Modern IT: From 3 Small “s” to Three Big “S”

 IT needs to get fellow business peers’ support,  transform shadow IT into the full spectrum of IT. 

Modern IT is pervasive, permeating into everywhere in contemporary business today, however, IT’s “mindset” hasn’t completely shifted from a controller into an enabler, from infrastructure into innovation, from back officer into brain yard yet, there’re both crucial points and s-curves on the journey, IT needs to overcome some small “s’, and embrace a few big S in transformation.
               

1 From Scarce, Shadow IT into the Spectrum of IT Solutions

When enterprise IT still acts as controller only,  think IT is scarce, while the world of clouds, SAAS services, consumerization of IT focus on technology abundance, and maximize its value and reward, then shadow IT crops up: it means the business department started bypassing IT for purchasing SAAS base applications on their own; on one hand, such circumstances are understandable, as business competes with agility, the speed of application solution can accelerate business growth; on the other hand, IT also has enough good reasons to control it: as IT infrastructure cost fortune, broke easily, shadow IT will cause risk/security loopholes to the business in the long term.

Therefore, IT needs to get fellow business peers’ support,  transform shadow IT into full spectrum of IT services, by building a rich ecosystem of services atop infrastructure -in both public and private cloud environments through integration and GRC management discipline, also well manage business-IT-Vendor trilogy in order to gain purchasing power for negotiation or reducing process redundancy.

IT Spectrum also means to inspire spectrum of collective wisdom, the spectrum of color in leadership, culture and change management.

2. From Shallow IT to Strategic IT

 Shallow IT means, at many of times, IT only provides band-aid, temporary fixing or ineffective communication with business:

• Focus on Symptoms, not Root Causes: IT continues to play “firefighter’ role to fix infrastructural issues, without digging into enterprise architecture to trace the root cause or review IT roadmap to look for touch point or re-prioritizing investment portfolio based on business value; 

• Inefficient 80/20 Rule: in order to transform from “shallow” IT: such as running IT for IT’s sake into Strategic IT: every IT project is a business project, IT need to refine new 80/20 principle, to ensure most of budget and resources have been used for business growth/innovation-driven projects.  

• Finger-Pointing Attitude: The other symptom for IT, actually for an unhealthy company, is that when something goes wrong, the top priority is figuring out whose fault it is, and finger-pointing with each other, fixing actual problems comes much later. Or business may complain about IT’s arrogance as it speaks its own language which business doesn’t understand and get lost in translation;

Strategic IT means IT needs to be more business focus with problem-solving attitude; well articulate what the business needs, and brings better and faster solutions.

3. From Silo IT to Significant IT

Low mature IT runs as a back office,  silo function, with bottom up, controller’s mindset, and traditional change-adverse attitude, because change may lead to problems or downtime, that’s why it’s avoided; modern CIOs need to take IT to the next level:  It’s about cross-functional collaboration, with more wildly and deeply touch with business, to deal with 3Cs: change/complexity/compliance, to fill out service gap, not just focus on time and on schedule, but also on value—to make sure the business value has been created.

Significant IT also means IT takes a unique position to capture the oversight of business capabilities via overarching enterprise architecture, take charge of over-abundance of enterprise data management. That said, IT need be cautious, but not overcautious, in order to capture the business opportunities, but also manage risk more seamlessly.

The significant IT becomes business driver for transformation, because at today’s hyper-connected, data-driven business dynamic, there’s no shortage of problems to tackle, it just requires more learning agile attitude, effective solutions with choices, and ambidextrous IT capabilities to build up high-performance business

                                                                                        

Hopefully, IT can become less shadow, shallow, and silo, gain with three new Big S capabilities: Spectrum, Strategy and Significance, in order for business transforming from good to great and built to last. 

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Enterprise Architecture: 3D Abstraction in Metaphors

EA must recognize the broader ecosystem and encourage creative thinking, in order to frame the future of business.

Enterprise Architecture (EA) provides greater visibility to the current and future position of an organization and enabling the relevant designers and decision-makers to act in a more informed manner. The biggest pitfalls for achieving EA value may include a lack of focus or lost in translation, due to the scope of architecture and immature EA discipline. Therefore, abstraction, as a thought-process of omitting unnecessary details that limit the generality of an idea, helps businesses see all important things from different perspectives.

1. Three EA Abstraction Levels via Biological Lens

 Many like to analogize EA as Living beings, business as enterprise body:

• Conceptual Level: EA helps organizations blueprint enterprise's character, identify business's DNA, capture value proposition, shape organizational culture, diagnose problems, set up guidelines, advise coherent actions in order to compete for the future; It can become an effective tool to communicate with upper management.

• Logic Level: EA functions as part of enterprise's “brain & nervous system.” better engage with the whole brain: the left brain helps business analyze, quantify and reasoning, and the right-brain drive business’s creative thinking, aesthetics, and feeling, that said, EA helps business both” think and feel” at the right way, and orchestrate vary business capabilities.  

