinking, communicating, and the way we perceive and understand things. Humans have sophisticated language skills. Is it because our brain is bigger and more complex than animals? Is human cognition converged with machine intelligence? The thoughts piled with the thoughts build into a cognitive mind. The most important capability of the cognitive mind is the willingness and ability to seek out knowledge, address our ignorance and the assumptions we make to minimize it, make a discernment based on such an understanding. Nowadays digital makes an impact on almost every aspect of our life and human society. So, what’s the digital evolution at the mindset level? And how to change the game via changing the mindset?

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with about #7000 blog postings. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

Decision Master Book Summary

Decision Master Amazon Order Link

Decision Master B&N Order Link

Decision Master iBook Order Link

Decision Master Introduction

Decision Master Chapter 1 Decision Intelligence

Decision Master Chapter 2 Decision Principles

Decision Master Chapter 3 Digital Decision Styles

Decision Master Chapter 4 Decision Pitfalls

Decision Master Chapter 5 Decision Maturity

Decision Master Conclusion Five Pillars in Achieving Decision Excellence

Decision Master Quotes Collection 1

Decision Master Quotes Collection 2

Decision Master Quotes Collection 3

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“Budget” Quotes of “Digital Master” Aug. 2020

Agile budget planning needs to be “hybrid” to mix top-down estimate with bottom-up adjustment. 

"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 “Budget” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Running a budget-smart IT organization takes discipline, methodology, and practice.

2 The real value-added, experienced Program Manager is to keep a proper balance between the 3 constraints (schedule, scope, budget).

3 It always seems to be the trade space based on stakeholder ease of suggesting Budget and Time are fixed, with no desire to give up Quality.

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

5 There is a clear difference between a budget and an estimate. Estimates are always ranges and are but one consideration in developing a budget.

6 A budget is a single number used for tracking progress. But you first need to secure a proper budget, or you'll be in risk of adding to the failure statistics.

7 Agile budget planning needs to be “hybrid” to mix top-down estimate with bottom-up adjustment.

8 The structure of much of budget estimating for big IT projects will tend to under-estimate the time and cost.

9 The facts say that most big projects are losing budgetary grip and that the estimates didn´t take into account those slippages at estimation time.

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Apply Competency Framework to Improve People Management Effectiveness

The competency framework approach adds value as they are implementations of the patterns to avoid having to reinvent the wheel. 

A high mature digital organization is usually outward-looking rather than insular, people-centric, rather than process-driven. A competency framework incorporates multiple and diverse components, provides guidelines, checklists, standards, platforms, processes, tools, and building blocks, to define and develop talent competencies, improve people management effectiveness and unleash collective potential.

Workforce planning: With fast-paced changes, hyper-diversity, the exponential growth of information, and fierce competition, workforce planning as an integral component of the strategic business planning today, has to become dynamic, analytical and systematic.

 In reality, many organizations get stuck in the old way of doing things. Sometimes, they hire only for immediate need, without long-term workforce planning. Other times, they look too narrowly at a specific problem to solve, lack of a broader view of the strategic goals for the long term.

In practice, strategic workforce planning requires applying analytics tools and other emerging digital technologies to integrate disparate planning sources and gain a comprehensive knowledge of the organization's collective talent requirement, capability alignment, and people insight. It also requires seamless collaboration among executives, talent managers, and IT professionals, access to needed information, and gain a better understanding of data-based talent analytics. The goal is to align workforce management programs with the strategic goals of the business scientifically for achieving high performance of the business.

Performance/potential management: With frequent disruptions and business hyper-connectivity, Talent Management, and Performance Management needs to go hand in hand. The organizational performance can be significantly improved by identifying clear goals and priorities, having the right people on the right bus at the right time, and framing the right incentive and rewarding system. Digital Performance Management needs to be more holistic, transparent, and objective, understood by the entire organization, sustained, and monitored at constant intervals to ensure robustness.

To dig through, the elements behind “the hyper performance magic” is holism, encouragement, empathy, appreciation, or people-centricity, etc. Performance management is no longer just a static tool for assessing past performance. The continuous Performance management needs to promote teamwork, rather than for micro-management, focusing on discovering and developing professionals’ strength, mapping every individual’s performance and potential with the dynamic business strategy execution more closely and seamlessly.

Corporate Learning Development: To keep business relevant and competitive, there is a need for organizations to understand the value of their human power, in fact, organizations today rely so much on their people to reach their strategic goals and succeed in the long term. With overloaded information and knowledge update, the digital workforce has to continue learning and keep updating their skills and build professional competency to proactively adapt to changes. Learning occurs through the experience of failing, and don’t waste the invaluable lessons from it.

In the business scope, the challenge is to move from the individual to system level, make an objective assessment of their organization’s learning maturity and develop a highly effective learning framework to build the collective organizational learning competency and nurture a culture that strongly encourages employees to self-evaluate, encourages autonomy, discovery, and continuous improvement. Through corporate learning, organizations can remove outdated thoughts, update knowledge, and fill skill gaps smoothly.

Knowledge management: Knowledge does not stand still and doesn’t always inform you of true understanding; knowledge is not isolated and needs to flow and transfer for achieving its business value. To streamline business flow, digital management knows the knowledge required to sustain itself and creates an environment and business systems to streamline knowledge flow, and involve the exploration of the knowledge interdependencies, and manage knowledge holistically.

