Innovativelogic

Logic is the hidden thread behind all intelligent things. Scientific logic is more algorithmic with hardening reasons, artistic logic is a soft clue with subconscious intuition people usually ignore.

Innovation is about figuring out alternative ways to do things. Logic enables us to uncover patterns and understand the interconnectivity underneath the surface. 

To be innovative, you need to re-frame the new box thinking, clarify the logic of connecting dots to generate fresh ideas. First, you need to embrace the unknown; then, you need to challenge the known, practice critical thinking and creative thinking to come up with novel ideas and fresh insight. Innovativeness is a state of mind, infused with an inner cohesion, hidden logic, emotional wholeness and comes from a unique vision to solve problems in conventional ways.

The logic of art is in introspection, the art of logic is in abstraction: You are just these four things; body, mind, emotion, and energy. Artists create art to express themselves, dig deeper about who they are via artistic logic. Art is sometimes created at the intersection of consciousness and subconsciousness, abstract expression and intuition. Art illustrates the world via interpreting abstract to condense reality or transform reality to visual abstract. The true artist channels from head to hand for creativity to be realized. The source of these creative channels is the link to the future, and connecting to nature; thus, there is an innate logic in it. 

From an innovation perspective, one major part of the 'art' is knowing how much science you need for each innovation initiative: The linkage between art and innovation are intertwined, and many skills are transferred between the two. Contemporary artists take cross-disciplinary activities to become artistic technologists; or artistic entrepreneurs, applying logical processes to transform art into fresh ideas to innovative solutions.

Creative logic is the glue to bind up multiple pieces of thoughts or innovative ideas: Creativity is consciousness with a sort of logic that allows one to see how all things can be both connected or disconnected to create completely new forms, ideas, or systems. Creativity is infused with learning agility, perceptual dexterity, critical understanding, 

Being creative does not necessarily mean you are completely spontaneous or lack logic, waiting for such “aha” moments; but it's an inner process of brainstorming, connecting meaningful dots, whatever it makes sense to generate novel ideas. So creative logic can be strengthened by having the ability to live comfortably with contradictory thoughts, express things creatively, and tap creative potential seemingly intuitively. Out of this comes a beautiful thing, the freedom of choice and the plenty seeds of creativity.

Invention is the creative story line with imagination engagement and logical scenario behind it: Invention =conceptualization to developing something; it’s a product of the imagination. Invention transforms challenges and problems into creative answers by designing or engineering something functioning, which did not exist before. Invention is the transformation of capital to a new product/process/idea, etc. Of course there is design, engineering or production logic in it. So inventive logic is the mix of creative and scientific logic; What defines science from chance is the ability to repeat a process with the same resultant solution every time, through the application of known facts. Invention and innovation involve a lot of planning, retrospective logic, processes, risk management, and people or execution skills.

Logic is the hidden thread behind all intelligent things. Scientific logic is more algorithmic with hardening reasons, artistic logic is a soft clue with subconscious intuition people usually ignore. It requires taking an interdisciplinary lens to understand the interdependent pieces of scientific invention or artistic craftwork, all pieces are handled with attention and proficiency to come up with innovative solutions.

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The flavor of GRC practices depends on the nature of the business and the level of the organizational maturity. 

Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must have the agility to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals.

The important characteristics of digitalization are over-complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. Hence, GRC (governance, risk management, and compliance) becomes more critical than ever. Here's the context; how should GRC programs be approached? Should technology be a driver? Can you achieve any level of GRC without automation? Can you achieve any level of GRC without people? What is the real driver of GRC? Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in the right direction and achieve expected business results. Here are the multiple perspectives of shaping a strategic boardroom with digital acumen.

Uncover Risks

Initiateriskanalysis Nowadays, opportunities and risks co-exist, risk management is the discipline of managing risks and opportunities; risk intelligent organizations allocate sufficient time to identify opportunities whilst they are managing their risks. Strategic risk management actually creates value by identifying opportunities to capitalize on uncertainty and volatility to maximize gains and improve competitive positioning.

Uncoverrisks Due to uncertainty and complexity of dynamic business ecosystem, risk management, or at a higher level, risk intelligence becomes a strategic imperative for business execution. The efforts on identifying, categorizing, integrating and managing risk are critical to build business advantage in the long run.

Uncoveringrisks II In the face of an ever changing environment with accelerated speed, from the highest strategic to the deepest technical levels, "agility" as the ability to "pivot" and change direction in response to market pressure, is a fast, sure response to external stimuli promptly. The progress to make agility transformation requires overcoming varying challenges, enhancing cooperation from varying parts of the organization, synchronizing different parts of the organization to “think & act” at the compatible speed to unlock performance collaboratively.

Uncoverhiddenrisks The digital era is volatile, complex, uncertain, ambiguous, and information abundant. There are unknown interactions and very high inner dynamics so there is always something that will go wrong sooner or later. The point is how digital leaders are able to leverage analytics and "gut feeling" to uncover potential business risks, bridge multitude of insight gaps to improve change and strategy management success rate.

