Insight of the Week 9/18-9/25 “Future of CIO” Sep. 2020

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 7100+ 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. Here is the weekly insight of digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Improving Organizational Maturity via Enforcing Various Digital Characteristics The digital era upon us is people centricity, people are the most invaluable asset in any business. They are not just cost or even resource, but the human capital worth investing in a smart way. However, in most companies, people management is a silo discipline with outdated practices. Developing a highly mature digital fit workforce and talent competitive organization won’t happen overnight, it takes planning, adapting, and innovating to enable true meritocracy and make a smooth digital paradigm shift.

BoD’s “Self-Check” and Assessment Digital is the new paradigm shift to deeply connect the business nature to the natural ecosystem which is volatile and interdependent. High-performing boards need to make sound judgment and steer the business ship to the uncharted water or the blurred digital territories towards a well-defined vision. They should do “self-check,” and regularly evaluate how they are performing as the board, as well as develop the best and next set of digital practices to get digital ready.

Art and Science of Complexity Management Organizations become complex as an evolutionary trend, not for their own amusement, they do it to respond to environments more proactively. And much of that environment is experienced by trying to get things done. As a matter of fact, modern organizations spend significant time and resources to deal with complexity, is complexity good or bad, and how to manage complexity effectively?

Improve Business Balance and Growth Cycle Horizontally and Vertically Rapid change, complexity, and uncertainty are the new normal, digital organizations have to self-adapt and self-renew itself, be able to reconfigure the organizational structure, and change their own behaviors for improving their responsiveness and flexibility. They can improve and accelerate organizational balance and growth cycle both horizontally and vertically, develop differentiated business competency to accomplish defined change, and make a seamless digital paradigm shift.

Orchestrate Digital Innovation based on Business Intelligence Information is the lifeblood of digital business nowadays, the digital era upon us is about algorism, raw data from machines needs to be processed into information that is further refined into intelligence. And the quality of intelligence depends greatly on the quality of information. In specific, the abundant information can be refined into business foresight and customer insight that provide the very clue to connect wider dots to stimulate great ideas, build the updated competency model, and take a transformative journey from running a reactive business to shaping a real-time highly intelligent organization.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking about the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation, and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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BoD’s “Self-Check” and Assessment

BoDs need to see further and perceive better than others in order to set guidance about what core to preserve, and what future to stimulate progress toward and steer the business on the thorny digital journey effortlessly.

Digital is the new paradigm shift to deeply connect the business nature to the natural ecosystem which is volatile and interdependent. High-performing boards need to make sound judgment and steer the corporate ship to the uncharted water or the blurred digital territories towards a well-defined vision at a steadfast pace. 

To improve their leadership maturity, they should do “self-check,” and regularly evaluate how they are performing as the board, as well as develop the best and next set of digital practices to get digital ready.

Information check: Information is the power, information precision directly impacts decision effectiveness and strategy management success. Contemporary BoDs oversee business strategy and they must become information-savvy. They need to do the regular “information check,” be able to capture the right information, apply it at the right time in the right circumstance with the right attitude. In the era with the exponential growth of information, the challenge for the board leaders is to discover how and where to find valuable information, not just the information being fed by the management. They need to learn how to discern information they trust from misinformation or information overflow, pull out the information they need, and learn what to ignore in order to make effective decisions.

Generally speaking, people form critical opinions based on facts, discerned data, common understanding, and clarified notions. This is particularly critical for top business leaders such as BoDs. They should have a clear vision of what they need to know, and how the information provided pertains to the strategic plan, as well as what they are going to do with that information. To improve the corporate board's effectiveness, the key point is to prepare crucial issues and collect information and feedback even before the meeting starts, and better to invest the time upfront to address concerns and achieve a workable agreement.

Gut check: Information and gut feeling are both important for making many critical decisions. Gut feeling isn't a random loose arrow. It's an internalized knowledge that has developed through theoretical knowledge and practical experience that guides the gut feeling so that people can make the right decisions intuitively. At the board level, often decision-makers have the business insight to make their decisions rich in information and significantly different from the available data. The sentiment of trusting your intuition is spot on, but attempting to break it down into conscious, and unconscious, etc, and consistently leading to a perspectival minefield. An informed gut feeling is more likely to be working with more information and possibly even relevant and accurate information, and could, therefore, at least, eliminate some poor choices.

We live in the “VUCA” digital era now, keep in mind though, the problem with intuitive decision-making is that it can seldom be quantified and so analyzed. It is not so good to go with intuition when there is an excuse not to put in the effort to pay attention to detail and think carefully. Besides leveraging quality information, the right dose of the “gut feeling'' of BoDs allows the decision-maker to exercise their judgment and helps them find "the right answer" intuitively.

