Initiativesportfolio

A healthy business initiatives portfolio expands into the hidden dimension of business prosperity by building unique capabilities.

The organization and business ecosystem could be at the tipping point for the digital paradigm shift. Companies with an effective business initiatives portfolio management can translate strategic goals into business initiatives and develop differentiated competencies. 

Portfolio management is about doing the right things, focusing on improving the decision-making process around which programs and projects should be executed based on their alignment with the goals and objectives of the organization, as well as preventing value leakage, and improving the overall success rate of strategy management.

Initiatives portfolio management is a practical tool to explore macro-environment corporate success factors: It helps to navigate critical business activities to reduce uncertainty and deal with complexity. While some organizations may be excellent in the execution of project management, they may not have a mature portfolio management process in place, which causes issues with the strategic alignment of programs and portfolios.

Portfolio management should focus on setting leadership principles and providing program/project guidance, rather than micro aspects of the projects by asking more tough questions both at the strategic and tactical level. How do you manage or engage associates in your organizations, how do you communicate organizational objects or goals? The new programs no longer stand alone; they fit together into an integrated system. It also focuses on the decision-making process around which programs and projects should be executed based on their alignment with the goals and objectives of the organization.

Portfolio Management provides an “executive” view of short, mid and long term business initiatives: The artifact becomes one that covers the following: what the application portfolio looks like today, what approach should we take to get the future ready? Portfolio Management provides an “executive” view including impact analysis, reporting and alignment to strategy, allowing the portfolio to be fine-tuned over time so that it delivers maximum strategic advantage to the organization. There needs to be a well-defined portfolio prioritization and rationalization process with business partners. Portfolio rationalization is an activity more critical than ever because economic cycles are getting shorter, and decision cycles are getting shorter.

Depending on the maturity of the organization and the pain points, PMO proactively provides deliverables regardless of all methodologies, measurements. Sometimes the goal of PMO is not only the strategy alignment and value leverage; it’s also about setting the right priority. When a new initiative comes up, the senior stakeholders must be able to rate its importance. If one focuses on short term value too much, this might not support long term strategy and vision in the end. If one puts too much focus on long-term value, there may be a loss of momentum and engagement.

Portfolio management as a governance discipline to simplify, optimize: There are strategic risks and systemic risks, there are financial risks, operational risks, or regulation risks, etc, in portfolio management. The primary focus of the risk management process would be to identify and manage those risks that can be addressed; also try to understand uncertainty, take scientific scenario planning to deal with “VUCA” reality smoothly.

Most of the organizations concern on how to simplify things and create an infrastructure that can be more reactive & proactive to the needs of users. Overly rigid processes are seen as a block to progress rather than a facilitator of it. Portfolio management as a governance discipline is an enabling vehicle that provides a platform for determining sound corporate behavior and structured decision-making for improving business initiatives management maturity.

Upon increasing paces of changes, the reality is that there are a lot of things that can go wrong and it is not always easy to identify what is important. A healthy business initiative portfolio expands into the hidden dimension of business prosperity by building unique capabilities, exploring the emerging opportunities, designing new business models, and investigating new paths for accelerating growth.

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Inspirecreativity

Creativity is an actual idea carried out in a tangible way that shows something new or imagined. Individuals need to focus on multidimensional thanking and taking creative activities.

Creativity is an innate ability to generate novel ideas. Creativity is a combination of something currently non-existent, thoughts, acts and with or without constraints. Creativity is not a "thing," but a process that happens as a proactive mental activity to a problem. Creativity is a phenomenon, it is all around us, we just need to get connected with it:

Creativity is spurred at the intersection of consciousness and subconsciousness: As human beings, consciousness is at the center of who we are. Creativity is often being called “out-of-the-box” thinking or thinking in the new or bigger box. Creativity involves birthing something into existence which was not there before. Consciousness is awareness of the subject we are talking about, our knowledge and strength in the field, like the compass, instructing our actions on a daily basis. The subconscious mind can be thought of like the garden in which the seeds germinate and grow, creative energy is released.

Being creative is not only about "being knowledgeable," or being skillful. The process to create involves consciousness of a high order, and subconsciousness of energy flow. It often implies to mix something new with old. The ideal scenario is a judicious and mature mix of both styles - logic and creativity; conventional and unconventional thinking. It takes vision to imagine the “art of possible,” passion to overcome obstacles in reaching new heights; learn, grow, fail forward or start over. Passion does fuel your imagination and spur creativity.

Creativity is a sort of unconventional wisdom: Creativity is multifaceted. The angle from which you view it determines how you identify and categorize the similarities and differences among the many faces of creativity. Creativity is fresh and new - at times throwing away conventional means, trying something radically new, and having overall multifaceted resourcefulness. Creativity comes from dissatisfaction with the existing scenario and zeal to create or improve the things. It is important to have a motivational environment to encourage creativity, with less restricted rules, or breaking down the outdated rules for sparking creativity.

At present, we can’t separate knowledge and creativity. Business should always be open to, conscious of, and feel empowered to act upon out of the box thinking. Innovation is often a collaborative activity; a motivated team will be creative and will be innovative, but the team must have the latitude; they can build multi-dimensional competencies to formulate creative alternatives to resolve problems innovatively. Organizations should reward your thinkers, the thinkers who are able to generate fresh ideas, put their ideas into action, creating value for the company in process/ product/ technology /market innovation to achieve sustainable profitability.

Creativity needs a problem, a creative person needs a purpose along with inspiration, passion to solve problems alternatively: Creativity is as much defined by the problem as by the capacity of the individual to connect things to resolve that problem in new and sometimes unexpected ways. Creative traits include such as open mindedness, cognitive intelligence, learning plasticity, intellectual engagement, pattern discovery, ambiguity tolerance, high adaptability, or risk intelligence etc. Creativity is the ability to work and produce, requiring a certain degree of independence and mental balance, the proper psychological level of inner security and genuine discovery, autonomy, and mastery.

