Seven Questions to Reinvent Airlines

Corporate culture—the set of norms, values and assumptions that govern how people act and interact every day.

Airlines, as the most charming and challenging industry, the least profitable, but the most taxed industry, experience literal ups and downs since its formation in the 1920s,  though the balance sheet starts turn black in 2010,  this legacy industry is the third largest contributor to economy, have been through the lost decade, it may still have the rocky road ahead, Airline is beyond at transportation business, it’s at customer service business, it’s the economic barometer and growth engine.

It takes energy and passion to re-imagine Airline  and it need collective wisdom and societal support to re-invent Airline, we may need more radical thinking and fundamental revitalization via series of questioning:

1. Business Model Re-invention:

Q1: Can we transform Airline from commodity business into value delivery business?

Merchandise concept redefine airlines in the last couple of years, By bringing a retailer's “merchandising” perspective to the airline, airline identified a substantial opportunity to enhance the customer's travel experience via new service options. This was a significant mindset change for the industry that had focused on streamlining operations for the past 30 years with limiting customer choices, the de-bundled customer services also create critical ancillary revenue for financially struggling industry, a key mindset change was getting the airline to think of itself as an incredibly effective distribution channel and very powerful merchandising platform, it transforms into the retailer with wings.

Reinvent Customer Life Cycle Management

Airlines need shift to a customer-centric business model, focusing on individual customer needs and buying patterns.

Beyond just taking a long time to book travel, there is a more fundamental issue: does  the current distribution channels cater for the personalized service that a 21 century consumer has come to expect?  Optimize customer’s whole travel experience is one of the clear vision and goal for airlines to pursue, the key theme is about delivering choice and convenience to the customers in every segment of customer’s journey by creating a powerful framework to underpin its self-service initiatives, wide range of channels and choices to meet customers’ diverse preferences, it also help reduce the overall cost of service its customers and serve them even better, focus resource and service on customers’ touch point, and soothe customers’ pain point. Please also read: Seven Delights to Optimize Flying:

 To step further, social computing provides the opportunity to transform aspects of self-service into more real-time dialogue with customers, and offer more value-added service to reinvent customer life-cycle management with speed and re-imagine more potential revenue stream. 

Reinvent Loyalty Program

Loyal customers are truly the backbone of any successful business, given the high percentage of revenue derived from them. It costs significantly more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, also understanding customer behavior is critical to build and maintain true customer loyalty.

Most airlines have strong loyalty programs that bind their best customers and keep them returning to the same carrier. The “stickiness” of the programs focus largely on revenue optimization and airline operations, and less on customer satisfaction.

The future of loyalty program is based on social computing and enterprise 2.0, social loyalty becomes especially important once airlines realize that some of their most enthusiastic flyers are also its most vocal brand advocates. So the most high-value customers are not only in term of miles flown but also in terms of their social influence online, it also explores the role that predictive analytics can play in enabling carriers to make timely, meaningful and relevant offers that drive deeper loyalty and engagement among existing customers,  acquire new customers to outmaneuver the competition.

2. Tax & Regulation Re-invention:

Q2: Should Airlines taxed as sin or pay the fair share, does government and stakeholders are happy the way it is or make the necessary change to put is on the growth trajectory?

A lot of people and companies count on aviation’s success. About 2.8 billion people are expected to fly safely in 2011. That directly creates employment for 5.5 million people worldwide.

However, many seasoned airline executives point out airlines are taxed higher than the 'sin taxes' imposed on tobacco, firearms and alcohol, about the 17 different aviation taxes and fees amounting to USD16.5 billion already paid by airlines and their passengers.  And additional USD36 billion in new taxes are being proposed recently.

The industry are lobbying government for more common approach on standard policies and liability issues to realize its real potential as well as to further contribute to the economy and putting the industry on a growth trajectory.

In addition, Governments should be persuaded to framework the infrastructure needs to be put in place to support and facilitate the distribution of passenger data on a global industry-wide basis, also to help the industry on such important issues as re-equipping aircraft for the Next Generation Air Traffic Control System.

 3. M&A Capacity & Capability Re-invention:

 Q3:  Can consolidated Airlines become more agile to adjust the capacity & capability  to make sustained profitability ?

In recent year, airlines have been consolidated through M&A activities, it builds up strategic value for the industry at the long run. either scale deal—an expansion in the same or highly overlapping  business—or a scope deal—an expansion into a new market, product or channel (usually are a mix of the two types) would help airlines grow capacity and enable more capability, but the most critical factor is to make airline agile via consolidation, modernization,  rationization, integration, innovation and optimization., etc.  

