Variety of Leadership Gaps

It's a well-known fact that there is no perfect leader, but the progressive one is on their way to be more effective by bridging multiple gaps seamlessly.

Leadership is about the future, it’s about change, and it’s about making a difference. The business is complex, the world is complex, and leadership is complex. The future of leaders has to deal with opposing views, cultures, constraints and competition. 

There are a variety of leadership gaps that cause blindspots in decision-making and create chasm in innovation. Innovative leadership is in a strong demand to inspire the culture of learning, and accelerate digital transformation.

Vision gap: Top leaders are a visionary role who sets the direction for the enterprise internally and externally. because the essence of leadership is to guide direction via removing the obstacles or breaking down the outdated concepts or things either hard or soft, visible or invisible, in order to lead forward boldly at the steadfast paces. In reality, sometimes, leaders’ visions are clouded and distorted by rosy colored glasses or narrow-minded perspectives, causing misjudgment, and distracting their business from the top prioritized change agenda. Ideally, vision is an integral part of the leadership or directorial role. In most cases, it must be shared, collaborative, and sustainable.

The digital leader has to have the capability to look ahead and imagine what is possible for his/her organization as part of the whole. The business management process is fundamentally an act of trust, mutual respect, and cooperation to achieve the organizational vision. To bridge the vision gap, exceptional leadership will welcome additional perspectives on how to set the vision with clarity and build the future business by taking the step-wise approach, more importantly, to react very quickly and manage both opportunities and risks accordingly.

Cognition gap: People think differently, cognition reorganizes parts of one’s belief system, and thoughts navigate within one’s present belief system as it is. In fact, the cognitive gap is one of the serious problems because it disconnects many things which are supposed to be interconnected and causes blind spots for either defining the real problem or solving it smoothly. It becomes the barrier for connecting the dots to stimulate creativity, or capture insight. Hence, to bridge cognitive gaps, the heterogeneous team with cognitive differences is more innovative than the homogeneous group setting, as good ideas are multidimensional, they take root in unsuspected places and they evolve with time and by unexpected connections.

Understanding cognitive intelligence helps to improve leadership and management effectiveness. Digital leadership is crucial to encourage “Thinking Differently,” shaping the bigger, much bigger box of thinking is evolutionary at the cognitive level. It is important to be able to be objective and gain a different view in order to develop and have a better understanding of certain topics or problems that may occur. Business leaders can practice how to tap into their most powerful and brilliant mode of thinking anytime, anywhere, and under any circumstances. brainstorming is happening in real time with people and plays spontaneous networks of human and business operational concerns, etc.

Expertise gap: The expert power has the foundation of in-depth knowledge, profound insight, enriched experience, and abstract wisdom, to connect the minds and win the hearts. Leadership is not just a status quo, digital leaders and professionals need to strengthen their strength and build a unique portfolio of competency and capabilities, and master the cycle of “learning and relearning,” focusing on what the situation or issues require, not confuse knowledge with leadership ability. They should have a breadth of leadership skills to handle many situations, practicing “expert power” to enforce leadership effectiveness in a consistent way.

Knowledge is path-dependent. The only thing anyone can truly know is themselves and even we grow and change every day. Everything exists in a constant state of change and knowledge of an evolving thing must evolve with the thing. This means that to discover an opportunity, you should have previous knowledge in the field to be able to get recognized. Knowledge is learned, and expert power is earned to make deep influence via the inner drive and demonstrated wisdom. People who have great expert power are often lifetime learners themselves, continue learning and relearning relevant knowledge to renew their expert power and practice it intelligently.

Innovative problem-solving gap: Fundamentally, every work is to deal with problems big or small both from long-term strategic perspectives or at the tactical level on a daily basis. For many complex problems, having “we always do things like that mentality” and conventional ways to solve problems perhaps create more silos and generate more problems later on. In the business world, at least, you can't always wait for the "best" solution to emerge. Innovative leaders reject conventional thoughts and structures without apology. To be creative, one would have to break down some old rules or silo mentality, bridge decision gaps, take risks to get out of the conventional thinking box, broaden thoughts and connect wider dots for coming up with alternative solutions to tough problems.

Creative problem-solving requires an open heart and learning mind. We are in a seamless paradigm shift in thinking from "problem" stickiness and root-cause analysis towards discovering possibilities and creating multiple pathways. With abundant information and powerful collaboration platforms, solutions need to be made from a much broader and encompassing view that is not possible in linear thinking. When solving problems or brainstorming new ideas, being in a state of flow is what a creative mind would like to achieve because it is the most productive state to experiment, explore, and encourage the new way to solve problems.

Leadership style gaps: In the bureaucratic working environment with overly restrictive hierarchy, command and control is the “default” management style which is not so fit in the digital new normal because today’s digital professionals are more informative and diversified as knowledge is only a click away. The problem of traditional “Command and control” is that you can control people’s behavior, but not their mind. Methodologically, “Command and control” is ineffective if excluding things like listening, accepting feedback, ensuring that expectations are reasonable. It's even more about authoritarian behavior and bureaucratic decision-making.

Digital leaders today can harness innovation by practicing open leadership styles and improve innovation management effectiveness. The digital styles of innovative leadership include taking on the role of a coach by being a good role model for teamwork, setting a good path for leadership development, and inspiring the culture of learning and creativity. Intrapreneur leaders are in demand because intrapreneurship is a unique combination of “being innovative” and high mature leadership behaviors that develop and achieve high-quality business results over a sustained period of time. Generally speaking, digital leaders today are the conductor-leader to orchestrate; attactor-leader to consolidate, instructor-leader to educate, etc, having an open mind and showing flexibility to break down outdated rules, deploy fresh ideas, optimize processes, or explore new ventures to harness innovation.

It's a well-known fact that there is no perfect leader, but the progressive one is on their way to be more effective by bridging multiple gaps seamlessly. The digital leaders of the future sense, feel, read, imagine and intuit possibilities in the digital paradigm shift. Rule-breaking or rule-making is part of transformative leadership which demands insight, understanding, patience, persistence, and courage, among other things. It’s a critical step for game-changing.

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unlockingperformancebyovercomingbarrier

Many changes, especially business transformation, are difficult, you have to overcome barriers, remove roadblocks, avoid pitfalls, get out of your comfort zones, and ride above the change curves.

Digital makes a significant impact on how we think, live, and work. There is the mix of old and new, physical and virtual, order and chaos. We are in a time of tremendous change, the dawn of the digital age, the path to the next level of digital maturity, also in the era of confusion and information overload. 

