Innateperformanceindicator

The real purpose of Performance Indicators is to provide business insight and monitor the progress and performance.

Corporate Performance Management is a management control from strategy to the shop floor. "If you can't measure, you can't manage," legendary management guru Peter Drucker once asserted. 

Managing performance means understanding results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to ensure it happens. It takes multifaceted approaches from multidimensional perspectives to unlock digital performance and catalyze change.

  

    Innate Performance Indicators & Scoreboard

Innate View Via Scoreboard A scorecard assesses the progress to strategic goals, provides the management a holistic view about the progress of business transformation by considering the impact on finances, customers, internal processes and employee satisfaction, Scoreboard is a strategic decision support system, and change steering instrument.

Improvement Indicators Continuous improvement means to continue to discover that "there is always a better way. Any individual indicator can be a lead or lag indicator depending upon the context and the explanatory model chosen. Have always looked at a Lag Measure as the method for measuring the outcome and the Lead Measure as the bet you make. Here are three indicators for measuring improvement.

Initiating Inquiries Kpi The real purpose of Performance Indicators is to provide business insight and monitor the progress and performance. Without measurements, it can be hard to tell whether attempted improvements make the situation better or worse. However, performance indicators shouldn’t become another parameter which will diminish creativity or decrease productivity. The performance management needs to ask insightful questions to make sure the measurement makes sense; being able to show those quantifiable benefits in hard facts such as measurements helps greatly.

Indicators Of Human Capital The digital era upon us is about people-centricity, Human Capital does make sense within the context of the goals of a company especially when you consider Human Capital is the largest intangible asset of a company. What Key Performance Indicators would you recommend to determine the value an employee adds to their department, and ultimately for their company, and how would you implement it?

Value of Scoreboard Corporate Performance Management is a management control from strategy till shop floor. A good balanced scorecard measures key strategic measures along with the things that drive those measures. A KPI Balanced Scorecard is a great idea, however, the success of that scorecard will be determined by the components of the scorecard and how meaningful those components are to the successful implementation of the change.

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thoughts; 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 5 million page views with about #8200 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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The "Performance Master" Book Conclusion


The "Performance Master" Quote Collection I


The "Performance Master" Quote Collection II


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Innovativenessindex

An effective innovativeness index enables individuals or management to identify creative traits, recognize innovators, so collectively, they can build high performance innovative teams with complementary competencies to reinvent the future.

Being innovative is a state of creative mind on how to disrupt outdated thinking and the old way to do things, and figure out alternative solutions in a consistent manner. Some individuals demonstrate more innovative traits than others. The Personal Innovativeness-index will indicate, top-down, the contributed economic value of each employee (executive/management, professional/expert) in relation to their innovative initiatives and personal creative activities, commitments, influences, impact, and contributions. 

To score individuals as innovators, focus on individual capabilities and potential to innovate. Here are a few intrinsic capacities of individuals that the management can make an objective assessment of to create a personal innovativeness index.

Cognitive ability & style to identify patterns and make unusual connections: Creativity is an innate cognitive process to generate new ideas. Human’s cognition is a complex process which can happen in many different ways- exploring varieties of meanings, thoughts, abandoning old connections, and establishing new relations to connect unusual dots for sparking creativity. Innovativeness is both natural and nurtured. Each one of us has some natural cognitive traits, with our own set of conscious and subconscious patterns. The interaction between what is within us (the self), and how we project to the exterior world is the bridge to achieving inner wholeness, as well as trigger our creativity. Every person has the ability to be creative, just tear down the mental barriers they have and tap in their inherent abilities to innovate.

Being innovative is a state of mind which leads us to understand the inner wholeness. Creativity happens at the intersection of consciousness and subconsciousness; or consciousness and super-consciousness. That’s why “aha” moments are neither completely serendipitous nor fully-planning. The more consciously we grow, the more aligned we become with our intuition, the more chance we can practice creativity muscle to identify patterns and make unusual connections. Innovators are usually independent thinkers, who criticize conventional thoughts or practices; discover new patterns or generate something fresh; all of that requires a deliberate mental effort. In neuronal terms, this involves disabling some of the “wiring” and working on the new ones, to generate chains of thoughts, for sparking imagination or coming up with new ideas.

Interdisciplinary knowledge and skills for creative problem-solving: We live in the hyperconnected world in which the border of knowledge is blurred as functional, industrial, or geographical silos are broken down. Hard science and soft science converge; art and science become so interlinked with each other to design great products or services for customer delight. At present, we cannot separate knowledge and creativity if we want to stay competitive, the updated and interdisciplinary knowledge enables wider dots connections for creative problem-solving. In fact, being creative is simply about how to solve a problem in an intelligent manner.

Keep in mind, knowledge is an important ingredient to build a powerful innovative mindset; however, “too much” knowledge, especially some outdated knowledge could clog imagination and stifle innovation. To put it another way, being creative is not about being "knowledgeable" only, but about generating new concepts, fresh knowledge, or stimulating great imagination. Because innovativeness is often at the edge of things and able to expand the boundaries of knowledge or conventional thinking, and through such expansions, new knowledge is developed. For those who are trying to solve problems, it is important to apply creativity in a recursive way for both problem identification and problem-solving. It’s about reaching an interdisciplinary stage at which innovators, perhaps collectively, can mix imagination and knowledge/skills or integrate different pieces of knowledge/skills seamlessly for creative problem-solving.

Personality with the traits such as openness to new experience, tolerance of ambiguity, personal initiatives to practice creativity, social linkage skills & competencies: Both introverts and exerts have potential to be innovators. Extroverts network and get some good ideas through social interactions; introverts ponder deeper, connect unusual dots to generate fresh ideas. So the innovative traits for both personalities are the tendency to constantly question the conventional wisdom, Self-awareness, intellectual engagement - taking varying activities that can stimulate your imagination and spur creativity. Creative people define and create their own convention that they live by in comparison to everyone else who just accepts or inherits their convention to live by.

In a world where change is significantly speeding up, business leaders couldn’t predict the future with a certain degree of accuracy, uncertainty and ambiguity are the new reality. Creative personality seems to be more colorful and paradoxical. Creative people usually have a diversity of backgrounds, perspectives, and personalities; they are intellectually curious; insightful, confident, and humble; always love to listen to the two sides of the stories; or facilitate the different conversations. Openness is the most difficult thing to refresh your mind and create novel ideas; being imaginable, inquisitive, proactive, arguable - you don’t need to agree completely with the other side's viewpoint, but you can always gain empathy, insight, and a new perspective to see things from the other angle and be creative to figure out alternative solutions.

Learning plasticity- willingness to accept feedback or tenacity to refuse it; with capacity to adapt: Growth is not possible unless people are willing to move out of their comfort zone and demonstrate learning plasticity to continually learn, grow and innovate. People with a learning mind see unique patterns and make fresh connections that others overlook, to connect wider dots for sparking creativity.

A mind with learning plasticity is able to absorb all necessary knowledge and adjust its thinking processes according to changes in its environment; apply the acquired knowledge and lessons learned to succeed in new situations. Learning is a lifelong experience, it should make our mind more open to embracing new possibilities, develop an agile mindset, remove outdated concepts and let fresh knowledge in, make unusual connections to nurture creativity.