What makes an airline agile? Taking agility to its simplest level: An agile airline is one marked by ready ability to move quickly,  adapts to business and technology change dynamics, responsive to competition, and maximizes all its assets and resources. A common denominator to agile airlines is an ability to move information to the right passenger, employee or partner with this same agility.

 4. Talent & Culture Re-invention:

 Q4: Can Airlines where organized labor has outsized leverage, with new united way to manage the inherent responsibilities and also leverage change sufficiently for long term prosperity?

• Leadership Re-invention.
  The context of the industry impacts the type of leader or leader characteristics that are required for success. While disruptive forces such as external influences or technological breakthroughs can change the direction and potential for an industry, leaders, by their actions, can influence the evolution of an industry and aviation eco-system as well, the influential leadership can also inspire the creative destruction to revitalize the legacy industry like airlines. 

• Culture Re-invention:  

Corporate culture—the set of norms, values and assumptions that govern how people act and interact every day. It’s “the way we do things around here.”

How to cultivate the positive culture, such as customer centric, safety driven and break up the “legacy mentalities” and encourage the new view and thinking for staff to take extra miles,  voice themselves via social networks, or corporate blogs, to ensure that these communication lines are open and people understand what sheet of music they are playing to, to win both hearts and minds.

5.  . Infrastructure &Technology Re-invention:

Q5: Can Airlines modernize the legacy infrastructure, simplify & optimize the process and ride the latest technology wave  to drive further effectiveness and efficiency?

Airline need simplify the complexity in their IT infrastructure without compromising on agility or security. To transition to the future state, airlines may need move from the traditional heterogeneous environment (typically defined by poorly integrated legacy applications) to common platforms that are closely integrated and aligned with key business processes.  The latest technologies such as cloud/mobile/social/Analytics will further transform IT infrastructure at more digitized pace, so airlines can achieve the agility needed to more quickly respond to customer demand and market changes.

By transforming into more integrated platforms, Airlines can enjoy greater business continuity, higher levels of redundancy, and enhanced internal and external service performance. Those changes translate directly into a lower total cost of ownership, a clearer focus on mission-critical objectives and a more competitive position in the demanding global economy.

New technologies,  more effective operations, more efficient infrastructure, and positive economic measures. This is the industry’s Four Pillar Strategy, defined by Tony Tyler, IATA's Director General and CEO

 6. MRO Re-invention:

  Q6: What if airlines operated their customer-facing IT with similar discipline and decision making as the maintenance function?

Besides labor and fuel cost, Maintenance is the third largest cost to run airline today, airlines today need put maintenance optimization into the long term strategy plan. 

Re-invent Airline Connection: transform paper-based, work-intensive and non-user friendly information exchange (to and from end users: pilots, mechanics, flight attendants) into more digitized, user friendly communication. 

Re-invent User and management decision: transform from decisions rely on time-late, unreliable, inconsistent and incomplete information into more real-time data, information and analytics.

Standardize Business Solution: there is a clear definition of the business problem that needs to be solved, and agreement who can solve which problems, also streamline the vendor relationship and optimize the business processes.

 7.  Alternative Energy Re-invention:

Q7: Are BioFuels well shaped to become the energy pillar for air transporation?

According to data from the International Air Transport Association, total emissions for the airline industry stood at 649 million tons of CO2 in 2010, up 3.5 percent from the previous year.  The industry has pledged to stop increasing its carbon emissions by 2020 even as global air travel increases, and to halve its carbon dioxide emissions from its 2005 levels by 2050.

The I.A.T.A. estimates that replacing 3 percent of the kerosene in jet fuel would reduce aviation CO2 emissions by over 10 million tons, at an initial cost of $10 to $15 billion in production and distribution facilities.  Aviation is working hard with a spectrum of activities to reduce environmental impact. Biofuels are seen as one of the pillars to achieving this target; I.A.T.A. predicts that biofuels could replace 6 percent of kerosene in the airline industry by 2020.

Converting 20 percent of aviation to biofuels would transform modern aviation, be a major signal that clean energy can work at scale, and offers a model for developing R&D, certification and supply chain consortia. It would take around 12 billion gallons of biofuels, and perhaps 120 million tons of biomass, distributed to 1700 or so airports around the world.

But availability of supply and its cost — biofuel is more than double the price of regular aviation fuel — are now the main impediments to its wider use. http://biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2011/10/13/quick-win-aviation-biofuels-offers-breakout-for-clean-energy/

In summary, in order to overcome the challenges, all forces such as the authentic leadership, the financing system, the committed end-user group, the technologies ready to scale and valid distribution channels need be well aligned and reinvent the alternative energy for the long term. 