An essential role for Knowledge Management is the need to enable knowledge flow, connect ideas but also people, and crucially manage it to generate business value. Knowledge Management needs to look at all the present collaborative processes already being used to evaluate them for improvement. Systematic knowledge management solutions need to explore the breadth and depth of knowledge, its prospects, and practice to effectively use organizational knowledge timely, improve the collective corporate learning capability, and develop talent competency systematically.

Culture management: Anytime people work together for an extended period of time, a culture is formed. It’s the force that guides how people will interact with one another and deal with those beyond their group. A learning culture enables talent development. Successful culture change helps people become who they are. Refining the digital culture is crucial because when having conversations about culture, it is the policies, procedures, rewards, and retributions that drive and groom an advanced mind, good behavior and it is the employee behavior that expresses "culture."

Technically, corporate culture is created out of the systems, processes, human capital, and associated continual development, organizational hierarchy, and strategy design of the organization. Culture improvement is critical, actually, one of the most challenging aspects of people management is understanding the role that organizational culture plays in the distinctiveness of the organizational capabilities. To change "culture" is to change the persistent emotional experience of the people working within a process of gratitude, inspiration, inclusion, or any number of alternatives. Building a digital culture in the ever-expanding workplace is a multi-layered and multi-dimensional management issue.

The continuous talent recognition and development approach make businesses more innovative, responsive, and adaptive as the markets change. A well-designed competency framework approach adds value as they are implementations of the patterns to avoid having to reinvent the wheel. It produces a set of object instances that are reliable, repeatable, and fully distinguishable for improving the effectiveness of people management. Though a competency framework is not the gospel of business and it needs to continue updating.

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The Monthly “Digital Master” Book Tuning: GRC Discipline and Innovation Aug. 2020

The important characteristics of digitalization are over-complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. Hence, GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) becomes more critical than ever. 

Here's the context; how should GRC programs be approached? Should technology be a driver? Can you achieve any level of GRC without automation? Can you achieve any level of GRC without people? What is the real driver of GRC? What's the interrelation of GRC and innovation?

GRC Discipline and Innovation 

Innovation Governance as a Continuum Innovation is a managed process of transforming the novel idea to achieve its business value. Innovation governance is to advocate, steer, and sustain innovation effort to achieve business value. If innovation management is like the pedal to accelerate speed, and then innovation governance is the steering wheel to keep a straight line or take a turn at that velocity of innovation management. Innovation governance as a continuum is an important perspective to improve the innovation management success rate.

An Innovative Board: Setting Guidelines to Catalyze Innovation Digital businesses encourage autonomy and innovation. The corporate board plays a critical role in making good policies and setting the right guidelines to catalyze innovation. Digital principles provide a more robust foundation that makes it possible to straightforwardly derive solution-level governance and ensure the effectiveness of innovation management practices. Sharpening innovative “directorship” for getting digital ready is imperative for setting the top leadership tone to rejuvenate the culture of creativity and run a highly innovative digital organization.

From Enterprise Risk Management to Enterprise Opportunity Management We live in an era, full of uncertainty, velocity, complexity, and ambiguity. The result is higher risks of conflict and inertia. Thus, organizations must have solid risk management disciplines, make objective assessments, develop a high-effective management framework, provide backup options, and make the transition from risk mitigation to risk intelligence - the accumulation of enough resources to thrive by capturing opportunities in it and adapting to the uncertainty and changes smoothly.

Do the Rules Stifle innovation Innovation is to transform the novel idea and achieve its business value. It is a business discipline which can be managed. In many organizations, perhaps there is an innovation department specifically setting the rules to take charge of innovation. The paradox is that all creative activities are subversive in questioning the status quo. Setting rules and goals for creativity goes against the very nature of creativity and thus inventiveness and innovation. So does the innovation department stifle innovation? Isn't there a more fundamental problem to innovation failures? What should be done if the rest of the company is hostile to innovation? Should the company give up on innovation?

Where does risk fit within innovation? Not so many people like innovation, because innovation stands for risk, and that is associated with trouble. Innovation is only attractive to the ones who spend their whole life thinking and building creative stuff. A rarer skill is being able to interpret that creative idea into a marketable innovation. Where does risk fit within innovation, and how can the business manage innovation portfolios with calculated risks?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 7000+ 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.

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Insight is a “Deep Thing”

Insight is a sudden understanding of- a complex problem- cause and effect, in a specific context.

Insight is the perception of -

the inner nature of things;

the act or result of understanding.

Insight is the vision-

through the mind's eyes of

seeing things intuitively.


Insight is the light-

guide us through mental darkness.

Insight is the spring water-

digging out of knowledge land.

Insight is-

thinking into the box

after thinking out of the box.

Insight is a “Deep Thing.”


Insight is a sudden understanding of-

a complex problem-

cause and effect,

in a specific context;

uncover the core issues of-

a situation;

identification of -

relationships and behaviors,

within a model, context, or scenario;

leading to-

resolution effortlessly.

Insight is a “Deep Thing.”



Insight is a mixed bag of-

creativity and reasoning,

intuition and logic;

power of -

acute observation and deduction,

questioning, connection,

penetration, discernment.

Collective insight is superior.

Insight is a “Deep Thing.”

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