Inherentapproachofriskintelligence Information exponentiality and change are the new normal, uncertainty and risk are inherent in every venture. In fact, organizations encounter more risks than ever due to over-complex business dynamics, unprecedented level of uncertainty, and complex legal regulation compliance system.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with 9600+ 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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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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Initiatecustomizedgoverance

The higher the complexity of the organization and its ecosystem environments, the more agile and customized governance is in demand to meet performance baselines and generate multifaceted value.

Corporate governance is about steering the organization in the right direction. Economic turmoil and business struggles continue to remind global organizations of how effective today's business governance is, what are top issues existing or old hassles hauling around.

 Contemporary organizations and societies become more informative, interdependent, and people-centric, corporate governance needs to become more agile, customized, not only enforcing risk intelligence, but also capturing business opportunities for business growth, harnessing innovation and generating multidimensional business value constantly.

Customized governance based on personalized communication and real time information can improve organizational agility: Corporate governance indicates a relationship with the corporate board, management and the stakeholders, and it is a facilitation system to enhance communication and harness collaboration. So customized governance discipline can fulfill its purpose as a high-level corporate enabler by providing a customized communication bridge between shareholders/investors and top business leaders such as corporate directors, to ensure people are pulling in the same direction, improve business effectiveness and accelerate performance. You cannot have an effective GRC without people. By enforcing customized governance discipline, you can improve human judgment or decision making by putting the right talent in the right positions and keeping them fully functioning

Customized governance harnesses innovation and improve-people-centricity: People are both means and ends to governance discipline. Governance is the structure and process of authority, responsibility, and accountability in an organization. Without people, governance is only the mechanism to limit business potential. Thus, governance needs to be people-centric, including engagement and motivation because a focus on command & control has the tendency to create silo, decelerating the growth of the business. Don’t just see governance as constraint, but rather opportunities. Organizations are always struggling with balancing process and innovation. Customized governance is actually a great tool to facilitate innovation. It’s about less controlling, repurposing, realignment and integration, to bridge the multitude of gaps, breakdown bottlenecks, lubricate rigid processes with invaluable feedback and flexible functions or structures to achieve people-centricity.

Customized governance models should enforce alignment towards customer-centric products and delivery mechanisms: Contemporary organizations are dynamic, complex and unpredictable systems that would perhaps be disturbed by nonlinear events. We can't and won't be able to predict or manage every turn or twist of the business, engagement and motivation aren't intrinsically difficult for management. Governance isn’t just about putting restrictions on what you can do, it is also about monitoring and knowing when things are not going right, making an adjustment of planning or taking appropriate actions at the right time. Customized governance can be perceived as a people-centric process, leadership persona and effective tactics, to enhance delegation of authority, accountability enhancement, etc to improve business effectiveness and efficiency.

The higher the complexity of the organization and its ecosystem environments, the more agile and customized governance is in demand to meet performance baselines and generate multifaceted value. Organizations and society become more people-centric, pulling in the right direction by allocating resources, time, and assets scientifically, policies and standards can be put in the right time and place to enforce strategic agility, structural flexibility, for achieving high performance.

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Initiatecustomizedcommunity

 Only through continuous improvement, breakthrough innovation, customized influence, human advancement can be sustained and the world can move forward with accelerated speed.

We are at the intersection of standardized industrial society and personalized digital society. Contemporary society has the right mix of information fluency, cultural empathy, and knowledge variety. 

Either in the organizational or societal scope, customization is the process of making products and services extraordinarily relevant to the wants, needs of customers, physically, spiritually or emotionally. It’s about gaining empathy to enforce design thinking and creativity to implement customized solutions for shaping people-centric communities or societies.

Customized solutions give people an impression on how it can tailor their needs to solve their specific problems with personal touch: Either at the organizational, community or societal scope, what’s the customer’s impression of your brand? Do your business solutions make logical sense to customers, make them feel special? Do you only focus on technical-correct or do you always have a big picture to build strategic vision to delight your great customers and talented employees? Do you reward loyal customers or push them away? Etc.

The inquiry of human nature - thinking, attitude, behavior, necessitates an approach which is transdisciplinary and practical to great personalization for designing tailored solutions to delight customers with their personal needs and taste. Etc. Once you have this basic premise right, everything flows naturally, exceptional customer service and people delight will be the automatic result.

Leverage human science to unleash human potential: In many circumstances, individuals or organizations with potential haven't performed to the level of desired performance. Real societal progress is made through the work of progressive and foreseeable minds who can figure out how to predict the future and capture the great opportunities to unleash collective human potential. Human science is an inquisitiveness to know about our being. Are we entering the era of people-centricity by applying human science to using positivistic, scientific methods for studying human phenomena and building on a harmonized society via the lens of customization?

There's a convergence of hard and soft sciences of humans, such as nature science & philosophy, neurology & psychology, biology & sociology; technology & anthropology, etc. Philosophy = “why, what,” to discover truth; Science = logic of “what, at, & how.” When a new stage emerges in the progression of society and advancement of technology, the very goal of developing and studying human science is to solve human related problems, tap the unlimited human potential via customized learning, working. contributing.