Therefore, it’s critical to identify, understand, and avoid pitfalls, discover strategic and predictive pathways to change, increase confidence, position a brand and leverage resources to make the digital paradigm shift effortlessly. Slideshare Presentation

        Unlocking performance via overcoming barriers

UnlockingperformanceviaOvercomingbarriers Nowadays, business dynamics are intense, even stressful, it’s crucial to understand many things underneath the surface of the business, and sense dysfunctional business reality.We live in the digital era with exponential growth of information, the speed of change is significantly increasing. The business system is complex and the organization is multifaceted. Decentralization, globalization, and diversification can all be practical reasons for communicating...

Uncoverbusinessvulnerabilityformulas Many business changes or transformational efforts are symptomatic of not having a comprehensive understanding to identify business vulnerability. The inevitable range, breadth, depth, and pace of uncontrollable factors acting on any organizations across vertical sectors mean identifying business vulnerability and constant fine-tuning are essential to improve the organizational maturity. Surely there is no one size fits all formula to manage a smooth transformation...

”Lost-in-Translation”& Other Strategic Pitfalls Business leaders should focus on the bigger picture, avoid pitfalls, rely on the skills and intelligence of the staff they lead so that they can manage a strong strategy.There are many risks and pitfalls (hidden risks) for strategy execution, besides 'culture eating strategy for breakfast', there are more factors leading to the poor execution of strategy, such as: Strategy Creep -give lip service to the strategy, it can be indicative of larger planning...

Culturechasmsymptoms Companies need to reinvent themselves, overcome all sorts of hassles, accelerate changes to the fundamental business model, culture, all critical business factors, to something better, and create synergy for moving upward.The digital world moves into a hyper-connected and interdependent digital relationship under “VUCA” business new normal. Multi-generational workforces have a different working style and life priority, with more dynamic team building...

Overcome Barriers to Accelerate Transformative Changes Many changes, especially business transformation, are difficult, you have to overcome barriers, remove roadblocks, avoid pitfalls, get out of your comfort zones, and ride above the change curves. Digital Transformation, like the computer technology revolution itself, is a long journey on the bumpy road with ups and downs, risks and rewards. It is a strategic imperative to diagnose crucial issues in those change laggard organizations, avoid all sorts...

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 5 million page views with about #7800 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.

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Inspiringlearningascoolthing

 Learning has to become a lifestyle, and develop it as a habit.

Our mind is raw,

learning makes it mature.

To learn constantly,

so we continually improve.

Learning is not the thing,

we are 'done' only in our youth,

it has to become a lifestyle,

and develop it as a habit.

Learning keeps us fresh,

energy flow...


To create the new requires -

not just one skill,

but many,

not just old experience,

but fresh perspectives,

creating new knowledge,

spurring imagination,

all the time.

Learning agility differentiates

growth mind from-

static mind;

high potential from-

mediocre.

People want to grow,

develop and mature.

Learning is a “Cool Thing.”


Lifelong learning is-

no longer a choice,

but a necessity to -

compete for the future;

learning is -

interactive,

interdisciplinary,

informal,

inclusive,

and integrated,

to explore unknown,

tap our endless potential.


Limitations on learning,

are barriers set by-

humans themselves,

as learning is-

a continuous process to-

unleash potential,

drive progression,

further the quality of civilization,

and enrich the role-

we play in the universe.

Learning is a “Cool Thing”

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Clear Change Statement

A multidimensional future mining view and making clear change statements help business leaders let go of the current reality and think outside the current constraints and comfort zones.

The future state is very fluid, it can be defined in the present moment but will change while we are trying to reach it. Progress comes from innovative "vision statements" stories of the future. A clear vision is in demand and it’s important to capture multiple views to describe the future state of the business. 

In practice, Vision Statement is very difficult to establish if the company doesn't have a Strategic Analysis, a Strategy and the most important thing a Purpose of Business.

Desired future state: As you cannot plan your strategy if you do not know what your vision for the company is. Given that articulating a vision includes a coherent and powerful statement of what the desired future state can be and focuses on common goals and step-wise approaches. Make sure that you break it down into looking at the ideal future first, followed by the practical view via resource, schedule, and talent assessment. And then ask questions to clarify: How has the business model evolved? What does revenue look like? How to fill the gaps in building business capabilities, what are barriers and how to overcome them, how to manage risks, etc?

Increasing speed of changes, frequent disruptions often led by emerging technologies, rapid business model innovation, digitization, consumerism, and many other factors are creating new challenges and opportunities for enterprises. Building a change vision is often difficult as it requires alignment at the most senior levels and needs to link to the overall strategic imperatives of the company. Imagining the future of the business, identifying what generates the most value for the company and expressing that in strategic objectives helps managers keep their eyes on the higher horizons and focus on what matters the most. Vision is required at any given stage of an organization’s life span, so do economies. Without a continuous envisioning of a better future, society is doomed.

Clear statements on the desired performance and improvements that will result from the change/transformation: With change as a new normal, vision is not static, but needs to keep evolving. Establish a "sense of urgency" required to drive change and make leaders and managers responsible and accountable for wrong decision making and missed goals, make clear statements on the desired improvement. It demonstrates the management's respect for the employee, their high expectations for excellence in performance, and their tangible and bold statement that the employee is valued and trusted to achieve high performance.

Clear statements help to prioritize, only initiatives that support the achievement of strategic goals and objectives should be implemented. Continuous improvement means to continue to discover that "there are always better ways." Top management focuses on developing a purpose and future perspective, bringing together people in a common and committed effort, and moving people in the right direction despite many obstacles, and seeking employee accountability for results. The managers can generate scenarios in which there is no one solution to one problem, but rather, to construct an event in which the individual inputs must compound and build upon each other. It is performed in collateral activities, meaning that people step out of their daily job to perform specific improvement activities, and improvement is the reward for being willing to change, setting metrics, adjusting plans, measuring performance and understanding results dynamically.

Clear statements on achieving people centricity: Digital is the age of customers. Being customer-centric is one of the most significant goals for forward-looking businesses to shape a digital future. Strategy mapping allows you to first understand your customers and what they value; and then identifies how to best characterize that value through key indicators, and then define those measures appropriate to best assess the performance of these indicators. To develop customer centricity, organizations need to develop clear statements on achieving people centricity, and understand whether their processes or the elements of the process are commoditized or intimate vehicles for "sensing" the external customer environment and "sensing" the internal employee environment.