Performance check: A corporate board only fulfills its role to shareholders and the management team when it is focused on performance. They need to focus on business performance as well as their own performance. High-performing boards set goals for their own performance and regularly evaluate how they are performing as the board and where the board’s performance bottlenecks are. “Performance check” at the boardroom enables BoDs to laser focus on performance-driven agenda and practice their judiciary power effectively. To monitor business performance, that performance check is not limited to financial performance only, but also to the firm’s performance in creating value for employees and customers. The board feedback on business performance and outcomes help the business management make the timely adjustment for making continuous improvement.

In achieving the role of the performance monitor, the corporate board needs to decide whether management is achieving expectations, gain an in-depth understanding of what’s blocking business achievements, targets, and advise the management on the maximization of the business capital allocation and improvement of the multidimensional shareholder’s value. It's not only about the performance now, but also about the future and that means an open mindset to change, with a long-term perspective.

The modern digital board has many responsibilities, and also gets a lot of distractions. BoDs need to see further and perceive better than others in order to set guidance about what core to preserve, and what future to stimulate progress toward and steer the business on the thorny digital journey effortlessly.

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Lift Organizational Maturity via Systems Lens

Lifting the organizational maturity via system lens means the company needs to integrate its interdependencies, take multifaceted management disciplines, and structural approach.

Digital enterprises are inherently and intensely complex, changes do not happen in isolation from each other in predictable ways. Complex business systems are full of interdependencies, unpredictable, hard to detect any nonlinear responses. Business leaders today should apply systems wisdom to lift organizational maturity and drive digital paradigm shift smoothly.

Systems wisdom helps us get behind the "surface" validity and provides us deeper insight into the nuances of "why and how": Change is never for its own sake, it’s about solving large or small problems. You have to really dig beneath the superficial layer, get to the heart of the matter. Systems thinking enables us to see the interconnectivity between parts and the whole, the relationship dynamic, and create common rationale between different perspectives in order to diagnose the real cause of problems, get behind the surface validation, and gain a deep insight into “why does the problem happen,” and how or solve problems in a structured way. In reality, people often apply tools like linear extrapolation, based on linear models when the dynamic digital business system is not operating linearly. Thus, they often fix symptoms, not real issues, they run the business as a sum of pieces, not a cohesive whole. That further leads to silo mentality and culture inertia.

One characteristic of nonlinear systems is that small changes can have large impacts. A small error, inconsistency, or change in a system specification can totally ruin its performance. If leveraging systems thinking to fix the right problem, it perhaps makes a significant impact on fixing the chain of issues effectively. Therefore, the linear business system perception needs to be replaced by the adaptive digital system viewpoint, business leaders need to “step outside of the system, expand their vision lens to adopt different perspectives for truly coming up with a holistic solution without causing too many side effects.

Systems wisdom helps to bridge the gap between "raising awareness" and "internalization," which is not a single step but requires ongoing communication and structural efforts: With frequent disruptions, the organizational change shouldn’t be just a few random initiatives, it needs to become a differentiated business competency. It’s important to leverage system wisdom to bridge the gap between "raising awareness" and "internalization." As business transformation involves internalization of the defined values, culture, and conceptual model, the newly established behaviors will be in harmony with the internalized values. In practice, understand your work environment, understand what is required to be done, have the right resources and talent, and channel your energy into doing things that can make the difference and accelerate digital transformation.

To survive in today’s knowledge flow, don't judge anything until you can engage with the information flow, then look more closely at the mechanisms that are creating the knowledge flow. Business transformational leaders need to unfold systemic relationships, solicit feedback, listen to different opinions to avoid falling into linear thought traps, or only listen to one side of the story. Keep people awake, keep people engaged, and keep people informed, in that order, make ongoing communication, and take structural efforts to change.

Systems wisdom allows us to get “out of the box” by letting go of accumulated traditional wisdom: Unconventional wisdom often means fresh insight or “out-of-the-box” thinking. Conventional wisdom usually has a negative connotation about sticking to outdated concepts, traditions, cultures, or the old ways to do things. The big issue for many people is that with the conventional mind, you expect unconventional results. It keeps nurturing mediocrity and keeps expecting innovation out of that mediocrity. This is like walking on the treadmill. Taking steps, getting stressed out but not moving ahead. Knowledge is no doubt important but more than that is complete awareness of what is happening in the context from a system perspective, let go of accumulated traditional wisdom, and apply nonlinear logic and creativity to solve complex problems in an optimal way.

In practice, there is always a temptation to use simple linear models to understand highly complex or nonlinear scenarios. The reason people are struggling for true wisdom is that it means that they have to make a huge effort to get beyond rational linear thinking. With rapid changes and frequent disruptions, the predictive “cause and effect” in system dynamics perhaps include nonlinear cause and effect models. Gaining an interdisciplinary understanding of nonlinearity and a dynamic business ecosystem could be at the tipping point. We have to be determined to get better results somehow and it will help us try unconventional thinking processes and practices, with a better outcome.