Creativity is as much defined by the problem as by the capacity of the individual to connect things to resolve that problem in new and sometimes unexpected ways. An obsession with the rigidity of efficiency stunts the innovation creation process. Innovators seek inventions, new designs, Harnessing the different experiences, perspectives and ideas of people for creative problem-solving. They can help their organization generate and share fresh ideas, explore new opportunities and achieve the art of possible.

Creativity is an actual idea carried out in a tangible way that shows something new or imagined. Individuals need to focus on multidimensional thanking and taking creative activities. It is imperative for improving the organization's culture to one that is more innovative, inspires creativity, celebrates or allows failure. The organization must allow for learning, experimentation and failure. That means you cannot run at maximum capacity. All structure and business processes tend to funnel creativity in a specified direction to accelerate its performance for the long term prosperity.

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Isntcompetitionnaturalphenomenon?

Good competitions rejuvenate-creative energy; push us to -grow, innovate, influence; lift us from -surviving to thriving, evolutionize-human society, ultimately.

Look at the sky with-

all the great planets,

in equilibrium from-

forces of the other.

Are they competing with-

each other to-

shine through-

the darkness;

can they -

exchange information,

to grow consciousness of -

the universe?


Competition in biology,

means -

the cutthroat struggle,

in nature for-

life's essentials;

as part of -

the genetic bias of -

every living thing;

competition between-

ideas and values advance-

human society;

competition to-

further the world of -

pursuing ego is-

negative,

unprofessional,

apathetic.

Good competitions rejuvenate-

creative energy;

push us to -

grow,

innovate,

influence;

lift us from -

surviving to thriving,

evolutionize-

human society,

ultimately.

Negative competition suffocates -

the spirit of change,

diminish-

the brightness of -

true talent:

create-

unhealthy rivalries

causes confusion,

frustration,

stagnation,

downgrades humanity,

unwisely.


If competition is-

friendly,

lighthearted,

thought-provoking,

inspires us to imagine,

helps us create ideas,

brings -

intellectual stimulation;

without being made to -

feel less.

it renews -

positive energy,

encourages us to-

pursue the “art of possibilities,”

adventurously.


Competition shouldn’t mean-

we want to be -

the same;

but means-

we want to be unique,

the best;

we can be.

Compete with-

purpose;

over time,

things change,

humans are-

developing,

growing,

maturing

autonomously;

choices are -

part of -

evolutionary process,

accelerate -

collective human progress,

impressively.

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Initiatestepwisestrategyimplementationcontinuum

Business leaders today should navigate through complexity, velocity, uncertainty or ambiguity in a dynamic business environment and enhance an iterative strategy management cycle effectively.

In today’s “VUCA” business dynamic, strategic planning and execution are a continuous cycle of organizational adaptation to a changing world. The best strategies offer a somewhat clear path for implementation while the worst are vague or unrealistic.

 Timing is everything, the changing market conditions drive the need to ensure that corporate strategic initiatives are aligned and realigned with operational tasks. Strategy and execution are no longer linear steps, but an iterative continuum.



Get sponsorship and endorsement from the C-Level for dynamic planning: Strategic change starts with a “sense of urgency,” which can only come from the top management. You need strong senior executive leadership for support of strategy execution, drive strategic change and adoption, and provide a competitive advantage in the long run. The visible and active sponsorship is critical to focus on resource assignment, adoption, communication and training, coordination and facilitation, not bullying and forcing. Strong leaders have to support/sponsor strategy to ensure competence, talent for execution is available.

The top management sponsorship is crucial to develop a good strategy, discover the unique business strength and build the culture of performance. The strong sponsor is more important than the correct functional alignment. A great sponsor can overcome organizational issues, particularly early in the maturity. The sponsor must be fully engaged with the strategic change, willing to be visible, willing to lead other senior stakeholders and ready to participate in continuous communication, making adjustments of planning and improving strategy management effectiveness.

Identify strategy champions and build a qualified execution team: The best people to execute a strategy are those who have contributed to the development of it. A strategy implementation team should be built with strategy champions who can shape strategic thinking, drive strategic changes efficiently, break the resistance of people and encourage them to accept new changes. There are multiple personas for strategy execution such as strategy navigators, strategy practitioners, strategy evaluators, etc. It is a slow process and takes a lot of patience from strategy champions to achieve higher than expected business results.

A well-defined strategy needs a well-trained team to execute it; and there is no shortcut to it. It is advisable for any organization to adapt step by step process to manage strategy and build internal capability with it. Finding and building the right team with complementary skills and empowering them to implement the strategy effectively.

Perform consistent clear communication between all stakeholders: Communication clarity directly impacts business effectiveness and strategy implementation success rate. One of the factors for strategy management to fail at the implementation phase is its complexity. Often, there’s ambiguity in strategy management and dynamism in strategy implementation. The expectation is not communicated clearly to all and is neither well understood by all stakeholders or well defined into the achievable business goals and objectives. Top leaders are able to initiate digital dialogs, collect the cross-functional teams’ input and commitment to get the work well-done and accountable for high performance results.

Good communication is based on expertise, contextual understanding, and deep insight, to avoid “lost in translation” syndrome. Effective communication will identify, and enforce both internal and external success factors in strategy execution, avoid roadblocks or overcome barriers on the way. Either individually or collectively, communicating with business peers, partners, or customers, needs to be authentic and fact-based. 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. Everybody needs to be involved, at a certain point and at a certain stage of the strategy execution.