Accelerate collective advancement: Advancement is about forward-thinking, knowledge enrichment, continuous improvement, and ultra-modernization. The advancement can become more reachable when we appreciate each other’s strength, complement each other’s capability; understand each other via empathetic understanding, set principles to build common ground, and lift each other via mutual trust and empathetic communication & collaboration.

It’s important to enforce governance discipline, and optimize customized management approaches. With all that advancement being accelerated academically or practically, we are in fact, stepping into the era of personalization with cross-disciplinary understanding and collaboration. We need more creative talent who can think beyond their own domains, experiment with alternative ways to solve problems, pursue truth, reality, and wisdom, sharpen their unique talent, accumulate enriched experiences, and make transcendent changes.

Today’s information-abundant, internet-based world is much more hyper-connected and interdependent. An advanced society is more informative and people-centric. All generations need to realize they need to keep refreshing their mindset, learn from each other. Human society is an organization that belongs to us and the way to change it is to modify our individual, group, and collective practices. Only through continuous improvement, breakthrough innovation, customized influence, human advancement can be sustained and the world can move forward with accelerated speed.

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Initiatecrossboundaryresearch

The varying advanced research studies need to become more interdisciplinary; organizational management needs to be reinvented to enforce business balance and growth cycle.

The global world becomes more hyper-connected and interdependent, humans have broken science into many disconnected domains,” with each having its own cryptic jargon. So people with different expertise will only produce dots from their own field in their specific jargon, having difficulty connecting cross-boundary dots for generating fresh insight. 

It takes a multidisciplinary approach with innovative methods to do advanced research; be mindful to explore the engine behind the variety of thoughts, recategorize enriched global knowledge, and redefine the level of professional growth and collective innovation.

Create "stimulus mining" areas for learning and innovating: To pull out the old cliché, information is the lifeblood, and knowledge is power. Information is growing exponentially, knowledge is only a few clicks away. Data is an asset and information is a crucial business resource as long as it stays accurate, consistent, and reliable. Amassed data like the forest is a resource and can be processed into information wood, crafted further to knowledge goods, to turn it into useful business insight solutions strategically, methodologically and economically.

However, many traditional knowledge management solutions cannot capture the “expert knowledge” effectively; much of what is captured, stored, and delivered is general information - not expert knowledge. Business leaders and professionals need to keep learning, growing and innovating; both expanding their knowledge and deepening their expertise. The advanced research about knowledge management helps to organize some activities for knowledge re-invention, encourage new knowledge generation or refurbish some old knowledge; create “stimulus mining,” for people to keep learning and innovating continually. So people can start to explore from a much stronger point of view and create fresh ideas or new perspectives, enhancing a healthy cycle of "learning-doing-relearning” smoothly.

Recategorize global knowledge: Nowadays, we shift from the silo based industrial age with knowledge scarcity to the hyper-connected digital era with information abundance. That means knowledge gets stale sooner than what you thought about due to rapid change and exponential growth of information. Information management is converging with knowledge management. Many silo-based information management approaches or traditional knowledge categorization methodologies and practices need to be updated to improve knowledge flow, resource alignment, and catalyze innovation.

Technically, there is a variety of categorization, generalization, specialization in science and there are a handful themes and tones in art for us to break down the old box, set new standards, and recreate something fresh. Learning becomes more personal, one’s knowledge is another one’s information only, recategorization provides a new angle to enable business leaders and professionals to connect the dots across the box, keep recycling knowledge and recirculating our imagination, for generating more ideas, aligning knowledge and resources to solving crucial problems seamlessly.

Refine the levels of professional growth and capability integration: Due to the complexity of modern society with hyperconnectivity and interdisciplinarity, The inside-out operational centrism becomes outside-in multi-disciplinary people-centrism. Knowledge professionals need to keep developing their talent, improve their skill set, and integrate relevant professional capabilities into core competencies. In adapting to faster-paced changes, people need to become more fluent, intuitive and productive in what they are doing, the mechanistic work production analog is replaced with organic growth metaphor. It’s important to refine the levels of professional growth, from linear skills to suitable professional capabilities to integral competency.

There is intense learning and continuous knowledge update for professionals; there are different levels of professional capability maturity, combining the modular capabilities into new capabilities to solve complex problems. Integral capability is often nonlinear and synthetic in nature; a unique set of professional capability is more complex in development, sophisticated to copy and faster to integrate. It cannot be transferred because of the degree of originality, learning, or well-built expertise that people go with it. The deeper you can tap your talent, the higher level of professional capabilities you can develop, the more complex problems you can solve.

We are at the intersection of the knowledge economy and the creativity economy; the digital environment is dynamic and uncertain, it’s strategic to build a learning organization in which people can learn and develop themselves and dare to be different. The varying advanced research studies need to become more interdisciplinary; organizational management needs to be reinvented to enforce business balance and growth cycle. As business innovation today is heavily dependent on having the right people with a growth mindset to change proactively and innovate relentlessly.

