Iscioaspecialistorgeneralist

Debating is not for stimulating conflicts, but for brainstorming better ways to do things.

Due to the changing nature of technology, IT leadership roles also continue to involve & shift the focus, to move up the maturity level. More and more CIOs are requested to take more responsibility and many CIOs present the breadth of leadership competency. The proactive IT debates help IT leaders to brainstorm better ways to do things and improve management capabilities. 

Here are the monthly CIO debates collections about envisioning digital IT leadership and running high-performance digital IT organizations.

        Is CIO a Specialist or Generalist

Is Digital CIO a Specialist or a Generalist We live in a technological world and every day more and more technology affects the way we live and work. Great opportunity, danger, and disruption are around every corner. However, many IT organizations are still perceived by business as a support function, slow to change. Forward-looking CIOs need to ask themselves: Is IT viewed as an inhibitor or the driver of change? What’re the best and next practices to reinvent IT for getting digital ready?

Is Management and Control of Technology Shifting Away from IT Some say that CIOs are losing ground due to the proliferation of Shadow IT, Consumerization of enterprise technology, Omnipresence of social platforms., etc. Is it true that the management and control of technology are shifting away from IT, and what is the effective way to run IT and business as a whole?

Is IT Management a Science or an Art? IT management success directly impacts the organization’s bottom line efficiency and top-line growth, especially large, complex IT-led business initiatives, which have a very low success rate to reach customer expectations. So what’re the root causes, and is IT management science or art?

Is IT at Cross-Road? IT organizations are facing significant transformation, perhaps crossroad is an appropriate word to articulate IT position since CIOs seem to fall into two camps. The first is the "utility" CIO who competently manages a complex technology infrastructure but is not on the "go-to" list for implementing the strategy. The latter is a "value" CIO who has delegated infrastructure management and well articulates how information and technology can accomplish the company's strategic and tactical objectives. So what is next for CIOs beyond the crossroads? How can CIOs enable high performing organizations, and in return, their organization's leverage high-performing CIOs?

IT Attitude: Confident, not Arrogant On one side, IT complains not get respected from business, on the other side, business think IT acts arrogant sometimes; such “he said, she said”, “Pride & Prejudice” dilemmas continue to stir up new debate in CIO forums, the point is not to figure out who is right and who is wrong, the key is how IT can leverage different viewpoint and keep improving leadership and service. But, how to adjust the attitude or break down the bias?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with 8700+ blog postings 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. 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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Introduction

Chapter 1 Digital IT Leadership Q&A

Chapter 2 Digital IT Fitness Q&A

Chapter 3 Digital IT Innovation Paradox Q&As

Chapter 4 Digital IT Management Dilemmas

Chapter 5 Digital IT Potential Q&As

Chapter 6 Digital IT Priority Q&As

Chapter 7 IT-Business Gap Q&As

Chapter 8 Digital IT Performance Q&As

Chapter 9 IT Branding Q&As

Chapter 10: Digital IT Talent Management Q&As

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Interdisciplinarycognition

The unbalanced mindsets lack in-depth understanding, hybrid thinking can combine different thought patterns in order to identify patterns, diagnose real problems and solve them thoroughly with consistency.

We live in a hybrid world with overcomplexity and interdependence, real world interaction and online presentation. Interdisciplinary thinking is a combined thinking process to solve many of today’s complex problems which require strategic consideration, multidimensional cognition, innovation approach, cross-cultural, cross-generational perspectives. 

Many of today’s problems are complex, which types of hybrid thinking are in demand to generate premium solutions for overcoming challenges.

 

Inclusiversity thinking focuses on commonalities as a human being, but also embraces cognitive difference: Organizations today have a variety of diversity such as generational diversity, cultural diversity, personality diversity, etc. Check out the research on complexity, diversity, and functionality and you will find that diversity in a group of people produces better performance and high levels of resilience. Cognitively diverse groups spark collective creativity and discover higher quality solutions. Innovation is a divergence and convergence continuum. By focusing only on what makes people different, you actually gear their mind to think about differences first. After divergence, it’s important to have a convergent process for transforming fresh ideas into great solutions to achieve commercial value. Therefore, inclusiversity thinking helps to diversify and unify, that's what cultivates the culture of innovation and ultimately improves performance.

"We are all different'' with different perspectives, gifts, and skills, then the opportunities open up, not close down. The diversity of perspective and insight, unifies for the purpose, direction, and goals. The competitive team with “inclusiversity” theme composed of talented people embraces complementary experiences, the spectrum of skills, unique competencies, cultural perspectives, and personalities, brings in fresh ideas and new perspectives to make wider connectivity and drive innovation. So inclusiversity will be transcendent to the next level of human advancement when having a common purpose.

Anathesis Thinking can better adapt to the hybrid world we live in today via holistic understanding with integral solutions: Almost every work in modern society needs some level of analytics and synthesis. Analysis is defined as the procedure by which you break down an intellectual or substantial whole into parts or components. Synthesis is defined as the opposite procedure to combine separate elements or components in order to form a coherent whole. The “hybrid mind” with “anathesis” (analysis + synthesis) is able to understand, frame, and solve today’s multilayer, interdependent, over-complex business problem smoothly.

One cannot be good at being analytical without creativity. Analytical thinkers solve problems day in and day out. They need to imagine complex problems in their context, imagine what can be done with the data, and possible solutions. Methodologically, creative people consciously use different kinds of thought processes involving both analytics and synthesis, that hold onto their natural connectivity while being prepared to connect the dots even in the opposite direction should they make sense to create innate ideas and develop innovative solutions.

Coopetition (cooperation + competition) thinking encourages positive competitions and cross boundary collaboration: Competition or cooperation can be used for a greater purpose/cause to elevate individuals as well as the entire society. Or they can be abused or misused to cause unnecessary pains, and significant problems. It easily creates the gaps and often leads to unhealthy internal competitions for the limited resources, causing people who are supposed to be on the same team to work against each other.