More often than not, customers are the center of innovation efforts. A customer objective should describe value in the eyes of the customer. Total Customer Delight is an index of total participation in the growth of the enterprise, directly or indirectly. It defines the degree of value ownership of customers in the enterprise. Customer satisfaction to be a KPI and the defined area should possess a goal and measurement indicator stating that businesses are hitting or missing the objective. Customer satisfaction measure should be defined, a goal around it and a way of improving and getting better at delivery of the component.

A multidimensional future mining view and making clear change statements help business leaders let go of the current reality and think outside the current constraints and comfort zones for allowing an unknown future state to emerge and manage changes dynamically, connect the previously unconnected dots, help to understand where and how you can and should improve and get the biggest effect and scale-up across the digital ecosystem effortlessly.

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Innovation via Systematic Approach

 Innovation management approach has become an art out of necessity to address critical issues, clarify strategies, and ensure people in it can prosper and thrive to unleash creative potential.

Digital organizations and systems have the characteristics of hyperconnectivity, nonlinearity, adaptability, unrepeatability, and unpredictability. Highly mature organizations not only apply the most advanced digital technologies to innovate their business but more importantly, they also need to enforce systematic understanding, transcend the classic management discipline into an interconnected system approach.

 Forward-thinking organizations are eager to build a creative workplace, but being innovative is the state of mind and in the business scope, a collaborative effort, to make a significant difference in the overall levels of achieving high performing business results and unlocking the full business potential.

Intricacies and interdependencies: With today’s high velocity and frequent digital disruptions, enterprises today are inherently and intensely complex, diverse, and ambiguous with unpredictable outcomes as the complexity of aggregate layers of every internal system is a burden that often causes conflicts. To keep idea flow and business fluidity, contemporary businesses are not the "closed system" but the dynamic digital ecosystem which is complex, interrelated, and interconnected, full of opportunities and risks. Thus, they have to gain a greater awareness of the intricacies and interdependencies of organizational systems, processes, people dynamics, technology, resource allocation, technological touch, and economies of scale, etc, to initiate the ecosystem innovation effort and generate systemic business value in a structural way.

Running a business is an iterative problem-solving continuum; and solving problems innovatively needs cross-functional collaboration and organizational level synchronization. There are no unsolvable problems, but there are complex problems that are those you cannot solve with given resources, knowledge and capabilities you have at your disposal at the time the problem arises. To dig through, multi-dimension and complexity are two key factors in the intrigues of large problems which many organizations across the vertical sectors are facing today. Thus, it’s a strategic imperative to applying a system's lens and creative touchpoint to be aware of business intricacies and understand how the various factors affect the business system, and then, manage the complex system and the people of the complex system by eliminating unnecessary complexity to build a balanced innovation portfolio with the right mix of incremental and radical innovation, and maintaining the right level of digital balance.

Interface and interaction: In the face of vast areas of unknowns, effective business leaders understand that a system is a necessary precondition for an effective intervention, leverage a scientific innovation management framework to threshold all critical factors, develop an interface and interaction associated with complex systems, engenders new perspectives or actions as part of the process of creating a cross-disciplined innovation approach. Methodologically, the solution to breaking down silo is to apply bigger thinking, to implement an effective innovation strategy, craft better integral processes, and harness mass innovation systematically.

Running a cohesive innovative organization requires cross-functional communication and interdisciplinary knowledge sharing. Interaction and collaboration is at its essence, the intellectual harmony between humans. Collaboration in the business requires a much higher degree of innovative thinking than the competition and winning. Organizational leaders need to take a holistic look at the variety of business relationships and interconnectivity, emphasize communication, participation, relationships, collaboration. To connect the wider dots for sparking innovation, organizations today need to encourage knowledge exchange cross-functionally. It starts to leverage powerful technology tools to boost social engagement, inspire creativity and foster innovation. People can understand new topics and get access to knowledge effortlessly, with abilities to interact with the expanded digital ecosystem seamlessly. So collectively, the organization can thrive via unleashing their potential and bring higher than expected results.

Integration and Interconnectivity: There is abundant information permeated everywhere and silo spreading in the different layers of the organization. In many organizations that get stuck at the lower level of business maturities, the overly rigid hierarchy and functional gaps create bottlenecks that prevent information flow, stifle innovation and slow down business speed. To run a company as a holistic whole to harness innovation, you have to consolidate, integrate and optimize. The purpose of integration is to enforce collaboration and unification in order to create business synergy and catalyze business growth continually. It’s important to enforce integration and interconnection of the across organizational, industrial, national and international business, social and political systems to achieve common purposes and co-solving thorny problems innovatively. By doing so, you are creating a case where you force an organizational alignment to the integration, and you develop the urge to push the organization up to the next level of business growth cycle.

Integration is key to ensure that the application ecosystem offers real value and also is necessary for future agility with a compelling story. For the large enterprises where integration of legacy systems was found to be not cost effective. It takes cohesive collaboration for business as a whole, with an ability for applications to integrate with each other and enable workflows between them as part of a business process value chain, to aligns the different parts of the ecosystem to adopt more points of integration, with layered and loosely coupled modular capabilities to build differentiated innovation competencies.

Unlike the traditional organizations often being perceived as mechanical systems keep spinning; digital organizations are the living things that keep growing and evolving. The interconnected systematic innovation management approach has become an art out of necessity to address critical issues, clarify strategies, and ensure people in it can prosper and thrive to unleash creative potential. The real challenge is to understand where and how you can and should improve to get the biggest innovation effect, focus on creating strategic synergies, and scale-up across the digital ecosystem to generate systemic value and make a leapfrog of societal progress.

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Innovativeinsight

Isn't it a tough journey, celebrating #7800 blogpostings to deepen leadership profundity. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking, brainstorming, innovating and sharing.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 5 million page views with 7700+ blog postings 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.


Innovation thought-provoking-breakthrough mindsets Innovation management needs to accomplish the goals through their people who are the ones with breakthrough minds and a set of core professional competency.Due to the fact that innovating in today’s digital world with “VUCA” reality has become increasingly complex in nature. The conventional mind which is bound by its beliefs and conventional wisdom often has a negative connotation about sticking to outdated concepts, traditions, cultures, or the...

Raise Concerns to Enhance GRC Governance controlling and enforcement takes a new meaning such as agility, intelligence, and creativity in the dynamic era of digitalization .Every business is different with its own set of issues, problems and concerns regarding its strategic and inherent risks. There's a clear connection between bad governance and poor performance, good governance practices can improve business maturity, and high mature businesses usually have much better performance...