Emotional intelligence - enhance a healthy emotion cycle to reach a state of innovativeness, including to have the right dose of risk-taking: It’s normal for being a human with all the emotions vibrating. Each emotion helps us evolve. Creativity is infused with an inner cohesion, emotional wholeness and comes from a vision of uniqueness. Creative tensions or conflicts make people argue, debate, and criticize ideas or things; passion pushes people to act; calm enables people to analyze, and persistence allows them to take the tough journey with resilience, etc.

Emotional intelligence is based on emotional awareness, including the ability to identify your own emotions and those of others. The ability to harness emotions and apply them to tasks like creative thinking and problem-solving. .To avoid the trap of emotional turbulence or individual perception, you have to think critically and profoundly and you have to really dig beneath the superficial layer, understand the trigger of emotions, and apply emotional intelligence to nurture creativity in a consistent manner.

There are creative people in almost every profession. The most advanced societies are diverse mixtures of peoples that can spark creativity and develop innovativeness. You cannot wait for something breakthrough or “aha moment” to happen, keep curious, always think profoundly, learn new things, and acquire new capabilities. An effective innovativeness index enables individuals or management to identify creative traits, recognize innovators, so collectively, they can build high performance innovative teams with complementary competencies to reinvent the future and drive transformative changes.

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Innatepotentialitydevelopmentcycle

Potential development and self development is the journey to improve professionalism, unleash talent and refine the high quality of being a better version of you.

We live in a time of rapidly changing technology and business dynamics. Either individually or collectively, potentiality is innate, the untapped talent or strength that is worth investment and it’s the hidden dimension to build unique capabilities.

 Potential is about the future performance. Forward-looking leaders and professionals not only focus on how to achieve high performance today, but also think long term - how to follow the logical steps for discovering and unleashing their full potential to achieve more?

Investigate passion: Passion aligned with capabilities and meaningful work is a destination that grows with you. Passion is an emotion, which is something that comes from within, the bottom of your heart, with the strong sense of connection with "self," not only about the reasoning of your mind, to react or take actions to achieve. Be passionate about learning, innovating and growing. Passion enables determination, creativity, strategy, and talent. Passion should never take precedence over judgment. Following the passion requires a good sense of judgment that you are on the right path to untap your potentiality. Having a passion and building a career around that passion would certainly help to discover “who you are,” and become one of the very first steps of becoming “who you want to be.”

Vision and passion can mutually reinforce each other. Passion is an inspiration which is often accompanied by vision. Passion helps brighten the future where being visionary is about making the future. Passion can sustain and can be the drive to realize visions. Although passion from a career perspective comes in many forms, it may change based on your set of career "lenses" as you evolve. So if the vision is clear, sustain it, do not let your passion fade away. Be passionate about learning, the skills you develop will help you as your career evolves, fuel creativity, align your focus and therefore potentially aid you in greater success. If you do not have the passion for what you do, determination, creativity, talent, and strategy become hard work which in turn disables determination etc.

Uncover talent/strength: Innate strengths are where our natural talents lie, they energize us and point to where we can be most successful. So the trick is to know what your strengths are -realized and unrealized. To uncover innate strength, think of things that you enjoy doing or you feel you could do something great even without training. Until you begin to look inside yourself to value the strength you never knew you had, you would ponder around- where does such inner strength come from, your mind or your heart? Being able to see our strengths and weaknesses without self-judgment is a logical step in unleashing our potentiality. We begin to appreciate and love our own inner qualities that were perhaps not recognized before. The strength is neither only about the quantitative numbers such as years of experience or static certificate nor linear skills only, it's the good combination of character, talent, mindset, knowledge and expertise. Your inner strength will bring you perception, persistence, and performance towards the career path you take and accomplishment you intend to make. Career success based on innate strength is something intangible, an inner feeling, the spirit of growth, positive emotions, excellence by choices.

From a talent management perspective, either individually or collectively, leveraging the unique strength and building professional competencies for adapting to the unpredictable and riding above the learning curve is critical to achieving high performance. Social analytics is an important tool to help pinpoint who knows what within or even beyond your organization, based on social influence and action rather than assertion. Collaboratively, the team works as a whole with complementary strength. One’s weaknesses will be covered by others - his weakness is her strength. Strength identification and development allow organizations to identify the strength of talented people, and enable companies to target top influencers, explore alternative talent pipelines to put the right people in the right positions to unleash collective organizational potentiality.

Sharpen skills/capabilities: In the siloed based industries age with knowledge scarcity, most professionals develop their linear skills to solve a certain set of problems by practicing their functional role as specialists. But as we gradually move into the digital economy with abundant knowledge and blurred functional or industrial domains, it’s important for them to keep learning and sharpening their skills to fit for the new normal and unlock their professional potentiality. The practical reality of today's business world is that business leaders and professionals must have both technical "hard" skills and quality "soft" skills. Self-management taps the inner and outer resources of strength, practices to build relevant skills, and develops a set of professional capabilities to achieve the ultimate goals.

Although the responsibility to keep skills updated and grow professional expertise has always largely fallen on the individual employee; albeit it is great when the organization provides support, and empowers their staff with efficient technological tools and abundant resources to achieve more. Forward-looking management helps employees at all levels within an organization think out of the box, take reasonable risks, go beyond their defined roles and keep updating their skills to take more responsibility or solve bigger problems. Make sure the work environment encourages creativity and collaboration. It is great when the organization provides support and empowers its staff by showing respect and offering talented people opportunities and efficient tools to achieve more.

Build core competencies: Knowledge professionals understand that learning is a lifetime experience, and then their experience will be a building block to develop unique professional competencies. A core competency is a harmonization of multiple capabilities with a focus, and in alignment with the resource-based view, to achieve something considerably bigger. It is at the same time valuable, rare, and difficult to imitate. Because there are a mix of hard and soft skills in the proper ratio to build interdisciplinary knowledge and core capability. An individual who over time through learning, practice, and education, has become an expert; being expert is not a status quo, but a well-developed ability often with core competencies to frame and solve problems in a structural way. As the expert power has the foundation of in-depth knowledge, profound insight, abstract wisdom, conveys clear vision with great communication skills to connect the minds and win the hearts.

Due to the exponential growth of information and the shortened knowledge cycle, growth minds, new skills, or professional capabilities are needed every day to build core professional competencies. Great managers ask their people to talk about their work experiences and what was going on when they felt most engaged and alive. What was happening and what made that experience so powerful for them. So they can nurture an innovative working environment with personalized training or coaching, align and realign their talent by putting the right people in the right position to achieve the strategic goals of the organization. So collectively, they can build a more competitive team to deliver quality results.

Every person is unique, has their own career goal and purpose, and different life and working experience. Thus potentiality development is a personalized journey to explore a set of possibilities for realizing our vision. Business professionals need to have learning agility to continue updating their knowledge, build unique competencies, proactively look for opportunities to grow and advance their career. Self-discipline matters; without it, you cannot create a new state of awareness where the self is nourished through the experience of energy flow. Potential development and self development is the journey to improve professionalism, unleash talent and refine the high quality of being a better version of you.