Many organizations today are running in between - the mix of old and new; the different departments or divisions within an organization evolve changes with different speed. With today’s digital hyperconnectivity and interdependence, it is time to step into the new hybrid era of corpetition (cooperation + competition) and reach the next level of digital harmony. Coopetition (cooperation + competition) thinking helps to catalyze innovation by inspiring healthy competition and harnessing cross-functional collaboration.

The world is far from perfect, most of the problems are caused by miscommunication, poor decision making, or irrational actions or behaviors. The unbalanced mindsets lack in-depth understanding, hybrid thinking can combine different thought patterns in order to identify patterns, diagnose real problems and solve them thoroughly with consistency.

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Implementationpitfalls

The super execution is the result of the synchronization of all key business factors by strengthening multiple links to create business synergy and build differentiated enterprise competencies.

In today’s “VUCA” business dynamic, the success of strategy management undoubtedly lies in the ''timely execution.'' Strategy and execution are no longer linear steps, but an iterative continuum. A successful strategy execution is based on ‎information, innovation, intelligence, and improvement for delivering solid business results continuously. 

The cause of incomplete strategy is either the assumptions in the strategy were not fully vetted or market dynamics wasn't anticipated. The cause of ineffective strategy implementation varies, the success of strategy execution is multipath, information-dependent and dynamic.

Lack of clear and decisive leadership: Strategy management is the bridge between current state and future state of the organization. Gaps are created when strategies are misaligned with the expectation of the implementation team. Weak leadership enlarges gaps, misunderstands varying critical issues, unable to lead transformative changes. Strategy creep can be indicative of larger planning issues such as poor due diligence in the planning phase, no alignment with vision or mission, lack of clear objectives, lack of clear goals, etc. To make implementation work, the wider senior team needs to be involved in the development, have a great understanding and have ownership and commitment. Implementing new strategies is difficult and is often met with great resistance. Leaders must be willing to display the courage and determination required to continually push the initiative forward to achieve the desired goal.

Statistically strategy execution has a very high failure rate. From top down, leadership is the ability to influence the values, mindsets, decisions, and actions undertaken by others. The high-mature senior leadership is based on vision, learning agility, influential intelligence, and a high level of intellectual and emotional maturity. Top leaders go beyond a senior title, their leadership competency is based on their bigger and deeper thinking box, to shape multidimensional views and enable them to develop a far-sighted vision. They are humble to learn, bring their skill and maturity to the next level which will make them a more decisive leader. Profound leadership influence is based on their ability to inspire, confidence to assert, intelligence to decide, uniqueness to bridge, and competency to turn around.

Good strategy, but poor execution: Statistically, more than 70% of strategy fails in execution. It is about many different matters like resistance to change, silos or units with competing agendas. You can have the greatest strategic plan in the world, but it will be worthless if the organizations are not accountable to anyone for the execution of their tasks. In order to bridge the gap between strategy and execution, you need a purposeful and rigorous method for translation of strategy into goals and objectives.

Often there are disconnects between strategy and execution. It is impossible to plan and implement something you cannot do. Even when the strategy is appropriate, poor implementation will derail it. When you designed the strategy, you may not have understood that the execution was going to impact other areas of the business in ways you didn't anticipate. Even if you have a fair strategy, when mistranslating the good strategy into a set of goals and objectives, it further causes the failure to implement a strategy. When there is no consequence for making mistakes, there is no point in investing the time needed to make sure that decisions are sound.

Lack of accountability: Many companies fail in execution, something possibly missing is the internal capacity to understand the strategy to the extent that the management and executive teams can participate actively in strategy development and proactively drive implementation. There are varying causes behind strategy management failures, lack of accountability is one of the crucial reasons that make business dysfunctioning and ineffective problem-solving. Irrational actions or behaviors make the business vulnerable to risks, and causes business failures large or small.

People don’t feel safe, or run away from accountability because they had a personal experience or they have observed others being treated poorly or unfairly when being held accountable for results. Lack of accountability on follow-through; inability to measure impact, too focused on short-term results, maybe the most popular big obstacle to improve strategy management effectiveness. It is important to build a culture of accountability at the organizational level. In fact, accountability goes hand in hand with the delegation of authority or power, to advocate the digital style of autonomy and self-management.

The super execution is the result of the synchronization of all key business factors by strengthening multiple links to create business synergy and build differentiated enterprise competencies. It’s important for managers to take a holistic view or an outside-in perspective, keep their eyes on the higher horizons, imagine the future of the business, and focus on what matters the most, identify what generates the most value for the company, avoid pitfalls on the way to implement strategic objectives effectively.

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Innovation

Innovation management needs to connect wider dots, lay out different thinking, structures, and best practices, to allow business to develop into its potential.

With frequent disruptions and fierce competitions in the business ecosystem, individuals or organizations simply cannot stand still, never innovate or make progress. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. 

There is more flow of creative ideas, the innovation pie actually gets bigger. The good or bad innovation would depend on the business’s attitude to connect the right dots and nourish a culture of creativity, its aptitude to manage ideas and improve the success rate of innovation.

Innovation & sufficiency: Innovation is about thinking differently, making difference and pursuing alternative ways to do things. To breakthrough thinking ceilings, you need to be able to observe deeper and see around the corner, perceive the invisible behind the visible, recognize the connections and interdependence, gain sufficient knowledge and unique insight. and transcend the interdisciplinary knowledge to spur creativity.

From an innovative problem-solving perspective, the mental models through which you understand things deeply influence how you imagine the future, recognize the connections and interdependence. Thus, knowledge sufficiency is crucial to have an in-depth understanding of cause and effect based on the identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario to get to the heart of the matter, develop other virtues like non-egoism, self-control, self-sufficiency, and self-reliance in order to solve problems in an alternative way.

Innovation & sophistication: There are both known unknown and unknown unknown; there is always some remaining uncertainty and emerging properties. Business management needs to be able to deal with “VUCA” reality, develop sophisticated innovation capabilities which are unique, hard to copy, to build differentiated business advantages. Innovation nowadays is rarely an individual activity, but collaborative team efforts. Innovation sophistication is not the same as complication. One of the very goals for innovation management is to simplify the old way to do things or to manage complexity in an optimal manner. The unnecessary complexities such as overly complicated processes or rigid rules perhaps stifle innovation as organizations get locked into huge processes around building extensive business cases to innovation.

