Seven Negative Characteristics Most Leaders Possess

The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths, making our weaknesses irrelevant.    --Peter Druker

ALL MANAGERS ARE IN LEADERSHIP POSITIONS, BUT NOT ALL MANAGERS ARE LEADERS

1. Micro-management -- inability to delegate. 

The leaders don’t truly understand the difference between management vs. leadership; which therefore translates to micro-management, arrogance, lack of trust etc

2. Most Leaders won't and don’t share the whole picture.  

Not all leaders can articulate the “overarching” vision or mission. The definition of vision has always been… “Beyond what you can see… to what can be” - the odds are against a shortsighted leader without any foresight, who wants to be great

3. Lack of self-awareness as a recurring theme 

Becoming a legend in one’s own mind and taking oneself too seriously, while good leaders are on the "still learning" curve

4. Insufficient and inconsistent levels of value-driven personal discipline 

Insatiable hunger for power at the cost of peace of mind

5. Lack of  balance of confidence & humility 

Not all leaders can find the right balance, doing the “Right Thing” and being the catalyst to business success

6. "Stifled leader paradox" 

It means that "leadership" is constantly "on" (the "being") but "strategic leadership" (the "doing") can be switched "on/off" at will. It also means that the "stifled leader" is either a willing participant of the stifling (if he/she has strategic skills) or a stressed victim unaware of strategic potential of his/her leadership

7. Narcissism is one of the most common negative characteristics among leaders. 

The voice in their head saying “you can do it better”. Lots of times it leads to self-fulfilling prophecies, and success follows. But, when the voice is wrong and the leader fails,  that same narcissism will lead them to blame others, freeing their conscience of guilt and leading them to start the cycle all over again

An effective leader will eliminate those negative characteristics,  cultivate the positive traits of good leadership such as delegation, trust, self-awareness, setting clear expectations, fairness, listening, decision making, providing feedback and respect…

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CIOs as "Chief Investment Officer" Is IT still Triple-Puzzling: Costly, Complex and Confounding

IT is not perfect, but IT continues to stretch out and make progress.

Year after year, the similar debates are spurred in CIO forums: What is the TCO on IT investment? What is the value added of IT service?  Does IT lack of cost transparency into initiatives. So is IT still triple-puzzling: Costly, complex and confounding?

1. Is IT still Costly?

That's debatable, as the cost is not a good measure in today's dollars. Technology becomes cheaper than ever these days, IT can just do more with less now, If you break down the costs into functional units, though the overall spend is higher as IT intends to achieve more, the cost has come down. That said, indeed, IT has higher performance-cost ratio today than ever.

• Linkage of IT to Top-Line Business Growth:  IT in many organizations is only viewed as cost center, it doesn’t define a clear business case of a dollar for dollar translation, while many of the application, infrastructure, etc. may have revenue generating implication, and if that business linkage could be clearly defined and a solid IT would have a strong voice in the organization.

• Revenue Requirements of IT Investment: If you really want to hold the business feet to the fire, bring up the concept of "Revenue Requirements." Assume you're going to allocate the cost of an IT investment across several revenue generating groups. Whatever the cost is estimated to be, they will then need to determine the net increase in revenue at current margins needed to offset the cost of the IT project. 

• It’s both Science & Art to Well-Define Metrics Right: IT TCO can be difficult to determine, simply because many of the costs inherent to an organization are often "soft" costs that the corporation itself doesn't have a handle on. Especially the more complex the solution, the more difficult it is to ascertain a true TCO. 

Therefore, be positive, IT is not perfect, but IT continues to stretch out and make progress, year after year,  the Business can get a better clearer picture of IT solution from a cost, transparency and complexity level. No solution is a plug and play but being able to quantify value and cost on IT initiatives is essential especially given the magnitude of the investment.

2. Is IT still Complex?

Complexity is relative to the audience & not always bad. The more IT intends to plan and implement, the more moving parts and more complexity are there

•   Complexity is not always bad: Who says complexity is an only bad thing. Some of the most elegant systems out there are ecosystems, and they are very complex.Thus, IT needs to focus on ease of use, and reduce unnecessary complexity, but improve flexibility even certain level of complexity needs to be added. It will be as complex as it needs to be to work well.
  
  
•   User Experience is indeed optimized: While technology is still complex on the back end, it has become much simpler from an end user perspective to the extent that one of the great challenges of CIOs is justifying their enormous budgets while all this stuff "just works.". IT is business solutionary to simplify and optimize business processes while IT infrastructure pieces are still complex. Much like no one wants to hear the electric company lament how complex power generation is, so,  the tolerance for IT complaints about how hard their life is has fallen dramatically.

• IT automates "thought" with strong governance practices  It’s the "thought" that is the real issue. Too many conflicting priorities of organization do not create an environment for clarity in thought. The root of all lack of coherent thought is in the way to divide work in organizations - The performance design.  Thus, a mature IT will clarify & automate "thought" of organization. If organizations have true governance, wouldn't the corporate strategy to a great amount deal with the conflicting priorities and provide greater clarity.

3.Is IT still Confounding?

Well-designed and executed technology is not confounding. The real issue is that IT needs to stop touting how well it does infrastructure, and start demonstrating how they help the company achieve business objectives like accessing new markets, generating new products or becoming more operationally effective. There are many issues facing IT that need to be addressed. 