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Agile Enterprise Needs Agile Governance

Corporate governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws, and institutions affecting the way a corporation (or company) is directed, administered or controlled. Defined as "specifying the accountability and decision rights framework"

 1. Do we really need governance?

 Governance will remain a difficult issue for today’s business, digitalized organizations with extended business boundary at an increasingly flat world, and the desire for more innovation will make governance issues more complex. Without it, the law of entropy takes over and any orderliness disappears.

The Great Recession we've just been through even makes us think deeper about how to enhance governance. The rule of Thumb is:  Enterprises don't need less governance — they need better, agile governance.

Governance structure/body:

• Provides authority and principles to operate
• Structured process of decision making
• Enables realization of the EA future state by ensuring project alignment tailored for the organization.
• Management, assurance and compliance processes
• Audit, legal and regulatory term 

2. What are biggest problems for today’s Governance?        

Business and IT often perceive governance as an impediment to innovation, is today’s governance over-control, not resilient enough to embrace the change?

One point of struggles is governance taking away liberties that are essential to people doing their jobs at creative way, if there's a problem with trust then governance will suffer, because motivations are not aligned across organizational boundaries.

Culture resistance to governance from project-focused staff who argue that governance hinders agility. But this argument confuses project-level freedom with organizational agility. True enterprise-level agility requires the architectural coherency that comes with an business vision realized through conscientious governance.

 3. Why do we need agile governance?

Today’s rapidly changing business environment shorten the average fortune 500 companies’ life span  from 75 years to less than 15 years, only the most agile enterprise will survive and thrive, beyond Agile Wings we discussed earlier,  the problem is not about weather we need governance , more about applying the right kind of governance according to context.

It's not 'one style fits all': we need very different styles of governance depending on where the piece of work sits on a spectrum from classic Hierarchy “Waterfall” (Control -governance) to a Self-management 'Agile' (loose-governance)

Define the spectrum of governance from waterfall-control to free-form agile, and the conditions that apply to change-projects and experiments at each point along that spectrum. In other words, define a flexible form of governance across the change-space, in which, for example, ‘Shadow IT’ Migrate from IT governance to business change governance would be explicitly encouraged as long as it’s outside of clearly-defined boundaries. Provide support to enable agile projects to identify non-negotiable constraints such as regulation or mandatory standards.

Here are seven questions to ask in order for organizations to manage governance:

1) Can the work of managing be pushed out to the periphery of our organizations?
2) Can it be automated? Can it be dispensed with entirely?
3) Is it possible for an organization to be highly decentralized and precisely synchronized?
4) Can you get discipline without disciplinarians?
5) Are there ways of combining the freedom and flexibility advantages of self-management with the control and coordination advantages of traditional hierarchies?
6)  Can we reduce the performance drag of our top-heavy management structures without giving anything up in terms of focus and efficiency?
7)   To what extent can "self-management" or "peer-management" substitute for manager-management?

4. What are the Agile Governance Best Practices?

• Led from the top, define architecture standards, establish a rigorous and stable governance process
• Appoint people with the right skills for the lead roles.
• The shift of governance to focus on enterprise change
• No Single EA Governance Definition Fits All Cases
• Include More Agility In Your EA Governance Processes
• From mechanistic governance to Agile governance
• Embedded Governance in the business strategy and IT planning cycle.
• Embedded Governance in the investment decision cycle for IT and business.
• Shift the governance conversation from availability of IT resources to the most productive uses for the enterprise's scarce resources
• Think of Governance as a Process, Not a Committee
• Avoid Defining Governance in Terms of Technologies
• Blended Combination of governance styles depends on the decision being made
• Clear decision making, accountability and responsibility for EA decisions.
• Risk Management to balance investments in accordance with policies and in support of objectives
• Culture & change management (symbol, behavior, thought/feeling/belief)
• Risk/Complexity tolerance, business adaptability, innovation, open leadership style and analytics capability.
• Establishing measures to monitor adherence to decisions and policies assurance

Read more about Agile Pillars: 

Is Agile Strategy on the Way

Main Characteristics of Agile Enterprise Architecture

Three Perspectives in Agile Success

Agile Process Management

Agile Budget Planning

Agile Talent Management

Agile Governance

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Cloud with the Chance of Nature Wins

Like nature thunders and lightening to warn the coming storms, the Cloud computing also signal the age of radical digitization: more creative destructions are on the way to re-imagine IT, business.

Sky is like the colorful canvas, sometimes, cloud flow and print the art on it, now cloud computing also shape the business society, make a big impact on the new realm of digitization.

Cloud is growing bigger, according to the reputable consulting company’s report,  81% of businesses are either planning,  in early or advanced stages of experimentation or already have full-on cloud implementations. Cloud is the timely transformative technology which helps businesses become more agile, improve processes, and deliver the cost-effectiveness.