All businesses have certain capabilities, including innovation. What matters is digital capability sophistication and maturity (efficiency, effectiveness, and agility). As sophisticated capability is an acquired and organized "ability" within a company and takes hard work to put in place, it can therefore not be transferred because of the degree of organizational learning and organization that goes with it. Innovation management is both art and science. That means we need to be humble and admit we can't control anything beforehand, let things flow naturally; let ideas click spontaneously; let people do things in their own way and also have some fun. Sophisticated leaders and professionals are intelligent and innovative; entrepreneurial and insightful; set the guidance for creating something new, focus on the nature of interconnectivity rather than just on isolated entities. That is the essence of sophisticated innovation management discipline.

Innovation & plasticity: Creative disruption acts as a catalyst for business growth and innovation. Growth is not possible unless people are willing to move out of their comfort zone and demonstrate learning plasticity to continually grow and innovate. Digital learning is multidimensional, dynamic, interactive, informal and integrated. Whatever we sense as a human being, there is a methodology behind that: see it, sense it, get it processed in the brain, react, learn, and demonstrate learning plasticity. Collectively, organizational learning plasticity is an important digital trait to keep the business competitive and build innovation capability.

In management practice, there is no single initiative or program that will suffice to raise the plasticity of individuals, functions, businesses. Every organization needs to learn some good theories, develop tailored innovation practices via leveraging effective tools or methodologies and use them wisely with the expertise to really add value or drive innovation. The emerging digital technologies such as social platforms and collaboration tools provide a flexible way to learn, share and collaborate, apply the acquired knowledge and lessons learned to succeed in new situations, connect wider dots for sparking creativity and catalyzing innovation.

Innovation is the management discipline to reduce business complexity or increase revenue. Innovation management needs to connect wider dots, lay out different thinking, structures, and best practices, to allow business to develop into its potential in which organizations are combining all that is available to them in imaginative or advantageous ways to achieve the “art of possible.”

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Ineffectivesilos

If you only fix symptoms, the real problem will keep coming back, wasting time and energy.

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

    Ineffective Silos

Innatesilo Most business managers and teams operate with an incomplete and relatively small view of the business ecosystem as traditional companies are operated in functional silos to achieve a certain level of business efficiency. However, most people don't realize which gaps silo is causing, how much pain it is bringing or the cost to the organization. Silo is a universal problem facing businesses, especially for large mature organizations or our society as a whole today.

Innergapscausedbysilothinking Silo is a universal problem facing businesses, especially for large mature organizations or our society as a whole today. And most people don't realize which gaps it is causing, how much pain it is bringing or the cost to the organization. Nowadays, businesses are moving into the hyperconnected, accelerated digital continuum. How to break down silo thinking, and embrace holistic thinking in building a high-performing organization?

Culture Chasm Symptoms 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 and management discipline. Organizational culture as a collective mindset and attitude could be one of the most invisible and intimidating factors to influence your organization’s future. In reality, there is cultural chasm happens in the 21st century organization more often than ever such as:

Identifythebiggestbarrierstodigitaleffectiveness Digital transformation is the rough road with all bumps and curves on the way. There are a number of challenges common in transformation programs, such as having a clear vision, getting the right strategies, execution, a forward-thinking leader to convey the transformational vision, and a broader view of customer demand, etc. More specifically, what are the biggest barriers to digital effectiveness and how to overcome them for improving digital business performance and maturity?

Initiativestobreakdownsilos? There are different definitions of silo. The segmenting or sectioning of work by skill/knowledge/type/etc is a necessary component of business operations. However, silo mentality and silo management often mean keeping people’s mind static, keeping people separate rather than keeping work separate. It sets barriers to changes, decreases business effectiveness and efficiency, and decelerates the speed of the organization. What is the rational scenario to break down silos for streamlining business flow, and unlocking individual and group potential?

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 7 million page views with about #8700 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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Innovativesolutionists

Great solutionists are future-oriented, holistic, focused on long-term problem-solving, without ignorance of emergent trends.

Problem-solving is both art and science. It is about seeing a problem and actually finding a premium solution to that problem, not just the Band-Aid approach to fixing the symptom. The problem-solving practices will not be simple for many of today’s complex issues. Some or many solve certain problems in a certain area but create other problems in the other domains. 

Thus, it’s important to take a logical scenario for solving them interdisciplinarily. All digital leaders and professionals develop their reputation as a problem creator or a problem-solver.

Strategic solutionist: Problems do not exist in isolation but as an interdependent and interacting system of problems. Thus, business leaders or professionals need to capture unique insight and develop all necessary skills to diagnose the real issues, especially at the strategic level, identify solution options and which solution option is most aligned with the strategic goals. Strategic thinking is about keeping the end in mind. So a strategic solution is about engaging future trends, solving problems to make strategic impact and advancing organizations or societies from a long term perspective.

Many problems today are complex and interdependent with interactive pieces, interdependent components, and “conflict” goals. It’s important to set the right priority, and clarify: What solution options are available that will meet the business need and which option is the best option? Is it one solution or multiple solutions that will be required? Which solutions represent the best business value in terms of achievement of the business outcomes? Which option is the best option from a strategic perspective to solve a multi-set of problems? A good strategy is a premium solution that results in a formulated approach to deal with the chain of relevant problems effortlessly.

Innovative solutionist: One of the biggest challenges in this complex digital world is the fact that we need different perspectives, different knowledge and different ways to solve a problem. Creative problem-solving starts with creative communication and set alternative choices. Creativity in the "corporate" world has a lot to do with fostering a creative environment and tap the multitude of diversity to solve problems alternatively. To put simply, when you encounter a tough problem, often you need to solve it in a creative way by assessing what is your current situation and what is your fundamental choice.