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Initiatelearningcycle

With the overwhelming growth of information and shortened knowledge cycle, today's digital workforce must develop the hybrid learning habit in order to build professional competency and unlock their performance and potential.

The purpose of the book “Digital Hybridity: How to Strike the Right Balance for Digital Paradigm Shift” is to shed some light on how to strike the right balance of stability and changes; being transactional to keep spinning and being transformational to leap forward for making a seamless digital paradigm shift. 

Digital organizations should apply the hybrid management approach, focus on building a diverse, networked, and extended modern working environment in which the powerful digital platforms and computing technologies enable seamless conversations, delayer overly rigid organizational hierarchy, inspire idea sharing and brainstorming, and engage employees and partners to achieve the high-performance result.

Initiate Learning-Doing cycle

innovativelearningcycles Due to exponential growth of information and emerging digital technology, today’s workforce is a technology savvy, hyper-diverse and super-connected with the characteristics of multi-generation, multi-culture, and multi-devicing. There is a risk in investing in your people, but what is the risk of not investing?

Initiate Continuum to Develop Learning Habit To quote Peter Drucker, an American management guru, “knowledge is the most valuable commodity.” It couldn’t be truer in the digital era. On one hand, the fresh knowledge can be captured from the abundance of information, to create significant business value; on the other hand, it doesn’t take so long for that knowledge to become a commodity once the market is exposed to it. With the overwhelming growth of information and shortened knowledge cycle, today's digital workforce must develop the hybrid learning habit in order to build professional competency and unlock their performance and potential.

InnerDigital Balance Cycles Effectively Digital transformation is inevitable, it means the increasing pace of change and fierce competition. Organizations must keep the lights on and also make strategic movements all the time. Like running up to the string, keeping digital balance is critical in reaching digital aptitude. But how to manage the following digital balance cycles effectively?

ImproveWorkforce Hybridity As our digitized world becomes hyper-connected, over-complex and interdependent, digital system themes with all the aggregates-spanning business challenges, paradoxes and opportunities bring organizations further towards the challenges of constructing and enacting "hybrid realities" across individuals, teams, looser groups, organizations, network-enterprises, and holistic digital ecosystems. The digital paradigm that is emerging is the sociological organization which is alive, holistic, vibrant, energetic, responsive, fluid, innovative and resilient with hybridity of knowledge, processes, workforce, and competencies.

Initiate Hybrid Digital Management Disciplines We are experiencing a major shift from the industrial machine age with information scarcity to the digital era with knowledge abundance. Traditional top-down linear management style is frequently criticized for its silo, inflexibility, bureaucracy, unresponsiveness, or lack of innovation.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #9600+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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Illuminatelook

Look out of problems before-looking into the problems; look past, present, future, to understand issues, contextually.

Time is -

moving forward,

continually

Are you a

pathfinder to look ahead,

discover the new trail to

move upward,

confidently?

Can you reach -

the right vista point,

look forward,

look around,

look above,

look underneath,

to capture -

holistic views,

enjoy the landscape with-

unique scenes,

delightfully?

We all face -

problems, large or small,

look out of problems before-

looking into the problems;

look past, present, future,

to understand issues,

contextually.

Take a wide look around at -

what's going on, outside;

take a deep look at -

what's going on, inside,

take an objective look at-

the problems,

from different angle;

Is your subjective reality close to-

objective reality?

Looking ahead expand -

your horizon,

to see the “art of possible,”

unimaginably;

looking back teaches you -

lessons, invaluably;

without taking a breath to reflect,

rushing up to move around,

makes you-

exhausted,

unsurprisingly.

Can you stand up as high -

as you can,

should you -

look in every direction,

you could?

Are you open-minded,

with fresh eyes to -

see things differently,

share fresh viewpoints,

interactively,

move forward,

step-wisely?

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Initiatebodoversight

The oversight and commitment from the top at the corporate board level is very important for innovation and business transformation to be successful.

The digital world is dynamic, nonlinear, uncertain, and volatile, emergence becomes apparent. The beauty of the digital landscape is the fresh insight of business. Corporate boards deepen their understanding of the organization, share a holistic perspective of business growth, harness innovation and enhance a healthy cycle of performance-conformance to improve organizational maturity.

 

BoD’s Convergent view of past, present, future of business: The corporate board plays a critical role in strategic oversight, policy-making to steer the organization in the right direction. The seasoned board leaders have enriched knowledge and plenty of experience, to understand the organization’s historical roots, articulate the present and envision the future of the business.

Looking back with discernment helps BoDs understand where the businesses are, any immediate gaps or dangers that make the forward view unrealistic. The BoD’s convergent view of past, present, future makes them more future-oriented and optimistic, perceiving “what could be,” The BoD’s synthetic view of corporate knowledge, insight, competency, allows them to understand their business strength & weakness, evaluate the level of capability, business coherence, and maturity, to improve organizational competency for the long run.