Innateculturalintelligence To be an effective culture master, one needs to take three steps- culture awareness, empathy and intelligence.Every organization exhibits a culture. Anytime people work together for an extended period of time, a culture is formed. Organizations can learn, benchmark against, competencies to improve business performance. Whereas the cultural aspect is an intrinsic factor that drives the organization's business longevity, the point is what we do and...

Unconventionalproblemsolving Solving complex problems today requires perceptive intelligence, multidisciplinary knowledge, profound insight, and enriched experiences. 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 be self-aware...

Integratingdecisionlogic One significant effect of digitization is increased velocity, complexity, unpredictability, and a need for a faster response to changes in business and industry based on effective and efficient decision making.In the world where change is significantly speeding up, business leaders couldn’t predict the future with a certain degree of accuracy. Decision-making is difficult due to varying reasons such as uncertainty and ambiguity of business circumstances,...

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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Unlocking Performance by Enforcing Disipline without Disciplinarians

 It’s theoretically and practically possible to get governance discipline without too many disciplinarians, and run a harmonized organization with autonomy to delight people and unlock business performance.

One significant effect of today’s digital economy is high velocity, uncertainty, complexity, unpredictability, and a need for a faster response to changes in businesses. Governance ensures business effectiveness by enforcing accountability and collaboration. A strong governance approach steers the business in the right direction and unlock performance. 

By principle, governance comprises "value delivery to the business" and the "governance of risk management." By practice, how to enforce the organizational governance discipline depends on the nature, scale, and complexity of the organization, as well as understanding business risks and conduct comprehensively. To simply put, the purpose of governance is to enforce management discipline. Can you get discipline without disciplinarians?

Governance as "decision-making optimizer”: In today's “VUCA” digital environment, decisions become more complex and involve diverse stakeholders and you have to weigh varying factors. Oftentimes, there might be many negative and positive vectors to a decision and each is weighed against each other to arrive at a satisfactory way forward. You need a sound process with governance mechanisms embedded in it to frame the decision scenario, leverage quality information, weigh options appropriately with the right people and actually make an effective decision. Governance as a decision optimizer is the act of guiding, influencing and regulating the decisions and behaviors of the entire workforce, management included, to improve decision maturity and drive sustainable value-creation to the shareholders.

A strong governance model illustrates the governance processes that are used to govern specific activities and establish decision rights, and illustrates the mechanisms of escalation and resolution used to make effective decisions. Good corporate governance enables a good decision-making system and optimal decision-making mechanisms to ensure decisions occur as fast as they possibly can to adapt to the “VUCA” new normal. It can assure the corporation’s operation under the correct directions and behaviors correctly without too many manual procedures and unnecessary complexity.

Governance as a policy setter: You cannot have effective governance without the soft ingredients such as culture and awareness. Strong governance discipline can only be implemented in humans via setting good policies to encourage positive attitudes and good behaviors. Policy is a set of principles for decision making or guidelines to shape collective mindset, attitude, and drive behaviors. With a set of well defined policies and principles, companies can enforce governance disciplines to improve manageability and transparency of the company via efficient automation mechanisms without too many human interventions.

In reality though, there are some organizations out there that have a plethora of policies and many of them are nothing more than that, just a policy. Good governance = superior management, to ensure the right things are easy to do. We do need to not just develop positive policies but also align actions and attitudes with them. From the boardroom to front desks, policies are communication from the top. Business management should take their leadership position seriously with educated intention to set good policies, enforce accountability and improve business process transparency, intelligence and maturity.

Governance as business aligner: Alignment is fundamental and multidimensional to ensure a seamless strategy implementation and it is key to fully achieve corporate performance goals. Good governance can create good performance and manage risks effectively, especially in the long run. There are often disruptive processes or technologies that need some relaxation of the old governance models. An effective governance model illustrates the governance processes with the mechanisms of escalation and resolution used to strengthen the weakest links of strategy management, and make seamless functional and skill alignment. Alignment goes beyond conformity and order taking, it needs to include a close partnership with interpersonal communication, value analytics, seamless execution.

Having an in-depth understanding of the business vision and mission, doing the governance mapping helps to identify interdependencies and streamline governance processes, and ensure the appropriate GRC structure and mechanism are realized without being bureaucratic, manually intervened or misaligned with business objectives. Strong GRC disciplines have a direct link to business and its processes, and those organizations that have a higher mature strategic alignment through integration, collaboration and harmony, etc. will outperform their competitors and tend to be more responsive to the business dynamic and reach the next level of organizational maturity.

The goal of organizational governance is to ensure that businesses work as a whole to improve communication, harness partnership, demonstrate value and engage employees. The cure comes from within the people, as well as the organization as the collective whole, whether individual or a group that we want to change from how they are working by appreciating the right things they are doing.  It’s theoretically and practically possible to get governance discipline without too many disciplinarians, and run a harmonized organization with autonomy to delight people and unlock business performance.

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Initiatinglearningexperimentaleffort

 The collective human potential transcending into the business competency is the greatest thing the organization should ever invest in...

Every organization is different, and it is at a different stage of the business cycle. There is no one size fitting all formulas or practices to develop a learning organization and build differentiated organizational competency. 

The key characteristics of digital organizations are learning, information fluidity, people-centricity. Customer-led business growth can truly create the momentum for catalyzing business changes and bringing high-performance business results.

Information savvy: Information is permeating everywhere in the business. The effective and productive Information Management activities and scenarios should understand and manage complexity, know how to prioritize based on the business needs, communicate extensively, focus on information refinement and adoption to achieve its business value. Therefore, the senior management team should understand the critical role of information technology in the future of business. An information savvy organization can refine the right information in the right form and of adequate quality to satisfy the demands of the organization, capture business insight or customer foresight to rise above the waves of the emergent digital trends.

An open information system can incorporate both ends and means; continuously open to new information from the dynamic business environment and is able to circulate information within the organization system seamlessly and responds to rapid changes continuously. In high-intelligent organizations, Information Management is a linchpin to weave all crucial business elements to a set of differentiated enterprise capabilities for improving the success rate of strategy management and organizational maturity.

Knowledge abundance: Organizations become more complex than ever, thus, knowledge needs to be facilitated and managed systematically. Knowledge assets are a blend of resources, not a single asset, and its integrity, availability, and confidentiality can be crucial to how the organization functions or maintains its competitive advantage and fits the business strategy the best. Digital knowledge management needs to enable knowledge flow, safeguard the full understanding of business processes or tools, manage knowledge as an asset to improve its integrity, availability and confidentiality.