Don’t let Cloud pass you by, when we watch the cloud in the sky, we have some expectation, the wind, the rain, the snow, the iceberg,  same as cloud computing, it will bring some strategic nature wins:  


1.   Agile Winds

As lightly cloudy Summer sky brings up the breeze to soothe our feelings and lift up our spirit, the cloud computing will blow the agile winds to reshape the organization with flexibility and scalability, easy to provision, faster to market, cloud is not only the application delivery platform on the fly, but also the efficient mechanism for creating the instant on infrastructure. Cloud adoption is quickly shifting from a competitive advantage to an operational necessity.


Cloud also transforms the CapEx to OpEx, it provides business no matter big or small the new flexibility to take advantage of the latest technology,  to build up the competent capacity with elasticity and agility.

2. Green Rains

Like Spring rain to nurture the land and sprout the green, the cloud computing, based on virtualization,  brings up the energy efficiency, improve the hardware utilization, network reliability, and reduce the carbon footprint, cloud becomes the sustainable technology not only improve business’s bottom line, but also turns green to be the new gold. 

 The natural economies of cloud enforce utilization and smoothing of inevitable workload peaks and troughs, do improve the greater energy efficiency, cloud is also the new solution to help re-designing the data center, and  re-imagine the IT, for the long run, the virtualization and cloud computing do inspire the new hardware design with energy efficiency, increase flexibility, responsibility and manageability, to help build up the more sustainable, also more cost-effective business and to framework the wired enterprise without wire. 

 3 Brain Storms   

As nature storms influence the productivity and our daily life, the cloud-based social computing create brainstorms to make impact on culture and human society.

Like cloud blurs the sky, cloud computings blurs the industrial boundaries and geographic boundaries as well. The infusion of social software capabilities through the enterprise provides the powerful platform to engage employees, connect with partners and customers, to co-create the knowledge stream, to share the thoughts and wisdoms, to wash out the negative rules, to extend information value chain, to amplify the customers’ voice and to inter-connect the better world.

4.      Big Data Shower              

 Like the nature cloud full of water will pour out the shower upon the earth, the online conversations and  applications create exponential data and information which we call the Big Data, the cloud saturated with Big data may also deliver the big data shower, means both opportunities and risks, the opportunity means radical customization, the constant experimentation, and new business model creation, but security and compliance are the potential pitfalls we also need well prepare for.

Like the nature power of shower, big data shower also has big volume, velocity and viability, the organization need capture and analyze big data, because the traditional monolithic data warehouse is no longer efficient enough to bring up the business insight, even the hindsight is not valid enough, since  in today’s rapidly changing environment, history may not repeat itself so often, and only the real time big data can shape our vision and gain foresight for what we should do next,

5.      Innovation Flakes

Like snow flakes whitening the earth, innovation flakes brighten the world, and cloud computing may become the dynamic incubator to turn routine businesses into innovation magic house, because it now takes only fraction of time and cost to try and fail with new ideas, the failure is no longer the fatal pain, it becomes an option for business to learn, grow, try and improve.

For forward-looking business, cloud computing also provides effective platform for open innovation in business design, strategy and marketing experiment, customer communication and talent management, the proven innovation then replicate and scale up to benefit larger base of users with speed.

  6.  Creative Destruction Thunders & Lightening

Like nature thunders and lightening to warn the coming storms, the Cloud computing also signal the age of radical digitization: more creative destructions are on the way to re-imagine IT, business and our personal life, such as E-Book destruct the traditional paper book business, smart phone and mobile computing is destructing the pc, and cloud is destructing the legacy business/IT infrastructure and service.

More radically, Cloud destructs the old way to do the things, inspire the fresh thinking and new communication style, destructs the silo functions, and integrate the business processes into more holistic business management seamlessly.   

7. ICE (Intelligent Consumer Electronic) Bergs

Cloud with the chance of iceberg! The Consumerization of IT, which means many smart personal computing devices such as smart phone, tablet, netbook, e-reader., etc, connected into the cloud, and ascendance of mobile becomes the dominant cloud platform for human interactions both within enterprise and with customers, partners and personal life.

The convergence of smart device with Cloud has transformed our society into the more radical digital age, the whole world get more inter-connected via the Cloud.

Not all Clouds are created equal, pay more attention to the dark cloud on the silver lining, the pitfalls when you jump in, but also, don’t just watch over the cloud and forget to reap the harvest.  

                                                                                                        

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Three Dimensions to Shape the Great Questions

The answer from yesterday is not as critical as the questions about the future.