• Finance usually tries to use some antiquated methodology to measure IT. IT projects don't often neatly fit the "well-worn" model, because a lot of IT initiatives are one-offs with unique impacts and requirements. As a result, responsibility for developing TCO, IRRs, and ROIs tend to be "thrown over the fence" to IT, making them solely responsible for the result. Therefore, the CIO and CFO need to work closely to update IT finance methodology and practices. 

• A Well-set Corporate Strategy can clarify IT purposes & goals: The sum of the parts starts with Corporate Strategy to act collaboratively for business as a whole, and a well-set business strategy mirrors IT governance. Modern financial systems and processes, in conjunction with PPM/ and the PMO functions and auditable communication throughout the leadership ranks. The strategy and message must be the same from boardroom to the mail room. The process and systems must all work in concert to deliver the agreed upon IT projects and programs. 

In closing, IT may still be more costly than other business investment, but it's value benefits for improving business capabilities; IT may still be complex, but a premium complexity can optimize user experiences; and IT may still be confounding for some audience, but it's at the right way to be interwoven into corporate strategy. Importantly, many IT organizations continue to make progress and deliver high performance result. At high mature IT organizations, these triple puzzles may well turn to be triple rewards for their organizations. 

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Can Strategic Planning be Standardized across Industries?

 The strategy is not about solving a single problem, but rather a concerted solution to a multi-faceted strategic set of problems.

Some strategy consultants think 80% of all strategic planning processes are similar - Across industries! However, reinventing the wheel seems to be a common practice among sectors. 

Can strategic planning be standardized across industries? Shall we develop a set of common practice in developing strategic planning, if so, what’s the benefit; if not, why so?

1. Common Core Elements of Strategic Planning across all Businesses

No matter what industry companies are in, the strategic planning processes tend to look very much the same, even to a point where they could be standardized. All businesses need to observe and analyze their competitors, their market environments, and trends that may affect their performance. They need to develop strategic objectives, derive and implement effective measures, and review the implementation process using common performance measurement tools, such as the balanced scorecard.

• Possibilities for having a simple common agenda as a basis for strategy formulation should not cause big problems. There are some core elements of the strategic planning process that appear to be common across all businesses. The outputs as one has eloquently put does become a communication tool for the leader to convey the direction of the organization or company so the stakeholders have an understanding of where the company intends to head in the future. 

• A basic procedure for the formulation of Strategy may look something like this                        (This Agenda aim to be a logical approach to a process ensuring work is not getting sidetracked so waste of time and effort is avoided).

1) Start by defining Mission, Vision and Values – especially "Basic Beliefs”,  that have a direct influence on the choice of strategy.

              2) Choice of Driving Force: Market Needs, Products offered or a given capability ...Where the organization belongs in these two dimensions of environment: Simple & Complex; Dynamic vs. Stable, Futuristic vs. Historical, Creative vs. Systematic,

(3) Select Product respective Service/Market Mix in the light of Opportunities and Threads via SWOT analysis
            (4) Identify requirements to Key Capabilities seen in relation to the actual situation and Strengths and Weaknesses.

(5) Define some Goals coherent categories

(6) Break down Goals to operational Objectives

(7) Make Strategic Action plans and Budgets within a given time frame.
(These must be seen as  iterative processes –depending on the circumstances, there could be a return to earlier points in the agenda.)

• "Simplexity" of strategic planning.  Keep it simple to adapt to complex business dynamic. Strategic planning is perhaps one of the last processes which are not guided by methods or software. Things may change. There are strategic planning process models in use which are the foundation of strategic analysis, choice and implementation for all businesses. There are standards, it is important to have reliable, consistent and well-structured strategic information. However,  the discussions, arguments, analysis and choices which these models help to develop are by no means standard nor could they be subject to standardization. Finally, it’s also about data structure - even in the strategic planning process. Based on the data/information,  you can create individual presentations, special reports, and documentations. 

2. The Uniqueness of Each Strategy

Though there’re quite a few common elements in strategic planning, Strategic Planning is a good place to start with respect to creating a universally accepted framework for strategic thinking and planning. What makes each situation unique is the lens that the players bring into the planning process, and how you use that to facilitate the process itself and the outputs and, of course, we can never get away from tailoring solutions to different companies.

1)  The strategy is not about solving a single problem, but rather a concerted solution to a multi-faceted strategic set of problems - a solution that results in formulated strategy and approach for the long-term action plan. The strategic planning is a problem-solving process, but setting strategy and vision is a leadership and communication problem. The strategy is produced by people. Therefore, it MUST be comprehensive. The strategy has never ever been produced by analysis only, but by people ! The analysis is an INPUT into synthesis. Tools should help teams guide their thinking along frameworks to provide answers. Before using any tool, the question to be answered should be relevant, worthwhile to answer and clear to all. Therefore, realized activities within the frame of the agenda, as well as the results of these activities presumably, are very different from one organization to another. Due to different organizational and environmental conditions from organization to organization, the strategy comes to different focus as no surprise.