Creativity is often the secret sauce for problem-solving. Leaders and professionals should encourage out of the box thinking, ask open questions to collect relevant information, think of alternatives, look for creative, cost-effective opportunities to develop cross-functional teams for solving problems alternatively; bring together people who would not typically have the opportunity to communicate in the day-to-day operations, recognize innovators who can bring up fresh ideas, and figure out alternative solutions.

Philosophical solutionist: Philosophy can allow you to see the cause and effect thoroughly and help you see reasoning in action. Observations and conclusions in the field of philosophy may be acceptable or unacceptable to different people of different social and ethnic backgrounds. That means, there isn't always a right or wrong choice in any situation and there are a lot of grays in between. Philosophical lens is broader and deeper, as philosophy is the mother of science, it is methodical and has deliberate processes for identifying questions, reasoning, and thinking outside the box to diagnose the real problem and discover the truth holistically.

Philosophical problem-solvers abstract the quintessential from complexity, discover the root cause of problems. There isn't always a right or wrong choice in any situation and there are a lot of grays. Sometimes there is an obvious right or wrong solution to a problem which you have from your perspective. But when someone else looks at the problem from their perspective, they may come up with different ideas as to what is right or wrong. Philosophy not only allows you to reason the visible, but also perceives the invisible elements of the problem. Philosophy takes on problems of knowledge, but perhaps its greatest strength is in its ability to "solve" problems elsewhere; not only to solve the problems, but to dissolve them sometimes.

Problem-solving evolves both detail and the big picture, tolerating uncertainty and taking step-wise actions. Great solutionists are future-oriented, holistic, focused on long-term problem-solving, without ignorance of emergent trends. You can't always wait for the "best" solution to emerge. It is important to experiment, explore, engage, and create multiple pathways to solve problems smoothly, to make a smooth transition from pursuing the perfect solution which perhaps does not exist to making continuous adjustment and improvement.

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Unpuzzlingcomplexity

The simplicity and complexity are just opposite ends of the same spectrum. That compounds all "problems." You need complexity to understand and appreciate the simplicity and vice versa.

It becomes complex if things do interact, particularly in the case of "nonlinear" interaction, you can't separate things properly or you cannot predict the actual effect of interaction straightforwardly. 

Companies that are skilled at managing complexity can gain advantages by pushing the boundaries of a more sophisticated business mix that provides opportunities to create inter-business value, differentiated digital capabilities and the unique set of business competency.

   Unpuzzling Complexity

Innercomplexity Businesses today are over-complex and interdependent, multi-dimension and complexity are two key factors in the intrigues of large problems. There are no unsolvable problems, but there are complex problems that are those you cannot solve with given resources, knowledge and capabilities. And there is frustration if there is a lack of a solution that helps to enforce logic and validate methodology to smooth problem-solving. What’s the in-depth understanding of such complexity?

Intrinsiclogicbehindcomplexproblems Business is complex with many moving parts, to deal with today’s multi-logical situation in digital dynamic requires multiple valid viewpoints, multidisciplinary approach, and multi-choice solutions. Digital leaders or professionals should understand the intrinsic logic - how likely the situation is likely to change or better information will become known.

Unpuzzling IT Complexity Information is growing exponentially and the nature of technology is complex, there is a multitude of complexities in the organizational scope. The emergent digital complexity includes hyper-connectivity, hyper-diversity, and hyper-dynamism. The goal of an IT organization is not to make things more complex. The fact is that IT has to become the business optimizer for managing complexity and unlock organizational performance. Unpuzzling IT complexity means to improve IT organizational maturity from functioning (have redundancy) to firm (work solidly), to delight (“just right” simplicity).

Innatevarietyofcomplexity Change is overwhelming, and complexity is inevitable, but they are both facts that are happening all the time and at a faster pace than never before. Complexity means increased uncertainty in things outside our control and uncertainty in the results of implementing strategies. Complexity is diverse, ambiguous, and dynamic with unpredictable outcomes.

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

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thoughts; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making an influence through touching the hearts and connecting minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #8700 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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Innovation

By collaborating as a cohesive team, new insight crops up all the time through the efficient feedback mechanism to get into better design and make continuous deliveries of delightful products or services with consistent quality.

The good design is part of the business strategy for building a people-centric company. The design takes planning and fine-tuning that must take place to deliver products or services. 

The important thing is to identify the common design principles and the shared body of knowledge that will help to raise design thinking from an inwardly focused creative activity or semantic argument to the truly recognized management discipline and innovation approach.

The people-centricity factors such as employee or customer experience is the fulfillment of a need that keeps the business on the right path to innovate: Employee or customer experience design is multidisciplinary in nature, not just about "design" but a collection of tactics, or a one-off exercise. The deep look of customer journey uncovers the nuance and emotion of each touch point and the transitions in between. Design thinking is both a philosophy and a set of methodologies for achieving personalization. To be done successfully, customer experience design requires creative designers, seasoned, knowledgeable professionals and a process to guide the efforts in a structural way.

You need to understand the journey before you can focus on the experience. Good customer experience management is a norm, but a great Customer Journey with exceptional Customer Experience offers the 'WOW.” Empathetic design enables the business to improve customer satisfaction by designing products or services that fit their needs. Employee/Customer experience, when done with rigor, discipline and focused approach in the right way, can be developed into a strategic capability. The journey is the path customers take; it is for awareness, for service received, and for retention, etc.

The purpose of design thinking is to pursue the “art of possible”: Design is empirical like science, it starts with a need and tests the solutions with experimentation. Design is a type of innovative activity that has perhaps high risk. If you cannot afford to fail, you cannot apply design techniques alone to solve the problem with people-centricity. The companies who are able to develop the culture of innovation that encompasses all of their designed products, services, and customer touchpoints will win.

Design Thinking is fundamentally an inclusive approach where the intent is to go beyond just need and utility, but to delight and influence. Being design-centric is when innovation meets the products/services to fit the design proposed as long as costs meet the criteria. The big advantage of being design-centered is that you prioritize making things likable vs. just making them functioning. Empathic design is a user-centered design approach that pays attention to the user's feelings toward a product or service.