Where being simple is more sophisticated nowadays. Lifting the organizational maturity via system lens means the company needs to integrate its interdependencies, take multifaceted management disciplines, and structural approach to drill down the critical business success factors that underpin every dimension of the business performance, and ensure the business long term prosperity.

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The Monthly “100 IT Charm” Book Tuning: Unlock IT Potential Sep. 2020

Modern IT is not equal to IT modernization, it is the key differentiator of the business to “reimagine what is possible.”

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.

Unlock IT Potential

Unlock IT Potential and Accelerate Organizational Performance In the digital era, information technology potential directly impacts the potential of the company. IT potential is an investment, for catalyzing IT-enabled innovation, improving revenue, and catalyzing business growth. IT-driven innovation, in general, is surely a discipline that covers innovation management, knowledge, entrepreneurship, technology transfer, or information mining. Here are three pathways to unlock IT potential and accelerate organizational performance.

CIO as “Chief Innovation Officer”: How to Unleash IT potential in the Digital Era? Nowadays, information is permeating into every corner of the organization, and digital technologies bring unprecedented convenience to both our lives and businesses. Modern IT is not equal to IT modernization, it is the key differentiator of the business to “reimagine what is possible.” To keep IT relevant, CIOs need to think and act like “Chief Innovation Officer”: Running IT as the business in the business to reach its full potential.

Can CIOs Spin Multiple Plates Magically Well? IT plays a critical role in catalyzing the digital paradigm shift as it can be used as a tool, enabler, catalyst, digital integrator & transformer, and a unique capability builder to meet the ultimate goal of an organization for the long run. Increasingly, IT leaders look to play the role of supplementing the business vision with information technology as the accelerator and innovator. They need to be like the skillful performers who can spin multiple plates magically well, but put a lot of effort behind the scenes.

Transforming IT from Monolithic Hardware Oriented to Mosaic Software Driven With “VUCA” digital new normal, for adapting to the increasing speed of changes, organizations have to be nimbler about updating technology and managing information. IT matters not only because it’s pervasive, but more about it continues to advance, and its nature of the "constructive disruption." At the highest level, IT becomes the game-changer for the business. The faster the top leadership team understands that IT is not just technical, but rather business-driven, the better they can leverage IT to build differentiated organizational competency. But more specifically, how can IT leaders release digital IT brilliance to achieve business excellence, and unlocking the organizational potential?

Running IT as the Business Growth Engine IT organizations are at the crossroad, either continue to be a commodity IT service provider or reinvent itself to become a business growth engine. To keep relevant, IT should help the company achieve its business objectives in any way possible. IT has to learn the business; be the business and become the business. Then, you can run IT as the growth engine of the business, suggest and implement IT-enable business solutions that move the company forward.

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 #7100 blog postings. 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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“Rhetoric” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2020

"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  “Rhetoric” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Charismatic leaders have strength to persuade others, not always be oratory or rhetoric, but make influence on others’ hearts.

2 Logic and rhetoric have studied what makes arguments effective and trustworthy, valid so that you can feel confident in accepting the conclusion.

3 Perhaps, unnecessary argumentation is in some way the result of the lack of sincerity of purpose, lack of clarity in communication, full of rhetoric tones, lack of openness towards viewpoints of others, and the lack of humility in personality.

4 The people piece on the integrator end is what makes it possible to utilize these resources to facilitate more efficient staffing models. Information assets are not the issue. That is simply more rhetoric.

5 Words alone are only crude tools of communication and terribly inefficient at conveying the feeling of a message. Their interpretation is quite varied from person to person and when overused or not complemented with actions, words quickly become rhetoric or noise.

6 When Mr. King uttered the poetic verses, it’s not just rhetoric, it’s the spirit; it’s not just a speech, it's creativity, it’s not just the opinion, it’s the message about the harmony of nature with the world.

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Tensions between Standardization and Multiple Digital Characteristics

 Digital management needs to take a holistic discipline with a mixed style to handle the variety of standardization tensions adequately in order to improve business efficiency, effectiveness, and maturity. 

Digital organizations today are hyper-connected and interdependent, with many moving parts and an ever-expanded business ecosystem. To improve business maturity, standardization is a process of embodied technical knowledge accessible to all types of businesses that enable effective and efficient product and process development, and enforce the variety of standards such as industry-standard codes, language standards, engineering standards, or performance standards, etc. The digital management needs to deal with the following tensions well in order to build up a people-centric and high-performance business.