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Innovationmaturitycycle

The success of innovation management is never an accident, it’s a holistic management process with an iterative forming-storming-norming-performing-transforming scenario based on thought-out planning and execution continuum.

Innovation is to have a new perspective on things and move forward by transforming ideas for generating business values. Innovation is a unique business competency for the organizations to thrive in fierce competition and frequent disruptions. It is a creative process that often leverages an intensive technology to solve a real or potential problem of a society that breaks with the current standard and has technical and economic feasibility. 

Companies have to gain a greater awareness of the intricacies and interdependencies of organizational systems, processes, people dynamics, technology, or resource allocation. In any business, if you are not moving forward, you’re moving backward. Innovation is not serendipity, but a management process with the full cycle of “Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Transforming.”

Forming a good innovation strategy & innovative leadership/team: Due to the complexity of modern businesses, within the organizations, innovation nowadays is rarely an individual action; or a few unstructural business initiatives. A good innovation strategy as a leverage point helps the business orchestrate innovation to stay focused by integrating diverse elements into organizational capability and capacity to innovate. It provides coherence between actual capability and the strategic goals that have been defined, and addresses in outline how the strategic objectives will be achieved, which includes building a strong innovation team and shaping excellent innovative leadership.

Highly innovative leaders are open-minded and insightful, connecting the wider dots and enhancing cross-boundary collaboration. The innovation team has five “I”s: Imagination, Influence, Information, Implementation, and Integration, but not about Isolation. The innovative teams are motivated by factors that improve their well-being, such as autonomy, mastery and a sense of meaning or purpose; they are able to have the most useful mindsets, behaviors, and skills, to be both competent and confident to do something new or different and not be at the effect of their learning anxiety. Innovators demonstrate the very characteristics of creativity, curiosity, concentration, and customer-centricity. For teams to operate effectively in the innovation space, they need to develop some core teaming skills to communicate and collaborate, building upon trusted relationships, to enhancing mutuality or attunement with one another.

Storming ideas and fresh insight: Being able to engage in the successful creation of innovations is a very hard work and does include a lot of thinking, observation, brainstorming inquiries, and unusual connections. Innovation is driven by important customer and market needs. If you're going to innovate without knowledge of "evident customer needs" then you might distract yourself by overly focusing on processes, technologies, or your set of “we always do things like that' ' innovation practices. Idea management is an integral management discipline of innovation. The appropriately configured innovation platform creates a scalable means for brainstorming, designing and building ideas throughout the enterprise. Any innovative idea in order to be successful during its development into innovation should satisfy the following criteria: consumability, marketability, protectability, feasibility, and profitability.

The challenge is in knowing how to assess ideas to fit for your organizational development blueprint; how to accelerate idea validation and streamline innovation processes. Otherwise, you’ll run the risk of spending too much time and effort chasing down bad ideas. It helps to assure that the results of an innovative approach will have a positive impact on customers, partners, end users, and the marketplace. In terms of company history, evaluate how the company produced or implemented new solutions that were totally different from its “business as usual”; in terms of market evolution, what are incremental innovations, what are truly breakthrough, radical or disruptive innovations in the market, etc. When organizations "think differently," continually generate fresh ideas, and implement new ways to solve problems, then you are on the right track to lubricate the innovation cycle.

Norming a culture of innovation: Being innovative is a state of mind, which is more important than doing any type of innovation. In many traditional organizations, innovation is just a buzzword, everyone talks about it, but very few people, especially leaders are creative enough to live on it and knowledgeable enough to really work on it. Innovation is the new normal when business management focuses on building a culture of innovation which incorporates multiple and diverse components such as value, trust, simplicity, adaptability, and continuous improvement, etc, to empower their change agents and innovators; apply collaboration platforms and tools to enhance sharing and collaborating, and increase participation; be able to cultivate an environment that supports the desired changes or learning.

An innovative culture is usually outward-looking rather than insular. The creative workplace is based on a triangle with three vertices. Culture, method, and people. What inspires and motivates many innovators is the passion for learning new things. Innovation happens at the intersection of people and technology; customers and business. There are many human links within the innovation phases and usually implemented in teams. The spirit comes from the top, disruptive innovation will happen no matter how well you prepare. Great leaders are creative themselves, they can inspire, provoke, empower their innovators and change agents, provide direction when needed and give others time, space, and freedom to create, and embed innovation management mechanisms into the corporate dna.

Performing innovative results qualitatively and quantitatively by building a balanced innovation portfolio: The ultimate goal for innovation management is to create business value. Though both quick win and long-term return on investment for innovation are crucial, do not sacrifice the long-term viability of the portfolio for only short-term rewards. A healthy innovation portfolio keeps a balance between exploration and exploitation, including many different types of innovations, the size and mix of innovation initiatives depending on the business circumstances, strategic objectives and severity of external challenges or changes. Do not measure innovation only based on lagging indicators such as short-term financial metrics. Compared to traditional business initiatives, innovation has high risk and high return, with a high failure rate. Therefore, it’s also important to define the right set of performance indicators or index for process optimization, culture improvement, capability/capacity building,

Managing a healthy innovation portfolio should be integrated with the annual strategic planning process and financial investment model. Overall innovation performance of the company depends on the quality and quantity of ideas entering the “innovation pipeline,” how well it can convert them into desired output, propositions, or process improvement, etc, with measurable business benefit. The effective measurements selected should be part of a link to cause-and-effect relationships and ultimately affect the business growth and long-term perspective of the organization. Innovation performance indicators provide necessary feedback which helps the business keep improving the innovation process or drive early success to create a positive spiral. It’s a part of transparent visual management allowing the business pulling resources and assets together for orchestrating an innovation symphony and delivering better business results.

Transforming toward a high-mature innovative organization: Being innovative is a state of mind, and practicing innovation consistently is a critical step in building an innovation powerhouse. Even if you have ample innovative ideas, it doesn’t guarantee innovation success due to the possible execution gap. Innovation today not only has a broad scope but also has deep context. Usually, breakthrough innovation involves both high impact and high risk, not something everyone can accomplish. You have to systematically develop the capability to execute it successfully. To start the next cycle of innovation management, businesses have to learn from experimenting, amplify the best practices, cultivate an innovative climate, hyper-connect into an expandable ecosystem, engage in multi-industry collaborations to shape a high-mature innovative organization.

In practice, bridging the innovation execution gap requires a structural execution scenario with clear stages, performance thresholds, decision-making parameters combined with the iterative communication and learning process that supports wide-ranging exploration at each stage. Highly innovative organizations have a powerful innovation navigation system to detect opportunities for innovating, enhance systematic innovation management, and draw together mutually supportive companies from multiple industries that collectively seek to create the differentiated value they could not reach alone. As a result, innovation becomes a persistent, shared reality even across silos and geographies.