We’ve been living in such a dynamic world, change is the only constant, actually even change itself has been changed and expedite. The world is transforming from personal computing into digital computing, from globalization into globality, from knowledge limitation to information explosion, the answer about yesterday is not as critical as the questions about the future. How to ask the right questions is not only just the raw intelligence to reflect human’s intellectual curiosity, it becomes the new skills need be sharpened and focused on, to co-solve the common problems and co-create the better world. Stay hungry and foolish, to challenge the outdated rules or culture, to perceive the invisible and spark the collective wisdom and new thinking.

1. The Art of Questions

Like a piece of art, the great question is beautiful and insightful, to spark imagination, connect the dots with our own personal experience and appreciation, make us feel engaged in the exchange. The art of questioning is to ignite innovative thinking, the essential to questioning also stimulates the creative sides of our brains in order to find answers. A great leader is one who has all the questions but not all the answers: How to see the things as a whole, from management perspective, it’s to see through the spirit of organization, it’s to ask the open-ended questions about the structure, the process, and the culture, it inspires the fresh thinking about the legacy issues, the new angles to see the unsolved problems.

Albert Einstein’s quote: “We can’t solve the problem with the same thinking we used when we created them.” The art of question is also much more about the communication, we all desire to seek and participate conversations, it’s the part of human nature, and the whole world can engage in a big conversation to change for the better through social networking.

2. The Science of Questions

The effective questioning is also about the science, it’s tough and direct, critical thinking, logic and the reasoning. Direct questions are not necessarily meant to offend. Through the science of questions, such as 5 Ws and 1H: What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who, we search the patterns, get quantified answers and qualified information, to help us make the wise decisions and plan the better scenario.

The science of questioning is about asking the right question at the right time with the right person for the right information, it is also based on the art of listening, it’s the attitude, the trust, it’s the soft science of communication embedded with hard science of problem-solving capability, the robust questions in a way that helped us "dispassionately" examine alternatives, it’s synthetic process to stimulate the whole brain thinking. The science of questions is also about fact finding, the analysis, the structured thinking, the objective evaluation and comparison, the progressive pursuit of better solutions, it’s human’s cognitive improvement.

3 The Philosophy of Questions 

                  

Assume nothing, Question Everything. There is no such thing as a stupid question. All top philosophers will tell you this:

• Socrates (Socratic Method) a series of questions that are asked not only to draw individual answers but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand. The Socratic dialogue that helps people reaches their own conclusions about what can be done to improve a plan or project, which, of course, leads to much more ownership and learning.

• "The three peers, which must have my teacher and I chose him in good to learn from him” - Confucius The questioning culture will cultivate the learning attitude, step out of our comfort zone and become the lifetime learner. 

•  “We can’t solve the problem with the same thinking we used when we created them.”- Albert Einstein

• “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” –Shakespeare.

Provocative questions initiative - seeking mysteries and paradoxes that the questions for which there were no answers were the ones worth asking.

•  “A prudent question is one-half of wisdom" by Francis Bacon

• “The future of leaders leads by asking” by Peter Drucker

In summary, how to ask the good questions is the art, the science, the philosophy, and the management discipline. Though you need to have the sensitivity to the cultural difference, the criteria of great questions should not have a border, just like the true art and science are timeless and without boundary. Through effective questioning, hopefully, we can re-imaging the life potential and re-unite the humanity.

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Leadership Innovation in 21st Century

A leader is a dealer in hope."                                    — Napoleon Bonaparte

In today’s hyper-competitive, rapidly changing digitized global environment, the average Fortune 500 company last only fifteen years, economic turmoil and Great Recession make the last decade  “lost decade” for many organizations and industries, innovation is the only secret source to revive and re-energize troubled businesses,  leadership innovation is the key ingredient and first step first to embrace the changes.

20th century’s stereotyped leadership style is neither sufficient nor complete, what is the leadership in the 21^st century, here are some new characteristics of modern leadership:

1. See the world of color, instead of black and white

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.                                                                                                      - John Quincy Adams

Many 20th century managers see the world with black & white vision via the mono-color lens, see the business either as partner or competitor, see the person either friend or enemy; well, a multi-polar world in the 21^st century is the world full of color, also blur the lines from the view of multiple angles. The creative, synthesized words such as :

-Co-petition  

-Simplex

-Globility

Well conceive the paradoxical reality today, and modern leadership also needs to to reflect the theme, to embrace, engage and inspire the more authentic leadership with color.

2. More like Educators than Entertainer

The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.-Ralph Nader

The authentic leaders should be more like educators:

--Great educators instill the values by being as a role model

--Great educator share knowledge with passion

--Great educators test class by asking questions and seek variety of reasonable answers

On the other hand, entertainer may have more fans and followers, with a different set of skills, mostly entertainers don’t need always be self, the scripture is not always her or his own thought, the action may not always have the positive impact on our society.