The tension between standardization and flexibility: Standardization intends to generalize or figure out a “common formula” for dealing with certain business issues such as product or process development. Flexibility is about taking alternative ways to solve problems. Ideally, standardization should provide benefits through reuse that accelerates solution implementation and reduces expenses and risks. Flexibility enables the business to do things better, and faster, etc. In order to survive and thrive amid constant change, companies must reclaim the right balance of standardization and flexibility for building strategic and operational agility into their business foundations.

The traditional overly rigid hierarchical setting makes the standardization process and practice challenging due to the silo mentality and lack of cross-functional communication and collaboration. Standardization should be done at the solution level and should only occur when the functional requirements for the different groups are the same or where there is a core set of functional requirements that all groups need and additional requirements are easily added without causing any significant side effects. For example, standardization perhaps has an adverse impact on the performance of the solution for those groups that do not need these added functions. Or it imposes addictions cost - dictating modifications to something that has already been implemented in order to be consistent with a specification. Thus, business management needs to be flexible and understand both sides of the coin for improving business efficiency and maturity.

The tension between standardization and customization: Digital is about options and people centricity. Building a customer-centric organization is at the top business executives’ agenda in any forward-looking organization. With unprecedented convenience brought by emerging technologies, customers are selective, you have to provide customized solutions to tailor their needs, to have the gain from the change via value perceived by customers. On the other hand, to improve business efficiency and speed, you need standardization to achieve cost optimization.

Usually, companies need standardization of internal reasoning via the capitalization of previous experiences, cost control, convenience, etc. It’s also important to meet customers’ expectations. The "dosage" of standardization and customization in the new product is the key, meeting target costs in the product design phase engineering is the path worth following. Forward-looking organizations develop trustful relationships with suppliers, collect feedback from customers, and engage employees to improve their productivity, with the goal to improve the people-centricity of the company.

The tension between standardization and innovation: Organizations can make a profit either through standardization (volume) or through innovation (diversification). The right tension between standardization and innovation is actually healthy because organizations indeed need both, and in fact, cannot really exist without a healthy balance of both. A “stable core" with standardization practices does facilitate incremental innovation on top of that core via “doing things” differently.

In fact, to improve organizational maturity, the business management should switch the mentality from standardization “versus” innovation to standardization “and” innovation, and develop a set of best practices to strike the good balance of both. Increased standardization facilitates innovation in an environment where the rate of focus and priority change exceeds the production cycle and ROI deployment. Once the core is stable, the organization is free to build durable innovation. Enterprise Architecture needs to develop further architecture standards that are valid where a multi-enterprise context is a norm rather than the exception, to deal with the tension between standardization and innovation smoothly.

Digital organizations are “always-on,” hyper-connected, and over-complex, exhibiting digital characteristics in various shades, extensiveness, and intensity. Digital management needs to take a holistic discipline with a mixed style to handle the variety of standardization tensions adequately in order to improve business efficiency, effectiveness, and maturity.

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The Monthly “Problem-Solving Master” Book Tuning: Navigate Uncertainty to Solve Complex Problems Sep. 2020

 Problem-solving today has a very wide scope, intricate factors; more often than not, lack of knowledge and scarcity of insight leads to poor problem-solving for the long run.

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.

     Navigate Uncertainty to Solve Complex Problems 

Navigating Uncertainty to Solve Complex Problems Effectively Today’s business problems are complex and interdependent due to increasing paces of changes, volatile market situations, extreme competition, and emergent digital technology trends. So many factors need to be considered in order to both understand and solve problems effectively. In practice, there’s the “problem of defining a problem” with its cause-driven by people’s ability to make sense out of uncertainty. The lack of clarity usually surrounds the context of the decision to be taken. Nothing is clear or concise. The synthetic “problem-solving” competency is integrated by a couple of professional capabilities

The Aspect of Complex Problem Solving Running a business is fundamentally an iterative problem-solving continuum. Given the complexity and uncertainty of the digital business world and given the challenges of hyper-connected and interdependent dynamic ecosystems, problem-solving today has a very wide scope, intricate factors, more often than not, lack of knowledge and scarcity of insight leads to poor problem-solving for the long run.

Applying Systems Thinking to Solve Complex Problems Due to the exponential growth of information and rapid changes, many of today’s problems are over-complex and interdependent. Sometimes, you try to fix one piece of the problems but cause more issues later on. Thus, all stages must be handled with attention and proficiency to ensure success.

Fixing Root Causes, not Just Symptoms We live in the world with all sorts of problems; many problems exist because they are either ill-defined or the concept cannot be adequately captured contextually. There are illogical problems or irrational problems. Some problems are the symptom; other problems are perhaps caused by people’s emotional reactions to a set of circumstances of events.