Without innovation, organizations cannot thrive for the long term. Without structural innovation, companies cannot grow into innovation maturity. Although serendipity perhaps plays some part in innovation effort as there are plenty of stories about great ideas evolving sudden flashes of insight or out of chance; breakthrough comes from bottom not the top. The success of innovation management is never an accident, it’s a holistic management process with an iterative forming-storming-norming-performing-transforming scenario based on thought-out planning and execution continuum.

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Ignorance

A journey of digitalization is a bumpy road with many ups and downs. It could be misled because of the wrong focus, the wrong assumptions, the wrong ends, or the wrong means.

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

          Ignorance

Ignorance In Problem-Solving Fundamentally every work is the problem-solving continuum. Any problem is the right problem if there is an attempt to find a solution for making progressive changes. It becomes about addressing the correct need and perhaps the problem becomes how to identify the need at the right level. Good problem-solvers take a proven approach to fix the issue efficiently; great problem-solvers dig through the root and take care of a series of issues effectively; wise problem-solving masters can prevent or dissolve the problem effortlessly.

Incorrect Assumptions Of Transformation Embracing digital is inevitable as that is now part of the reality. However, taking a journey of digitalization is a bumpy road with many ups and downs. It could be misled because of the wrong focus, the wrong assumptions, the wrong ends, or the wrong means. It is important to clarify the myth and misconception in order to lead change and drive digital transformation seamlessly. Here is a set of incorrect assumptions of digital transformation.

All Sorts of Ineffectiveness Even businesses step into the hyper-connected digital world, many business managers and professionals still apply old silo management mindsets to new ways of organizing, and this legacy of the old economy causes most of the organizations across vertical sectors today are process and control driven, those processes become inflexible and stifle changes. Also, lagging companies have an overly rigid organizational hierarchy, and outdated procedures, their business is still the sum of pieces rather than a holistic whole, having all sorts of barriers to changes and deficiencies that get their business stuck and go nowhere.

Fatal Mistakes Cause the Business Mighty Fall Due to the “VUCA” business new normal, the digital organization and its business ecosystem today become hyper-connected and interdependent. It’s important for the management to understand the business as a complex adaptive system with different functions, structures, layers, and teams. Every organization today sooner or later will step into the uncharted water or blurred territories, it is also critical to avoid these fatal mistakes or hidden pitfalls, which cause the business mighty fall, in order to lead the company forward at steadfast paces.

Barriers Stop Businesses & IT from Reaching Digital Premium Many organizations are on the journey of digital transformation, but it is the path not being fully discovered and explored yet, there are many roadblocks and hidden barriers along the way. There are also both pains and gains to bridge businesses and our society from the industrial age with knowledge scarcity and change inertia to the digital era with information abundance and innovation flow. There is still a long way to go from the classic flavor of industrial management approaches to the dynamic style of digital leadership practices. Here are three barriers on the way to stop IT or the business as a whole from reaching a high mature digital premium.

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thoughts; 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 #8200 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 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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Innatesophistication

We live in the era in which all of us leave abundant digital footprints in the internet space. Consistency enhances sophistication; profundity conveys sophistication.

We live in a complex world with a mixed bag of new and old; fresh knowledge and misinformation, truth and false, etc. To deal with complex problems and interact with hyperdiverse people in our modern society, being sophisticated implies being authentic, intelligent, articulate, decent, consistent, and profound, etc. 

Modern society is a dynamic continuum with collective human progress. A sophisticated leader or professional has a unique set of complex mindsets, recombined capabilities and skills to understand multifaceted situations and solve problems thoroughly.

Authenticity: The traditional understanding of sophistication is about having conventional wisdom or demonstrating certain social manners to interact and communicate with others in the business environment. But nowadays, digital makes things so transparent, your professional life is converged with your personal life, not only your words, but even your thoughts can be amplified via the speed of the internet. Authenticity is an important ingredient of sophistication that helps you build strong credibility. Mindset-attitude-behavior consistency conveys authenticity and high professionalism.

Being authentic is the state of self-consciousness, self-discovery, and self-improvement. The more you understand yourself; the better chance you can have a positive attitude to develop yourself, build unique character and competency. You become more sophisticated as you are cognitively strong to understand things and express them well with accuracy. You become more sophisticated because you shape your own style and taste; you are able to appreciate others’ talent or quality as well. Being authentic makes people more truthful and influential and demonstrates professional sophistication. If they can keep pursuing the better version of themselves, understand others with empathy.

Competency: Being sophisticated means you can deal with varying complex situations thoughtfully. That perhaps requires multidimensional competencies to formulate creative, unconventional alternatives or solutions to solve problems effectively. The more competitive you are; the more confident you become to adapt to change; the humbler you become to know your strengths and weaknesses, so you can understand people, things, and circumstances thoroughly. The integrity and suitability of professional competency are tested through traits such as attitude, passion, entrepreneurship, leadership, multidimensional intelligence, versatility, maturity, and wisdom, etc.

Usually senior leadership is a sophisticated role which requires a person to have multidimensional intelligence to make effective decisions and unique competency to show versatility and flexibility in response to unpredictable or unanticipated circumstances. An individual may practice a profession for many years but has not matured its practices - lack of well-defined sets of principles to reach a state of fuency. So professionally, they are not sophisticated enough to achieve high quality and meaningful results or discover their own purpose over a sustained period of time.

Profundity: Back to the root of the word “profundity,” it means being insightful and understanding to overcome unconscious biases. To gain a profound understanding, it is the responsibility of each individual to examine themselves and to make sure they are open to true understanding. If you always categorize people via physical identification only, you are not profound; if you only read the content without contextual intelligence, you are not profound; if you only capture the symptom, but not dig through the root cause, you are not profound. A profound mind is deep, sophisticated, "read between the lines," "listen to what is not being said," to perceive things objectively, closer to the actual reality and is more persuasive for communicating with clarity and solving related problems comprehensively.

Being profound also means consistency- be consistent in the habit of learning, acting, and problem-solving to build their professional; not only keep consistent on themselves, what they think, what they say, or what they act, but they also look for consistency in their teams, in their organization as well as in the ecosystem, as consistency harmonizes humanities. We live in the era in which all of us leave abundant digital footprints in the internet space. Your digital profile needs to have a cohesive consistency with your “trueself,”it should reflect your dynamic thought processes, your innate strength, and your professional credibility and brand. Consistency enhances sophistication; profundity conveys sophistication.

The paradox is that we have already developed so much that mere survival is the shadow perception of the human world. Sophistication is one of the most advanced traits for contemporary business leaders and professionals to think and act consistently; interact with others thoughtfully, handle problems step-wisely and respond to unpredictable or unanticipated circumstances flexibly.

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Initiatingchangewithforecast

The prediction of the future is based on the analysis of the past and insight of today.

The speed of change is increasing, uncertainties and complexity are a common occurrence in any walk of our progress. The goal of business forecasting is about predicting what will happen and how to act on it by making effective decisions and solving complex problems. 

Either orienting change, navigating through strategy management, or developing competitive workforce, you may not be able to foresee specific instances of futures, but you can imagine general classes and positions to take advantage of shaping or mitigating what is then occurring, as well as how to influence and prepare for overcoming the learning curves and moving things forward promptly.