Conduct periodic follow-ups to review/refresh checkpoints, manage internal/external success factors of strategy implementation: When you define goals and objectives, resulting from a strategic thinking/implementation process, these goals should have a mid to long term time horizon with intermediate checkpoints. To have a "complete" picture of how effective your strategy is, the management needs to check up: Are your people acting in a way that is consistent with the strategy? Are your processes and people integrated to ensure a consistent ability to change? Is strategy implementation on the right track to achieve higher than expected business results? Etc.

It’s important to set up a checkpoint, conduct periodic follow-ups; make those checkpoint reviews comprehensively, take into account financial and non-financial measures, internal improvements, past outcomes and ongoing requirements as indications of future performance. The term is in tune with the risk-driven, adaptive nature of agile strategy management. You must have relevant metrics that measure not only financial and market performance, but operational and organizational performance as well. You should check to see if you're on course what adjustments are required, and where to go next.

There are many roadblocks on the way of strategy execution. Therefore, business leaders today should navigate through complexity, velocity, uncertainty or ambiguity in a dynamic business environment and enhance an iterative strategy management cycle effectively. It’s important for managers to take a holistic view of strategy, keep their eyes on the higher horizons, focus on what matters the most, identify what generates the most value for the company, express that in strategic objectives with clarity, and take step-wise strategy scenarios to implement it smoothly.

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Inclusiveboard

Corporate governance is about how well an organization is being run, whether it is in the right direction, as well as its overall problem-solving competency.

Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in the right direction and achieve expected business results. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must set the inclusive tones, have the agility to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals collaboratively. 

Here are the multiple perspectives of shaping a inclusive boardroom to lead seamless business transformation.

  Inclusive Boardroom

Improve Corporate Board inclusiveness  Digital means rapid change, the unprecedented level of uncertainty and ambiguity, the expanded spectrum of innovation, and the theme of people centricity. All of these changes bring significant opportunities and responsibilities for the new breed of digital BoDs to lead differently. The digital corporate board leadership today needs to be future-oriented, highly adaptive, steer the organization towards the digital journey with a clear vision, a highly effective board agenda and a set of best and next practices.

Inclusiveness Inclusiveness is the quality that maximizes and leverages the diverse talents, backgrounds, and perspectives of all employees. Even the wisest person has the corner of the fool, it takes inclusiveness to have collective insight. Being inclusive is both the mindset and attitude.

”I”factors in the Boardroom The digital Board is responsible for ensuring an appropriate mix of skills, knowledge, and experience are present or available for it to fulfill its functions. Developing a contemporary digital board is not only about filling with cool-headed, high-professional and high-intelligent BoDs, but also about making good policies, advocating changes, and monitoring the progress to ensure they are leading the business in the right direction. Here is three “I”s to digitize the boardroom.

Insight Gaps-minding in the Boardroom Leadership is about envisioning and leading the business towards its future. Top leadership roles such as board directors are supposed to be the guiding force in the enterprise. In practice, the digital era is volatile, complex, uncertain and ambiguous. Many say that the multitude of gaps (thinking, knowledge, innovation, strategy execution, etc.) are enlarged because different industries, organizations, functions, and individuals evolve with varying speed. To lift up the board leadership maturity, minding the insight gap is challenging, but a critical step for improving leadership effectiveness. Leadership is an influence, influence comes from progressive mindsets, profound insight, and step-wise actions. Insight is an understanding of cause and effect based on the identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario.

Build a High-Performing Board Corporate Board plays a significant role in overseeing organizational strategy, practicing governance and exemplifying leadership disciplines. However, most of the boards still operate on a traditional approach to recruiting for the expertise and executing its function; what’s the paradigm shift in building a high-performing Board, and how to create the synergy, trust, and confidence of BoDs?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with 9000+ blog postings in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.



The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Slideshare Presentation


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The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Introduction


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter 1 Introduction: The Digital Board's Composition Inquiries


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter II Introduction: The Digital Board's Digital Inquiries


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As": Chapter III Introduction: The Digital Board's Strategy Inquiries


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter IV Introduction: The Digital Board's IT Inquiries


The "Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As" Chapter V Introduction: The Digital Board's Leadership Inquiries

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Innovativeleadershipstyles

There is no “one size fits all” formula, or a single leadership style, but rather many that can be used and in many instances, several can be morphed to fit the style required to amplify leadership influence.

Leadership is complex yet simple. Being a leader means giving people confidence on where to go via a clear vision and how to get there via a good strategy. 

Command and control style leadership is gradually out of steam, strong global leadership today is based on fresh insight, logical reasoning, empathetic understanding, persuasive communication, professional maturity, with continuous deliveries to deepen influence.

Authentic leadership is based on character, growing with an advanced mindset: It takes the courage to be original, be different, be true to one's own personality, spirit, or character to spark innovation and amplify leadership influence. Broadly speaking, a significant adjustment in human evolutionary path rooted at the mindset level, either for driving progressive changes or complex problem-solving. Leadership as making your people grow is a tough call based on “who they are,” authentically. It is logical that "character" is a critical success factor for leadership. The character goes beyond just ethics, the complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person, group, or nation to make their influence. To develop strong leadership, look around to find out how to bring talented leaders with the right leadership traits closer to integrity and authenticity, train them with proper skills and cross-boundary leadership competency to amplify collective influence.

The substances of leadership are about vision, positive influence, and progression. Authenticity matters as you have to deal with so many different personalities and diversity of cultures, break down stereotypical biases, fill a certain gap or multiple gaps in order to lead to the future smoothly. Leaders with advanced mindsets embark upon the road of total inclusion as that appears to be the only way to advance forward and realize long term prosperity. Authentic leadership presents very characteristics of courage, competency, and consistency. Not only do character-based leaders keep consistent on themselves; but they also look for consistency in their teams, organization, and the ecosystem.