• Physical Level: EA as nerves, link eyes to help business “see,” connect ears to help business “hear” or enable hands to help business “touch,” it’s more about important details for implementation. All the contributors make the organization work as a cohesive unit or something should improve or change

2. Three EA Abstraction Levels via Chronological Lens

If the business runs as an automobile, then EA is more like an installed GPS, provide business with hindsight, insight and foresight:

·       Foresight: Just like GPS is used to navigate the journey to the destination, EA needs to focus on the future state of business, guide through business transformation journey with holistic understanding and systematic thinking;

·       Insight: GPS can describe the current location in detail, EA needs to also explicitly look at the critical issue from every important perspective, help business understand where it is in order to make continuous improvement or large leap; 

·      Hindsight: GPS can store some historical routes being taken frequently before, EA can also manage enterprise knowledge accordingly, things are the way they are today because of the decisions one has made in the past. But just because they are that way today, does not dictate the future of how things will be tomorrow. That said, EA helps businesses learn historical lessons such as success stories or failures in decision making when history repeats itself, the enterprise can become more agile and resilient.

3. Three EA Abstraction Levels via Philosophical Lens

EA is about to blueprint and abstract, it’s natural to perceive it via philosophical lenses:

Level: 1: Overview: When you look at a mountain, you see a mountain

At this stage, you just see what you look at on the surface, the altitude, the shape, the color, only capture the physical characteristics of the mountain, it’s inanimate.

In EA, it’s about realization or generalization, EA abstracts the fact and knowledge from business.   

Level II: Highlight: When you look at a mountain, you see not a mountain

That said, you may concentrate on a few trees, the snow-covered on it, or an eagle stop on the top, you did highlight something more interesting or beautiful, more matters for yourself, you desire to dig deeper, understand more, 

In EA, it’s about specialization (Implementation), or classification (portfolio management), EA provides business insight on project priority or technical integration. 

Level: III: Perception: When you look at a mountain, you perceive a live mountain

At the highest level, you see and perceive a mountain again, it means, the mountain is alive now, you may not so much care about its physical look, you capture the spirit of the mountain, regardless which season you are in, you can see its full colors, you can imagine what the top look like, you feel it and touch it holistically, you can even communicate with it, and harmonize human nature with mother nature., etc. It’s about wisdom, idealism. symbolism.  

In EA, it’s also about inclusion or holism. Most organizations that adopt outside-in thinking are in a strong position to share information and outcomes with customers and business partners to foster trust, gain foresight and spur ecosystem investment.

Abstraction without purpose is meaningless, abstraction makes one understand EA needs to go deeper beyond broader touch, helps the business out of shadow & shallow, abstract wisdom from knowledge, at today’s business dynamic and always-on, interdependent world, EA must recognize the broader ecosystem and encourage creative thinking, in order to frame the future of business.

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3P to Demystify Business Complexity: Perception, Parable, and Prescription

Simplicity does not precede complexity but follows it. Alan Perlis

From Wikipedia, the complex is a “complex” word with various perspectives.  In general usage: Complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement; In a business context, complexity management is the methodology to minimize value-destroying complexity and efficiently control value-adding complexity in a cross-functional approach.

1. Complexity Diagnosis:

(1) Complexity vs. Complicated:

The use of the term complex is often confused with the term complicated. In today's systems, this is the difference between myriad connecting "stovepipes" and effective "integrated" solutions. This means that complex is the opposite of independence, while complicated is the opposite of simple.

(2) Productive vs. Non-Productive Complexity:

Rising complexity has been fueled by broad trends such as technological innovation, globalization, and M&A, which are not likely to slow down any time soon, not all complexities are created equal and can be managed effectively:

• Macro-systematic complexity:  includes laws, industry regulations, and interventions by non-governmental organizations. It is not typically manageable by companies. The goal should make it a value-added complexity.

• Designed Complexity: results from choices about where the business operates, what it sells, to whom, and how. Companies can remove it, but this could mean simplifying valuable wrinkles in their business model.

• Highly productive complexity:  such as employees interacting as they create value from intangible knowledge-based assets, invisible but powerful learning agile culture, and cross-silo business collaboration.

• Value/Cost Ratio in Complexity: complexity that is translated into additional revenues, such as product/service enhancements that customers are willing to pay more for, or that result in greater customer satisfaction and loyalty—can hurt the bottom line if the value it delivers in increased revenues isn’t greater than its real costs via adding business complexity.

• Unnecessary complexity arises from growing misalignment between the needs of the organization and the processes supporting it. There is the unproductive complexity of bureaucracy, silo walls between functions, and confusing matrix designs,  resistance to change, workforce constraints, slow decision-making, complex administrative processes, and competing incentives;

2. Complexity in Human Behavior: A Parable about Adding Feet to Snake

In ancient times, there’s man participating in an art contest, he decided to draw a snake, after finishing it, there’s still time left, so he added feet to the snake, it's more about adding complications than imagination, so he lost in the competition.