2)  Strategy development and delivery process as iterative and diagnostic: From that perspective, you could say that 80% of the steps are similar but the DNA of organizations and markets are so variable that there is a strong element of qualitative "art" along with the science piece. This includes the "art" of bringing the team along to support and execute as well as the "art" of understanding the internal and external environments as they continue to evolve. A good strategic plan is paradoxically stable and adaptive.

3)  It is important to think about the flexibility in designing these standard procedures and to offer the user the possibility to customize the content & context for its own purpose. Many will enjoy having a simple tool to pull down basic SWOT statements, that everyone in a particular industry is facing, and then you need to adapt it to your own specific position in the market. It is in the nuance of these discussions that you can help to crystallize a strategy that addresses both the common things that anyone in the industry must do to thrive in the future and what is uniquely different about what you intend to do to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

4)  The process is universal, but the tools and techniques can be picked from a 'menu' to suit the market/situation. And the choice of tools and techniques to develop them is totally dependent on the industry, environment and rate of change required by the organization. If businesses were offered a standardized set of tools, they could choose the ones which best fit their needs, bring them in an individual order, and link them together. In this way, they could quickly establish a process structure which then only needs to be filled with—of course, individual—content. The most noticeable variable across industries is the pace at which the process is applied; the selection of the right techniques depends on the maturity phase of business, the culture styles and the identity of the company. It would be really great to create a fit between the state of the firm and its environment with the appropriate toolkit. Analysis, synthesis, opportunities, objectives, strategies tactics and measures follow from that. 

5)  Every Business is unique, thus, every strategy is unique: There are quite a few things can be standardized at certain level such as, the criteria of good strategy, the resource/tools being used to make good strategy, leadership/talent team who co-develop strategy, as well the process to bridge strategy planning and execution, and standardization avoids to reinvent wheel. However, every business is at a different position of the business cycle, and execution is part of the good strategy. Of course, the strategy is not just about the wheel, it's also a GPS to lead the entire enterprise vehicle towards the right destination. 

6)  Every business is better suited to a specific Planning Model. The most common approach is STP (Situation-Target-Proposal), but there is also the Draw-See-Think-Plan approach.  The Business Strategy Tools are coupled according to selected Planning Model. Rather than focusing on Stages and Tools in Planning Model, Stakeholders are truly interested in a major change in Business Performance in the short, medium and long term. Further, all industries have more or less their own distinctive business cycles. It follows that strategies always have to be flexible and fleet-footed as the business environment undergoes a major change. The strategy has to necessarily be tinkered with - to ensure that business goals are met.

7)  The Success of a Strategy is not the Method, it is Execution. Understanding competitive forces and its root cause is required for effective strategy, along with the understanding of the structure of industries. So main templates may be the same across the industry but rest will vary. It is more about looking at your strength and core and then formulate a pro-active strategy.,. Every strategy making process will come to the point where resources need to be committed to implementation.

Therefore, a strategic planning process has to be stable and can be standardized with a well-known set of specific strategic planning topics like competitive environment, SWOT, trend analysis, goals and measures, market evaluation. However, a strategic planning process needs to be adaptive because an organization has to think about non-standard topics like possible game changes in its business model and its unique circumstances. And, it is important to think about the inter-relation between stableness and adaptation, standard and creativity, sequence and iteration; and importantly, the success of the strategy is people and execution.

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Digital Mindset: Five Mind-Shift to Accelerate Digital Transformation

Authentic, audacious, adaptive, aggressive when necessary—these business leaders have what we call the accelerator mindset.

Human minds are perhaps one of the most powerful but mysterious things in the universe, as they continue to imagine and invent things for changing the world; the fact is that the world now becomes more advanced, complex and dynamic than ever,  while certain types of mindset may start lag behind, to put the other way, the "crazy" mind in industrial speed becomes new normal with digital speed; while the normal mind in industrial era becomes out of dated at digital era. So, should people now accelerate the mindset shift to adapt to the change shaped by themselves? What are those open mindsets needed in the 21^st century?

1.    Negative to Positive 

•  What is positive thinking? It’s idealistic realism, also the cautious optimism, it’s the value thinking and strategic thinking; it helps you conquer the current barriers in order to embrace the brighter future; it creates the energy and synergy in pursuit of the long-term vision and growth.

•  Positive mindset about their circumstances: Positive thinking is the high thinking capability with capacity (inward strength) and ability (outward action) to re-frame the experience of adversity. People with positive thinking convey strong will to make changes, and have a future orientation that makes them more prone to sacrifice immediate needs for future goals. And as important, they show a positive mindset about their circumstances.

• Positive Leadership: Only positive leaders can look forward, not backward, overcome barriers and bias, breakthrough ceilings, mind gaps, and bring the positive difference mankind need to make progress and move toward the future.

2.    Fixed to Accelerated 

Fixed mindset refers to those who approach the work with fixed mindset-the assumption that their abilities were innate and not subject to change; while accelerated or growth mindset refers to those who solve problems or target the goals with growth mindset- the belief that their ability level was nothing more than a snapshot in time and eminently changeable as they continued to learn and develop..

•  The Accelerated Mindset is the Digital Mindset: In an industrial era, fixed mindset is OK to survive as the business and the world are slow to change; however, at the age of digitalization, knowledge is only a click away, growth mindset is strategic imperative to adapt to the changes and accelerated mind is needed to continuous improvement and transformation.