Forecast change impact: Running business today is a dynamic change continuum. Change can be classified into long term transformation, mid-term change capacity building or short-term sprint to reach certain performance goals. Foresight is critical to navigating the organization into the uncharted water or blurred digital territories. Forethoughtful business leaders envision the trends of their vertical industry and forecast the upcoming change with a certain degree of precision even though nowadays the business conditions and ecosystems are full of uncertainty and ambiguity, develop a vision of what it could be, mobilize the organization to accept and work toward achieving the long-term business vision and institutionalize the changes that must last over time.

Forward-thinking companies leverage information-based analytics to provide business foresight and customer insight about upcoming opportunities or risks, see changes coming and with pre-planning to overcome the resistance before it even manifests. The optimal prediction system should have the best results in different areas according to the specific or customized quality criteria. You have to be honest about what’s going on, and should have the measures laid out beforehand to clearly indicate the extent to which the change needed is achievable. Some changes could be business critical, so without a measure the effort cannot be justified.

Forecast the management efforts to realize the strategy: We live in an era full of uncertainty, velocity, complexity, and ambiguity, strategy is no longer a set of docs sitting on the executives’ shelf, but a dynamic book that has to keep updated for adapting to the “VUCA” new normal. To manage resources and make investments in strategy management effectively, business management needs to forecast the efforts to realize the strategy; they might also need to predict and deal with threats or disruptions that the organization faces, sometimes you need to be able to look for something “hidden,” which is not always so obvious, keep evaluating how costly it would be when the necessary adjustment is needed to adapt to the emerging changes.It is the step-wise scenario of information –insight/foresight – decision making for taking tangible efforts to realize a good enough strategy.

The business context reflects both complexity and chaos, each of these contexts requires in-depth collective insight and foresight into effective decision-making. Prediction can be an outcome of the controllable relationships within the business and skillfully apply risk-based thinking to almost every discipline of management. In order to make better assumptions or improve forecast precision, have a very good grasp of the overall business, its strategy, the marketplace, business model, and competitive distinctiveness. Besides information precision, the highest level of future sensitivity comes from appreciation of the whole business conditions and situations which rely heavily on leaders’ ingenuity and intuition, knowledge, and experience. Their deep “common sense” leads toward ”effective judgment," and drives the organization forward-what should you do upon it. It’s the transition from vision to a smooth strategy management orientation.

Forecast talent/skill/competency demand: People are always the most invaluable asset and human capitals that organizations need to invest. Digital workplace is highly professional, competitive, and informative. Thus, forecasting the roles & positions you need to navigate the changes driven by digital trends as well as knowledge, skills, and differentiated capabilities are required in building the “future state” of the business to ensure you have the right people in the right place, at the right time, and for the right cost to accelerate organizational learning and performance. Employees need to continue growing, taking more responsibility for determining the parameters of the working relationship, to improve their professional competency.

Forward thinking companies forecast needed skills and roles, address their common and unique competency requirements and map that out through some skills/competency matrix within their organization. More specifically, they define and forecast the professional cognitive/attitudinal /behavioral competencies required to achieve their organizational strategic goals at a technical/functional/ company/industry level and ensure calculated business results being achieved seamlessly. Talent managers start using quality information not only to monitor employees’ behavior, but also to ask and answer some hard questions that are at the heart of how employees contribute to business performance, predict employee preferences and behaviors and tailor next practices to attract and retain talent.

The prediction of the future is based on the analysis of the past and insight of today. The best prediction is optimal. The accuracy of the prediction will depend on the completeness of the input information and talent of analysts. Foresight is also an ongoing conversation, business leaders have to keep evolving and gaining new and broader views, discovering unexpected connections between the business and its rich environment, and shape the future together collaboratively.

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Innovatingviainformationintelligencedotconnection

Running an intelligent organization is all about transforming information into business insight and foresight which can instruct organizations to adapt to changes, accelerate business performance and unleash full organizational potential.

With exponential growth of information and knowledge is only a click away; the beauty of the digital landscape is the fresh insight and multidimensional perspectives. An intelligent business or society always looks for opportunities across the boundaries to improve and innovate; predict and prevent risks for improving organizational responsiveness and resilience. 

In practice though, most managers spend very little time on addressing crumbling paradigms with continuous disruptions and distractions, or they would not know how to start raising the “digital IQ’ of their organization. How to connect the dots between information, intelligence, strategy, and profitability? What is the best scenario to run an intelligent organization?

The quality of intelligence depends greatly on the quantity of information: Information is refined data, knowledge is refined information. Intelligence is the subset of knowledge that is refined through information analysis for discovering certain patterns or gaining business insight. One’s knowledge is the other's information only. knowledge is gained through study, communication, research, instruction, etc. If focused, the more we know, the more we can do. If not focused, we may know "everything" and still achieve nothing. Conversely, if we know "nothing" we will achieve nothing. Perhaps intelligence should be the jewel of knowledge that has the potential to generate great value for businesses or societies. Cognitively, intelligence is defined as capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.or manifestation of a high mental capacity. Technically, intelligence is captured via technological analysis tools by processing abundant information to achieve certain values.

Methodologically, business intelligence is the process of transforming data into information and through discovery, transforming that information into knowledge/insight/foresight in better management and governance. To run a real time intelligent business, the static and siloed information/knowledge approach is too slow to adapt to the changes and dealing with exponential information growth. Part of taking knowledge seriously as a corporate asset involves assigning responsibility for knowledge within the organization, breaking down silos, both maintaining and improving knowledge flow. This requires a holistic look at the entire knowledge environment and identifies how the information management initiative aligns with the company or functional objectives, to improve communication and collaboration. The return on investment in effective information/knowledge management is to accurately interpret the business intelligence being presented resulting in "smart" decisions being made that can be measured to achieve tangible business results.

Information is the grist for strategy; but it is intelligence that defines the strategy: In the context of an organization, information is representation of organizational entities including human beings and processes.Business Intelligence refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging-out, and analyzing business data, to achieve business value. It helps to enhance the understanding of the relationships between these objects, processes & patterns and derivation of associated value for the good of the organization. Without intelligence, strategy is dumb; without strategy, intelligence cannot reach its full potential. With the introduction of information and application of intelligence, it is the aggregation and assessment of information that creates the intelligence required to define the rules and strategies driving the business forward effectively. Enable clear linking of strategy from the boardroom to the shop floor to assist in decisions and problem-solving

Sometimes it’s not so easy to do so. Business Intelligence often fails to take into account the alignment of strategic, operational and financial goals. Thus, there is a high probability that strategy execution fails to achieve expected business results. To implement an intelligence-enabled strategy, first, smart business management works cross-functionally to identify how information is associated with the valued tangibles of businesses, products, and resources, how to refine information into knowledge and capture the unique business insight. They are able to measure real-time information relative to those goals while giving executives a scorecard view of their performance throughout the quarter/year based on those goals, and allow them to take corrective actions to get back on course when deviations occur.