Insight: This story tells the people, the snake did not have feet, draw into the snake, put the snake feet, the result does not become a snake, neither a dragon. Superfluous, or use the metaphor of complications, to tell people to do anything to be seeking truth from facts, otherwise, not only one can not do a good job, but will mess up things. That also said nothing is more complex than human behavior.

3. Ten Prescriptive Solutions to Complexity Optimization:

Complexity is easily managed once being identified as productive complexity or non-productive complexity, the value-cost ratio in complexity, the goal is to master it and achieve a high-performance business result:

1)     Non-Linear, Holistic Business Thinking in Inter-dependent World: The whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts in today’s heterogeneous and inter-dependent world. The key issue is that you can’t really understand the whole system by simply looking at its individual parts. That’s the essence of a complex adaptive business management discipline, to make the business as a whole premium than the sum of pieces.

2)     Ambidextrous Capabilities: The ability is developed to tolerate ambiguity and proactively manage complexity. The capability focuses on how effective managers are at taking the initiative and working outside a narrow definition of their roles;

3)     Sophistication is the quality of refinement: It is displaying good taste, wisdom, and subtlety rather than crudeness, stupidity, and vulgarity when managing complex systems, human behavior, or data.

4)     Effective Organizational Design. Effective organizational design at the individual level can minimize complexity. Misaligned processes and systems are important drivers of individual complexity. The tactics companies can explore by focusing on the individual level via accommodating entrepreneurship in processes: defining accountability, removing duplication, sorting out and streamlining processes, and building skills and capabilities in the right places at the right time to drive exceptional growth and diversification.

5)     Make complexity transparent: Complex organizations don’t always behave in a linear way. Altering cultural, organizational, and operating systems can, therefore, have unintended consequences that may generate even more complexity. Make business processes more transparent is the first step in order for people to understand and optimize complexity.

6)     Apply the “80/20” rule. 20 percent of customers or products account for 80 percent of revenue. Optimize the whole, not the separate silos. Without a cross-functional, end-to-end perspective across the entire enterprise, managers tend to focus on their own functions or departments. This silo thinking is a source of process complexity

7)     Business Agility: about doing things better, faster and cheaper: strategic agility (planning, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting; trend identification; risk management) is fully underpinned and propelled by their operational agility (optimizing the supply chain; faster response to customers, enhancing sales processes and systems; achieving flexibility in the workforce; IT criticality). Maximum agility is achieved when these two factors come together, create cost/value matrix, and optimizing the product/service portfolio.

8)     Business Resilience: the organization has a set of capabilities to bounce back from economic turmoil or mistakes in business strategy or decision making, and promptly recover & catch up via cohesive actions and collaborative processes.

9)     Business Elasticity: organization can more easily scale up or down to adapt to the fast-changing business dynamic, it’s also a crucial capability to overcome complexity, be able to actively cope with positive or negative changes in markets and regulations.

10) Business Flexibility: Gaining business flexibility requires a company to establish the right balance between adaptability, agility, and stability in its operating model, cost structure, and processes. Companies are focusing on making both their back-office and front-office processes more agile to gain competitive advantage, and this often means challenging traditional organizational structures to fit new business realities, being flexible on how they approach different opportunities.

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity. Douglas Horton 

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Three Big “WHEN”s to Explore Big Data

There are more businesses are at the journey to debunk Big Data mysteries, as we are living in such a “petabyte” age, nobody can claim the Victory yet by conquering 3”V”s  + 1C about Big Data: Volume, Velocity, Variety and complexity. By exploring "5W +1H" Big Data scenario: Why, What, Where, Who, How, now, we are pursuing the last “W”: big “WHEN”s at Big Data adventure:

1. When should you start take Big Data Journey?

• Sooner than Later: big data like airline seat or perish food, it will expire soon, that said,  being able to process and analyze your data as soon as possible is critical to gain competitive business advantage;

• Shorten “When” from starting point to “When” to get result: Reducing the time between when data is collected and when insight perceived from that data,  which you can access the resources and analyze the large scale data promptly and easily;

• When - timing of data is at the heart of Big Data opportunity: it makes Big Data analysis difficult, besides the other characteristics of Big Data such as 3”V” + complexity, on the other side, the “timely” data provides unprecedented opportunities for business to win at era of uncertainty.

2. Big “WHEN” need focus on the Future of Business

Traditional BI usually like a “rear-view mirror” to uncover the hindsight on the business, and tell you where you have been; Big Data deployment puts emphasis on foresight via predictive analysis, rather than historic ones, that said, the big WHEN in Big Data need focus on future of business:

• The future trends of business: It is the data mining practices concerned with the prediction of future, the probabilities and trends, predictive analytics is to be as much an art as a science, it makes Big Data analytics both risky and rewarding;

• When is crucial in Data-Driven decision making: Big data predictive analysis becomes central to business strategy and decision making, it's all about timing, the focal point is also about how to execute complex tasks and measure ROI in Big Data initiatives.

• When means historical, real-time or “as soon as possible” analysis: Different data may go to different destination, the art of choices may depend on intent of usage and the quality of data.    