3. Act as Bridge, than the Wall

"Strength lies in differences, not in similarities"    -Stephen R. Covey

     

  Though the wall looks strong and visible, it divides silos at our organization and our society; on the other hand, bridge is more transparent and classic, shorten the physical distance, even becomes a landmark for our communities.

Leadership is like a bridge, visible, but not too overwhelming, solid with style, to connect the world with elegance.

4. Half Water, Half Flame

Firing up leadership mix humanity with humility, lead with passion, sincerity, vision, and mission

Water flowing leadership is on behalf of the flowing wisdom, the insightful observation, the analytic prediction, and knowledge accumulating.

Hybrid leadership style means visible but intangible, deep also inspiring.    http://futureofcio.blogspot.com/2011/07/five-elements-of-authentic-leadership.html,

5. Influencer, than Authority

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them."                            — John Maxwell

20^th century’s leadership with authority lead through command and control at hierarchical pyramid-like organization, modern digital technology shape natural leaders via multi-dimensional influence, to voice through broader base of audience and make influence on any interesting subject more seamlessly

Influential leadership helps framework the open leadership, social enterprise,  unleash talent potential and capture collective wisdom.  

6. Leadership is more like compass than Alarm

One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.

The authentic leadership like a compass, the true north leadership lead the right direction with sound judgment,  shared human values, open mind, and collective intelligence.

The authentic leaders lead at the front of the crisis time, but more importantly, the true leaders should predict the danger, and well prepare the worst case scenario.

7 Authentic Leadership is a Nature Power

The influential leaders scent like flower, nature and authentic, touching like wind, nurturing like rain, and bright like rainbow.     

Leadership innovation is a prototype project, need experiment, exploring with audacity.

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe' a part limited in time and space…. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." ---Albert Einstein

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CIO Master: Built to Change

IT is interwoven seamlessly with businesses, to become a true innovation engine, strategy enabler, and change agent.

Built to Last, Good to Great is every organization’s dream journey, however, the global economic uncertainty, digital information explosion, and unprecedented social and environmental changes make business facing significant challenges every day, IT on the other hand, no longer affords to be built to maintain as a cost center, IT needs to be built  as the value center, key differentiator to help reshape organizational competency, re-energize modern leadership and workforce, rekindle innovation and re-imagine growth. IT’s new vision is transformation, IT needs to be "built to change" for transforming the organization to:

1. Elastic Enterprise via Cloud Computing

The industrial-based enterprise of the 20^th century had run out of gas, the digital enterprise of the 21^st century has the new characteristics and DNA of innovation. The elastic enterprise will promptly adapt to changes, ride up the new digital tide, not only survive the economic recession, but also thrive and expand effortlessly into the adjacent business, and explore the global landscape.  

The elastic enterprise brings back IT as the strategic asset, the value creator, and modern IT solution such as cloud is timely and strategic, because it provides unprecedented flexibility in deploying applications,  because it has a  huge potential for reducing costs, because it is elastic to adjust capacity with more reasonable OPEX, easy to provisioning, faster to marketing, and CIOs are increasingly becoming solution brokers or service orchestrators.

2.Real-Time Enterprise via Mobile Computing

The modern enterprise needs to be non-stop, instant-on, IT consumerization is the catalyst to fuel today’s fast speed, to boost employees’ productivity, to reduce the cost and to leapfrog the competitors, and provide unique customer values. The real-time enterprise gets “wired” without wire, the modern mobile computing such as smartphone, tablet., etc offers both organizations and employees alternative to access working related information with their fingertip remotely,  

The foresighted IT organization will build up the effective enterprise mobility platform both for today’s efficiency and tomorrow’s growth,  deploy the mobile application to create the new revenue stream,  attract new talents such as next generation of digital native workforce, leverage the security and pursue operational excellence.  

3. Networked Enterprise via Social Computing

The emergence of social computing challenges us to re-imagine the way we are working, learning and connecting, and by intelligently embracing the social computing, the modern organization extend its boundary, to inspire and inform customers and business partners to participate the conversation, and engage employees’ wisdom and insight.

IT plays critical roles to orchestrate the enterprise-based social platform, collect big data and analyze it, to hear customer’s voice, foresee the business and technology trend,  cultivate the innovative change management culture and unleash humanistic energy.  

4.Agile Enterprise via Agile Methodology

Today’s digitized and decentralized global economic environment not only proves Change is the only constant” even truer than ever, but also the speed of change has been accelerated exponentially, the agile imperative is the strategic priority for every progressive, forward-looking organization in the new decade of the 21^st century.