Knowledge basically involves the human factor and captures the benefit of someone's experience, then applying it and making it available to broader audiences who can benefit from the combined intellectual asset of the knowledge and experiences, to consider the interdependency of knowledge ownership. Ultimately, businesses need to transform KM from static to dynamic, from efficient to effective; and from process driven to people centric.

Learning-experimental Organization: You can only fail better only if you learn from failures. And then failing is something that prompts you to move ahead. The future belongs to those fast learners who can test and run, walk the talk, and ultimately become a digital master.” Have the systems and structures in place prior to implementation to actually monitor and track training, learning and knowledge management.

Forward-looking organizations cultivate the culture of learning, empower learning champions, encourage the growth mindset to lead a healthy learning and doing continuum, explore new opportunities and build differentiative capabilities to perform in the future for unlocking business growth. They improve learning agility via the view of the knowledge ecosystem, incorporating the multi-faceted aspects of the knowledge system, innovation and intuitive behavior.

Companies are gradually opening up to the next practice to enforce change, catalyze growth, harness innovation, and accelerate digital transformation. The collective human potential transcending into the business competency is the greatest thing the organization should ever invest in because it is the driving force to fuse change, catalyze business growth, to reach the next stage of the business growth cycle.

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Paradoxical Logic

Digital leaders and professionals should embrace the opposite thoughts and take expanded lenses to perceive the multi-facet world via interdisciplinary inference or reasoning in order to solve problems effectively.

The world becomes more paradoxical, balance is a leverage for the problem-solving and in-depth understanding of economic and social systems. Some argue that every advance in science is about dealing with paradoxes via innate logic and holistic understanding. 

Logic is neither equal to conventional wisdom nor linear understanding or arithmetic rules only. Logic could be paradoxical, as paradox is the result of two opposing truths existing side by side, which can be both right.

Divergence vs convergence: While the team is analyzing and co-solving the "problems," it will better go more convergent to really hone in on the "why." Once you figure out what the true problems are and are ready to ideate that needs to be divergent thinking. It’s best to bring a group of people together with the cognitive difference such as different backgrounds, capabilities, strengths etc. together in order to obtain such a way of divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is sort of free thinking to keep your mind flowing, to explore and question; then convergent thinking will do the reasoning, synthesizing and sum up the team needs to go divergent to explore the space during ethnography/contextual inquiry). Further, the digital convergence of devices and services are creating new business models and revenue sources as most companies across industries are being forced to become technology companies and run information businesses.

Ideas are seeds of creativity that can change a certain situation and future. Divergent thinking is nurtured by interdisciplinary knowledge and enriched experience to create new ideas. It’s easier to tame a big idea, and then to make a small one look more fancy than it actually is. It takes logic to recognize, filter or deal with ideas, implement them and guild teams to make things happen timely and transform a vision into reality. In the business setting, in order to innovate, it is necessary to follow a process where divergent and convergent thinking are always present and where you can use different tools. The future vision is one of them, a very powerful one. Finally, when down-selecting ideas and eventually prototyping that would be more convergent thinking.

Induction vs. Deduction: Under a complex digital environment with “VUCA” normality, many problems today are complex, we need to look at each situation individually, ponder around intriguing inference behind complexity and ask what leadership model is required. It’s important to comprehend dynamics, deal with the mountain of information, master induction or deduction; understand variables, interfaces, interactions, intervention, and weigh in varying decision factors.

What many see as innovation is actually a problem-solving scenario - you need to take inferential logic to understand the real problems and illustrate them well, take an interdisciplinary approach to solve them creatively. A simple process of deduction to derive a solution drawing from knowledge, experience, and out-of-the-box creativity. Theory- practice-theory is a logical induction-deduction scenario and a multi-disciplinary effort to improve innovation, or the transformative change management success rate.

Analysis vs. Synthesis: Analysis is to understand something that already "exists" such as building a model of an existing system. Synthesis is to build something that does not exist such as building a system according to the model. Analysis may not be able to answer the why questions about a system. It is defined as the procedure by which you break down an intellectual or substantial whole into parts or components (loosen, untie, set apart). Synthesis is defined as the opposite procedure to combine separate elements or components in order to form a coherent whole. studying social phenomena through qualitative means to create meaning.

Analysis is the pre-phase of synthesis. synthesis is the analysis' goal. They complement one another. Never attempt to improve a part of the system unless it improves the whole. Every synthesis is built upon the results of a preceding analysis, and every analysis requires a subsequent synthesis in order to verify and correct its results. In this context, to regard one method as being inherently better than the other is meaningless.

There are all sorts of thoughts which are all happening in the same sphere of influence of an individual human or groups of humans, or humans interacting with knowledge of the past, or connecting with some "super-conscious" field. There is always a well-known solution to every human problem-neat, plausible, and wrong. Digital leaders and professionals should embrace the opposite thoughts and take expanded lenses to perceive the multi-facet world via interdisciplinary inference or reasoning in order to solve problems effectively.

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Accountability needs to be well embedded in the business culture, for individuals taking responsibility for what they DO and what they SAY!

The purpose of “Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit“ is to share insight about multidimensional enterprise fit from digital characteristics, organizational structure, change, knowledge, and talent perspectives; evoke critical and paradoxical thinking about digital “fit vs. misfit,” spark healthy debates on how to define and develop true digital fit, and build a fitting working environment to inspire creativity and accelerate digital transformation.

 

                   Improving Accountability

Running High-Performance Digital Organization with High Accountability A hyperconnected organization can approach the flow zone when the positions in its hierarchy have clear and accountable tasks. The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves. It blurs the geographical, functional, organizational, and even industrial borders nowadays. Traditional hierarchical lines will phase out and a collective of business partners will emerge working collaboratively...

Influse Autheiticity, Accountaility, Autonomy into Digital Organization Running a self-autonomous organization is about empowerment and trust to encourage authenticity, with the ultimate goal to improve business efficiency, effectiveness, autonomy, flexibility, accountability, and performance. Digital organizations are like the living systems that are organic, holistic, vibrant, energetic, and responsive; they can self-reflect, self-discover, self-adaptive, and self-renew in thriving as high-performance businesses in...

How to Build a Culture of Accountability Accountability needs to be well embedded in the business culture, for individuals taking responsibility for what they DO and what they SAY! Accountability is “the obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.” (business dictionary.com). To step further, accountability is not only to accept the responsibility for what you DO - the actions...