3. When: enough is enough in the Iterative Big Data Management life Cycles?

• When –means the full data life cycle management, including  making decisions on weather data is stored for short-term batch processing or long-term retention, in the petabyte age, where the amount of information available for analysis is accelerating exponentially, the Big Data information lifecycle management process should ensure a laser focus on data/information that matters: Spend more time on understanding the problem, less time on designing the solution. To quote Einstein: “if I have an hour to solve a problem, I will spend 50 minutes to understand it, and 10 minutes to solve it”.

• When –means shorter window of business opportunities, organizations need get quicker understanding customers by analyzing customer data and responding to customers request;  faster time to market by reducing data latency, unleashing Big Data potential for big revenue recognition opportunities or putting business performance improvement effort.

• When –also means the agile methodology to deploy Big Data , the emerging Hadoop open source project becomes popular solutions to manage data information life cycle, and address business and technology trends that disrupt traditional data process scenario, also embed information back into business life cycle more seamlessly via iterative communication and collaboration, the mantra to deploy Big Data is  “ Do it faster, better and cheaper”.

“WHEN” matters because Big Data transforms analytics from hindsight-oriented business intelligence into foresight driven diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics, organizations now are also moving from inside-out orientation-where they analyze and report data from within the business boundary via historical perspective into the outside-in one-where data out of traditional business boundary flow in and bring the futuristic perception of business. It’s the new theme of contemporary business at the “always on” and hyper-connected new normal. 

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Three Progresses Made in Corporate Risk Management

There’re a growing number of organizations shifted their risk management orientation from bottom-up to top-down, with more senior management and board involvement.

The economic turmoil makes all businesses large or small to rethink their risk management strategy, through all those reputable consulting/audit firms’ survey and deep-dive research, the consistent message is sent out about risk management as strategic imperative, create value via it and deliver the high-performance business result. There are three signs of progress in risk management leading companies made, to set up a solid footprint for others to follow:

1. Risk Management is Top Management Strategic Matter

There’re a growing number of organizations shifted their risk management orientation from bottom-up to top-down, with more senior management and board involvement, to take charge with risk issues and have been seeking to improve their ability to define and communicate a clear, consistent, enterprise-wide message about healthy risk appetite and variety of possible situations and risk scenarios.

 For leading organizations, ERM is already an integral compe­tency and top priorities for C-Suite executives, providing them a holistic process for connecting the dots on risk across the orga­nizations — and pushing the responsibilities and solutions of day-to-day risk ownership out to business managers.

One of the best ways to protect against unknown risks is to think about vulnerabilities rather than trying to predict risk events, and don’t forget to cultivate risk-aware culture. 

2.  Risk Management: from Value Protection to Value Creation

Statistically, the companies with  mature risk management practices outperform their peers financially; the companies with more mature risk management practices generated the highest growth in revenue, EBITDA and EBITDA/EV

The findings suggest that:

·         The top-performing companies (from a risk maturity perspective) implemented on average twice as many of the key risk management capabilities as those in the lowest-performing group.

·         Companies at the top 20% of risk maturity generated three times the level of EBITDA as those in the bottom 20%.

·         Effectively harnessing technology to support risk management is the greatest weakness or opportunity for most organizations.

Value Creation Opportunities may include:

• Achieving superior returns from risk investments

• Accepting and owning the right risks to achieve competitive advantage

• Improving controls around key processes

• Using analytics to optimize the risk portfolio and improve decision-making

• Using risk management savings to fund strategic corporate initiatives





3.   Risk Management embedded in an organization’s DNA

From industry survey:

·         (52%) said they intended to elevate the profile of risk management throughout their organizations;

·         The next most popular responses were reorganizing risk management processes (39%)

·         Providing additional training for staff (37%),

·         Incorporating new technology (31%)


·         (77%) said that their companies employed a centralized model with regard to risk management;

The efforts on managing risk holistically or in a more integrated fashion are critical for the long run, as financial performance is highly correlated with the level of integration and coordination across risk, control and compliance functions. That said, risk management needs to get integrated across departments and functions. 


Current risk management systems and processes are not highly automated, strategic, and technology risk management to see the highest budget increases in automation. From the investment perspective, analytics is the next big frontier for risk management, as we’ve been living in a more complex and interconnected world. Data privacy and security were also singled out as an area that is likely to receive increased investment during 2012 and beyond. Technology can play a pivotal role in enabling change and in leveraging the right balance among risk, cost, and value across the enterprise.

Now Risk Management becomes the fourth pillar of business beyond people, process, and technology, are you ready to shape it up?

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BPM’s Social Wind

BPM is the practice of refin­ing and optimizing processes from end-to-end to promote efficiency and effectiveness, nurture innovation, or increase customer value

Social is collaboration and knowledge sharing which are critical part of the "process of process improvement". That’s why social BPM get coined when BPM meets social software. To dig deeper, what does "social BPM" mean? What is its area of effectiveness and efficiency? Why social BPM seem have fallen short of expectation?