Situational or personalized leadership is in demand to broaden perspective and deepen leadership insight: Static leadership does not work well in the digital age. Great leadership is an ability to discover and enforce leadership strength. Leadership is situational, there is the time you need to lead ahead and facilitate answers, there’s the time you need to lead from behind, and ask insightful questions to attract fresh viewpoints. Situational leadership is affected by context, culture, including capability and resources, and the means to an end, rather than just defined by the end result.

People need to feel that leaders understand their concerns, particularly in tough times; recognize their talent and contribution to the organizations. Personalization needs to be the theme for leading a people-centric world. So great leaders can build competitive teams by complementing each other’s viewpoint, learning, criticizing, and collaborating; deepening their leadership influence by tailoring customer’ needs or solving employees’ problems smoothly, in order to improve leadership effectiveness.

Competency-based leadership: It is an effective practice to build the distinctive leadership “hardcore,” Every leader is unique with a set of differentiated competency. Leaders’ competitive uniqueness will attract divergent thoughts and diversified talents, unify and bridge the variety of differences from mindset to actions. One of the digital leadership capacities is to get people out of their comfort zone to meet challenges, learn new skills and unlock collective creativity. Competent leaders with unique strength spur creativity with confidence, pursue the goal with persistence, and practice leadership discipline with openness. They will make a team of common people achieve uncommon results; unleash the team’s potential, coach with empathy, lead via the power of pull.

Often, businesses tend to focus on what the leader needs to do differently going forward. It’s important to convey leadership philosophy, develop expertise, build leadership profiles and reputation all the time. Leadership is the ability to develop people, innovating, coaching, problem-solving, etc, are all great leadership competencies. Leadership influence can be spread out, improvement can only be there if people accept change and enjoy growth, as well as make the most out of it.

Developing leaders is a crucial investment, requiring time, energy, methodology and practices. It is often viewed as a luxury in today's fast-paced work environment. There is no “one size fits all” formula, or a single leadership style, but rather many that can be used and in many instances, several can be morphed to fit the style required to amplify leadership influence.

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Initiatepolicysetting

Generally speaking, the policy is a set of principles for decision making or guidelines to drive behaviors.

As hyperconnectivity is the very nature of the digital organization, cross-silo collaboration is crucial to build and sustain a dynamic workplace in which collaboration happens in that space between people in relationships receptively and thoughtfully interacting with interest and care for one another’s needs and activities.

The most effective digital workplace is in which sharing and collaboration are the norms, understand, and recognize that everyone plays a “piece of the pie,” inspire teamwork and collaboration which are the route towards building a people-centric organization.

       Initiate Policy-Setting

Initiatepolicies Due to the high velocity and complexity of modern business, running a successful business is both art and science. There are different mindsets, business dialects, communication styles, business contexts, management practices that can shift frequently. It’s important to set the right policies to encourage desired change. People need to do what policies say or have the policies say what they do. Policy is not static, it needs to keep evolving.

Innatepolicy Generally speaking, the policy is a set of principles for decision making or guidelines to drive behaviors. Policies need to serve a purpose. Top leaders are both policy makers and followers. The corporate board needs to clarify whether the organization ensures policy coherence across the portfolio; or whether the policy-making and governance are effective enough to improve multifaceted value creation of the company.

Initiate Policy Generally speaking, the policy is a set of principles or guidelines to shape collective mindset, attitude, drive behaviors, influence culture and collective performance. The policymakers such as board directors should have abstract thinking skills, multi-dimensional intelligence, interdisciplinary knowledge & understanding, as well as empathetic communication skills to convey the accurate insight via the brief messages and improve policy-making effectiveness. How does the organization ensure policy coherence across the portfolio?

Initiatingpolicymaking A set of good policies define why we make a decision one way or another or the scenario behind problem-solving. Policies need to serve a purpose and they are mandatory to follow through. However, in reality, in many organizations, just because a policy exists, it doesn't mean they will be effective or followed - that takes leadership maturity and peoples’ commitment.

The BoDs as the Digital Rule-Maker The purpose of the board of directors is to direct the organization in the right direction. The board directors as senior directorial roles have both privilege and responsibility to “talk the walk,” make the good policies or set digital principles to drive changes and lead digital paradigm shifts. The board of directors is the digital rule-maker for getting the business management digital ready.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #9000th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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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Initiateinterdisciplinarylogic

Logic becomes nonlinear as organizations or human societies turn to be more hyper-connected, and interdependent.

Due to the “VUCA” nature of digitalization, complexity is unavoidable as things do interact, particularly in the case of "nonlinear" interaction. You can't predict the actual effect of interaction straightforwardly. 

To deal with varying issues and circumstances with uncertainty, it’s important to take cross-logical approach to analyze, synthesize, make objective perceptions, interpret without “getting lost in interpretation,” or ignorance of emergent trends, in order to improve change effectiveness and organizational maturity.

Abstract philosophical logic: Philosophy is broader, abstract human knowledge into deep wisdom; philosophy is methodical and has deliberate processes for questioning, reasoning, identifying faulty reasoning, allowing people to think in a bigger box for clarifying the cause and effect of problems thoroughly. Philosophical abstraction is the foundation of insight by being able to step back from the details, overcoming the symptom of` `lost in details"; seeing patterns, generalization, standards, context, and a bigger picture to build trust and spread the truth.