Bridging the Gaps of Accountability Accountability can be harnessed via motivating your employees to achieve high than expected results and build a culture of learning, trust, and professionalism. Digital transformation is all about shaping highly performing and highly innovative organizations. Lack of accountability is often one of the biggest obstacles to getting things done, or cause change inertia. Because people don’t feel “safe,” or run away from accountability because they...

How to Enforce Performance Accountability Accountability goes hand in hand with the delegation of authority or power. Digital transformation is all about shaping highly performing and highly innovative organizations (Digital Master) to improve efficiency & effectiveness; agility and maturity. In detail, how do you drive workforce performance, whilst generating accountability for that performance? Accountability goes hand in hand with the delegation of authority or power....

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 5 million page views with about #7700+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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Integrating decision logic

One significant effect of digitization is increased velocity, complexity, unpredictability, and a need for a faster response to changes in business and industry based on effective and efficient decision making.

In the world where change is significantly speeding up, business leaders couldn’t predict the future with a certain degree of accuracy. Decision-making is difficult due to varying reasons such as uncertainty and ambiguity of business circumstances, fear of failures, unsure about priority, unconscious bias, lack of knowledge or profound thinking process, etc. Thus, it’s crucial to take logical steps in achieving decision smartness.

Study the situation: The more complex the situation is, the more different approaches and role gaming is needed to reach for understanding. If you understand the origin of the situation, where you want it to go, and how to get there, you would understand the specific WHYs to dig through the root causes. The insight of the situation requires in-depth understanding. It’s about the understanding of one´s possibilities, adversaries, environment effects and other stakeholders’ behavior. Too often people may take the easy path, think and work at a superficial level rather than spend the time to understand what is going on underneath. Insight is an understanding of cause and effect based on the identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario; being able to identify the root cause of a problem or the core issues of a situation which leads to understanding and resolution.

Cognitively, people are often at the center of the problem. Diagnosing the problem from the mindset level is the critical step for digging into the root causes of many problems today. The more complex the situation is, the more important it is to leverage multidimensional thought processes to see underneath the symptoms and dig into root causes of the problem and see around corners without ignoring some pieces of important information, gain sufficient knowledge and unique insight to observe deeper and see around the corner, have an in-depth understanding of cause and effect based on the identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario, see around the corner, and transcend the interdisciplinary knowledge to get to the heart of the matter.

Ask questions: With “VUCA” digital new normal, you become a leader or high professional when you are already comfortable and confident with questions. From a decision management perspective, asking the right questions helps to validate how thoroughly and deeply your team's thinking is on a particular issue as well as the psychology behind innovation. Effective leaders want to understand the issue, they will always ask questions to people around them, get views of everybody, learn about the subject when necessaryIt might be worth asking: What is the problem? Why? Is it the symptoms or the real issues? How am I looking at this? Is there another way/another understanding? How come things are the way they are? What seems to be the constraints? Which factors or aspects of the problem seem most critical? Where is the weakest link or the strongest constraint? Etc. And then, use their leadership qualities to resolve the situation or make decisions which would be appreciated by everybody.

Asking questions is a non offending way of making the point by understanding the point of view of another side. All good qualities of leadership require practice, some practical tools, as well as methodologies, practice asking questions and being quiet for a while, get input before providing opinions and listen before you speak. These can be used by leaders to get them into the practice of asking rather than answering. Then the more they ask, the better they get at it and the more refined they can make their questions. Intellectuals question the established order, involving a lot of mental "doing" = thinking, comparing, concluding, reasoning and planning. Smart people ask tough questions, get updated information and multiple perspectives about the problems, learn about the subject inside-out, and then apply their leadership qualities and skills to resolve the situation effectively. And even more importantly, it includes helping leaders trust the people they wish to lead and make an objective decision via the state, ask, decide, act approach.

Collect information: Information as input to the decision-making does not absolutely determine the decision but allows the decision-maker to exercise their judgment. This is exactly what is required for the decision to carry effective information. For decision-making to be effective, the decision-maker must have enough knowledge to make their decisions rich in information and significantly different from the available data. In the human context, information drives awareness, which can include all of these characteristics, uncertainty, surprise, difficulty, and entropy, although it can also trigger a sense of confidence, confirmation, validation, verification.

Willingness to acquire additional information begins with acceptance you do not know enough to achieve your purpose; you recognize a gap in the knowledge you have and value in closing the gap. Analytics has no value until they inform decisions, getting buy-in to the value of the information being provided, and developing plans to act specifically on that information. Both willing and able to acquire various types of information begin with an understanding of purpose; what is it we want to achieve? The abundance of information flow, click-away knowledge, and the more advanced digital technologies make it possible to gain real-time insight and business foresight if organizations are truly being digitized underneath, at the process level. It helps decision-makers at a different level of the organization to proactively leverage information, relevant & interdisciplinary knowledge and collective insight for making effective decisions in a scientific and consistent way.

Articulate logic: Many of today’s problems are complex, the assumption that there is a single cause to a "problem" in a complex adaptive system is unhelpful. You need to be looking for patterns rather than isolating causes. It might be a good idea to first split problems into different categories and to assess the relative importance of the different categories for them and what could be done about it. There are multiple, inter-related dynamics, you have to really dig beneath the superficial layer. In reality, people may have abundant experiences, but they do not know how to apply logic to frame the right questions or how their experiences relate to useful outcomes.

With an unprecedented level of uncertainty and complexity, management of any type is a complex interaction of many cognitive systems, to avoid being illogical or irrelevant, the nature of how the "implementation of the idea has to follow a logical path for the solution" may include devices such as pattern recognition. People can be rational. Being rational doesn’t mean taking linear logic only or ignoring intuition in decision making. We have a predisposition to seeking patterns, or potentially in the pursuit of logic. Digital leaders and professionals need to develop critical thinking skills for making logical reasoning and practicing multidisciplinary approaches to solve complex problems. Logic is the ability for examining inference via analyzing, evaluating, and producing coherent argumentation, finding common ground and initiating dialogues, and applying multifaceted logic to make effective decisions.

Fill out the biases or blind spots: At today’s “VUCA” digital new normal, there isn't always a right or wrong choice in any situation and there are a lot of grays, so blind spots in decision-making are perhaps inevitable. This makes it very hard to choose a right or wrong from your choices. To close blindspots, you have to be humble to realize there are many things you know you don’t know and perhaps even more which you don't know what you don't know. Until that happens, you will continue in the lives of blindness. Can you provide calm inquiry clearing the blind spots to help find out what is really happening? Continue to see the importance of dealing with blind spots by learning how to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. All these together adding up to quite a bit should really make you desire insight and squash arrogance to improve decision effectiveness.