Agile software development methodology, agile process management are the hard disciplines for organizations to adapt to the changes via iterative communication with customers, timeline-based project principles, more compatible with fast-paced, hyper-competitive environment; agile corporate structure, open leadership, and learning culture are the soft disciplines to soil the innovation seeds. Being agile is a strategic imperative for any modern enterprise regardless of its size. http://futureofcio.blogspot.com/2011/08/agile-wings.html

5. Intelligent Enterprise via Analytics

The exponential growth of data (both structured and unstructured data) in digital era brings both significant opportunities and risks for the contemporary enterprise.  Analytics, as one of the most critical components of business capability, becomes another strategic priority for business to gain a competitive edge and distinctive capability in the 21^stcentury.

The data is the foundation of creating the insight, the insight perceive the new business opportunities and risks, however, the organizational modern data environment is fraught with inconsistency, redundancy, and multiple data and knowledge platforms, the modern IT needs to have a more integrated data life cycle management solutions to conquer data challenges, to provide data accessibility and availability, ensure transparency and visibility, enable trust and reliability.

In fact, top-performing organizations use analytics five times more than lower performers, and more than twice as many top performers indicated they use analytics to guide future strategies and day-to-day operations, as compared to low performers, CIO need create the strategic analytics roadmap in order to build up the intelligent enterprise, one of  the most purposeful components in smarter planet and human society.  

6.Sustainable Enterprise via Green Computing

Sustainability is not just the buzzword about corporate social responsibility, green is the new gold and means the bottom line profitability in a downturn economy.

Sustainability is about minimizing the usage of non-renewable resources, optimizing resource use, cutting emission and recycling waste, the major role of IT is in the orchestration and delivery of the effective process, manage the capabilities and capacities of potential suppliers and manage the relationship with both partners and customers

Green computing such as virtualization, cloud computing, sustainable desktop strategies, green supply chain, and smart meter & smart grid technology will bring up significant impact for IT to become the true game changer and value builder from a sustainability perspective.

7. Customer-Centric Enterprise via all above Characteristics

The new characteristics listed above will become the new pillars to support the customer-centric enterprise, how to delight customers is essential for any organizations intent to build to last, and to be great by those strategic choices

Modern IT is built to change, it is interwoven seamlessly with businesses, to become a true innovation engine, strategy enabler, and change agent. And modern capital society also transforms itself from capital driven into customer-driven, to embrace the constant change and deliver the shared social value for business, community, and humanity. 

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Re-imagine Airlines

I'm flying high and couldn't be more confident about the future.— Freddy Laker

For global airline industry, last decade maybe the “lost decade”, suffered from both nature and human disasters, flying fuel and great recession, however, airline as the most challenging and charming industry in the world, stand on its feet with discipline, stabilized and start growing again via consolidation, innovation and hard-working, it’s at infection point to brainstorm more enchanting ideas, to re-imagine airlines and rejuvenate this legacy industry.

Imagine the airline like:

1. Full-Mobile House in the Sky

Today’s digital technologies add the new pair of wings for airline to grow, to delight customer through self-service, flight entertainment, and personalized solutions.

               

• Always Connect-On Customers

Smart clients today expect to continuing working or entertaining on board, the business travelers need speed internet connections, track-your-flight features, proactive notification services, and first-rate loyalty programs; leisure travelers will delight with social media connection, tailored entertainment services, all the activities the family enjoy at home, they also expect to have the similar experience at plane.

• Real-Time Travel Experience

Even beyond, the always connect-on customers expect their mobile with faster response time and real-time travel information & experience, such as: location based services: online baggage tracking, movement tracking, push notification, voice recognition

• Everyday Hero

We have to make you think it's an important seat - because you're in it.

Think every journey is special, just like big full house family, most of airlines are a bit crowd,  to lift up the travel spirit, airline staff need present the friendly & humorous attitude , optimized service; the diversified passengers have the chance to stay at the same journey, need support each other to make either the short trip or long journey more fun and impressive, window seat taker has the view, the isle customer has the convenience to exit, so the middle-seat customer makes some sacrifice, become our everyday hero.

2. World Window through the Cloud

The globe will be linked by flight and the nations so knit together that they will grow to be next-door neighbors. . . . What railways have done for nations, airlines will do for the world.

— Claude Grahame-White, 1914

 If  airport is  the window of the city, then airline is just like the window of the world,  Smart cities, better world, the widow-seat passenger will tell you why and how to modernize our cities and change our world via the overview and foresight of the man-made scenes.

Airlines are also economy engine and barometers, the aviation ecosystems influence worldwide activities significantly, from global trading to business activities, from job creation to travel attraction and from sustainability to new energy development. Aviation industry is one of infrastructural pillars in modern society. 

3. The Retailer with the Wings

There always has been a mystique and a romance about aviation, but in terms of the principles involved of satisfying your customer there's no difference between selling airlines seats and chocolate bars.