Designers or design strategists should participate in the strategy work, and vice versa: People experience design is not just a single business or technical project, it is an important element of your digital strategy, from research to planning; from multi-lenses inquiries to multiple-stage reviews; from visual arts to wire frames. It is not just about a user interface, but an “end-to-end” customer experience and about your brand and competency. Design strategists embrace uncertainty, have the ability to convert insight into meaningful opportunities for the business; empathize and understand a range of needs, including that of the internal technical and product teams to implement intuitive products or services to delight customers.

On the strategic level, look at the overall business/operations, understand culture, business, user needs and expectations, clarify business goals, visions of design; look at where organizations are today and where they need or want to be, looking at the gap. Develop a high-level design strategy that satisfies the requirements of different groups. Often, this meant not just identifying a direction that met in the middle of all those constraints, but rather, figuring out which constraint /need /context actually mattered most in terms of potential impact to business.

Design-driven innovation is teamwork. By collaborating as a cohesive team, new insight crops up all the time through the efficient feedback mechanism to get into better design and make continuous deliveries of delightful products or services with consistent quality. Digital innovation often has a lot to do with external circumstances, it is important to leverage a systematic approach with robust processes and tools that enable the business generating winning concepts on a consistent basis to manage innovation systematically.

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Initiatechoicearchitecture

To thrive in the “VUCA” digital new normal, the enterprise architecture is a practical tool that helps the organization do pre-planning, planning, prioritizing, and adjusting all the time.

The pace of change is accelerated both in businesses and society, either as an individual or an organization. Architecture is an investment which helps to facilitate business planning & communication, turn around tough situations, and enjoy the challenges about complex problem-solving. 

It is important to leverage the architectural perspective to experiment, explore, and encourage a new way to solve problems. understand the complexity and guide people through it.

Architecture = Thinking and embodying the quality of human thoughts: Business Architecture enables “mind crafting” and deals with the diversity of thoughts systematically, be inclusive and recognize merit, orchestrate the interrelationship between people and process, to bridge the multitude of viewpoints effectively. By brainstorming and embracing the quality of human thoughts, the deep problem that reveals at the societal level is to understand what are the evolutionary pathways implied by those mind switches and how we can leverage different thought processes to stimulate novel ideas, tailor customers’ needs and solve their problems creatively.

An architect must consider the whole, and their purpose is to achieve the goals for the thing being architected. An architect’s view is multifaceted. From the outside-in viewpoint, the customer is the focal point; from the inside-out, employees are the key to execute strategy. An architect’s mindset is holistic, coherent and persuasive; has the ability to read the "ripples on the surface of the water," practice multifaceted thinking processes all the time, to reimagine the future of organization.

Business Architecture contains the organizational context in that it gives direction to the business design and transformation: The organization has to explore digital in all directions, the business architecture can be used as an organizational planning and design tool to depict "a model describing what the enterprise currently does" -a backward design viewpoint, the model offers an opportunity for senior management to reflect on whether they are truly doing what they thought they were doing. The business architecture of the future will be positioned as the glue between the customer, the business, and technology as the business boundary has been expanded.

Organizations have to adapt to the continuous changes by building dynamic capabilities and optimizing organizational structure. The organizational design issue is really about how to build the best mixture of organizational elements that harness adaptability through less hierarchy, frictionless processes and cohesive structures. Functions, Processes, Capabilities, and Services are all elements in the Business Architecture that should be cataloged and managed, and exhibited in relation to each other in diagrams when necessary. So the management can do the mapping between strategic goals, enable capability building and integrate different capabilities into differentiated business competency for successful strategy management.

A choice architecture is an instrument to reimagine how the organization needs to be reimagined to improve customer-centricity: Organizations undergo a paradigm shift-being experimental to try new things and explore the “art of possibility.'' Choice architecture can provide choices for businesses about communication content, the method and use their language to support customer-centric innovation. It provides a framework that facilitates communication, explores the art of discovery and options, fosters innovation through education and reduction in stringent rules, lubricates processes, embraces the new possibilities and alternative ways to do things smoothly.

Organizations become agiler to adapt to change and more information savvy for delivering real-time, intuitive products or services to delight customers. The choice architecture helps to eliminate confusion, facilitate effective communications by listening to the folks in the trenches and being willing to toss old prejudices aside to actually evaluate new ideas based on merit, helping to solve unforeseen issues for increasing people-centricity, setting abundant choices and options to delight customers, and improving organizational maturity.

To thriving in the “VUCA” digital new normal, the enterprise architecture is a practical tool that helps the organization do pre-planning, planning, prioritizing, and adjusting all the time; bring greater awareness of intricacies and value of the ever-evolving business systems, interwoven processes, technological advancement, resource alignment, deals with business initiatives, derived from strategy, improves the visibility of business management, craft the future state of the organization.

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Innovation

Managing innovation in a structural way is all about applying a scientific approach to problem identifying and solving.

Innovation is the specific phenomenon of the knowledge-based economy. The art and science of innovation is about how to deal with too much knowledge in terms of too many good creative ideas, and too little available resources. Scientific knowledge and management expertise, complementary assets, better access to capital, etc, increase the likelihood of investing in innovation.

 It’s important to keep connecting the wider dots if ever it makes sense and improve innovation effectiveness and maturity.

Innovation & robustness: Innovation is a non-linear process much akin to evolution; organization is a robust, adaptive system which is composed of, in part, of people, processes, and technologies. One can easily see the value of placing ideas into an environment of interaction/collaboration in which they can be tested and have the opportunity to evolve. Innovation Management is a dynamic system which needs to continue evolving and adapting, bringing greater awareness of idea flow, intricacies and the systemic value of organizational systems, resource alignment, business capabilities, people dynamics, and technological touches, etc, to accelerate performance.