Philosophy comprises logic, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, seeing complexity explained away in terms of a few simple principles an issue cannot be attained. Patterns, real and abstract, are the very essence of thought, communication, computation, or society. Philosophical logic allows people to abstract and balance varying viewpoints, even if they are opposite, so they can perceive objectively, get the true understanding of the complexity of issues, discover the truth from myth, and solve problems more effortlessly.

Strategic logic: The digital era upon us is about choice and people-centricity. A strategy is a sort of competitive "logic" manifested through organizational actions based on a clarified vision, experiment with policies or rules that create a favorable and sustainable outcome. Strategic logic is a part of the critical thinking process referring specifically to the processes of analyzing and making judgments about what has happened, doing predictive analysis on what will happen, and building consensus about what you are going to do about it.

Strategic logic is about “keeping the end” in mind, thinking business from a transformational perspective, and how to gain an advantage over competitors for the long term, It's about getting and leveraging the best information you can and continuously updating for diagnosing the real issues, making choices, and solving problems at the strategic level. Technically, strategic thinking involves multiple thinking processes such as spatial thinking and visionary recognition, information analysis and interpretation for uncovering all the options, thinking long term, not just the immediate goals.

Process logic: “Process" thinking is a logical reasoning process with a series of actions, activities, changes, etc., that proceeds from one to the next to achieve certain things. Robust process means a set of connected things or parts forming a complex whole, or a set of things working together as interconnecting parts of a mechanism to build business capabilities. Organizations develop repeatable sequences of activities that are reliable because they happen the same way each time you do them; it makes sense to think about the process with a set of activities that you are going to repeat for achieving business results.

Many who believe they are process-thinkers believe they are logical and they proceed in a logical progression by digging through the “executable knowing “how.” To enhance process logic for running a coherent, intelligent, resilient business, it’s important to do comprehensive process analysis - what is done, what is needed, describe the root causes of the problem, what can be done for existing "as-is" processes - or what is needed to achieve future "to-be" processes.

The linear logic helps to break down things to the pieces, but it often ignores the interconnectivity between parts and the whole. Logic becomes nonlinear as organizations or human societies turn to be more hyper-connected, and interdependent. It’s important to apply a multidimensional thinking box to understand business context and sustain diversified viewpoints to gain an in-depth understanding of existing or emerging issues, and handle them holistically to achieve higher-than expected results.

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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 9000+ blog postings in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. 

The “Digital Master” book series includes 29 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.

Innovatestructurally Innovation is about the future, without it, you lose sight of tomorrow. Innovation is complex and scalable in the hyper-connected business environment. It’s not so easy to count on one individual or one team to do innovation, more often than not, innovation is the cross-disciplinary management discipline for idea creation and implementation in a structural way.

Innovateleadership leadership is about direction and change. Far too often the term "leadership" is thrown around loosely and without any regard to true meaning. Leadership is complex and situational, the hardcore digital leadership capabilities are multidimensional, what’re the disruptive trends; how does your organization catalyze progressive changes and how much better can you do to leverage creativity and lead a seamless transformation?

Initiatecauseeffectanalysis A new paradigm arises out of progressive mindsets, abundant information, updated knowledge, intelligent processes, and structural approaches. Technically, innovation involves new ways of bringing together ideas and resources to create something novel, and then transform those novel ideas to realize commercial value.

Initiativesofgovernance With "VUCA '' new normal, in some circumstances, the line between management and governance is blurred, there are varying degrees of understanding of the scope of corporate governance, and cross disciplinary governance practices. GRC means keeping abreast of standards and auditing to all regulations that may affect the company.

Innersustainabilityframework Running a business is energy-consuming; waste of resources is costly. In most organizations, sustainability isn’t integrated into existing key processes & performance management systems. To deal with hyper-connected and interdependent business new normal, the framework approach makes sense if large scale issues such as sustainability are cross-disciplinary, information heavy, laser focusing on the strategic goals, practices orchestration leadership, facilitates cross-functional communication, develop a comprehensive roadmap, optimize processes, take a structural effort to achieve measurable results.

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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Initiatechange

'Change' is continuously happening and spiraling up in such a dynamic environment, especially the large well-established corporations and within that environment.

With high velocity, unprecedented uncertainty, information exponentiality, and fierce competition as the reality, digital enterprises are inherently complicated. Change is the new normal either individually or at the organizational scope. The ability to change and business adaptability directly decide the organization’s long-term competency.

 The highly intensive changes do not happen in isolation from each other in predictable ways, but act as a complex system feeding, amplifying and ameliorating change effects. Companies with strong changeability will get very great chances and opportunities to change the business in many fields, and lift up the organization to the next cycle of growth and maturity.

Drive change from mindset to attitude to behavior: Usually people are the center of changes. Vision is more than a destination, it is the way people envision change and look at things. Develop change capability in those who'll help to drive and deliver the change, also consider the ability of those impacted by the change. Managing change as a continuum means that it is not sufficient to just change people’s attitude or control their behaviors manually because you can’t manipulate how they think. If you can’t change their mindset, the change result won’t be sustainable, and the old habit will come back soon.

The differentiator is that people embrace change if they understand the value adding to them. The factor to the “transformational change” and its further “championing” has been the endless self-exploration and self-transformation in the material, emotional, intellectual dimensions that make a big leap in the journey of digital transformation. It is people’s understanding and perspectives of the result of change that will shape one’s mind, trigger the positive psychology, and drive one to behave in one way or another. Besides behavior changes, there are tactical changes such as updating technologies, optimizing processes, and making continuous change deliveries.

Integrate organizational design into the process design and re-engineering: It presupposes the ability of each link to articulate their strategic intent. The pace of change is accelerated both in businesses and society; either as an individual or an organization, structural changes may be necessitated based on the extent and spread of re-design of processes. The process, structure, behavior, and self-interest of individuals and groups -all these factors interact in a dynamic, not just the human cost or the human resource to fill a specific spot mechanically.