1.      Social BPM means Convergence

·         Convergence of digital technology trends: Social BPM means to converge BPM with other latest digital technologies such as social computing, mobile and advanced analytics, to manage formal or “informal” processes via both inside-out and outside-in point of view in decision making and customer experience optimization, or even embed gamification mechanism into BPM to encourage positive behavior and improving staff satisfaction.

·         Convergence of People centric Process & Document-centric Process: to manage end-to-end process more effectively via converging business’s social layer, organizational layer, and technology layer seamlessly; Social BPM refines micro-process to better integrate with macro-process;

·         Convergence of BPM and PPM, at least it encourages business to manage process and project more holistically via better communication and resource sharing.

 

2. Social BPM’s Benefit:

·        Effective Communication: Social is about facilitating interpersonal communications, or cross-functional collaboration, social BPM will help interaction between many process players;

·         Enterprise Architecture Refining: social is about mediation of social interaction and social relationships, the systems design would center on architecture, emergent social dynamics. The social BPM can refine business process by embracing ecosystem seamlessly

• Culture Evolution: culture is the way how a group of people think and do things, social encourages sharing and inspires collective wisdom, social BPM will shape the open culture or organization’s habit in process optimization and business transformation

·  Innovation Management: Innovation is about how to manage novel business ideas and achieve its business values, social BPM can be a right tool to help manage innovation via full life cycle.

·     Customer Experience Management: Modern digital technologies allow customers to have more alternatives when selecting services or vendors, also with social power to voice opinions for the services received, social BPM has potential to refine process with customers’ feedback loop and improve customer experience as a goal.

·         Social Business in Building: When an organization uses good BPM supporting technology such as social, the management philosophy will change from the old command and control to empowerment and measurement, social BPM becomes one of pillars in shaping social business

 

3. Why does Social BPM seem have fallen short of expectation?

·         A process is really only as good as its repeatability. Without capturing this tacit knowledge, you have no hope of a repeatable process. So in essence, no social BPM has not fallen short if you possess the correct features in your BPM platform solution.

·         Lack of Effective Social Governance: the most current social products are not built on a solid model of how narrative works in the human mind and as communication transactions channels between actors/players. And typically, a model of "work", what should be the subject of conversation, is also missing. That said, social without governance discipline will not improve productivity.

·       Installing social tool only won’t make process better: social platform is cool because it's about the information that is shared and used. So if you expect that social tools will make your process better just by installing them, It's no surprise you will be disappointed. Integration and participation are important and people truely matter.

Will social BPM like wind to lift up social businesss's wings? As BPM continue its journey, passing the rocky road, reach the value trails, touch the mighty waters and now meet the social wind, what's the next stop any way?

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CIO & CMO: Are you Soul Mates?

Modern business need both innovation and motivation, CIO and CMO need work to more collaboratively to create true value for business synergistically.

At many organizations today, CIO and CMO may just like live at different planet, one is from Mars, the other from Venus, marketing is like a running hare, without too much discipline; IT is too slow as a tortoise, with controlling mindset, but not guarantee it’s a winner. As modern business is no longer the competition between hare and tortoise, it’s about  how they work as a team to outrun the lion.

Now, with emerging digital technologies such as social, mobile and cloud, the latest trend such as consumerization of IT and BYOD-Bring you own device, and big data & advanced analytics at tipping point, can CIO & CMO get to know each other deeper, from stranger to become soul mate?

1. CIO = Chief Innovation Officer, CMO = Chief Motivation Officer

Statistically, 58 percent of IT executives said they were championing, or shaping the digital agenda at their organization, while 19 percent of the marketers said that the digital agendas at their companies were being shaped by IT executives. Instead, 69 percent of marketers said they were the ones in the driver's seat.

So the real issue is not about just listening to “he said and she said”, make a judgment on who should take credit on business’s digital effort,  the emphasis need be put on is about how CIO and CMO work as business partners to create synergy in organization’s digital transformation.

• Modern CIO is business’s chief innovation officer:  stand at unique position to oversee organization’s most valuable & intangible asset: data, IT is also the steward of business’s information system, IT needs to treat marketing as their valuable customers, and think how to delight their common end customers as premium goals. IT can play the pivotal role in managing business innovation journey, to bridge customer frontline department such as sales/marketing, customer service and business back office division such as procurement, finance, HR., etc, and make innovation as end to end business processes.

• Modern CMO is Chief Motivation Officer: it means the main purpose of marketing is about crafting multi-channel communication with customers, build business brand and reputation, enhance customer’s loyalty, improve customer experience, and motivate better customer behaviors., etc. So when the marketers think they are the ones in the driver’s seat, yes or no, imagine, if IT is an innovation engine of a car (business), even the driver (marketer) holds the key, if engine doesn’t work, the car simply won’t run. 

Modern business need both innovation and motivation, CIO and CMO need work to more collaboratively to create true value for business synergistically.