Business intelligence can improve organizational profitability: Profitability as different from “profit” is an ability to run a good business. Nowadays, information-based intelligence touches almost every critical aspect of business from financial analysis to competitive analysis; from workforce analysis to customer sentiment analysis, etc. High-intelligent businesses can sense and create new markets before competition; thus, making it much more sustainable than the competition. They are able to align the business activities that have a three-way impact - Revenue, Cost and Investments at the same time by choosing an environment to compete; they inherently generate more revenue per unit cost compared to competition across every demand pattern.

Business intelligence has a multidimensional impact such as assisting in prioritizing business problems or opportunities, enabling better decision-making, but it also causes some confusions. One of the downfalls is that people think of business intelligence as a technological tool or a technical challenge only, not a business application for creating business value. Sometimes It fails to look at the obvious. If you don't know the question and which data is key, how can you possibly get the benefit of any business information system? High intelligent organizations have a clear understanding of how customer-centric approaches enhance the business model and extend profitability. Everything from how pricing is affecting close times and support calls to referral business activity triggered by high customer satisfaction, etc. Business leaders/managers are provided scoreboard/dashboards or some other tools that are drillable and specific for tracking the progress of strategy management and calculate relevant return on investment, etc.

Contemporary business intelligence is contextual and multidimensional, it’s the tool to make effective decisions and it’s the way to solve problems. In the human context, information drives awareness, which can include all of these characteristics, uncertainty, surprise, difficulty, and entropy. In the organizational context, information is the glue to connect all sorts of hard and soft business success factors for “running, growing and transforming” organizations. Running an intelligent organization is all about transforming information into business insight and foresight which can instruct organizations to adapt to changes, accelerate business performance and unleash full organizational potential.

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Innovationgovernanceaspects

The leverage point is to let innovation shine via effective governance discipline, but not adding too much complexity.

Governance is by definition a framework of principles, practices and indeed ethics; separate, different and outside the setting and subsequent control of business strategies, budgets, outcomes and metrics (in short, management discipline). Statistically, innovation management has a considerably low percentage of success rate and there are numerous learning curves and barriers on the way. Innovation has to deliver business objectives, but it needs the right kind of governance to thrive.

Divergent view of governance: When you say innovation, you could really mean maximizing value to the business; when you say governance, you could mean minimizing risk. Innovation and governance seem to be the opposite practice. The problem with governance is that the people enforcing governance normally have a frame of reference based on their own experiences and a view of the organization's existing capabilities. In fact, there are varying degrees of understanding of the scope of innovation governance such as governance structures, governance processes, governance mechanisms, governance practices, and governance metrics, etc.

Also, sometimes governance standards can be taken too far and become their own bureaucracy. In that case, innovation would be stifled. Therefore, the right level of guide and process is important, but overly rigid processes or too pushy goals will stifle innovation. If governance is deemed to stifle innovation, then it is wrongly implemented, or indeed wrongly understood. The governance aspect and innovation don't immediately come together depending on the context in which innovation is used.

Innovativeness is a mindset, and that's where governance comes in: Innovation is doing something better than it currently is. Hence, it requires a sound and competent understanding of what is currently being done. Not what others are good at. It's a mindset. And that's where governance comes in. Governance needs to include engagement and motivation because a focus on control and enforcement has the tendency to damage an enterprise's capacity to motivate and engage staff. Organizations should identify patterns for good governance that sponsors and promotes engagement, motivation, and innovation as these are vital aspects of top-performing enterprises in our modern economy.

Governance is a state of mind that must be achieved. Products and processes are possibly counterproductive when they do not flow from a pervasive GRC mindset. As it's worth keeping in mind that “engaging, motivating, innovating” are cultural issues, which need to be embedded in the policies, processes, procedures, and practices of the organization. Governance is to frame innovation management, it should orchestrate the change, not police the creativity, do it with trust and flexibility. GRC is about collaboration and harmony, not a new organizational structure. It is about sharing information, knowledge, and common processes.

The governance mechanisms dictate how that idea is fostered from inception to retirement: If innovation management is like the pedal to accelerate speed of the car, then innovation governance is the steering wheel to keep a straight line or take a turn at that velocity of strategic planning processes and business execution scenario; the headlights to do forecasting of what lays ahead (risk or opportunity); fuel gauge (cost), speedometer (metrics), or the brakes to slow or continue the journey (resource management) etc. The governance process/mechanism can be embedded into the business process seamlessly, and governance practice should be shared cross-enterprise collaboratively.

Innovation management is not just about generating fresh ideas, but rather the processes to take ideas to value creation. When there is an innovative idea; the governance mechanisms dictate how that idea is fostered from inception to retirement. The bigger the innovation management program and the longer the time between major delivery points, the greater the risk going up exponentially. Innovation governance has a direct link to critical innovation processes. Not only from the financial results, but also from the involvement and signs being displayed in innovation management about what guidance, values, and principles governing the company's innovation activities.

The leverage point of governance is to frame innovation, but not adding too much complexity: In many organizations, much of GRC management is reactive in the sense that there is a lot of rushing around trying to fix problems instead of preventing risks. Governance needs to set a framework for innovation management. Metaphorically, if innovation management is like the pedal to accelerate the speed of the car, then governance is like a brake to ensure safety via properly controlling. Both are needed, in an integral way, the brake is not just for stopping the car, but for allowing the car to run safely.

Governance is steering. It isn’t just about putting restrictions on what you can do, it is also about monitoring and knowing when things are not going to plan so that you can take appropriate actions at the right time. The leverage point is to let innovation shine via the effective governance discipline, but not adding too much complexity. Often, innovation gets stifled in very large, mature organizations in which the management is more interested in protecting their positions and markets rather than innovating and generating new ones. One of the important aspects when designing a process for innovation governance is about doing risk analysis, to avoid or minimize risks.

Look at innovation-governance as a continuum: Both over governance and under governance can and will stifle innovation. Innovation managers should contemplate: Do individuals believe governance is essential to effective business innovation and that the two are interdependent? Or do individuals believe governance is incompatible with innovation and leads ultimately to company failure? What context "innovation" is used in? When you say innovation, you could really mean maximizing value to the business; when you say governance, you could mean minimizing risk. Is the purpose of the governance to support budget, security, regulatory issues, safety? Etc.

If you don't just look at innovation and governance as a continuum (increasing value, increasing risk), it could be argued that maximizing business value from prioritizing business objectives actually lessens a number of risks so the two are lock-stepped together. The governance aspect and innovation don't immediately come together depending on the context in which innovation is used. It is critical in adopting a social-technical-ecological perspective of governance models, in order to improve innovation effectiveness and efficiency.

Remember governance isn’t just about putting restrictions on what you can do, it is also about monitoring and knowing when things are not going to plan so that you can take appropriate actions at the right time. Innovation cannot be separated from a specific business purpose and in a broad context, governance is critical for meaningful innovation.

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Innovativeinsight

Isn’t it a tough journey to celebrate 8200 blog postings - to pursue the digital way to brainstorming, innovating and sharing….

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 5 million page views with 8200+ 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 innovation leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Innovation via Synchronization In the face of “VUCA” business normality, the exponential growth of information and lightweight digital technology bring both abundant opportunities for business growth, and unprecedented risks to fail the business even overnight. Timing is everything. The high-responsive organization can synchronize their business at the multiple levels of the organization; it presupposes the ability of the entire chain with every connected entity to articulate their strategic intent, function collaboratively to create synergy and keep the business moving forward with the right speed.