BoD’s oversight of levels of innovation excellence: In order to deal with changing environments and fierce competitions, innovation touches broader aspects of organization such as business model innovation, products/services/processes innovation, leadership/culture/culture innovation as it directly impacts growth potential, operational excellence and customer satisfaction. Innovation is too critical to delegate to the management without the corporate board’s oversight. The corporate board can contribute to both innovation management and management innovation. Moving up the level of innovation excellence means developing innovativeness as a state of mind and improving innovation management success significantly.

There are incremental innovations and breakthrough innovations; the broader the scope, scale, and impact of the innovation, the more one leans towards calling such innovation breakthrough or radical. It's no surprise that innovation catches more attention as a strategic priority. Innovation strategy is multi-dimensional, you have to systematically develop the integral innovation capabilities to generate fresh ideas, prioritize and implement them, derisk innovation implementation, and scale innovation effect systematically. Corporate boards as one of the critical leadership pillars should set the tone for practicing creative leadership, cultivate innovation culture, de-bureaucratize innovation processes and monitor innovation performance.

BoD’s enhancement of corporate performance-conformance cycle: Corporate boards monitor business performance and enforce corporate GRC disciplines. Conformance is inherent within value-driven performance, to some degree. They make an assessment of performance and conformance qualitatively and quantitatively and gain an in-depth understanding of what’s blocking business achievements, especially for the long-term. At the strategic level, corporate boards hold management accountable for business performance consistency, the stakeholders hold the board and the management team accountable for the effectiveness of the organization.

Corporate BoDs enhance an effective performance-conformance management cycle by setting good policies to encourage fitting mindsets, good attitude, and right behaviors, to improve multifaceted value creation of the company; the corporate board needs to clarify by pondering: How does the organization ensure policy of the direction, the oversight provided, and for the timeliness and caliber of action taken by the governing body. Is policy-making and governance effective enough to improve? So BoDs can make appropriate adjustments, improve their leadership agility to improve organizational performance and conformance for achieving the set goals in a structural way.

We have moved from the industrial economy to the knowledge economy, now stepping into the hyper-connected, interdependent global and creativity economy. The commitment from the top at the corporate board level is very important for innovation and business transformation to be successful. The corporate board takes the praise or the blame depending largely on their ability to influence the business outcomes holistically. Corporate board’s in-depth oversight of business management enhances business GRC disciplines and practices, improve business agility and maturity.

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Understandinglevelsofchange

Business transformation is the change on a grand level and it is a thorny journey full of uncertainty, velocity, complexity, and ambiguity.

Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice within an organization, but too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crises, and demands. This is the bureaucracy’s way of meeting the challenges. A digital transformation is achieved via dynamic Strategy-Execution-Change lifecycle management, although it is not all linear steps, but an iterative, ongoing and upgoing change continuum.

The purpose of the book “Change Insight” is to dig deeper to analyze the psychology behind changes and handle problems and changes at the level of the mindset, and explore people-centric change management philosophy and practices.

 

             Levels of Understanding Change 

Initiatelevelsofchange Change is inevitable to survive in the “VUCA'' reality. There are structural changes or technical changes; internal change or outside-in change; process change or people change. There are different levels of change such as incremental, radical, or transformative changes.

Impact Levels in Digital Transformation Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. Organizations have to create synergy via building a positive culture, achieve operational excellence via IT enablement, and inspire innovation via risk intelligence. There are three levels of impact organizations can make in the journey of digital transformation:

Inner Levels of Change Curves Either at the individual or organizational level, change is a differentiated capability to thrive in the digital era. Change is not always going smoothly, there are bumps and curves on the way. The change curve is a model of the states that people who are to change will go through, the curve is applicable to everyone, even those who planned and conceived the vision. The curve is ready to be the steps one goes through during change when in actuality they are the steps that come before change can take place. The real problem seems to be how to understand the curve and how it relates to change because going through the downs of the change curve has a negative impact on productivity. Here are three levels of change curves, as well as how to rise above them to improve the effectiveness of Change Management.

Innovative Perspectives of Change Management Change is inevitable. In the industrial era, the pace of change was more predictable and the scope of change is limited. Nowadays, digitalization disrupts not only the business boundary but also the industry boundary, as well as the geographical boundary. Change becomes more dynamic and distractive without planning and adaptability. The noble purposes of change are to pursue simplicity and improvement. There are positive changes and negative changes; there are incremental changes and disruptive changes, etc. Here are varying perspectives about Change Management.

Levels of Innovation Management Maturity There is no doubt innovation is becoming more important whereas technology is becoming so advanced and the pace of change is increasing significantly. In practice, innovation focus and capabilities an organization demands depend on the circumstances the business is in. Different organizations have different strengths and competency to innovate. Here are three levels of innovation maturity.

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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Initiativeingredients

 Ultimately, addressing the correct need and building core competency is what determines the right problem and solves them effectively.

Due to overwhelming growth of information and rapid change, problem-solving today has a very wide scope, intricate factors, more often than not, scarcity of insight leads to ineffective problem-solving. 