Apply Business Architecture to Solve Wild Problems As we learn and understand more about this interdependent and hyper-connected digital world, which is a lot more complex than we realize, there’s an imperative need for systematic problem-solving. Fundamentally, running a business is an iterative problem-solving continuum. Problem-solving has a very wide scope today, digital leaders and professionals can leverage Business Architecture (BA) as a problem-solving framework and practical tool for taking multifaceted disciplines to solve problems effectively.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 7100+ 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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“Quintessential” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2020

 Human creativity has a quintessential facet with the integration of multiple thought processes. 

"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  “Quintessential” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 The board in a high-level leadership position plays a crucial role in business advising and monitoring, as well as setting key digital tones in organizational culture style and leadership quintessential.

2 Insightful digital leaders with “discovery eyes” can discover the “diamond in the rough, “see through character, discover potential, capture substance, and abstract quintessential.

3 Human creativity has a quintessential facet with the integration of multiple thought processes. Creativity can start on an unconscious level, and then, when ideas start shaping, it is brought into our conscious awareness.

4 Architecting a digital landscape is a structural design process which can bring greater awareness of intricacies and the systemic value of organizational systems, business processes, people dynamics, resource alignment, cultural quintessential, or technological touches.

5 In essence, leadership is about the future, there is no generic set of leadership skills, but you can and should abstract leadership substances and capture leadership quintessential.

6 Leadership is ripened when the power of leadership is based on acute observation, insightful understanding, sound judgment, courageous questioning, unconventional connection, thoughtful discernment, culture quintessential. and deep penetration.

7 When you understand the interconnectivity and root causes, you may well define a starting point to break it through, absorb the quintessential, but remove or discourage the negative mindset or attitudes.

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Orchestrate Digital Innovation based on Business Intelligence

Information is useless if it is not being used to refine business intelligence, generate ideas, and achieve the business purpose.

Information is the lifeblood of digital business nowadays, the digital era upon us is about algorism, raw data from machines needs to be processed into information that is further refined into intelligence. And the quality of intelligence depends greatly on the quality of information. 

In specific, the abundant information can be refined into business foresight and customer insight that provide the very clue to connect wider dots to stimulate great ideas, build the updated competency model, and take a transformative journey from running a reactive business to shaping a real-time highly intelligent organization.

Business intelligence allows enterprises to interpret their past to better plan their future for enforcing a growth cycle: Information is growing exponentially, it is the aggregation of information and the assessment of that information that creates the intelligence required to forecast the future of the business and define the rules that drive the business transformation. From an innovation management perspective, identify how information is associated with the valued tangibles of businesses; products, and resources; how it triggers novel ideas, looking deeply into the future based on predictive analytics can have a profound effect on where you go, and how you get there to build business innovation competency.

Business leadership needs to be further-looking, apply business intelligence tools to shape a clear vision and a broad range of business perspectives. Information can be used to create the intelligence that shapes innovation strategy; as well as to test the results of strategy execution. To improve the innovation success rate, it’s important to build an information-woven innovation navigation system that involves tapping the organization's ecosystem for "smelling" the right idea at the right time and place, make it tangible, and achieve their business values. Also, develop digital innovation principles, methodologies, practices, and manage a balanced portfolio of innovations.to achieve progressive business performance..

Business intelligence allows in prioritizing business problems or opportunities and solving them innovatively: There is no way to create a definitive prioritized list without more business context. The quality of information assists in prioritizing business problems or opportunities. In practice, there is no way to create a definitive prioritized list without more business context. Information -based prioritization brings transparency and creates internal competition among new ideas. It helps businesses focus on crucial business problems and solve them in the right way.

Information confluence means breaking down functional silos or geographical borders to streamline information flow and idea flow. It's important to build business innovation strengths and capabilities by prioritizing resources and managing risks. Set up an intelligence-based prioritization process to remove bad projects quickly and channel good ones onto platforms that are easier to maintain. Leverage information to ask thought-provoking questions. The use of open questions is very powerful to collective constructive feedback. It’s important to extract information from the right data, to answer the right questions, with the right perspective in approaching the right problems, and solve them in an innovative way.

Business intelligence provides information on a user digestible and understandable level to generate fresh ideas: The information system as the backbone of innovation management helps to optimize the usage of information, enable users to visualize data, and create novel ideas. That means the analytics doesn’t just serve up pretty charts and graphs. look for insights, leverage imagination, but make validation and predictability, grasp opportunities to innovate products and services offerings, and create new business models continually.

The disruptive nature of emerging digital information technology is highly likely to have implications for business innovation. Information brings about business ideas; business ideas generate lots of information. Digital organizations as the information hub can become the hotbed to nurture and incubate great ideas. They can work toward an information ecosystem view that incorporates the virtual aspects of the knowledge system, innovation, and intuitive behavior.

Information is useless if it is not being used to refine business intelligence, generate ideas, and achieve the business purpose. There are some critical pieces of information needed for connecting wider dots to spur innovation and accelerate idea validation such as facts about business ideas. So the management can explore how the idea aligns with the organization's vision and key strategies, and manage a balanced innovation portfolio to achieve high business value.