 2. CIO = Chief  Improvement Officer, CMO = Chief  Measurement Officer

• Modern CIO is also as Chief Improvement Officer, or some call Chief Process Officer, continuously optimize business process is a long term journey for CIOs, in addition, traditional IT driven KPIs may also lack the perception for business to really understand business value IT can bring in, from survey,  46 percent of marketers reported that marketing "is not seen as a priority by the IT executives”,  it’s a good reason for CIO to communicate more with CMO and get further feedback for IT improvement.  

• Modern CMO is Chief Measurement Officer: marketers usually measure a lot at digital era, from page click to conversion rate, however, don’t forget to share those metrics with your IT partners, to co-develop KPIs and measure IT & marketing more holistically. With IT’s help, marketers can “push & pull” customers at the same time, see customer process from both inside-out and outside-in, CMOs, share more with CIOs for win-win. 

 3. CIO = Chief Influence Officer, CMO = Chief Maturity Officer

• Modern CIO is also Chief Influence Officer, that said, CIO’s leadership depends on the capability to influence executive peers, CEO owns corporate culture, but CIOs need to become a big influencers on culture in order to keep project on track; CMO has customers, and possible bigger digital budget than CIO,  CIOs need to influence CMO on sharing resources and talent, co-tracking project progress, understanding governance and risk management discipline.

• Modern CMO need to be Chief Maturity Officer: from survey: 39 percent of CIOs said that "marketing bypasses them and works directly with the vendor"; and 31 percent said "marketers hinder progress by taking control and isolating IT from solution selection, strategy or implementation.". Marketing may need leverage speed in order to be cohesive with established GRC infrastructure and corporate strategy, marketing may also need become more mature to understand the potential pitfalls they may cause when running a “shadow IT”, without having IT participate in.

Still, only CIO and CMO make positive influence with each other, be mature enough to discuss & brainstorm business priorities and potential loopholes more transparently, the business as a whole can achieve high performance result.

CIO & CMO, learn each other’s dialect or speak the standard business language, work heart to heart, neck to neck, as partners, as soul mate, to embrace 3Ps: People, Process and Progress. 

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Dig into Alphabetic Root in Pursuit of the Spirit of America

Individualism & Independence: means as a society, we value independence and self-reliance, with the right to pursue happiness, appreciate uniqueness and experimentation.

Tomorrow, the United States of America celebrates its 236th birthday. The 4th of July may not just mean another Summer holiday, the barbeque or firework, no matter you are citizen by birth, citizen by choice or citizen in-waiting, it’s a perfect moment for us to revisit the spirit of America via our own lens of value, our own experience of the journey:

When you watch the firework at the night of Independent Day, what do you see? What can you perceive the blossom of firework with these alphabetic letters: A-M-E-R-I-C-A,  shining on the sky?

1. A –Agility, Assimilation, Appreciation

There’re many great “A” words to reflect the contemporary spirit of America, at today’s rapidly changing economic dynamic, either as a fellow citizen or nation as a whole, being learning agile is a strategic imperative.

• Assimilation for citizens by choice:  for many immigrants, 4th of July is also the ceremonial day to swell as a naturalized citizen, it means you need work hard to assimilate into the mainstream culture; on the other side, at today’s hyper-connected world, it also means you need bring up some fresh, unique value ingredients and blend them into this well-mixed cultural pot, such as innovation or leadership. 

• Appreciation for citizens by birth: you may need to appreciate your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents to bring you here, to provide you more choices than living in many other places in the world; on the other hand, your birth-right citizenship should not make you become complacent and take everything for granted, should not stop you from being learning agile.   

Achieving More: In essence, the spirit of America is to unite all fellow citizens to achieve more.

2. M--Maturity, Mission, Meaning

Being mature doesn’t mean aged; as individuals, maturity means we are experiencing peak stage of the life cycle, as fellow citizens, being mature means we are not only perceiving what a great or greatest nation looks like, but also pondering our own roles as citizens; being mature means our leaders become deeper than louder; being mature means businesses not only serve their own shareholders, but also make more contribution to the national economy; Being mature means we see the world not just black & white, or bit & byte,  but embracing the full spectrum of color and enjoy learning from the best of the world; Being mature also means our kids not only study hard also smart, to have a competitive accent in the next generation.

As a mature citizen, we may continue to re-visit our purpose of life, the meaning of citizenship, as a mature nation, it’s the great time to rekindle the mission and vision of founding father 236 years ago: “Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness”.    

3. E—Enthusiasm, Egalitarianism, Engagement 

Compare to America Revolution 256th years ago, we’ve been living at much more peaceful time today, however, the mature nation should not lose its enthusiasm, and it shouldn’t stop America from making continuous progress, furthermore, it need inspire fellow citizens’ engagement to refine and enforce the core values of United State:

Egalitarianism & Liberty: still one of the key drivers for worldwide talent coming to fulfill the American dreams:  the belief in equality of opportunity -- that everyone in America should have a chance to succeed on his or her merits. Liberty not only means the freedom and determinism to do what we need to do but also involves how we imagine the role and responsibilities of a citizen in society. America is exceptional not because it’s perfect, but because it is different, an outlier embracing a unique set of values.