Business leaders and professionals need to learn how to think cross-disciplinarily, frame the right problems, align resources and talent scientifically, build a competitive team and hold them accountable to solve problems smoothly.

Identification: Any problem is the right problem if there is an attempt to find a fit solution. The truth is, problems today are complex and interdependent; every complex problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem. How you find a solution to it depends on your perspective to that problem. Can you take different angles to understand the real problem, identify the critical issues, rather than see the symptom on the surface?

It is so important to be cool-headed, understand the problem with context, leverage quality information and a set of inductions and deduction techniques for making logical reasoning. Context aids us in understanding what’s relevant and what’s not, do cause-effect analysis as the problems usually have many causes and can be very complex. Also, 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.

Collaboration: Complex problem-solving is often a teamwork, involving talented people by giving them active roles in the problem-solving initiatives. Beware of the need to consider the problems related to people, put the right people in the right positions with the right talent, proficient knowledge, and expertise to solve the right problems.

Strong collaboration is based on seamless alignment, scientific allocation, and empathetic assignment. Technically, there are capability alignment, information alignment, talent alignment, etc. An effective resource allocation and capital alignment scenario helps to prioritize effectively, integrate capabilities seamlessly to build core problem-solving competency, to ensure the budget is allocated to value proven problem-solving initiatives effectively.

Accountability: Good problem-solvers can fix the root cause of one problem; while a great problem-solver can perhaps solve a series of related issues. The digital leader’s role is to empower their people, assign the right problems to them based on their professional expertise and hold them accountable to get the work done effectively, make them feel important, appreciate and reward them, and then, the challenges to solve difficult problems can be overcome effectively.

People know what pieces of problems they need to solve, but they have the freedom to explore the technical “how”; do whatever needs to be done, and take the responsibility to ensure they do their best to bring about a good outcome. Collectively, accountability needs to be well embedded in the business culture. Trust, and verify; encourage self-management; if you ensure the individuals have autonomy within their tasks, you will be able to address performance on an equal partnership basis.

Ultimately, addressing the correct need and building core competency is what determines the right problem and solves them effectively. In practice, There is a talent or capacity shortage for either defining or solving the right problems. The good scenario for problem-solving goes between flexibility and processes, personalization and standardization; collaboration and healthy competition. It is important to experiment, explore, engage, and create multiple pathways to solve problems creatively. with the ultimate goal to achieve higher than expected performance results.

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Understanding

Being contextual implies an ability to balance other parts of the equation to capture insight rather than conventional understanding things at content level.

Logic is a thinking process where a result is derived from a thought. Logic the sequence of how to get things done. Logic is part of language; logic could be either scientific or philosophical. Logic is the hidden clue of human society. 

We have a predisposition to seeking patterns, or potentially in the pursuit of logic. It’s important to deal with the nonlinear, multi-logical situation in today's digital dynamic, and leverage quick logic or paraconsistent logic accordingly to make progress. 

 

Understanding

Understanding Contemporary organizations and societies are complex and informative; usually lack of the breadth of knowledge or fresh insight is the root cause of poor judgment. The in-depth understanding of either problems you intend to solve or the people you try to get to know have become an important quality for digital leaders and professionals.

Increasingtecontextualfluency In a world of complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity, no one can control the outcome of emerging events and unexpected disruptions completely. That means the future cannot be, in any way, deduced from the past completely. From a problem solving perspective, context is of utmost importance as it shapes insightful views of complex things and deepens perceptions of a specific cause and effect in a specific context or the core issues of a situation. Contextual fluency leads to true understanding of circumstances and solves problems in a structural way.

Innateprofundity Back to the root of the word “profundity,” it means insightful understanding; it requires a person's ability to grasp or comprehend information, be able to see beyond the obvious, look around the corner, dig into the root cause of the problems, and climb the knowledge-insight-wisdom pyramid stepwisely in order to solve problems thoroughly.

Unconventional Understanding The digital dynamic is where the continuous disruptions often led by emerging technologies threaten to tear down silo mentality, outdated concepts, legacy systems and practices just as it generates new opportunities. Nowadays business leaders and professionals feel more comfortable with the digital new normal - chaos, uncertainty, and ambiguity. They should break down conventional thinking boxes, improve sound judgment and discernment skills. Practicing unconventional thinking takes a certain mental, psychological and conditional chemistry to break away from thoughts that others have thought about and deepen their understanding of either existing or emerging issues. It takes courage, but it is a necessary step to take initiatives to spark creativity and make true progress either individually or collectively.

Contextualism Context intelligence is about understanding the whole meaning of languages and cultures, the interrelationships, and interpreting them in a cohesive way. Contextualism implies an ability to make decisions in the context of the environment. It’s a sort of logic to keep things meaningful or relevant, Being contextual implies an ability to balance other parts of the equation to capture insight rather than conventional understanding things at content level.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 7 million page views with about #9600th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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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Illuminateblogging

Isn't it a tough journey to celebrate -9600 blog postings -in pursuit of- innovative ways of -brainstorming, story-telling?