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The Monthly “Digital Boardroom” Book Tuning: Vision & Strategic Communication of Corporate Board Sep. 2020

The contemporary corporate board as the top leadership team plays a directorial role in envisioning the future of the business and overseeing corporate strategy. 

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.

Vision & Strategic Communication of Corporate Board 

 

The “Vision” Thing in the Digital Boardroom Vision is a future state of being. The vision needs to be a good metaphor - 'the guiding light' so that people can see themselves and their work reflected in it. BoDs and C-level roles are supposed to be the guiding force in the enterprise, possess sufficient knowledge to understand the business ecosystem, develop the business vision to predict the emergent trends of business, technology or industry, so they can guide the executive team to the right direction and lead the organization towards its future confidently.

Digital Boards with Vision Inquiries The contemporary corporate board as the top leadership team plays a directorial role in envisioning the future of the business and overseeing corporate strategy. Because leadership is about the future and change. Vision is not the “Nice to have,” but “Must have” quality for top leaders in order to direct the organization toward the uncharted water or blurred territories in today’s “VUCA” digital dynamic. Vision is basically a qualitative statement defining the "perception" of the organization, and the effective board provides the guidance on what core to preserve and what future to stimulate progress toward. Here are a few vision inquiries of digital boards.

The Strategic Communication in the Boardroom The corporate board is one of the most critical leadership pillars in contemporary organizations. At the board level, it is a matter of leadership guidance to make sound judgments and steer the organization in the right direction. Language influences perception. Communication, whether verbal, non-verbal or digital, is the coordination mechanism that makes business flowing. lubricates changes and practices leadership influence. Here are three insights of the corporate board’s strategic communication.

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

The Dynamic Facilitation Practices in the Boardroom The board of directors is the senior leadership role, leadership is the adventure to explore unknown, have confidence and insight for enforcing communication and driving progressive business changes, Digital board directors need to be the multidimensional thinkers, multi-dialect experts, and insightful strategists for facilitating digital dialogues and developing the best and next practices to steer the business at the right path to reach the destination smoothly.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 7100+ 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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“Gradually” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2020

In fact, companies that get stuck with their old ways run the risk of being rapidly disrupted and gradually become irrelevant.

"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  “Gradually” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 As of today with ever-evolving digital new normal, companies are gradually opening up to the next practice to enforce change, catalyze growth, harness innovation, and accelerate digital transformation.

2 The CIOs who identify small pivotal changes and start "fixing" them in the background, gradually over time making larger more complex changes tend to be the ones who can turn companies around and become the trustful business partner.

3 Companies are gradually opening up to the next practice to enforce change, catalyze growth, harness innovation, and accelerate digital transformation.

4 Children are conditioned to imagine, explore, discover, and create with cues from their environment and ability to discover and question it. However, when most of them grow up, they appear to gradually lose curiosity because they know; they also gradually lose courage because they are aware of the consequences

5 Corporate performance management systems and processes are gradually moving away from a static, unidirectional, and time-bound avatar to a more dynamic, continuous, and interactive state.

6 Use an iterative approach that gradually builds a footprint within the organization, rather than trying to encompass all business areas at once.

7 In fact, companies that get stuck with their old ways run the risk of being rapidly disrupted and gradually become irrelevant.

8 With overwhelming growth of information and continuous disruptions, many organizations are at the crossroad, either making a radical digital transformation by taking out-of-box thinking or continuing with “we always do things like that” mentality” and become irrelevant gradually.

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Art and Science of Complexity Management

Complexity is diverse, ambiguous, and dynamic with unpredictable outcomes. 

Organizations become complex as an evolutionary trend, not for their own amusement, they do it to respond to environments more proactively. And much of that environment is experienced through trying to get things done.

 As a matter of fact, modern organizations spend significant time and resources to deal with complexity, is complexity good or bad, and how to manage complexity effectively?

Innovation vs. complexity: There are at least two ways to look at complexity: The first is to try to analyze what the impact of complexity is on a system (a process, business, economy); the second is to look for the impact of removing some of the complexity by simplification. There are needed complexities such as design complexity that competitors cannot imitate easily, or the collaboration complexity that makes people more productive and business agiler to adapt to the changes. Usually, innovation either through a need seeker or technology driver is the key factor to weave such complexity in order.

Innovation is about reducing the unnecessary complexity and identifying those critical variables, which are context. In the end, innovation complexity has to be reduced to actionable, overriding variables, which must be managed. In order to make new things, you will need additional functionality (that depends on new staff, funds, and other resources), or to turn old functions into new ones. New functions can be simpler than old ones, but become more innovative.