4. R—Resilience, Reflection, Reliability

Either as individual or nation, resilience is an ineffable quality that allows some to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. From natural disasters to human calamity, for many middle-class families, infrastructural industries, and the nation as a whole, the last decade is a lost decade in the US, however, we may just need to keep our morale on, keep our fingers crossed, be resilient to move forward, be reflective to learn the historical lessons and be reliable to create the new future.

5. I—Independence, Improvement, Insight

           

Individualism & Independence: means as a society, we value independence and self-reliance, with the right to pursue happiness, appreciate uniqueness and experimentation, but also respect the difference between us, treat others like what we’d like to be treated,

• Improvement: from one generation to the next generation, the spirit of America also includes how to make continuous progress as a society, to advance culture, education, technology, and humanity.

• Insight: At today’s over-complex world with exponential information flowing, be insightful means always capture the wisdom from knowledge, recognize character than style, diagnose the root cause, not symptoms, win the heart & mind of fellow citizens.  

6. C--Change, Choice, Creativity

Statistically, America is seventh in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, No. 4 in the labor force, No. 4 in exports, and a dismal 72nd in paying taxes. It means as a nation, 3 "Cs" are needed:

• Change: with both breadth and depth is imperative, from leadership to education, from economy to politics, change is a journey from good to great and built to last. 

• Choice: need be provided for fellow citizens to live better, or the national populism is needed to represent ordinary people's needs and wishes

• Creativity: is in the blood of the nation, America is still creative, still willing to take risks, that is the key character of America.

7. A—Adventure, Aspiration, Advancement

As one of the authors well put:  if you love somebody, send her to America; if you hate someone, send her to America, as it is both heaven and hell. That said:

• Adventure: What the global talent really admires is Americans' entrepreneurial attitude,  there's a greater appetite for risk and a greater acceptance of failure in the U.S. There's a cultural, go-at-it, you-can-do-it nature.

• Aspiration: America should continue to be an aspiring country to unite the best, to amplify human capability, and to advance humanity,  

• Aha Moment: Should the 4th of July, America’s birthday, become such an aha moment to unite our vision and bridge our difference?

Dear fellow citizen by choice, are you creative or courageous enough to declare “ I am more American than American”, as you bring in the fresh seeds and fertilize this free land; dear citizen by birth, are you positively and progressively say: I am American growing with a global mindset, ready to learn from best of mankind”; To all Americans: young or senior, democratic or republican, should we truly get united to achieve more, for our own,  for the next generation, for this great nation, and for humanity as a whole.

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CIO’s Vital Voice: Five Focal Points at Big Table

When CIOs really get a seat at the big table, surely they need to be the business leader first, to speak the language of business at least.

At many businesses, CIOs are underdog executives, after being through numerous debates and years’ effort, they finally gain a seat at the big table, what should they say when they get there? When should the voice of IT leaders be heard, and do CIOs think their voices get heard, what are those “should” & “should not” to do list? The best CIOs are good salespeople who see opportunities to save money, become more customer experience oriented, or come up with definitive competitive advantages, and with the business mindset.  Here are five focal points:

1. Be there, before Sitting there

When CIOs really get a seat at the big table, surely they need to be a business leader first, to speak the language of business at least. What does the board care about is the business growth (both top and bottom line), the cost optimization (not only efficiency, but also effectiveness), the talent management, and governance, risk management discipline.

• Should: Prepare well, contribute effectively. Before sitting at the table for presentation, CIOs need to do enough homework to recognize both formal and informal power brokers across organizations, to present and promote potential IT management portfolio, to be purpose driven such as improving business capability maturity, simply put, CIOs need to get business buy-in before the formal presentation. Also, make sure you have a handle on any fires and that operationally, the walls aren't crumbling or no one will listen to you even if you are sitting next to the CEO.      
       
• Should Not: When a CIO gets to the table, the last thing they want to do is to go and start talking IT in “geeky” way,  in the language of IT or through the lens of technology; Furthermore, while you might 'say very little' until really understanding the business, this should not stop you from asking. Good questions are golden

If all goes well, each executive will voice support for her or him as she or he communicates the vision to CEO, CFO or board. This will position her or him as a business partner with technical expertise, and her or his opinions will be respected as such. The CIO would or should have been asked to contribute towards the business strategy as a member of the senior management team 

 2. Laser Focus on Business Value

Often the CIO is perceived to be less of a champion of getting IT what it needs to optimally balance stability with innovative business value, and more of a fair 'player' at the business table. IT needs to shift the mindset, when presenting, always focus on business value, it's about how to craft and verify capability-driven business strategy, it's about next practice for business governance, it's about business process optimization, and it's also about organizational structure retooling.

• Should: It's vital to ask the right questions to business partners such as sales/marketing, finance, HR, operational risks & opportunities and how IT can help to mitigate against or contribute towards the pursuant of these, IT should express with the confidence on the true value it can bring in, help to foresee the future of enterprise, and take initiatives to streamline data-driven decision management scenario.