To awaken innovation in the well-established organization, the dynamic digital organizations need to get away from letting things fall through and start creating an “integrated whole” by utilizing correct processes to build innovation competency. Innovation systems function, grow and prosper by continually adapting, evolving, and improving flexibility, versatility, and resilience of the company. Innovation has high risks, to improve organizational robustness and resilience, the risk management mechanism needs to be well embedded into both soft business factors such as corporate culture and hard organizational elements such as process; to improve risk intelligence and improve innovation success rate.

Innovation & commercialization: Innovation is how to transform novel ideas to achieve their commercial values. Innovation is the synthesis of idea generation and commercialization. In today's go-to-market business environment - the art of commercialization is becoming increasingly complex. The main innovation challenges organizations face when attempting to innovate is a consistent process through which they can develop an idea into fruition, with the ultimate delivery of a commercially astute outcome. In business reality, when moving forward, many companies form and grow on the basis of "idea creation," but then get bogged down when trying to "commercialize" those ideas. Because it requires a different skill set, focus, and mentality.

Many innovation initiatives fail, people need to learn how to incubate and commercialize ideas more successfully. If a company's focus swings too far to the commercialization side of the equation, then innovation suffers and vice-versa. There is transparency in follow-up of a system of the innovation process from the idea up to the implementation. Because ideas are built on other ideas and that idea combination is a powerful technique, and the chain of ideas keeps the organization energetic and people engaged. It’s also critical to invite customers into conversations, implement ideas to meet their needs, and improve innovation effectiveness.

Innovation & speed: Timing is everything to deal with “VUCA” new normal, from idea generation to idea implementation, speed matters for winning customers and gaining market shares. Speed matters because it doesn’t take long for ideas to get stale due to the rapid changes and overwhelming growth of information. Innovation management needs to make adjustments to the speed with which new ideas are created and how fast well-selected ideas are brought to market.

One of the real challenges to innovation management is how to accelerate idea validation and streamline innovation processes. Having a large number of ideas is a good thing as long as you can get the best attributes of the ones you like and combine them into a solid implementation and outcome. Information is one of the most time-intensive pieces of the innovation puzzle, the speed of information flow directly impacts the speed of the business innovation.

Organizations are the robust and adaptive living system business leaders should think as an entrepreneur and act as a startup manager. Managing innovation in a structural way is all about applying a scientific approach to problem identifying and solving, embracing uncertainty, identifying interconnections and interdependencies, encouraging learning and understanding flows, in order to decode innovation serendipity and improve its success rate.

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Innovativeinsight

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking of new ideas; sharing and innovating.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with 8700+ 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 to celebrate 8700 blog postings.

Innovatesociety Modern society is a dynamic continuum with collective human progress; each society is different, with varying sets of beliefs, cultures, economical systems, etc. It’s strategic imperative to frame the fresh mindset to see the ever-changing world via the multi-dimensional lenses, it means deepening understanding of how people think and value each other empathetically, enabling leaders and professionals to envision what progress they need to make and understand how to shape a more advanced society; develop the best & next practice that is best suited to them to make progress.

Innovativeleadership Leadership is about the future, change, innovation. So the vision and intention of becoming a leader are to facilitate and encourage, as change is often an uncomfortable, yet necessary part of reaching success. Leadership is an influence. Leadership practice is, at its heart, a problem-solving process.

Illustrategovernance Governance is about how well an organization is being run, and if set upright, it should effectively oversee the achievement of the vision, mission, and objectives. Needless to say, effective governance leads to effective management and reaches a high level of organizational maturity.

Initiatestrategyimplementation The "view of the digital landscape” has many dimensions, rapid change, constant disruptions and fierce competition is the reality. If you are not different, you are a commodity. Nowadays strategy management is a dynamic process that needs to be constantly adjusted to adapt to “VUCA” reality.

Innovativeinitiatives Due to high velocity, pervasive information growth and frequent disruptions, organizations become complex if things do interact, particularly in the case of "non-linear" interaction with the very characteristics of hyper-connectivity and interdependent relationships. Also, every organization is at a different level of business maturity, has its own struggles and conflicts.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking of new ideas; sharing and innovating. 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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Innercauseeffect

Digital companies or society today are not the "closed system" but the dynamic digital ecosystem which is complex, interrelated, and interconnected, full of opportunities and risks.

Contemporary companies or societies are getting more and more complex, we need to gain an in-depth understanding of numerous visible and invisible factors that perhaps influence the cycle of balance and growth. We can shape a people-centric society based on the realization of sameness and difference; process and flexibility, standardization and personalization. 

To deal with unprecedented uncertainty and complexity, data based cause-effect analysis provides partial fact, but even critically, follows a more humanistic approach and accepts this unpredictable, irrational human factor as the key element for addressing challenges, accelerating performance and unlocking collective potential.

Information-based analysis lets us see the real-time cause and effect of business’s actions and customers’ responses: Forward-looking organizations intend to build customer-centric organizations. Customer Experience is about all of these things; perceptions, emotions and relationships. Organizations that can leverage information to refine customer insight, understand people’s sentiment, are able to monitor customer behaviors and market conditions with greater certainty, analyze cause effects of business’s actions and customers’ responses, react to the dynamic marketing with speed and effectiveness, to differentiate themselves from their competition.

Information is the most intensive puzzle piece of innovation; quality data-based customer sentimental analysis leads service innovation which can optimize customer experience lifecycle based on personalization, targeted interactions & preferences, take a 360-degree view of customers, ultimately increasing customer loyalty by enhancing “Insight, Interaction, and improvement.” It's about understanding the business-customer interaction, deeply analyzing the cause-effect of business actions-responses, delivering on your brand promises and ensuring that what and who you say you are, shows up in how you deliver customer-tailored products or services consistently.

Cause-Effect analysis anticipates people-centric purpose but not until the organization as a system is actualized, can you really observe or manifest purpose: Every organization is a purposeful system. Compared to the traditional organization as the mechanical system, digital organizations today are like the organic living system which keeps evolving to adapt to business dynamics. To deal with business “VUCA” reality, unlock organizational performance and achieve business purpose, the cause-effect analysis does have to rely on different levels of abstraction models, depending on complexity, you can adjust the level of abstraction by applying inductive through deductive logic, fine tune organizational system to fit its purpose.