Re-designed processes may require behaviors that may be again out of the comfort zone. It has to be implemented systematically and communicate democratically, and integrate the loosely coupled functions into business change competency. It is important to establish change principles that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about managing changes effectively, apply cross-disciplinary knowledge, take a structural approach to making radical changes in the underlying processes and functions and sustain change effects.

Accelerate end-to-end change performance: The perspective of change unfolds into a wider multi-dimensionally systemic business continuum, which would perhaps invoke further reflections of the focal scope and purpose of changes, as well as the generic perspective of running a dynamic business. Change Management shouldn’t be a conundrum, to make change sustain, the important thing is "end-to-end" performance.

Change can be an opportunity, at the end of the day, it needs to be all about unlocking business performance by moving the business number upwards and achieving calculable business results. To keep the change wheel spinning, improve change effectiveness with “end to end” performance, it’s critical to motivate and reward good behaviors, discourage bad ones because people’s behavior usually responds to how they are measured.

'Change' is continuously happening and spiraling up in such a dynamic environment, especially the large well-established corporations and within that environment. To move from one level to another level of changes maturity requires step-function changes in tools, culture, leadership, and process, and make the change as a differentiated business competency,

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Innersustainabilityframework

There are the trends with an interdisciplinary convergence of diverse sciences and humanities essential to the evolution toward a circular economy and our shared beautiful planet.

Running a business is energy-consuming; waste of resources is costly. In most organizations, sustainability isn’t integrated into existing key processes & performance management systems. To deal with hyper-connected and interdependent business new normal, the framework approach makes sense if large scale issues such as sustainability are cross-disciplinary, information heavy, laser focusing on the strategic goals, practices orchestration leadership, facilitates cross-functional communication, develop a comprehensive roadmap, optimize processes, take a structural effort to achieve measurable results.

Principles: The leadership sets sustainability as a considerably high priority, sustainability management has a very wide scope and is a relatively new area of expertise. It needs to focus on coordination and facilitation, follow the right set of well-defined principles to enhance reusability and reduction of waste, create new revenue streams to impact both bottom-line and top-line business growth.

All parties should benefit from following them. So sustainability is not the job of one department, but the shared responsibility of each individual and function, to make the working environment more energy-efficient and societies more resourceful.

Leadership: Many organizations which get stuck at the low level of maturity lacks the right capabilities or skills to manage sustainability, etc. The major role of leadership is in the orchestration and delivery of the effective process to improve corporate sustainability.

Corporate leaders need to become advocates and educators for corporate-wide environmental sustainability initiatives and transcribe a path that converts outside concerns into inside engagement, reduces energy use & waste & emissions in operations, manages corporate reputation for sustainability, responds to regulatory constraints or opportunities proactively.

Strategy: There is always an element of social benefits goal in any industry; it is however, for the organization and its promoters to draw the balance between social and commercial objectives, business management should make strategic decisions with an integrated view that blends financial, environmental, and social perspectives, in the development of a holistic sustainability strategy.

It needs to be kept in mind that in a hugely capitalistic environment today, the basic human needs have gone to a much higher level. And only once these are satisfied, do organizations look at social goals, integrate sustainability strategy into corporate strategy cohesively, communicate what needs to be done down the line to the various functional domains responsible for unlocking sustainability potential of the business.

Roadmap: There are multifaceted approaches to improve sustainability, and there are diverse groups of people that are impacted by sustainability management effectiveness and efficiency. Business management should become more insightful to manage the risks and opportunities in the future. The methodology and roadmap for sustainability management are designed to evaluate a company’s sustainability opportunities and risks throughout its extended value chain.

The roadmap is the outcome to mind gaps between TO-BE and AS-IS. You can define any type of roadmap within the context. The transition plan, or roadmap, is the set of sustainability investments, programs, projects and milestones that take you from the current state to the future state.

Process: Running a business is energy-consuming; waste of resources is costly. Sustainability needs to be integrated into existing key processes & performance management systems. In many organizations that are getting stuck at the lower level of maturity, sustainability isn’t integrated into existing key processes & performance management systems. Because a key piece of information—information around environmental and social concerns, has been missing from most business operations.

Sustainability is not a random effort, but a structural effort; it should be embedded into key business processes and deliver the next generation of the integral solution to fill out the gap, optimize energy usage and improve the overall business maturity.

Practices: Business carbon footprint impacts organizational efficiency. In fact, efficiency has been a key internal driver for sustainable practices and is the low hanging fruit when moving beyond compliance and obligation.

Whatever the activity to improve sustainability; the best way is the one that uses the least resources and takes the least time and still meets quality standards. That method is the best practice. Every organization should strive to explore the "best practices" throughout their organization to improve energy efficiency and scale up sustainability effect.

Scoreboard: The forward-looking management should ponder: How could they measure current CO2 footprint accurately? The goals of applying sustainability scoreboard are to translate the sustainability vision and strategic goals into operational goals and concrete objectives, measuring its performance visually.

Any real economic system is composed of and affected by diverse components such as peer pressure, social structures, globalization, and a host of other factors not normally included in economic thinking. Sustainable Balanced Scorecards and sustainability cycle assessments are examples to help the management track strategy implementation, show the visible performance result in the shorter term.

There are the trends with an interdisciplinary convergence of diverse sciences and humanities essential to the evolution toward a circular economy and our shared beautiful planet. Sustainability framework as a coherent set of principles, agreements, checklists, standards, processes, tools and building blocks, best practices provides the outline for forward-thinking companies intended to be fully developed or explored to ensure the long-term economic success of the enterprise and reach the next level of business effectiveness, efficiency, and maturity.