Blogging is a -

thought flow,

generate numerous streams,

merging into -

information river,

keep flowing,

cleansing-

merging into -

the sea of knowledge,

continually.


Blogging is about -

energy glow;

it is the flow,

that casts -

its glow,

sparkling a radiance,

all around,

to brighten up-

darkness,

rejuvenate freshness,

constantly.

Blogging is to-

brainstorm words to ideas;

ideas connect with -

ideas to -

shape unique insight,

innovative solutions,

unconventional wisdom,

creatively.

Blogging is like-

growing a fruit plant,

the intention is -

the root;

the deeper,

you can penetrate,

the stronger,

the plant could grow,

water it,

fertilize it,

expect blossoms,

coming soon,

reap fruits,

enthusiastically.

Blogging is -

like you are -

designing, solving -

your own jigsaw puzzle,

with thousands pieces,

in it;

shuffle it,

reimagine it,

discover clues,

underneath,

assemble it,

piece by piece,

patiently;

glue it up as-

a holistic picture,

unbelievably.

Blogging is -

an ongoing journey of -

observing, perceiving,

improving, proactively;

forming, brainstorming,

performing, transforming,

influentially.

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Illuminatingleadership

 Isn't it a tough journey to write 9600 blog postings - to pursue the digital way of brainstorming, innovating and story-telling?

Leadership is complex and situational; there are numerous variables that need to be leveraged in assessing contemporary leadership effectiveness. 

Leadership is complex, although it has many facets; at its core, the foundation of leadership is based on authenticity, developing interdisciplinary knowledge and multidimensional intelligence to inspire creativity, deal with paradox, overcome silos, advocate inclusion to make progressive influence..

 

Leadership vision: Leadership is about direction and change. In today's digital dynamic, you have to envision and gain a long-term perspective of the organization, turn around tough situations, and enjoy the challenges of complex problem-solving. It’s not about taking the shortcut, but selecting the optimal path to achieve the goals and fulfill the vision innovatively.

Leadership has to lead self, as well as others, by developing the human capital in terms of capacity building and adapting to the dynamism of global trends. A visionary changes the course of business by seeing beyond what all others see, sharing their perception of future trends such as digitalization, innovation, or globalization; or by charting growth of business for creation of new business models, products or marketing.

Leadership intelligence: Leadership now becomes more interdisciplinary, influential and innovative as we live in a hyperconnected, information abundant world with unprecedented complexity and uncertainty. The digital leadership effectiveness is based on how profound you can understand and how insightful you can guide. A mindset could be called interdisciplinary intelligence if it can discover the patterns of inter-relationship among all those leadership disciplines.

From a problem-solving perspective, intelligent leaders can apply critical thinking, creative thinking, strategic thinking and system thinking, etc, to problem identification and solution discovery. They demonstrate multidimensional intelligence, interdisciplinary expertise, learning agility, empathy, and persistence to amplify influence at different cognitive or hierarchical levels to drive progressive changes.

Leadership competency: Leadership is methodical, but there is some magic in there. Leadership is intangible, but there are many tangible ingredients to make it shine. Leadership is a competency. Authentic leadership, like a compass, leading people towards the right direction with clear vision, sound judgment, creativity, empathy, humility and shared human values. Leadership competency depends on a number of factors, the purpose to lead, leadership intelligence, the mix of knowledge and experience, thought leadership, sound judgment, and problem-solving capabilities.

To build influential competency, being an authentic leader is critical because if you know yourself deep enough, you are also better suited to tackle different challenges that will come your way as a leader; to make you think about what truly drives you to lead and why. Leadership is an influence. Insightful leaders can make a deep influence because their unique observation and clear discernment can not only shape the mindset but also touch the heart. The executives with influential competence will be more flexible and less rigidly tied to top-down, command-and-control environments. Insightful leaders are good listeners, indefatigable learners, ask great questions, and handle tough situations or thorny problems smoothly.

Leadership is a journey; leadership inclusiveness in the global context can be defined as visible and invisible differences, such as the levels of cognitive understanding, leadership style, diverse experience, cultural empathy, etc. High-influential leaders with thinking power and creative energy can clarify a clearer vision, shape advanced mindsets, build a portfolio of unique leadership capabilities in leading their organization forward and advancing human society continually.

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Integralgrc

Governance should be understood via multidimensional lenses such as innovation, people, and multidimensional value perspectives, and businesses need to take a systematic approach to develop and enforce it holistically.

Organizational governance is about steering. In mature organizations, it is a strategic imperative to move GRC beyond the corporate controlling entity to being the champion of corporate culture, ethics, and responsibility. 

How to enforce the organizational governance discipline depends on the nature, scale, and complexity of the organization, as well as understanding its risks and conducts for improving organizational effectiveness.

 


GRC can begin with frameworks, policies and standards to be put in place: The purpose of developing a governance framework is to define the building blocks of governance principles, processes, and practices. Effective GRC disciplines set various rules and regulations the organization has to comply with in a holistic way. Establish holistic governance across disciplines spanning the entire value chain, build driving principles for improving strategy management effectiveness, architecture cohesiveness, program portfolio maturity, optimize business performance through the creation of value to varying stakeholders in a coherent way.