There are numerous interdependent and interactive elements in the organizational system such as the human, software, logic abstraction, and the business environment. The linear cause and effect logic is applicable depending on the entity under evaluation, both man-made and natural environmental risks. However, the speed of change is increasing and business events keep emerging, in many cases, multi-sequential adverse event propagation is applicable for organizational systems. Logic, intelligence, creativity is often nonlinear and multidimensional nowadays. The multi-thread management involves manifesting business purposes, aligns initiatives, talent, resources, to build a set of core competencies and improves people-centricity.

The cause-effect of the problem is not always linear, a small effect in one place can cause a cascade of events that produce a nonlinear big impact: Digital organization or organization is dynamic and complex, the degree of business responsiveness depends on how business subsystems interact with each other, and those interactions can be nonlinear, technical, informational, or human. There are frictions or misalignment between subsystems, to solve problems large or small, it is perhaps important to find the pain spot of the organization. Data only does not give you the full insight and understanding to the true nature of a problem; it’s not so effective to use linear logic to understand highly complex, nonlinear cause-effect relationship scenarios to solve complex business problems. But understanding human dynamics, systems and relationships does.

The very natural attempt of humans to take the very powerful techniques of linear mathematics or logic and apply it to the world very quickly, come up against insurmountable difficulties for solving complex problems today. Prevention is superior to solving problems. There is interconnectivity and many potential options in a complex system, a small effect in one place can cause a cascade of events that generate significant impact. The predictive “cause and effect” in system dynamics can include nonlinear cause and effect models, and develop nonlinear business problem-solving scenarios. 

Digital companies or society today are not the "closed system" but the dynamic digital ecosystem which is complex, interrelated, and interconnected, full of opportunities and risks. The way to change modern society is to modify our individual, group, and collective practices so that they facilitate both the development of fellow citizens and the functioning of collectivity, always seek fresh ideas, explore new opportunities, orchestrate mass collaboration and drive collective progress.

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Initiateperformanceassessment

Digital organizations are all about information savvy, adaptation, people-centricity, high- performance, and speed.

To run a dynamic digital business means constantly fine-tuning the uncontrollable factors acting on the business and driving change success via multidimensional directions.

 Performance management is not an isolated management discipline, but a holistic approach with a right set of methodologies and practices via connecting multidisciplinary management dots to tell the full story with business context, to ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of its parts.

A self-assessment/evaluation gives the employee the opportunity to self-reflect “who they are”: Self-evaluation helps individuals in taking ownership, responsibility, and keeps focused. It is highly important that any employee and person self-reflects and be able not only to describe what they are able to do but also to reflect in a constructive manner how anything could be done in a different way even if a process has been successful.

Individually, self-management is about knowing and comprehending how you can manage emotions and behaviors, recognize what is best to think and do, to cultivate creativity and innovate. The purpose of self-reflection, self-assessment, and self-improvement performance cycle is more about inspiring authenticity; growth mind, engagement, trust, and innovation. Self-evaluation helps individuals in taking ownership, responsibility, and keeps focused. This also ensures the alignment and cascading of organizational goals to individual goals…

Performance is accumulated daily achievement; potential is about future performance worthy investment: Performance Management System (PMS) is a working tool that improves performance/ productivity within an organization. The holistic performance management approach means to well align the strategic level of measures with operational level metrics and manage business performance as an iterative management continuum. Most organizations fail to manage performance effectively because they only focus on assessing past performance, a robust performance management system needs to be more future-oriented, people-centric, output-driven, to enhance a performance improvement-potential discovery continuum.

In reality, performance issues can be caused by “mismatch.” The role and expectations are not aligned with the person’s skills and ability, in which case training can help, or perhaps there is a more suitable role for the talent; or culture “misfit.” Should employee performance assessment be based on mindset, behavior or outcome? Behavior and outcome are not, or should not be mutually exclusive, you need both and they need to be aligned. Performance is more about the future, not only about managing performance to “keep the lights on,” today but more importantly, ensuring future performance worthy investment. Inspiration and motivation are the good pairs to act in the right direction and achieve a sustainable result.

When defining performance management KPIs, set digital principles, and clarify the goals: Nowadays, organizations at different levels of maturity perhaps focus on measuring different things and measuring them in different ways. Performance should be sustained and monitored at constant intervals to ensure robustness. Performance-based management requires that the measurement and communication of performance be an integral part of an ongoing process and not an annual, quarterly, or monthly event.

Senior executives are more interested in “value realized” by the organization than the “value delivery” by the team. Performance management is not an isolated management discipline, but a holistic approach with a well set of methodologies and practices by connecting multidisciplinary management dots, to ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of its parts. Good organizations do follow a process and tick the boxes. Better organizations measure important performance issues as they go along, adjust the plan/objectives/goals as and when required.

Digital organizations are all about information savvy, adaptation, people-centricity, high- performance, and speed. Performance Management is both art and science. There are a lot of additional parameters, correlations, and context that should be taken into account as digital transformation is dynamic, complex and holistic. The ultimate goal of performance management is to implement business strategy effectively through well defining the right set of measures at both strategic and tactical level, to achieve tangible business results.

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Innovation

It’s critical to cultivate a compelling future vision, a culture which inspires creativity, accepts external ideas and rapidly integrates them into a holistic idea/innovation management system.

Innovation is all about figuring out a better way to do things or creating intuitive products or services to delight customers. Innovation is the process which combines restless dissatisfaction with the current state coupled with the excitement of leading individuals or teams to discover alternative solutions that tailor customer needs and produce great results. 

Every organization is different, every innovation initiative is also unique, there is no one size fitting all formulas or practices to develop innovation competency. Organizations need to connect the meaningful dots, generate fresh ideas, discover fresh patterns and improve innovation manageability.