Airline is also one of the industries with least return on investment due to the large capital expenditure and high cost, many famous quotes by great investors and strategists well articulated how difficult for airline to make money, however, airline, as one of our strong economy pillars, the critical retailers with the wings, deserve to make some profit.

Airlines make some new innovations in recent years, they build up the ancillary revenue stream to keep industry flow and reimburse the high fuel cost, in order to keep the sustainable growth for the long term, airline need:

• Keep building up the innovation capability to drive more  new revenue and enhance customer loyalty via the latest digital technology such as mobile and social;
• Optimize the distribution channel and supply chain, with focal point at core business and customer services
• Consolidate, rationalize, integrate, modernize and optimize IT infrastructure and applications.
• To engage the employees, with passion, trust, and next generation of working environment and  talent management.

Yes, to revitalize the airline businesses is strategic imperative and long term journey, but it worth the effort: to transform it from national embrassment into national pride, to recover its image as
 the Proud Bird with the Golden Tail


I was engaged in what I believe to be the most thrilling industry in the world—aviation. My heart still leaps when I see a tiny two-seater plane soaring gracefully through the sky. Our great airlines awe me. Yet I know they were not produced in a day or a decade.

 William A. "Pat" Patterson, CEO United Airlines

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Modern EA’s Value Propositions

 EA  should play the bridge role between business and technology, the goal is to share the knowledge and recognize the optimization point.

In the blog:
 http://futureofcio.blogspot.com/2011/07/re-imagine-enterprise-architecture-re.html, we pointed out some 20^th century EA’s crucial problems such as lack of clear definition, lack of prioritization and lower level of maturity; ivory tower approach, fragmentation, and over-complexity. After being through a variety of valuable forums and case study, we conclude EA needs to be revitalized to reflect the new identity and become the competitive asset at the digital era in 21^st century, to deliver the true values, embrace the latest digital technology trends such as social/mobile/cloud, and lead the business into more radical digital transformation. The modern EA could deliver the following value propositions and beyond:

1. Strategy Communication Tool

Strategy Architecture blueprint the vision, mission, the goal, identify the enterprise capabilities and unique value chain, EA needs to be more dynamic to define both the long term vision and short term change facing in the organization. More importantly, EA needs to cultivate loyal internal users such as CXO, to use EA as a true communication tool, either for an elevator speech or the board level presentation.

2. Orchestrate the Change Management

The social enterprise is the new theme in the digital era: Modern enterprises take a hybrid approach, to integrate traditional centralized pyramid shape structure and decentralized lattice style through enterprise social platform, focus on communication, open leadership, and innovation. An effective EA effort will help:

 -Identify the talent needed in order to achieve its strategic objectives, also the talent needs to be developed and maintained on an ongoing basis.

-Become part of the organization’s operating model, assess organizational awareness and competencies periodically, to facilitate knowledge sharing, to drive change management and cultural influence.

3. Compass to Transformation

The subset of EA, such as IT Architecture should become the framework for CIO to build up the IT roadmap, focus on business transformation, to digitize and simplify the end-to-end process, not IT details, keep simple and standardized, but also recognize the technology trend and well-describe how IT and the latest technology could drive business value: not only think about today, but also selectively forget yesterday, and forward-looking tomorrow.

·  Rapid, effective and positive response to business change

·  Orchestrate process and knowledge management for better future-state planning

·  Democratize and unify business and technology decision-maker scenario

4. Connect Optimization Point from Project to Organization

EA still should play the bridge role between business and technology, the goal is to share the knowledge and recognize the optimization point, and expand the process optimization from project to organization base:

- Improve business agility via consolidation, rationalization, modernization, reusability, simplification, and optimization

-Drive value and cost-efficiency via the current platform and optimized process

-Increase economies of scale through standards.

5. Business Governance

As we indefatigably debated, for those industry leaders or laggards, is EA the cause or effect, part of problems or solutions?EA is planning, governance, and innovation function that enables the organization to progress toward its vision of future states, governance should play a critical role in  EA, however,  for the majority of the organization, EA governance is just too theoretic and intangible to make it a reality, in more detail, EA governance will:

·        Define and Manage Architecture Risks & Risk Control

·        Decision Making Governance

·        Works with a program and project Governance context to  ensure the realization of EA Vision and Enterprise Solution

·        Review and Audit Solutions

6. EA Benchmarking

From an ROI perspective, EA benchmarking could have an immediate impact by setting up the performance report card and track EA best practice:

·  Set up an EA performance measurement program to link to overall performance management

·   Track EA Program Maturity and Perceptions

·    EA Best Practice ROI: such as EA team can provide the business with cost comparisons of different project approaches

·    Forecast the impact of cost avoidance

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