• Enforce the strength and unleash the potential: Fixed mindset sticks to the old way to do things while accelerated mindset enjoy new thinking, though it doesn't mean the talent with accelerated mindset should compete for everything, rather, it means one needs to stay focus, set discipline, enforce the strength and unleash the potential; it means to understand human’s difference and pursue uniqueness.

• Accelerated Leadership: Authentic, audacious, adaptive, aggressive when necessary—these business leaders have what we call the accelerator mindset. 

3.    Silo to Connected 

Either business or world is transforming from siloed functions, the sum of pieces into a connected whole, thus, one’s mindset also needs to be shifted to think differently and holistically.

• Shape the new thinking boxes: Optimize the whole, not the separate silos. Silo vision & thinking tends to hinder any efforts to systematically reduce operational complexity. 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.

•  Hard-Wire Diversity into Your Business: Collective mindsets are connected and superior to any single mindset. To streamline processes and minimize costs, companies should capture collective insight, analyze all critical, cross-functional processes, connect divergent factors at business ecosystem in decision making and business strategic planning.

• Connected Leadership: Open, insightful, innovative, and strategic, etc. those traits differentiate leaders with the connected mindset from others. 

4.    Linear to Multi-dimensional 

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.             -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

For most of the twentieth century, leaders led through variations of command and control with linear vision. That hierarchical, inward-focused style began to unravel at the end of the century. Still, appropriate in certain situations, it is increasingly being displaced. As linear thinking leads to closed mind, tunnel vision and blunt communication. While multi-dimensional leaders with independent thinking are needed to make an effective decision.

• Circular Vision is perception via multi-dimensional lenses. Leaders transmit energy to the variety of people, giving them a new sense of hope and confidence in achieving the circular and colorful vision with the positive frame.

• Multi-dimensional leaders are independent and multidimensional thinkers; they appreciate multiple values and see the world via the multidimensional lens. They are unbiased communicators, they encourage people to think differently, engage diverse viewpoints and empower talent to reach potential.

5.   Exclusive to Inclusive 

Inclusiveness is the lever. Inclusiveness is the quality of the organizational environment that maximizes and leverages the diverse talents, backgrounds, and perspectives of all employees. Diversity in the global context can be defined as visible and invisible differences, thinking styles, leadership style, experience, culture etc.

• The world becomes more inclusive: At the digital era, the business functional border, the company border, and even the profession border are blurred; indeed, the world becomes more inclusive, admit of the inclusion of the wide variety of specializations under one umbrella.  

• Inclusive leaders have the inter-disciplinary knowledge and emphatic cognizance: Always capture insight and substance, rather than look at things on the surface; always put other people’s shoes on, understand perspectives different from their own, and build networks with people outside of their organization. 

Mindset is everything. Mindset is the most valuable thing to shape every progress, but also the root cause of all mankind problems, it’s time to shift mindset: from fixed to accelerated; closed to open; linear to circular; exclusive to inclusive; silo to holistic; and reawaken your limitless mindset.

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CIOs as "Chief Investment Officer": The Practices of IT Asset Management

Companies are highly dependent on IT executives who make the proposal to change/ replace the technology based on the need of the business. 

The IT accounting/finance best practices are going to vary somewhat from company to company, from state to state, and from nation to nation- due to standards and guidelines on the depreciation of assets and taxes on assets. It is also going to differ somewhat based on how conservative or liberal the CFO wants to be on depreciation expense and the useful life of a given asset. It is very important that CIO partners with CFO and agree upon a standard depreciation schedule for different asset classes, and manage IT asset & IT investment systematically & flexibly.  

1.   A Tale of Two Sets of Accounting

As many organizations operate on an integrated global basis, they operated with two sets of accounts. The first was local country-based accounts complying with local rules on depreciation etc. The second was global management accounts that applied the policies the Board decided as appropriate for the effective running of the business. Consequently, the depreciation amounts in the local tax accounts and the global management accounts were often different. 

• Two different IT Finance Planning: Some IT executives do two different finance planning: 1) industrial and 2) fiscal. Matching the two tells the CFO when, for real, some assets will have to be renewed, so it gives the finance department the right information about when to get ready for the money to buy something. While the fiscal plans show up in the annual report, so it tells how much your company owns assets and value. There’s a misunderstanding of different types of accounting. While doing industrial accounting, you should use the actual number of fiscal years you intend to use the asset, both are needed. But the business is actually run on the industrial analysis, the fiscal one, although, are formally and legally needed, If the industrial analysis shows that your business is unsustainable (for instance) it is ACTUALLY unsustainable, even if the financial analysis might show the opposite in many cases.

• The other refinement some organizations applied is to use consistent "plan" currency exchange rates for the whole financial year so that any over or under-spending was not obscured by exchange rate fluctuations. The Finance treasury department then managed and reported on issues caused by exchange rate fluctuations. Some look at using purchasing power equivalent exchange rates to eliminate distortions due to local currency strength or weakness to avoid distorting decisions upon where to hire people, based on temporary currency variations.