• Should Not: See today’s much more hyper-connected, interdependent business world as “black and white,” “nut or bolt,” or “bit or byte,” should not treat IT project as technology challenge than solving business problems; also should not do innovation for innovation’s sake.

According to the variety of industrial surveys, many IT leaders believe they are still valued primarily for their technical contribution. Fewer than one in ten (9%) IT leaders believe that their teams are seen as strategic operators and 13% think they are seen as technical support – double the proportion of HR directors holding this view. While there is still work to do to ensure the majority of peers recognize IT’s strategic importance, its internal reputation is changing for the better, and changing faster than many IT directors realize.

3. Bring Both Good News and Bad News via KPIs

 CIOs should present business-driven KPIs interest executive peers at the big table: prepare for both good news and bad news supported by data, you may speak good news promptly if there's a visualized dashboard, not necessarily fancy, also help. The CIO needs to have an optimistic attitude, and even thing's not going so well, as positive attitude will fuel the passion & solution either at the top level or casual meeting with staff, When releasing bad news, always prepare for some alternative solutions to invite diverse opinions and welcome collective wisdom.

• Should: Express effectively and provide the reasons why IT is over- or under- delivering, also invite business to a co-track project, co-dance with IT at the faster tempo, and walk through the project more collaboratively. IT should be transformed from a back office function to a front office innovation center, from wired infrastructure to digitization engine without wire, and CIOs should transform self from an IT manager only to also be perceived as an influential business leader, be an IT practitioner and business strategist at the same time.

• Should not: Only focus on "on time, on budget" IT driven KPIs. Every IT project is the business project,  IT needs to express self via the lens of business, not just defense. Being a translation channel is something every executive does, but by very volatile and complex nature of IT compared to other functions, IT should not ignore to discuss technical details which matter, the leverage point is: how should you say it or what should not say.

CIOs who are comfortable with the seat may not only need deliver KPI driven business outcome, they may also need craft IT's elevator pitch timely in order to manage IT-enabled business capabilities and transform the organization from Good to Great & Built to Last. 

4. The Convergence of Business & IT Governance

 IT departments have come a long way from being pure technical specialists to being strategic operators critical to achieving business growth and transformation. A seat at the boardroom table is now theirs for the taking. At the board level, it's more about risk /compliance governance, requires a strategic and forward-looking perspective, dealing with uncertainty, identify and address key risks, also understand and convert the best of them to opportunity. 

• Should: At the governance table, it's all about how to optimize business processes, improve knowledge worker productivity, verify strategic plan effectiveness, and approach GRC in a holistic way. It means a lot for CIOs to make contribution as business leaders, they should advise the board about the intertwining relationship between risk management, compliance, and security, sometimes, the more effective GRC management need to break down the functional silos, soothe the political power plays, and build up a truly integrated, enterprise-wide GRC.

• Should Not: Talk about business continuity and data protection as pure IT matters, CIO need help create more of the direct line between the board and field.  Either business at the stagnation point, or perhaps businesses are approaching a tipping point, where IT takes a new role that is based more on the mission and purpose of the company.

Especially at the board room, not only you need to understand your own business, you need to know your industry, you even need to have insight about cross-industrial trends, and economy as a whole, as now, the leaders cross-sector claim they are an information business, learning the best practice and next practice, learning about success story and failure case, the point is: the spirit comes from top, being the agile leader in shaping the agile enterprise.

5. Talent Management: Leadership, Culture, Education

With IT perceived purpose shifting from being a process enabler to being a people and thought connector (with information, with communication tools, with knowledge and learning), it seems the straddling of the industrial age command & control/hierarchical structure and Information Age innovation and ingenuity/knowledge worker has come to a breaking point. The foot left in command and control must lift and weight must be shifted.

• Should: IT should lead the way to lifting one foot and shifting the organizational structure more into participative models that better support the quantum leap in speed we are experiencing, because, the purpose of business today is to amplify collective human capability and business capacity in order to compete more confidently, it's also about the right timing as the latest technology trend such as social/mobile/analytics/cloud continue blurring business boundary, expand business influence and expose enterprise into high-risk surrounding.

• Should Not: Rush into the concept which haven’t been accepted by business fully, for example, some corporate cultures will be more in favor of things like EA and some more averse--meaning in some companies the CIO might create a fabulous Architecture but it won't be well received by the rest of the 'C's, suppose one could use words like 'capability maturity' and 'culture' to describe the kind of insight and awareness that must have developed within the business leadership for matters IT related for the transformative potential of IT to have the most positive effect.

No matter which table you sit, the scope of conversation maybe vary, but if the discussion focus is about business strategy/execution, then the philosophy and methodology have some similarity, you need to be the business leader with broad understanding and knowledge, but you can also make contributions to reach the depth of your own discipline, which means be a strategist, a coach, and practitioner at the same time, even at big table, being learning agile should be one of the prerequisites for modern leaders, be both vocal and vital. 

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