Innovativecompetenciesofhighprofessionals As the organizational ecosystem becomes hyper-connected, over-complex, and interdependent, people are the key determinant of the business’s long term success. Today’s digital workforce has to continue learning and keep updating the skillset and build professional competency to proactively adapt to changes.

Unlockperformanceviaagilegovernance To run a high-performance business, the management and governance is an iterative business continuum to enhance business effectiveness. As the traditional management continues to rejuvenate itself to the changing new normal by establishing new principles and developing next practices; the governance discipline has also continually changed its shape and matured.

Unconventional Integrators With abundant information, fast-paced changes and frequent disruptions often caused by emerging digital technologies, many of organizations across the vertical industries are running in between - the mix of old and new; the different divisions within an organization are running in silos, each of them has their own set of knowledge, capabilities, subculture, and speed.

Innovating Potentiality Development Potential is about future performance-how well does an individual continue to learn and grow, how likely can they take on new challenges at work or life, move up to the next-level of cognitive pyramid, or roles that are expanded and redefined as the societal/economical changes? Discovering potentiality and developing talent are continuous efforts and distinct actions for progressive business professionals and contemporary organizational management. In fact, unleashing human potential is one of the greatest visions and missions of modern society. Here are a few inner factors in unlocking potentiality.

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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Influentialstrategists

The influential strategists gain an understanding of the past and the perception of the future so far as knowledge permits; they have the ability to tie all these important things together in order to develop a good strategy.

Strategy is about projecting and balancing variables on the business continuum to achieve the goals further away in the distance. There is no doubt that strategy becomes more important, not less in organizations large or small today because of hyper-connectivity, unprecedented uncertainty, fierce competition, rapid change, and frequent disruptions. Strategy will remain an "artistic science," as there is no design blueprint nor exact implementation rules. 

Business leaders and professionals have to continuously set up standards of competence and ability to enforce professional responsibility, groom more highly professional strategists with a unique set of capabilities to make good strategies and improve the success rate of strategy management..

Astute strategist: Making a strategy in times of uncertainty and unpredictability is an interesting way of putting things right. You can develop a strategic plan based on the improvement of the real situation by analyzing the mandate and extracting policies that enable you to make the vision and missions, then to make the smart objectives, policies, and programs that solve your long-term concerns and problems. A strategy is just as much about knowing what you will not do as it is about knowing what you will do. Top business executives as astute strategists do information-based research, connect interdisciplinary dots to do deep “swot” analysis by asking enough insightful questions, to enhance capability-based strategy management. To accelerate the cycle of strategy management, the dynamic capability will further build the organization’s strengths in core areas and differentiated competency.

Strategies emerge through network interaction. Feedback management is an integral component of strategy management. There are known and unknown risks. The conditions of known risk are amenable to constructing alternative scenarios and evaluating them. When you are formulating strategies under conditions of known risks, you have sufficient information to establish probabilities of alternative outcomes and the expected impact of strategic alternatives. The astute strategists learn how to leverage the network by leveraging quality feedback and developing approaches for shepherding strategy implementation through information-driven solutions. Feedback and adjustment become pervasive throughout the network, rather than one step in a structured planning and evaluation process to strengthen the enablers of the strategy, enhance links to business strategy alignment, scenario planning, program life cycle management, requirements management, risk management, resource management, etc. It might be good to work with plans and assumptions and scenarios, as long as you keep in mind that these have been elaborated from past experiences and past knowledge.

Agile strategist: Strategy formulation is a combination of planned and emergent thinking. When you are forced to formulate strategy under conditions of 'uncertainty,' you are operating in "white water" with little or no information on which to base your strategic decisions. You formulate a strategy and then encounter the real world of implementation, which provides you feedback that allows you to continuously adjust the strategy on the move. Just like a sculptor in the process of shaping a piece of artwork, he or she has a strategy in mind at the outset of the process; but as his/her hands interact with the material, the strategy is constantly adjusted until the final artwork is presented. Agile strategists apply a set of agile principles to focus on improvement, interaction, incrementalism, iteration, innovation, etc. With ever-evolving business dynamics, it's not all about "making a strategy" as an end-product, but about enhancing a strategy-making- implementation scenario.

In the business reality today, “critical uncertainties" are the unknowns below the tip of the iceberg with utmost relevance for the organization or entity you're planning for. In such cases, strategy formulation must be based on assumptions that your organization can change the operating environment, not just adapt to it. Significant variation from the planned result may, in fact, be a signal that the original plan is flawed; that a major shift in the environment has occurred, which necessitates rethinking and readjusting the plan - as the old saying goes: plan is nothing, planning is everything. Agile strategists can be learning agile, stay within what you will do in the strategic forum, but change some priorities or weight of effort in the short term, be opportunistic about the emerging event, and you will reach your goal.

Influential strategist: High professional strategists are influencers who can think multi-dimensionally and do not get lost in mundane detail. Uncertainty is the new normal. If it is really unpredictable, that means the future cannot be, in any way, deduced from the past. As such, it becomes far more about influencing others to choose to allow/enable the success of your strategic goals. It is also about communicating about the quality of the strategy, saying openly what is known and what is not. Influential strategists are great communicators. They can walk the talk and talk the walk. They intend to help all managers and digital professionals gain a holistic understanding of business transformation and come to grips with new ways of thinking, working and living; plan, but be able to adapt quickly to current realities. Understand your environment and playing field to develop a plan to harness the opportunities you identified.

The influential strategists gain an understanding of the past and the perception of the future so far as knowledge permits; they have the ability to view the complete business ecosystem with all its dependencies and interconnections. They are able to tie all these important things together in order to develop a good strategy. They have the ability to identify key leverage points where the non-proportional impact can be made. They are excellent communicators with a unique voice who can leverage social and collaboration technology tools to amplify the intellectual voice. In order to harness strategic communication, start by identifying the barriers that hinder effective collaboration and work on them.They have creative communication skills to break down barriers and bridge differences; they have empathy skills to tailor the variety of business audiences. When negotiating a strategy with stakeholders who hold the opposite viewpoints.And they have the ability to hypothesize interventions and iterate them till the right fit is made.

A profession is a set of skills, knowledge, and competencies gained through training.Whether the strategy is the profession or not, strategists need to be high professionals who are open minded, informative, innovative, kneep the ends in mind, understand the causes of their organizational problems, set the principles, and make choices for enable businesses to achieving clearly-defined business results.

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Innerconfidence

You become what you think and do, and you improve when you reflect and rectify what you have done; keep the movement on, you become more confident.

Confidence is such an attribute to make one look brighter than others. Confidence is about having the right dose of ego to show self-respect, self-worthiness, self-esteem, self-awareness or self-actualization. 

Real confident people can often make more objective judgments and solve problems effectively because they are open to learning, courageous to break down conventional thinking and humble to admit their limitations; continue to explore growth opportunities and make consistent progress. In fact, confidence is one of the most critical leadership characteristics and professional traits.