GRC is not a single process, but a collection of processes with strong governance mechanisms, such as roles and technologies, etc: Corporate governance has a direct link to each business and its processes. Although the governance structure is independent of the management structure, the governance process/mechanism can be embedded into the business process seamlessly. It makes sense to have governance processes that are more information-based, lightweight, continuous, focusing on results and adapt to changes rather than static plans. Governance takes focus; without that focus, each department will push and pull for their unique needs/wants, potentially slowing down the speed of the entire company. Information based analysis helps the business optimize crucial GRC processes, predict or detect fraud or bad behavior, break down functional silos to manage organizations holistically.

There are both hard and soft components in business GRC approaches: GRC approaches need to become more integral to improve organizational effectiveness and agility due to the dynamic business environment. There is an ongoing problem with overly rigid GRC approaches that seem to overlook the very human and social behavioral factors that underpin real GRC success. Effective governance is based on strong leadership, optimized process and efficient technology. You cannot have effective GRC without the soft ingredients such as culture and awareness which are the most critical aspects of GRC. A good compliance system must have morals and ethics incorporated into it, to improve people-centric GRC effectiveness.

Governance is about steering. The higher the complexity of the organization and the complexity of the environment in which it operates, the higher the requirement for GRC disciplines to shape differentiated capability, meet performance baselines, and generate value. Governance should be understood via multidimensional lenses such as innovation, people, and multidimensional value perspectives, and businesses need to take a systematic approach to develop and enforce it holistically.

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Itinvestigation

 IT leaders as “Chief Investigation Officer” need to enhance their management discipline, clarify their assumptions about something wrong, limiting, or not working in some way that requires 'fixing'; digging into root causes of problems.

Information technology plays a significant role in innovation and business transformation. IT captures organizational knowledge to continuously improve performance, develops the IT based business competencies needed for successful business solution delivery. 

IT failure can cause business failures and customer pains. Insightful leaders ask a series of questions to investigate the big “WHY” of IT initiative failures, fix relevant issues, build up the better standard with necessary flexibility in order to improve their organizational agility, performance and resilience.

Investigate beyond the surface of problems: Oftentimes, IT organizations are perceived as a support center only by business partners, they are overloaded, spend the majority of time and energy on fixing symptoms, but the real issues continue getting back. They didn’t contribute enough to generating business value and delight customers. When IT systems are dysfunctional, its value proposition fails to be translated into meaningful operational deliverables; IT incompetence perhaps further causes serious business problems. IT management needs to make a deep investigation of real issues underneath by communicating cross-functionally, and solving problems cross-disciplinarily.

IT failure is caused by the management of IT rather than just IT management. The breadth and depth of IT management include people, process, organizational structure design, and technology update. You can only manage what you measure. The wrong metrics selection or ineffective measurement practices perhaps mislead or cause management conflicts or resource misalignment. IT is an integral part of the business, investigate IT from technical, economical, innovation lens, improve IT agility and value creation.

Investigate IT-enabled business solutions: To break down the “we always do things like that,” mentality, improve IT reputation from a cost center to a value creator and an innovation hub. IT management needs to assess IT staff's professional capability, IT capacity and IT vendors’ overall competency. Always investigate the better ways to do things, particularly when you look at a situation and wonder how to understand the real problems and set choices to solve them innovatively otherwise, there's a great danger that the new "better" solution will fail because it runs straight into the same underlying factors that brought about the old state.

Businesses are looking for IT to add new innovative methods for management of complexity, develop the next practice for business transformation. IT management should handle investigations of innovative business solutions, to change the business’s perception, and reinvent IT by developing their people, evaluating and recognizing their innovative vendors and partners. IT can provide tailored solutions to not only fix the specific problems but also optimize the underlying functions or processes to develop competitive advantage.

Investigate hidden cost, risks, or gray area: Information technology permeates everywhere in the organizations. There'll need to be more IT involvement, not less for solving complex issues. To “just go ahead and fix it” carries assumptions, investigate hidden costs to improve operation excellence; investigate gray areas to enforce GRC. So the question boils down to figuring out the cost/benefits matrix of correcting or not correcting outputs and what cost/benefits factors get internalized, enabling IT management to improve their organization effectively.

Business opportunities and risks are co-existing in the organizations nowadays. In fact, every opportunity has risks embedded in it; and every risk perhaps brings opportunities as well. Strategic risks possibly cause fatal business failures for the long run. Do the cause-effect analysis thoroughly. If you don't understand all the causes, or most of the causes of the situation and also the context of the situation, then intervention may be worse than non-intervention.

IT leaders as “Chief Investigation Officer” need to enhance their management discipline, clarify their assumptions about something wrong, limiting, or not working in some way that requires 'fixing'; digging into root causes of problems, rather than seeing the symptom on the surface, keeping the end in mind, to ensure IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next, understand the real-world business problems deeply and run a high performance organization.

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