2. Why IT normally depreciates IT Asset in 3 to 5 years? Why not use it more? 

Finance and regulatory requirements don't always match. The more business-critical an element is, the better your understanding of reality needs to be; the less any replacement or updating matters, the easier it is to obey arbitrary regulation or rules. Although you have to always use two measures-industrial planning and fiscal planning. Depreciation from the industrial planning standpoint should always end with the market value of the asset and follow the characteristic function of the specific asset (a computer will lose more value in the first year of use than in the third). The industrial analysis doesn't have an impact on the deduction of income statements. It is only involved in estimating the actual cash flow needed to run your specific business model.

• There are functional and financial reasons why three-five years is a de facto time frame for IT devices. At the end of a three-year depreciation cycle, end-user devices like PCs will be very considerably below the current market spec both in cost and performance terms. For the same outlay as three years ago, you will naturally get significantly more capability, and the volume of moaning from staff about the slowness of their aging kit becomes a hidden "cost". For servers and storage devices, after three years, most vendors ratchet up the maintenance charges, sometimes extortionately. This is annoying but understandable because the cost to them of sourcing spares the cost to maintain current expertise and the likelihood of actually needing to do repairs all go up over time.      

• Depreciation is an accounting measure. It is important to depreciate in order to assess the assets market value, but even more importantly, depreciation is used as a deduction on income statements, therefore, lowering the amount of tax a company will pay. Depreciating the asset does not mean the asset itself is useless. So feel free to continue to use it if it drives business growth and/or keeps the business running. 

• Are In-house Software Assets? The other question IT need to agree upon with CFO is whether or not you are going to treat any software developed for internal use as an asset - in essence, treating these expenses as capital instead of operating expenses. If your CFO wants to do this, then, only using this accounting treatment on major projects that will be used for at least three years, as the last thing you want to do is to put a new asset on the books and have to take a large write-off a year later because the business unit is no longer using it. 

• IT depreciation life cycle: Depreciation is not always a precise indicator of the useful life of IT asset. Understandably, the accounting department has a job to do and depreciation schedules have to be consistent because that is a big part of what accounting is all about - consistency. In reality, the common policy of three-year write-downs has fed vendor marketing, pricing and support strategy that complements the practice. Combine Moore's Law on cost/capability, accountants and vendors creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you will almost certainly be replacing most kit on three to five-year cycle.  

3. IT Budget & Investment Decision

As many companies have multiple book sets due to the growing international nature of the business and the adoption of international accounting rules, they may not make a purchasing decision based solely on depreciation. It might have been a consideration, but if the financial team is worth their salt, they will understand the nature of technology purchases and they will have strategies to deal with the relevant issue.

• "Bow wave" effect on the IT budget such that an asset that was affordable in year one could cause significant budget problems in year two as there is twice the amount of depreciation on that asset. The solution to this would have been running a budget for the current and following years. Alternatively, it might have been better to have taken full year depreciation in the first year. This treatment may have had to be different in the financial and tax accounts (as opposed to management accounts) to comply with legislation and standards. 

• How can accounting practices deal with emerging IT service subscription model: such as cloud, mobile, computerization of IT, for example, on Cloud services, the accounting treatment depended on the contract? If IT made an upfront payment for 12 months service, this was shown in the IT financial report as 12 equal charges spread over the term of the contract (even if this went beyond the financial year). Similarly, for other contract periods such as twenty-four months upfront payment split into 24 equal charges. So it had much the same effect as depreciation. 

• Accounting practices are different from long-term budgeting needs, the practice of assuming a three-year lifespan of IT asset both for accounting and planning purposes are taken for some mature companies and assume that any cost-effective usage beyond three years is a bonus. But, don't focus on the accounting rules when it comes to IT decisions. You can't serve your end users and stakeholders well by limiting your outlook in that way.

3.   What about Product End of Life & End of Support? 

As part of the proposal for any major purchase, IT needs to include the cost of support (which was accounted by charging it in equal monthly installments over the duration of the support contract), work on the basis that if you couldn't afford the cost of support, you couldn't afford the purchase.

• Support fees are measured upon depreciation, in fact, support cost increases with the aging of the item normally of the same or very similar amount of the depreciation, causing a slight increase in the TCO that should be presented by the IT executives to the board as a good reason to innovate and renew the infrastructure on a planned timeline. 

• Manage asset value by adding the maintenance costs. For instance, when you buy a server, it's CapEx item only until when its warranty covers the maintenance. Thereafter, when you start paying for the maintenance, an OpEx item appears. The combination of the two items of expense draws a diagram that clearly tells you when would be the right moment to update the asset. 

Companies are highly dependent on IT executives who make the proposal to change/ replace the technology based on the need of the business. Thus, IT should continue to review upon the ROI of existing IT investment, whether the depreciated life cycle is completed or not; whether new technology/ product mature enough in the business market to adopt. Applying the right procedures and policies to asset management allows IT to create a realistic budget with few surprises, and keep best practice to adapt to “continuous changes.”  

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Why is Successful Change so Difficult?

An understanding of organizational dynamics is critical to bring about change. 

The phrase "The only constant changes" refers to the obvious fact that we see all around us which is that things are constantly changing. The pace of change is accelerated in every vertical sector, and even every corner of the world, however, 70% of change management projects failed, why change, or more precisely, successful change is so difficult?