Openness: We are what we think. Today we are inextricably linked, in real time and in ways far more imminent than most realize. Confident people are more optimistic, see the bright side, they have a special mindset that, rain or shine, leads them to think and act in a constructive way. Usually confident people do not restrict themselves to conventional wisdom, they are open to new knowledge and ideas; “listen, respect, respond, discern and adjust."

There’s no such thing as overconfidence, but there’s a thin line between confidence and arrogance or egotism. Because true confidence always implies openness to others’ viewpoints, doing things with purpose or taking the right dose of risks. Confidence in gut feel is a psychological sense of certainty in the face of unquantified uncertainty. Being confident means you are open-minded, mix the right dose of quality information and gut-feeling to make judgment, examine everything before advising it to others; have foresight with a proactive and predictive understanding of cause and effect, not reactive seeing.

Courage: We live in a world full of change, uncertainty, fierce competition and continuous disruptions. Confident people don’t blindly follow others, they are independent thinkers, have courage to break outdated rules, refuse to be bound by constraints and limitations, and be skeptical about the conventional understanding of the problems; overcome “shadow thinking” with negative emotions (fear, envy, change inertia), in order to be flexible and willing to innovate.

In the digital era of innovation, failure is seen as a fruit full of experience. Confidence can overcome fears; be courageous to take risks, be able to convince others to follow your vision and leadership. Confidence and grit give you the courage to overcome fears, take risks and fail forward.

Humility: Being confident is about having the right dose of ego; allows one to understand oneself, understand others, strike the right balance of being confident and being humble, self-worth and the worth of others. It is not about egotism. Confident leaders or professionals support others to shine and don't feel threatened by others’ brightness and wisdom. Beneath the ego is the desire to have meaning and purpose. We need a well developed ego but we have to keep it under control.

Do not attempt to be someone you are not. Confident people are authentic to be themselves; Being confident is about being your best, not beating another in a negative way. Being confident means you know who you are, your limitations and what you don't know, so you communicate and act in a consistent way. Therefore, a truly confident person may ask more than answer; take more risks than avoid making mistakes, lead rather than follow; but they always focus on solving problems, rather than becoming part of the problem.

You become what you think and do, and you improve when you reflect and rectify what you have done; keep the movement on, you become more confident. Being confident is to have the right dose of ego - no more, no less. Too much ego has one thinking too much of oneself. Too little ego has one not believing in oneself. A confident professional is not perfect, but progressive.

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Initiativepitfallsinbusinessmanagement

The inevitable range, breadth, depth, and pace of uncontrollable factors acting on any organizations mean identifying potential pitfalls, business vulnerability and constant fine-tuning is essential to improve business adaptability, performance, and maturity.

We live in an information exponential era full of uncertainty, velocity, complexity, and ambiguity, the result is the higher risk of tensions or conflict, change inertia, resource limitation or business vulnerability. 

Either solving business problems or implementing strategies, organizational management needs to gain the contextual understanding of the inter-connectivity of both visible and invisible success factors, identify and deal with the following pitfalls or the barriers on the way, apply interdisciplinary approaches to enforce interorganizational linkage and vertical staff accountability for running a high performance business.

Low quality information: Every company has a significant amount of information with mixed quality; it does not live alone but permeates everywhere in the businesses. Important bits and bytes of quality information needed to forecast a new market, an emerging technology trend, or business growth opportunities. But there are also inherent dangers of too much misinformation or incoherence in exponential growth of information and the body of knowledge that surrounds us causes miscommunication, poor judgment, or stagnation. That said, if information is unavailable, inaccurate, lost, stolen, or compromised, it will hinder the achievement of business goals timely, disengage employees, disappoint customers, and even mislead the business in the wrong direction. With continuous disruptions, misinformation can cause business failure at any moment

Information becomes one of the most invaluable business assets, but it could also turn out to be one of the biggest pitfalls for business management if it is not handled properly or interpreted accurately. Therefore, information management effectiveness directly impacts the maturity level of the entire business as effective Information Management can capture the real-time business insight and customer foresight for discovering the new areas which contribute to the business growth, or spot the opportunities to increase revenues. To avoid misinformation pitfalls, it’s critical to understand and manage complexity, know how to prioritize based on the business needs, communicate extensively, to ensure information quality, accessibility, reliability, and refine information to fully support the business goals and objectives collaboratively.

Overly rigid hierarchy: Change and disruptions are the new normal, to improve business agility, speed, and flexibility, flattening the overly rigid hierarchy and battling bureaucracy is a journey worth the effort at the emerging digital era with the nature of hype connectivity, nonlinearity, and interdependence. Rigid hierarchy slows down business speed and enhances silo mentality; and silo self-perpetuates when the soft elements of the organization such as leadership or culture have some serious issues, such as emphasizing on individual goals with unhealthy competitions, but ignoring strategic business goals for the long run. The overly rigid hierarchy with very characteristics such as bureaucracy, inflexibility, inefficiency, dysfunctional systems/processes, etc, are root causes of missing synergy and business stagnation.

From top-down organizational hierarchy, there are frictions between management and staff; people and people, employees and customers, etc. The enterprise collaboration platforms and tools provide efficient tools to encourage cross-functional communication and collaboration. to enable information fluidity, workforce creativity and management holism. To run a highly functional organizational system, the organizational hierarchy must balance the freedoms, and responsibilities of the subsystems and total system; the formal and informal structures wrap around with each other; there must be enough central control to achieve coordination toward the large-system goals, and enough autonomy to keep all subsystems such as individuals, teams, or divisions flourishing, functioning, and self-organizing. Modern digital organizations are not the sum of functional pieces, but an integral whole.

Misalignment: Many organizations get stuck at the daily busyness, ignoring the symptoms of business dysfunctioning. When productivity is low and synergy is missing; when people are not working via the system to solve the real problems but play the system to or build “comfort zones” and create frictions to changes, When different shareholders push the business to different directions, change gets stuck and digital transformation is stalled. Misalignment stifles changes and decreases the success rate of strategy management. Many times, communication bottleneck and collaboration ineffectiveness is a dissonance between upper and middle management or middle management and frontline employees. Role conflict or differing priority is often the cause of misalignment.

More specifically, misalignment is caused by silo thinking, miscommunication, lack of cross-functional understanding, or simply wrong people put in the wrong position to solve the wrong problems. So the management needs to clarify: Are your processes functioning to deliver results consistent with the strategic intent? Are your people acting in a way that is consistent with the strategy? Are your processes, portfolio investment, and people integrated to ensure a consistent ability to deliver customer value as defined in the strategy? If you can answer yes to these questions you have a better alignment. If not, you have to identify which of the strategy, processes, and people elements are out of alignment and fix them. Holistic management approach provides structure coupled with strategic planning towards preventing sprawl, ensuring strategy alignment is assured through financial alignment and towards leveraging existing investments as much as possible.

The organizations are so technology-driven and information-intensive today, the inevitable range, breadth, depth, and pace of uncontrollable factors acting on any organizations mean identifying potential pitfalls, business vulnerability and constant fine-tuning is essential to improve business adaptability, performance, and maturity.

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