Oftentimes, individuals have cognitive differences. Silo mentality, various non-critical thinking patterns, lack of insight or contextual intelligence, etc, lead to poor or inaccurate judgment, unconscious bias, illogical interpretations, poor decision-making, and then, further cause a series of issues cascaded into big problems and fatal business failures. In specific, there are all sorts of decision biases: Optimism bias is the tendency to believe, expect or hope that things will turn out well. Pessimism Bias is the tendency to believe that most things are likely to go wrong. Focalism Bias is a sort of systematic tendency describing the common human tendency relying too heavily on the first piece of information provided when making decisions. In a team or social setting, 'groupthink' can be extremely pervasive and a group's intuitive decision making should be taken with extreme caution. A great way to manage bias is to simply get it out in the open communication environment. In a collaborative decision, let individuals embrace their bias by sharing it with others in a non-threatening context. This can help to enable the "wisdom of crowds" as a source of improved decision-making. Try to eliminate all biases and you are likely to reduce the use of heuristics, and deal with bias + complacency before seeing a clear picture and arrive in a somewhat unbiased decision.

Perceive consequences: The lack of updated viable information, systematic understanding, clear logic is critical to the failure of, or consequences of a bad decision. A good process can still get adverse outcomes. All good processes do decrease the risk of the wrong choice, not eliminate it. The decision is not necessarily bad, but the flow and sequence of the subsidiary decision implementations all encounter a different set of context dynamics. This means being very clear about both internal factors, such as decision situation, context, relevant knowledge, organizational capability & resource, etc, as well as external factors such as technology factors, political and legal conditions, and competition and consumer demands, etc. It also means taking multiple perspectives into account, minimizing "agendas" or "spin," working through the decision process logic, reconciling differences and inconsistencies in data or sources, using a set of criteria for evaluating information and conclusions and considering unintended consequences. If the decision-making process is well designed and well executed, you have the highest probability of getting the best outcome in the state of knowledge accessible at the time of decision.

One significant effect of digitization is increased velocity, complexity, unpredictability, and a need for a faster response to changes in business and industry based on effective and efficient decision making. There are many variables in complex decision making, there are tradeoffs you have to leverage, and there is no magic formula to follow. Walkthrough “learn, ask, collect, articulate, fill out, perceive” stages for digital decision-making. The true wisdom leads to putting more thought into things and searching for flaws in decisions and that widens the possibility of coming up with alternative decisions. Decision maturity is based on the maturity of the decision maker to overcome bias, make iterative decision processes & planning, leverage both information and intuition, to not search for perfection, but improve decision effectiveness.

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Solving complex problems today requires perceptive intelligence, multidisciplinary knowledge, profound insight, and enriched experiences. 

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 be self-aware of their role in problems, show professional maturity, and develop a good reputation as the problem-solver.

     Unconventional Problem-Solving

Unconventionalproblemsolving Solving complex problems today requires perceptive intelligence, multidisciplinary knowledge, profound insight, enriched experiences. We live in a world in which change is the norm and we confront a number of high complex problems across business disciplines and knowledge domains. The problem-solving logic is just so simple - diagnose the real problem and solve it in the right way. However, the problem-solving thought process and practices.

Unconventional Understanding The profile of innovator that is most common is the talented people with an innate curiosity to improve, breakthrough unconventional wisdom to innovate. The digital dynamic is where the continuous disruptions often led by emerging technologies threaten to tear down silo mentality, outdated concepts, legacy systems and practices just as it generates new opportunities. Nowadays business leaders and professionals feel more comfortable with the digital...

Questioning Conventional Wisdom to Make a Digital Leap The abundance of information flow and the advanced digital technologies make it possible to gain real-time insight and pursue new possibilities. Nowadays we live in a digital society with exponential growth of information, clicks away knowledge, open culture, but also in face of frequent disruptions and fierce competitions. Fundamentally running a business is about solving problems and making progressive changes. Digital leaders and professionals…

Problem Solving With Intentional Novelty The more complex the situation is, the more different approaches and role gaming is needed to reach for understanding and inject novelty, study the choices and select the best possible implementable alternative. Fundamentally either running a business or living life is an iterative problem-solving continuum. There are strategic problem solving from a long term perspective and tactical problem solving on a daily basis. Problem Solving with...

How to Create Multiple Pathways for Problem-Solving It’s all in the attitude to explore the better way and develop a creative “problem-solving” mindset which needs to be nurtured properly. Fundamentally, the business or societal progress is made via a healthy cycle of problem-framing and problem-solving continuum. There is no magic formula for problem-solving, With the increasing pace of changes and shortened knowledge cycle, the best practices are outdated sooner than ever and “commonly known”...

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 5 million page views with about 7700+ 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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Information Governance

The effective compliance tool monitors change, alerts the organization to risk conditions, and enables information accountability.

The CIO’s role among many things is to decide where to make IT investments, provide IT Insights (Analytics) and be the marketer for all the information. Data is growing at an exponential rate. So, the data governance issues will also become pretty serious if steps are not taken immediately. IT is responsible for working with business folks to identify the business rules and provide the data insight mattering for decision making, customer insight as well as workforce analysis.

Data Management Life Cycle: Information Management has to break down silos, to keep information flow and apply an integrated and holistic information life cycle management solution to conquer challenges and generate business value rather than try to “control” it. Data governance is critical especially as we move to the on-demand model; data is an asset that needs to be protected and used properly.

Information (data) is a resource over which the governing body should exercise oversight, for which the governing body should delegate certain responsibilities and for which the governing body may well define some policy regarding how decisions are made. Then, we can correctly see data management as being the tasks and responsibilities delegated to management as part of the governing body’s governance activities.

Data Quality: Data Governance, for the most part, relates to the maintenance of quality data. Data quality does not end with managing the incorrect entry of information, but the logic of data has to be taken into account too. One of the data quality perspectives is that, instead of having a variety of data quality properties, which are unrelated or independent to a number of different organizational forms that users have to translate or decipher, the focus should be on one standardized format that can be used by a number of users within classified user groups.

Keep in mind though, Data Quality doesn’t mean you pursue the perfect data, but the good enough data being transformed into information, business insight and human wisdom. In order to provide meaningful and insightful reporting or business intelligence, data governance is essential. Think about it, you will not be able to understand the performance of your company or measure it without good quality data and data governance ensures that you can get your hands on it.

Data Compliance: One more thing needs to always keep in mind is regulatory compliance. That will be the driving principle behind your data or IT governance. Once you've taken care of compliance, governance seems to flow out rather easily for no other reason than compliance, which takes a lot of effort and control these days.