The paradox of complexity: The business is complex, the people are complex, and the world is complex, there’s no such thing as absolutely good or bad, you just need to have the special eyes to discern it; the system mind to untangle it. The complexity question differs from one organization to another. For example, a local company is less complex than a global company: a company that operates only in the U.S. would probably be less complex than one that operates in several nations. When a business becomes overly complex and people get frustrated and annoyed by not being able to accomplish things easily, this drives the search for simpler concepts and methods, which is the need to take the innovative initiative. At the same time, however, over-complexity in a business may be hiding simple and innovative ways to achieve things because the people involved just don't get the time to step back from the complexity and hence, they continue to follow the old routine to do the things.

The optimization of complexity: Complexity has increased exponentially and has become the part of digital new normal. Imagine the complexity that comes in due to these characteristics such as less structure, rules and regulations, diversity, volatility, ambiguity, unpredictability, lack of linearity and increased flux working and impacting together. There are unknown interactions and very high inner dynamics in complexity.

It becomes complex if things do interact, particularly in the case of "nonlinear" interaction, you can't separate things properly or you cannot predict the actual effect of interaction straightforwardly. Companies that are skilled at managing complexity can gain advantages by pushing the boundaries of a more sophisticated business mix that provides opportunities to create inter-business value, differentiated digital capabilities and the unique set of business competency.

Complexity is diverse, ambiguous, and dynamic with unpredictable outcomes. A complex problem rarely has a simple solution. 'There is always a well-known solution to every human problem-neat, plausible, and wrong, to quote Russell Ackoff: “The only problems that have simple solutions are simple problems."

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The Monthly Insight of Information Management: Data Quality and Management Sep. 2020

 Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, and creativity is all about connecting the dots.

T

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 data/information is qualitative, measurable, and defined uniquely by an organization.

     Data Quality and Management

Data Quality Attributes and Assessment The business operates in the real world, and the real world is muddy and chaotic, with the exponential growth of information and the increasing pace of change. In fact, nowadays, information is one of the most invaluable assets of the company. You will not be able to make effective decisions or understand the performance of your company or measure it without good quality data or information.

Five Aspects of Quality Data Quality data means how to transform the clean data into the useful information, and deliver it to the right people at the right time and location in order to make the quality decisions as well. Quality is not equal to perfect, but good enough data to transform into business. Here are five aspects of quality data?

How do you Define Quality Data Corporate IT is the steward of the business information system. And information System (IS) is "a system" that deals with Information Management: collecting, storing, and processing data and delivering information, knowledge, and digital products. Too many businesses are data rich but information poor. Or they spend so much time and energy collecting data for that "just in case" scenario. Information Management quality means quality data, quality management, and quality measurement. What are further perspectives about Data Quality?

Data Refinery Data refinery is the key step to transform raw data into analytic insight for helping businesses make smart decisions. What are the key steps to do it effectively?

CIO’s Crown Jewel: Data According to the IT analyst firm IDC, 15 petabytes of new information is generated every day (one petabyte equals one million gigabytes). That’s eight times the amount of information that resides in all U.S. libraries, and industry analysts place the growth rate closer to 100 percent annually. Data growth becomes one of the biggest challenges in modern organization, beyond the chaos, it’s the 80% of organizational core assets, and it's the DNA of digital enterprise.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #7100th 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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“Oxymoron” Quotes of “Digital Master” Sep. 2020

Digital innovation is neither an oxymoron nor a serendipity, you have to manage it strategically and systematically to achieve the consistent business result.

"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 “Oxymoron” quotes in “Digital Master.”


1 A heavy innovation process is definitely an oxymoron, but you do need certain processes and governance framework, as many good ideas have diminished in middle-management of many organizations because of lack of attention.

2 Innovation process needs to be rigorous, not too rigid. If the process in the innovation process is akin to what would come out the too rigid management school of thought, then the term might be oxymoronic.

3 Digital innovation is neither an oxymoron nor a serendipity, you have to manage it strategically and systematically to achieve the consistent business result.

4 Corporate value is not just an abstract or oxymoron, but a multi-dimensional concept, from economic value, quality value to brand value or social value.

5 The corporate big five needs to be well defined holistically, as they are correlated and interconnected transformed from oxymoron concept into practical planning : Vision, Goals, and objectives - are the end (long term & short term) goal/milestones of an organization. Mission, strategies, and tactics - are the means of achieving the end goals defined in vision/goals/objectives.

6 Since the future is increasingly less predictable, the effective leaders will plan for the future by asking “what if”: which means to identify a few critical issues at business, and then focus on actions and resources on them, to avoid strategy planning becoming oxymoron.

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Five Aspects for Developing a Talent Competitive Organization

People Management is about building talent competency of the business by finding, renewing, and protecting the right of talent, streamlining positive energy flow, and ultimately shaping a talent competitive digital organization.