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Innovatestructurally

The leverage point is how to cultivate great leaders, structure innovation without adding too much complexity.

Innovation is about the future, without it, you lose sight of tomorrow. Innovation is complex and scalable in the hyper-connected business environment. It’s not so easy to count on one individual or one team to do innovation, more often than not, innovation is the cross-disciplinary management discipline for idea creation and implementation in a structural way. 

Managing innovation holistically is all about applying a scientific approach to problem identifying and solving, identifying interconnections and interdependencies, encouraging learning and understanding flows, in order to decode innovation serendipity smoothly.

Business leaders have to dive deeper to see the invisible in order to read digital sentiment clearly, spur innovation continuously: Organizations are the robust and adaptive living system, business leaders should think as an entrepreneur to solve problems alternatively. Every state of energy is conditional and must meet certain conditions in order to take that form, groom more highly effective innovation leaders with both positive thinking, risk-intelligent attitude and high aptitude. They are able to capture emerging digital trends, develop learning agility, and pull innovation execution towards the right direction for achieving high performance results.

Though innovation happens more often from bottom up, the spirit comes from the top. Innovation leaders deepen their contextual understanding of the business ecosystem, knowing the business dynamic, perceiving the business insight in a cohesive way, enforcing cross-functional communication and cross-boundary collaboration. They empower people to build the culture of innovation; encourage them to be creative, foster an open environment in which people can unlock their creativity, build inclusive teams that can bring all sorts of strengths and capabilities together to amplify creativity effect and run a highly innovative organization.

Innovation Management needs to establish an effective framework to manage innovation in a systematic way: It is a strategic imperative to develop the organizational level innovation competency. Innovation management needs to lay out different mindsets, structures, processes, capabilities to unleash the full potential of a business system by tapping organizational potential to innovate, investing in the cultivation of capability and capacity. There is an increasing reliance on information technology to provide differentiation and speed up innovation. It’s also critical to set guidelines, nurture a culture of innovation, communicate with varying stakeholders to understand their needs, collect feedback for sparking creative ideas, recharging business models and managing innovation systematically.

Innovation happens when the conditions are right for it to happen and to successfully propagate for accelerating a dynamic. Freshness, robustness, sensitivity, comprehensiveness, autonomy, speed are all very characteristics of digital innovation. Interdisciplinary knowledge and systematic innovation approach is in demand to deal with today’s over-complex business dynamic, set more rigorous procedures for innovation portfolio management and more stringent criteria for the adoption of new innovation initiatives, according to the strategic view of the organization, core competencies and capacities of the company.

Companies have to be prepared to lose some to gain more from innovation efforts for the longer term: If the working environment with delightful interaction is stimulating and challenging, employees should think of knowledge/idea sharing as something they gain, rather than lose. To build innovation management competency for organization, the difficult challenge is not just launching successful teams, but maintaining the motivation and focus of the people, build an open environment in which people can learn and work, improve their productivity, creativity, and design competency so the company can climb the business maturity ladder from functioning to firm to delight.

Innovation is the most desired change. In a creative workplace, it’s actually necessary to have a certain degree of chaos to break down some old rules or outdated processes for playing the innovation oddball with the free spirit. Running a self-organizing innovative business does not mean chaos, but builds the cornerstone of self-regulating business, encourages transparency, and improves innovation capacity. Innovation often has high risks, sometimes, it takes a long time and lots of effort to nurture it into fruition. The management needs to make an objective assessment of their innovation appetite, attitude, and aptitude, manage an innovation portfolio strategically and systematically to achieve great business results for the long term.

Highly ambitious organizations manage innovation by taking a structural approach and solve hyper-complex problems in an alternative way. The leverage point is how to cultivate great leaders, structure innovation without adding too much complexity, streamline idea flow, generate winning concepts on a consistent basis, and achieve sustainable business advantage cohesively.

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Innerlearningagility

People with learning agility, demonstrate the following traits, to adapt to the twenty-first-century business realities.

High organizational learning relates to high response in recognizing and addressing system constraints, and adapting to the ever-changing environment. 

With the increasing pace of changes and the cutting-throat competitions, to effectively respond to the digital dynamics, either individually or collectively, continuous learning becomes an important skill for capability building and prerequisite of developing changeability.

 

         Learning Agility

Innerlearning Agility We live in a knowledge economy, today’s digital professionals are knowledge workers who are open to learning and sharing insight and creating new knowledge all the time. You simply can't resolve the 21st-century problems with the mindsets shaped half-century ago. Continuous learning is not only a job requirement but also a great habit to keep our minds fresh and knowledge updated. Learning agility is a person's ability to learn quickly, and adapt prior knowledge to new experiences, build professional competency, and solve complex problems smoothly. Here are three aspects to develop learning agility.

Innovativelearning With “VUCA” characteristics of the digital environment, people or organizations should keep learning agile. The shift from the reactive learning mentality to proactive learning attitude enables individuals and organizations to look forward, improving their learning competency.

innovativelearningcycles In face of overwhelming growth of information and increasing pace of changes, learning needs to become a crucial component in professional development, or leadership grooming in order to keep their mind open; make their skills updated and continue to build the dynamic professional competency to compete for the future. In fact, learning agility is the fundamental requirement for all digital professionals. Learning is the key to move forward, address any future potential challenges and issues with more confidence. How to shift from the reactive learning mentality to proactive learning habit, and enhance a few crucial learning-growth-innovation cycles smoothly.

Innovatevialearningagility Learning agility is the willingness and ability to learn and then apply those lessons to succeed in new situations. People with learning agility, demonstrate the following traits, to adapt to the twenty-first-century business realities.