The effective compliance tool monitors change, alerts the organization to risk conditions, and enables information accountability. This requires a common process to deliver real-time accountability and transparency across regulatory areas with a common system of record to monitor regulatory change, audit and measure the impact, implement appropriate corrective actions, and update policies.

In order to manage data life cycle more effectively, the whole issue of governance is there to be put in place in the context of the business process that the data is supporting, and enforce data governance via technical processes, methods, and knowledge, take a holistic approach for processing and refining information to improve the organizational decision effectiveness and achieve its business value.

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Initiatinginnovationviakeepingfingers ....

In reality, many people are used to living in familiar territory with a silo mentality and apply conventional wisdom based on a very limited thinking box they shaped quite a long time ago.

The world is transforming from personal computing into digital computing, from knowledge scarcity to information abundance, the answer about yesterday is not as critical as the questions about the future. The implementation of the idea has to follow a logical path to the solution of most types of problems, since contemporary society tends to follow logical rather than lateral kinds of structures. 

Business leaders and professionals need to keep fingers on things that matter to lead breakthrough change confidently.

Keep fingers on examining yourself cognitively: When you judge something, you form a critical opinion of it based on facts, discerned data, and preconceived notions. Many times people make poor judgment, not because of ignorance, but because of the lack of insight. Willingness to acquire additional information begins with an acceptance you do not know enough to achieve your purpose. In today's digital dynamic, you have to envision and gain a long-term perspective, you have to apply multidimensional intelligence for either gaining clear discernments or making effective decisions.

Outdated knowledge is what leads to a decrease in imagination. The most important capability of the cognitive mind with a clear discernment is the willingness and ability to seek out new knowledge, address ignorance and the assumptions you make to minimize it. Cognitive understanding requires a person's ability to grasp or comprehend information. Without true understanding, there is no way to have strong discernment. It is the responsibility of each individual to examine themselves, fix cognitive ignorance and bridge cognitive difference, and to make sure they are open to true understanding.

Keep fingers on dealing with the “shade of gray” thoughtfully: Due to the overwhelming growth of information, hypercomplex, and interdependent digital new normal, there are many grey areas and debatable concepts. For example, right and wrong is a very hard thing to define. It depends mostly on your perspective, experience, and situation. Sometimes right and wrong mean correct and incorrect. Sometimes they mean accurate or inaccurate. Businesses should develop a shared view of digital organization that promotes a deeper understanding of core processes, systems, and transformative competency, adjusting their attitude (emotions, cultures, or circumstances, etc.), investigate "hidden risks" or uncover gray areas, and manage them well to improve business resilience.

Keep fingers on connecting wider dots to spark innovation systematically: In reality, many people are used to living in familiar territory with a silo mentality and apply conventional wisdom based on a very limited thinking box they shaped quite a long time ago. It generates silos and blocks creativity. With a static mindset and being called conventional wisdom, the same mediocrity is inherited down the line by generations, organizations or the society keep nurturing mediocrity If we all stayed in a box and didn't believe things exist outside of our box, there's no room to broaden our thoughts and no innovation can be sparked.

Unfortunately, businesses unrealistically keep expecting innovation out of that mediocrity. The point is not to be unduly constrained in your thinking or knowledge, but at the same time not to lose sight of the objective of thinking, keep fingers on shaping new thinking, break down silos, and connect wider dots to stimulate innovation. The horizontal communication and collaboration, and knowledge sharing are what spurs innovation via cross-pollinating ideas and implementing them systematically.

A great wealth of knowledge fuels imaginations. To survive and thrive in today’s “VUCA” reality, the business management has to keep their fingers on the pulse of business information and uprising trends which can create fresh opportunities to help the business grow and reach the next cycle of business maturity.

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innatebusinesstransformationformula

The very purpose of any change is to make continuous improvement and focus on the long-term prosperity of both employees and business.

The purpose of the book “Digital Maturity: Take a Journey of a Thousand Miles from Functioning to Delight” is to envision the future of the business, articulate the very characteristics of digital organizations; reimagine the interdisciplinary and hyperconnected digital ecosystem; fine-tune processes and structures of the digital business; develop the best and next practices to charter the digital paradigm shift seamlessly; leverage information & technology as the linchpin of the digitalization; take a holistic approach to measure digitization effort; avoid pitfalls and barriers on the way; and make a leap from doing digital to being digital effortlessly.

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. It is like a gigantic puzzle with many misplaced pieces, you have to put them all in the right places to discover the real meaning and unleash its full potential. You cannot make a true digital paradigm shift without an in-depth understanding of the digital interconnectivity and embracing the multitude of digital maturity.

Business Management Formulas 

Professionalism & Integral Management Formula The digital organization can reach the stage of ripeness when it acts as an organic system which continues evolving, adapting, informative and innovative. We live in a world in which change and disruptions are the new normal. Every organization is at a different stage of the business growth cycle. Thus, it perhaps requires differentiated business manageability and creative workforce to solve business problems large or small on a daily basis.

Uncover Business Vulnerability Formulas Many business changes or transformational efforts are symptomatic of not having a comprehensive understanding to identify business vulnerability. The inevitable range, breadth, depth, and pace of uncontrollable factors acting on any organizations across vertical sectors mean identifying business vulnerability and constant fine-tuning are essential to improve the organizational maturity. Surely there is no one size fits all formula to manage a smooth...

The Digital Management Formula Digital Management = Goal + Principle + Process + Practice + Training + Metrics The digital paradigm has many dimensions, with hyperconnected nature and many moving pieces. Digital management is a hybrid and holistic discipline with many mixed parts. It consists of the interlocking function of making corporate policies, organizing, planning, controlling, and directing the organization’s resources in order to achieve the objectives of that...

The Digital Transformation Success Formula Opportunity + Competency + Attitude + Resource + Scale + risk management + Leadership conviction + Maturity = Digital Transformation Success The organization or company may be in business for many years but has not matured its management disciplines and structural flexibility. The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves and make the digital..

The CIO’s Digital Formulas to Guide Digitalization The very purpose of any change is to make continuous improvement and focus on the long-term prosperity of both employees and business. The Digital Era upon us means fast-paced changes and abundant information. There are systemic consequences and impacts of thinking and actions in terms of interconnections and interdependency of digital business management. The highly complex and dynamic digital paradigm shift needs to be elaborated in a well-organized...

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 5 million page views with about 7700+ blog postings 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.

Read More