1.  Why is Change so Difficult?

Change becomes fundamentally difficult in most organizations because it is treated as something distinct from running the business, evolving performance, and increasing results over time. Leaders and employees are stressed enough in getting done what is right in front of them that change is layered upon becomes disruptive.

• Resistance to change is part of human nature. For many people, "sameness" is psychological security. Change leads to psychological insecurity. Most people like security. Even though it is difficult to change human nature, there is still value in understanding that resistance is normal and must be considered/managed. 

• Leaders do not set a good example to be change agents. Even the people who are advocating change are resistant to change. It is common for people to propose changes that impact others while exempting themselves. This type of approach is guaranteed to be resisted. 

• Culture Inertia: Change is about shaping the new culture, which is collective human habits of organization: Corporate culture can have its own personality, and uncovering the fears and desires of that personality can be very important in discovering where the resistance is coming from. Resistance to change can be a form of self-defense that comes from fear. Whether it's in a corporate sense, or with individuals, understanding what motivates a personality is a key to understanding how to keep them moving ahead. 

• Emotional Attachment: Every change, even for something wonderful and new, it means the removal of something old and loved (even if that is old and loved is "nothing" as in many revolutionary or discontinuous inventions). People are emotionally attached to those things being possessed. So, it stands to reason that humans would react similarly to changes such as new processes and organizational structures with the Kubler-Ross grieving process (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance). 

2.   How to Get People Buy-In for the Changes

What motivates people who like to change?" The same question could be asked of those who don't like change. The immune system of the dimensions of change - people, culture, behavior, and organization could be influenced by hooking into the history, opening the eyes on the bad experiences, and realistically defining and communicating the need for a change. With a thorough understanding, people learn to adapt over a period of transformation slowly and steadily.

• People Buyer-In: People really don't like change and want familiar things. To make a change strategy effective, you need to help people see 'what's in it for them' to facilitate real change. Commitment is on the other side, simply put, you need 'buy-in'! People are creatures of habit and change is stressful. Even with buy-in, it is difficult for them to change habits and routines. Many executives believe they can accomplish change by simply mandating the change, but it is not that simple. 

• Understand the Types of Resistance: Resistance can be a form of self-defense designed to keep one from further stress. Hanna's model breaks resistance down into precursors that one must face like " the willingness of an individual to overcome anxiety" to deal with change. through resistance assessment, you have an informal idea of the degree to which resistance is present. If you understand the types of resistance, then a plan can be developed to help people through. 

• Convey the Value about Change: "what common factors drive an individual": As every organization consists of a majority of the reluctant people, HABIT, VALUES & INCENTIVE (in terms of benefits or reward or growth) are the common factors, which drives an individual. Considering putting yourself under the pressure of deviating from age-old habits due to a "Change Regime.” The first question that comes to mind is perhaps "what values in it ? " or "What is the ROI of my extra effort ??" or "what benefit it carries ??" Even though concerns are addressed properly, still a portion of reluctance will remain until you realize or feel the benefit of the change. 

• An individual's attitudes and beliefs are all valid within the context of his or her personal experience: Taking people through new experiences, exposing them to additional "data" through those experiences, and doing that very purposefully will create the opportunity to shift attitudes, beliefs, mindsets that ultimately will change their behavior in a lasting manner. The art comes in ensuring energies are put forth to create sufficient critical mass, but not necessarily 100% full commitment to all people. Understand the following psychological models as well:

1) Change in people has the same impact just in varying degrees, producing some degree of anxiety
2) People need time to assimilate change and work through the issues that result from the change, moving from the emotional to the rational
3) Resistance can take the form of “this won’t work” or “this is too much stress”
4) Time serves a beneficial role in aiding people in adjusting to change
5) Helping people talk about change and giving them tools to deal with the problems of change promotes self-efficacy
6) Social support is important and peer support needs to be available
7) Some people will never adjust and not all resistance can be resolved
8) We can only control our own responses and cannot control the responses of others so let the process play out and deal with issues as they develop                                                  

9) Understand what basic approach is being utilized: Logic, power, structure, or mixture of approaches.

3.  How to Plan & Practice Change Management Right?

There are many change models and approaches around. It is human nature to develop heuristics and 'best practices' since we are pattern seekers and habit formers. However, most of them were created in the industrial era, lack of effective technology to support implementation.  Change is chaotic, but change management needs to be well designed and practiced systematically. And now, social and enterprise collaboration tools provide an effective & interesting digital platform to make change more tangible and measurable. 