Innovation & scalability: In essence, innovation management is about how to manage people, assets, time, resources, and risks to achieve high-performance business goals; managing and scaling up innovation skillfully to unleash organizational potential. The emergence of potential opportunities for exploring innovation opportunities is likely to follow a nonlinear pattern as the pervasiveness of an organization's digitization journey increases.

Innovation strategy is an integral component of business strategy, companies must begin thinking about ways with strategic planning to broaden their ecosystems and revenue streams while becoming more responsive and scalable to improve innovation effectiveness. Every process, every expenditure of time, talent, money, or energy and every assignment of resources should be managed scientifically. The highly scalable digital organization can expand and amplify its influence with the ability to co-create and scale up innovation in a digital ecosystem

Innovation & accountability: Innovation has to result in something which leads us to a better state than where we are today. Innovation is the team work, it requires fine-tuning the organizational structure and culture that nurture new ideas and more creative talent, add salt and spices, and be able to profitably execute on those ideas. Accountability comes from strengthening all important links in innovation management by clarifying innovation personas and improving innovation effectiveness. Who is accountable for idea management? Who leads the idea implementation? Who can navigate through the tough water of innovation ? Who can facilitate creative dialogues? Who is accountable for the quality and the cost of innovation? Who are great idea implementers? Who is accountable for achieving expected results by measuring innovation performance? Etc.

Accountability goes hand in hand with the delegation of authority or power, that is part of improving innovation autonomy. To enhance accountability, it’s important to align innovation initiatives, resources, talent, and integration/implementation plans with the strategic goals and objectives; improve innovation effectiveness by keeping processes transparent at all levels, and focusing on long term innovation success. Accountability needs to be well embedded in the organizational culture, to encourage responsible communication, decision-making, and action, with the intention to build on morale and real productivity, and improve innovation competency of the organization.

Innovation & Information integrity: Behind the scenes, information management is the crucial piece of solving the innovation puzzle by optimizing the value of information while minimizing risks. There are some critical pieces of information needed for connecting wider dots to spur innovation and accelerate idea validation. However, information management is challenging as the poor information management most organizations experience is caused by a lack of in-depth understanding of information integrity; not knowing how to apply the worthwhile evaluation to reveal the inherent value of information. The key to innovation management is integrity.

Real-time information is one of the most time-sensitive pieces to un-puzzle innovation. It is a persistent and pervasive problem that demands an ongoing reviewing process to ensure information can be refined into unique business insight to explore where to innovate and how to innovate. The information has to be approved and as up-to-date as practically possible in a system which can be accessed by people who need it. Information is the power, running a real-time digital organization starts with providing real-time information management solutions to un-puzzle innovation and conquer dynamic digital management challenges.

Innovation success depends on many factors; people are always the most critical one. It’s critical to cultivate a compelling future vision, a culture which inspires creativity, accepts external ideas and rapidly integrates them into a holistic idea/innovation management system and builds a highly innovative organization to unlock collective potential.

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Initiatecstrategicommunication

Digital communication is sophisticated, but it’s the coordination mechanism to inspire, motivate, persuade, negotiate, and clarify.

Communication is a tool, not a purpose. It is critical that communication needs to be directly related to your audience situation, how it affects them. In a progressive corporate culture, open communication generates a digital vibe to inspire change, engage the variety of audience and streamline strategy management.

The successful strategy needs good communication transmission that will create a sense of ownership: Communication has truly occurred when the message is received and understood. When there is a lack of empathetic communication, it is the lack of trust among workers and management. It significantly increases the probability for strategy or change management to fail. In the well established organizations, there are different functional dialects, communication styles, and these contexts can shift frequently. Business professionals, especially leaders, need to master what to communicate and how to communicate, encourage people to speak, actively listen to what they say, engage in candid “giving and taking” communication.

Communication is not a single dimensional talk down from the top, communication has to flow via all directions also through common business language, not the functional dialects, to avoid ‘lost in translation." Everybody needs to be involved, at a certain point and at a certain stage of the strategy execution. Involve all stakeholders right from the beginning; practice cross boundary communication, seek ideas/suggestions with the execution team and create a bonding within the team. That will help the expectation management/perception management etc. The key consideration is to understand that translating strategy is not a project to fix something which is wrong reactively, it is a proactive mentality to move the organization to a future point.

Effective communication will enable better-translating strategy into the program portfolio: Communication clarity directly impacts business effectiveness and strategy implementation success rate. There are top leaders accountable for the business and it depends on their vision and ability to initiate digital dialogs, collect the cross-functional teams’ import and commitment to get the work well-done. Inconsistent communication blocks business fluidity, and causes organizational stagnation. Misinterpretation enlarges communication gaps and causes decision-ineffectiveness.

The strategic plan drives an organizational project portfolio mix. The desired portfolio mix drives project selection criteria. Effective communication closes functional gaps and enhances the linkage from strategy/vision to implementation. “Less is more” from the communication perspective means you need to speak less, observe and listen more, and truly improve communication effectiveness with empathy and clarity. To have this happen reliably requires a bidirectional and reciprocal cycle of listening and telling, and develops the culture of continuous improvement and expedite speed of strategy execution.

Effective communication will identify, and enforce both internal and external success factors in strategy execution: Communication is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision, build trustworthy relationships and drive desired changes. Effective communicators are working to spread that throughout the organization in a diverse set of activities with mixed communication styles, lubricate business relationships, clarify key business success factors for accelerating strategy execution.

To fix miscommunication or misinterpretation symptoms, the management needs to clarify: How would you describe the prevailing business mood? What are the needed changes in communication, behavior, process, accessibility, or engagement approach? Do you inspire open conversations about the work environment? Effective communication should harness trust relationships between different team members, between teams, or employees and management. The effective collaboration platforms, technologies or tools optimize business processes and improve communication maturity.

Digital communication is sophisticated, but it’s the coordination mechanism to inspire, motivate, persuade, negotiate, and clarify, to make progressive change possible and allow a group of people to function as a cohesive team to achieve more. In fact, communication clarity directly impacts on the change effectiveness, strategy effectiveness and the speed of digital transformation.

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