Learning agility Today’s workforce is more global, flexible and virtual as the world becomes so hyper-connected and over complex, especially the speed of change is accelerating in the digital era, learning agility is not only the very quality of digital leaders but also the fundamental requirement for all digital professionals, in order to keep the mind open; make the skills updated and continue to build the dynamic digital capabilities to compete for the future. So how can digital leaders cultivate a working environment where learning is encouraged and rewarded, and creativity flourishes? What is the best way to create an environment where innovation can blossom? Is there a global solution, or is every organization different?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about 9000+ blog postings in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.

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Initiatehumancapitaldevelopment

We all have talents each on our own, with an integral people management approach, we would be able to use our talents and capability for the betterment and further unleash collective potential.

Due to the increasing speed of change, the exponential growth of information, and abundant knowledge, there's a disconnect between short-term staff needs and long term talent perspectives. It’s an organization's commitment to effectively manage the flow of talent to achieve organization’s goals and investing in people to ensure long term business advantage.

Know your talent in and out, analyze talent pipeline, develop workforce analytic competency: In any organization, opinions of a person do not just weigh on titles, but how effective a person is in their respective role within the organization, their talent, performance and potentiality, their responsibility and the accountability to fulfill their responsibility. There is a digital way to identify talent -hiring character, raw intelligence, growth mind and recombinant capability: There is a two-step scenario to put the right people in the right positions to solve right problems. First: it’s sourcing, with an expanded talent pool. and second: it’s recruitment process with an unconventional approach. Both can be time taking if a company just relies on traditional ways. If you can make any of these two more innovative and efficient, your problem can be solved seamlessly.

Build workforce analytic competency by preparing the coming skill shift and developing the desired talent competency. Due to the overwhelming growth of information, shortened knowledge cycle, fierce competitions, frequent disruptions, today’s digital professionals need to develop versatile talent and differentiated capabilities to produce high performance results and amplify their professional influence. The one thing to differentiate talented people (either high performance or high potential) from mediocrity is mindset, which further drives attitude. Besides skill fluency, talented people should be selected by the most advanced mindset. The talented managers must work with the right mindset to recreate an inclusive organization in which talented professionals can become sophisticated decision makers, capable problem solvers and innovative influencers to deal with tough issues effectively with every dip in the business life cycle.

Nurture creativity and reinvent new knowledge, the talented employees are limited only by their imagination: Every professional has their own journey for growth either personally or professionally based on their own perception, inner talent, knowledge, life experience, training, and refinement. So people need to feel that leaders show empathy to understand their concerns, particularly in tough times; recognize their talent and contribution to the organizations. Talent management evolves varying hard business factors such as processes, functions, structures, technologies, and soft elements such as communication, culture, leadership, etc, takes an interdisciplinary approach to realize the business vision by unlocking collective potentials.

Talented people are encouraged to discover their own purpose and strength, aligned with the business purpose. Talent management professionals have already risen to the occasion with “big picture” in mind, open up cross-disciplined dialogs, optimize dynamic processes in ways that perhaps were not possible before, eliminate numerous obstacles on the way, provide coaching and guidance, make an influence so that the talent employees are limited only by their imagination.

Cross-functional collaboration helps to fuel ideas and contribution: Human Capital is always the largest intangible asset of a company which has to keep investing, nurturing, and growing to ensure the long term prosperity of the business. Analytics based talent management can help in multiple dimensions for adding value in the way businesses recruit, retain, and nurture the talent; unleashing collective human potential for the business's long term prosperity. You need to discuss the types of talent needed to stretch your thinking, embrace talented people who have diverse backgrounds in multiple dimensions, such as cognitive difference, character, education, life experience, work experience, culture intelligence, interests, etc, to improve innovation competency of the organization.

Human Capital is about potential, if unleashed, can transcend the organization to reach the next level of maturity. There’s uncertainty and risks in the art of unlocking talent. Often resource management becomes a bottleneck for developing talent and unleashing potential. Still, workforce development is a long term investment. The purpose of the training is to catalyze long-term talent development through collaboration and effective communication. It should also be clear how the company will invest in developing their human capital since the organization will benefit significantly. People enjoy working if they are engaged, feel trustful, and make accomplishments.

We all have talents each on our own, with an integral people management approach, we would be able to use our talents and capability for the betterment and further unleash potential. Digital organizations are organic systems with integrated management processes being developed that help to build a cohesive set of business capabilities, to reach high performance in the long run.

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Isntcompetencyspecialthing

Competencies are- interrelated with-traits and experience; requiring -character, talent, determination, persistence, discipline..

Competencies have been embraced -

around the world;

you compete to -

be the best,

among the best.


Competency is-

a combination of -

capabilities with a focus;

capability stands you out;

competency shines you through.


Character is based on -

who you are inside,

authentically;

competency comes from -

sharpening -

your inner strength,

technically;

they are -

two-sides of -

the same coin to -

make high-achievements,

professionally.

Everything consumes -

energy,

let people explore -

where their energy is,

unlock -

the full potential,

synergistically;

strengthen-

the strength,

build-

unique competency,

dedicatedly.


Every professional has -

their own journey of -

growth,

on which,

there is purpose,

in adversity,

we all experience,

learn from it;

we are going to -

get tested or trial,

at various times,

unsurely.

The roadmap for

building competency is-

not a straight-line,

but spiral up ,

expands into -

the further horizon,

extensively.

Competencies are-

interrelated with-

traits and experience;

requiring -

character,

talent,  

determination,

persistence,

discipline,

enabling people to-

produce high performance,

adapt to -

rapid changes,

promptly;

demonstrate resilience when-

getting a setback,

confidently;

become unique professional,

amplify their influence,

consistently.

Isn't competency special thing?

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