• There are five stages before the change is reached: Pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance. Walking people through the process of resistance is key. The change should be based on planning strategy; there is long-term mythology for big changes & short term mythology. Planning is a good way to achieve change if the planning effort is integrated with normal management processes. The change objectives must be well defined, understood, and accepted through planning

• An understanding of organizational dynamics is critical to bring about change. Change management must go beyond stakeholder analysis, dealing with resistance, communication, and begin with a deep understanding of the current and desired future state. Then the question is what people and the organization must be capable of at each iteration of moving forward. The work of change becomes about building those capabilities by impacting systems/processes, people, and culture in a sequence of manner that shifts mindsets, skills, and behaviors. The effective approaches need to integrate the fundamentals of change management, strategy, talent management, individual and organizational learning, socio-technical systems analysis, and organizational capability development. Knowing how people and organizations learn, grow and evolve is the thread that connects all of these domains

• More change questions that can be pondered  in order to frame change management and take competent change management initiatives
  1) always understand the audience requirements/impacts before any change is relayed/discussed considering the organizational goals
  2)  have a dedicated champion for propagating the change subject well in advance at the senior level
  3) gather formal/informal response through various tools and mechanism
  4)  fine-tune the change, if required, and update the concerned after considering the feedback into consideration as applicable without much dilution to the organization's needs.
  5)  update stakeholders on non-implement-able ideas, suggestions with appropriate rationale
  6) transparent all activities relating to change initiative, take advantage of the latest technology tools for communication, the practice of change
  7) find out the reason for the members who are not in favor of the change and understand how much of these groups voice goes with the other members of the organization.                                

Change cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into actions, processes, and communications of the organization. In today's work environment. It takes a lot of energy to break habits and outdated thought processes, but change is happening at a more rapid pace. If you make a change part of your routine, then change becomes easier to deal with. People are already doing a lot more with less and if the change is just added to the workload, it will fail in the long run. If change is to truly take hold and be successful, management must embrace it. They must work closely with their team to keep the already heavy workloads balanced.

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BPM Project: How to get Employees Buy-In?

One of the goals in process design and BPMS implementation is about improving productivity or cost cutting. BPM project is also a change management project. However, around 70% of BPM projects fail or do not meet customer/user’s expectation. And one of root causes is culture inertia, people resist to change, but why, what do they worry about and how to get employees buyer-in?

1. Communicate clearly about the Project Benefits to Employees: As employees will concern about: How does the BPM effort benefit me: What’s going on to my team, my department? Job security concerns. . Therefore, the question of "what is in it for me??" is always an outstanding question from the stakeholder stand point 

2. Transparency is the key to getting shop floor buy-in. If you don't involve, educate and bring the employees on the journey from the outset and all the way through, then what's the point?  Transparency is key. Especially today, people won't adopt a system that isn't clearly a tool in their best interest, always up-to-date, and always available. At the end of the day, something that improves both the employee experience and customer experience is never going to be a hard sell. 

3. Engage employees in their languages and seeing within days what was their idea coming to life! Think bottom up instead of top down. Employees, managers and CxO execs should be able to scratch their own itch with BPM. Ask input and feedback from employees. The executives may get "buy in" from employees when they responded to these questions directly and succinctly! No idea off agenda recognizing change is encouraged. And the new processes would be their processes..... 

4. Make processes as easy as possible This requires a transformation from the BPM systems as being known today. Seamless integration between process and adaptive cases on the one hand. Replacing complex software installation with registering for an account on the cloud. As organizations talk so much about customer experience, that often forget who is most key in creating it: the employees 
   

5. Overall employee experience: Develop BPM as a discipline to improve productivity is the key notion of the "Employee Experience". The processes are designed in such a way that it creates a stimulating, motivating environment that gives meaning and purpose of work.  

6. Internal company users' needs and customers' concerns are always in alignment. Sometimes what is easiest for the business user creates obstacles for customers. Build up a customer-centric organization in which the new processes can be recognized with the ultimate goal & outcome to have satisfied customers. 

7. Let users work with good mentor involved in building processes, set the right guideline in understanding & using process; and take best practices in formally adopting new processes.

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How to Weave IT into Corporate Strategy

IT "strategy" should be an integral component of business strategy.

Most companies have no effective strategy. That is mostly because organizations lack focus and clarity on what they do. Rare business is ready to cognize itself and achieve self-consciousness (develop a strategy), and perhaps its leaders are also a lack of self-reflection upon who they really are. Thus,  this is not because of business - this is because of human nature. In order to reach higher business maturity, how to craft a good corporate strategy and how to weave IT into a business strategy to deliver high performing result?

1. Craft a Good Business Strategy 

The strategy defines the desired objective and communicates what will be done, by whom, how, for whom, and why the output is valuable. Of course, IT should be a part of the strategic planning process, so that the organization can take advantage of trends in IT that would accelerate the strategic advantage of the firm.

• Effective strategies may come in all shapes and sizes. For some organizations, the entire strategy may simply be a high-level roadmap with key initiatives and target dates. In others, it can be a book that addresses every imaginable avenue. Importantly, execution is part of the strategy, in order to effectively execute strategic initiatives; three major things must be managed; content/context, resources, and process. In large organizations, these three things fit in enterprise architecture, program management, and organization design functions respectively 

• The strategy is never just high level: Implementation details are the next few levels into the process. Strategy hologram - enough structure to see what it is all about, but leaving the details to the people that are on the ground implementing the business initiatives derived from the strategy efforts. Strategy frames the boundaries of action, and allows a specific set of actions to ensure effectively performing the defined strategy - this should be part and parcel of the strategy process.     
      