The digital era upon us is people centricity, people are the most invaluable asset in any business. They are not just cost or even resource, but the human capital worth investing in a smart way. 

However, in most companies, people management is a silo discipline with outdated practices. Developing a highly mature digital fit workforce and talent competitive organization won’t happen overnight, it takes planning, adapting, and innovating to enable true meritocracy and make a smooth digital paradigm shift.

Gap/Risk identification: Due to the increasing speed of change and abundant information, outdated thoughts or knowledge, and skill gaps are the reality. There's also a disconnect of short-term staff needs and long term talent perspectives, out-of-date talent recruiting, and performance management practices and mechanisms. Too often, leaders are allowed to complain generically about what they mean by skill and competency gaps, but they pick the symptom, not dig through the root causes. Management should also identify regulatory risk which is related to employee behavior, regulations, and laws; or the negative impacts of law or regulation on an organization's ability to attract talent.

To fill talent gaps, organizations today need to discover and develop talent for tomorrow, rather than just hire for yesterday. To improve talent management effectiveness, organizations must identify the talent bench strength and weakness, address their common and unique skills requirements and map that out through some sort of skills/competency matrix, to achieve organizational goals at a technical, behavioral and attitudinal level. Today’s talent managers should isolate and address a much broader array of talent risks, taking into account a critical need to craft a solid talent strategy that supports business objectives and capital investments for the long term perspective.

People engagement: In many digital laggards with a traditional business setting, the overall employee engagement is very low, businesses still treat their people as cost, headcount, or human resource only. People fear to step out of their comfort zone and adapt to changes. Employee engagement and empowerment are important to build workforce competency. Digital organizations today need to redefine themselves in which talent can develop and learn more rapidly than anywhere else.

With emerging enterprise collaboration platforms and tools, cross-functional collaboration and social engagement are the new normal in the effective digital workplace. Focus on passion and the creative environment to consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Higher levels of engagement come from recognition, feedback, growth, and opportunity. The organizations with the culture of empowerment will reap the benefits of knowledge workers who are willing to give discretionary effort and are always looking for ways to improve their own and team performance.

Training/talent development: If you want to create a truly high-performance team, you have to understand your people from mindset to attitude to behavior, and build the culture to encourage creativity, learning, and problem-solving. Each organization must be able to articulate clearly what constitutes “talent.” There is a different talent requirement to fit in different positions. What you can and should do is to provide the opportunities (talent development) for people to hone their talents and develop their skills, train them well and well align the employee’s professional goal with the strategic business goal.

Developing or creating talent is bringing up the hidden potential of people, discourage mediocrity which is often the root cause of negative vibes in the workplace. Identify areas of improvement individually (tech strengths), provide training on the specific aspect. Take advantage of the latest digital technology and online training, develop the tailored training solution in the most effective and efficient way to match the needs and demands.

Autonomy/self-management: High level of autonomy is the symbol of digital maturity. Either individually or collectively, self-management taps the inner and outer resources of strength, and to get yourself doing things with discipline and achieve the ultimate goals. A self-organizing team has the full authority on the business practices, processes, tools, engineering methods they would like to use to build business competency. At the company scope, organize a self-managed digital organization to define your circles, roles, and authority through the members of your organization, empower people, nurture trust, or inspire peace.

The high degree of the team’s or the organizational self-management capability reflects its maturity to be disciplined to do the work well in a dynamic and highly innovative environment. In these high-performance and high mature teams, the selection of roles is done automatically and naturally, people are able to adapt themselves and their organization through a collaborative and peer to peer approach. They can take ownership of their processes and achieve better-than-expected results. The goal for running a self-autonomous organization is to improve business efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness, and flexibility.

Performance evaluation: You can only manage what you measure. There is a need to evaluate the performance of employees in a more objective and continuous way. Performance is a byproduct of engagement. The performance management alignment should be a smooth and harmonized process, build a flow zone in which people are ready for moving to a fluid working environment, and improve business achievement as an iterative continuum. It is all about creating a strong relationship, understanding, reflecting, and driving high-performance results.

Business executives nowadays are eager to set stages for implementing strategies and driving continuous performance management. Performance Management has KPIs that help to drive behavioral elements. The thought process, behavior, and outcome need to be assessed cohesively, to truly understand the talented employee as a whole consistently, not just the human cost or the human resource to fill a specific spot mechanically. It should strongly encourage employees to self-evaluate performance, encourage autonomy, discovery, and continuous improvement.

As the business ecosystem becomes hyper-connected, over-complex, and interdependent, people are the key determinant of the business’s long term success. People Management is about building talent competency of the business by finding, renewing, and protecting the right of talent, streamlining positive energy flow, and ultimately building a talent competitive digital organization.

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