• Strategy, and its agent, enterprise architecture, are building a sprinkler system; a systemic process for operating in a consistent, defined operation in line with executive intent. Business leaders define the operational box that the company works within - the strategy. They define WHAT initiatives they are willing to fund to get there. WHAT <--> HOW transition is simplistic, but extremely powerful abstraction, key to many things;
  requirements <--> implementation
  Strategy <--> Execution
  Architecture <--> Design
  Enterprise Architecture <--> IT "architectures" (design)
  Executive Management <--> line management
  Building Architect <--> Engineers  

• Strategy to Execution: The organization's strategic plan should be closely integrated with its execution plan so that the strategy doesn't just sit on the shelf collecting dust until next year's plan.The execution plan includes detailed metrics, dashboards, links to the budget, a competency gap analysis and intervention plan, communication, and reinforcement plan, and individual action plans that tie each employee's annual actions in alignment with the organization's strategic plan. 

2. What’re Missing in Strategy 

The lack of Information strategy may come from lack of a corporate strategy to work from, resulting in best guesses for IT delivered work, or substituting attempts to solicit requirements from the functional business areas, and translating that into IT efforts in a vacuum, a process fraught with peril. 

• Lack of “strategic bone” in a number of IT organizations is because:

1) In many companies, the IT leadership is promoted for very tactical skill sets

      2) Many IT organizations are entire order-takers

      3) Many organizations don’t have a business strategy either.

      4) Many IT organizations overly emphasize the alignment angle on IT strategy.

   5) Many organizations do not allow their IT departments to work on strategies

6)  Many people in IT leadership avoid having a strategy because they feel that it is a constraint

7)  Many organizations have tried creating a formal strategy, it fails for the reason above or very frequently because the they don't have the ability to understand when their actions are in accordance with the strategy or not. 

• The whole process of creating an IT strategy, independent of the corporate strategy process, exacerbates the need to perform the business IT alignment. Most companies may have a strategy' on paper, but in all likelihood don't even look at it. It's an even bigger challenge today because companies are still trying to 'feel their way' through these economically stressful weeks/months - possibly years and any kind of strategic business thinking seems to be taking a back seat to simply keeping things together. You always have to have the business strategy that will include the mission/vision/values as well as objectives and strategies to achieve them. Once that is developed, THEN you can develop an IT strategy that supports it.  

• Having an information-based strategy requires people to think really ahead. How you design something will make a huge difference in the future when you start wanting reports and stats or flexibility. Many executives are either not interested in that process or annoyed by the questions and digging needed to get to what they are trying to accomplish. Never mind an information strategy (not exactly sure what information that would be...), particularly since modern companies have little to no regard for institutional knowledge. 

• Many companies miss the strategy for how they use technology to manage the business of the business vs. just managing the business. Is the business model scaling the right way to achieve the strategic objectives? Are there things that can be done to direct more cash towards development activity, besides just re-allocating budgets and cutting headcount? Most companies are lacking a holistic strategy for how they use technology to drive their business, and it's the information management strategy that most often goes unmanaged. 

3. How to Weave IT into Corporate Strategy 

With information & technology interwoven into business strategy, IT will re-integrate into the business, becoming one of the functional organizations, delivering business initiatives derived from corporate strategy, as one of the many functional organizations in the business, not an island unto itself. Such effort will just be one that is appropriate to the organizational maturity and culture. 

• IT "strategy" should be an integral component of business strategy: Vision statements have longevity; Missions are more temporal: technical, tangible, measurable statements and a functional strategy is organization's specific implementation of corporate strategy as well, not a self-serving, empire building set of "cool things to do". If any organization develops strategy at the function level independent of direct and specific dependencies on corporate strategy, they are doing a disservice to the company. And if these implementation strategies are not coordinated across these functional organizations, then EA has failed its primary function. 

• Information Strategy must be updated from time to time based on the current business requirements. Or if any advanced technology is driving the business, then it happens on the other way round. IT is driving the business, depends on the industry, as well as a benchmark in the similar industry. A good strategy will 1) know WHAT to do 2) know WHEN they were done and 3) know WHAT constitutes success, which, ideally, coincides with done. Kennedy's moon mission statement is the benchmark; they knew what had to be done, by when, and what constituted success.  

• The strategy frames effective constraints which are not only a facilitator but a requirement to value-driven innovation. Having constraints provides guidelines for creativity by providing anchors to explore from. It also frees you up from having to do a lot of base research on topics that don't add a lot of values but are necessary to move forward. If creativity is essential and how does one encourage creativity in IT services organizations. To be creative, one needs to understand and challenge the routine. And any new thought needs to be further challenged. All hard works (not the manual kind), require the application of mind and body.  An effective information strategy could open up opportunities to address the very possibility. 

• CIOs can provide extensive value to corporate strategy, transcending their IT-as-a-business role, and having a seat at the big table. CIOs need to become less technically focused (but not less technically literate), and far, far more business focused and business literate. And not just knowledge of a particular company, but knowledge in business concepts in general. CIOs have a unique opportunity; as IT is the one organization that touches every initiative, every functional organization, every business unit. By becoming integral to coordinating these initiatives inside and OUTSIDE of IT. A strategic CIO can lead his/her organization to become a competitive differentiator. 

Overall, when IT is woven into corporate strategy, it can create strategic value for the company such as reduce the amount of time it takes to innovate new product; improve the product transformation process - make it faster, better, cheaper; improve the ways services are delivered to end customers; improve information management practices,  and a set of derived business initiatives (as well as metrics - typically balanced scorecard) needs to be determined in order to measure performance result.

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