Welcome to our blog, the digital brainyard to fine tune "Digital Master," innovate leadership, and reimagine the future of IT.

The magic “I” of CIO sparks many imaginations: Chief information officer, chief infrastructure officer , Chief Integration Officer, chief International officer, Chief Inspiration Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Influence Office etc. The future of CIO is entrepreneur driven, situation oriented, value-added,she or he will take many paradoxical roles: both as business strategist and technology visionary,talent master and effective communicator,savvy business enabler and relentless cost cutter, and transform the business into "Digital Master"!

The future of CIO is digital strategist, global thought leader, and talent master: leading IT to enlighten the customers; enable business success via influence.

Sunday, October 2, 2016

Talent Management Monthly Brief: Manage Talent in a Digital Way Oct. 2016

11:09 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses.

“Hiring the right person to the right position at the right time,” is the mantra of many forward-thinking organizations. The question is how would you define the right people? How do you define wrong, average, mediocre, good, great or extraordinary person? Or put simply, for what should they be right? Traditional Performance Management focusing on measuring what an employee does (mainly being told to do) in a quantitative way is not sufficient to identify high performance or high potential, should we see through talent from different angles, and how to manage talent in the the digital way?

         Manage Talent in Digital Way

  • Managing Talent in Digital Ways? The digital dynamic continues to evolve with increasing speed of change and rapid integration of the business across the globe. People are always the most important asset of the organization. Talent Management is throwing fresh challenges and calls for radical change to be embraced. Because people are the cause, purpose and the center of changes. Talent Management is and should be the agent of change. They need to be involved in all steps of change and continually need to both drive and adapt to changes. What are the digital ways to manage talent today
  • Three Principles in Building a Creative Digital Workplace?  Digital is the age of people, and digital work environment needs to embrace the abundance of information and the culture of innovation, put people at the center of business, and to both engage employees and delight customers. How can digital leaders set principles to encourage creativity, build creative digital workplaces and open the new chapter of digital innovations?
  • Three insight for Talent Management Innovation, Generally speaking, a professional is an individual with the expertise of some specific area, who earns his or her livings from that expertise. A digital knowledge professional is someone for whom knowledge is the main input for work, as opposed to another worker who obviously uses his/her brain, but depends more on expertise in using a particular tool or set of tools. Digital knowledge workers have high innovation potential to transform which exists to which is new, that differentiate the digital knowledge worker from industrial knowledge workers. Hence, their value goes beyond productivity only, multiply via innovating.

  • Digital Talent Gap Minding in Running a Digital Fit IT? Human capital is always the most valuable asset in any business, especially now the rate of change is accelerated, and knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened. The talent gap is the reality, not a fiction, this is particularly true for IT talent management due to the exponential growth of information and change nature of technology. Organizations now have to make more tough choices to compete for the future, not just live in the past; to balance the short term talent demand and long-term strategic talent requirement. More specifically, which approach should IT take to fill the mindset/capability/skill gaps and also innovate talent management to capture the emergent digital trends, ride above the learning curve, and build an alternative digital talent pipeline?
  • Three Aspects of Retooling Talent Management: People are always the most important asset of the organization.The digital dynamic continues to evolve with increasing speed of change and rapid integration of the business across the globe. Talent Management is throwing fresh challenges and calls for radical change to be embraced. Talent Management has adapted to the changing workforce in the changing workplace and added additional best of breed talent and engagement systems to their existing core. Talent Management is positioned to make a true impact on the bottom line with the shifts from managing the human resource to investing human capital. Talent management is no longer the responsibility of just HR: All functions in the organization have a stake in strategic talent management practices. It requires cross-functional collaboration between HR, executive team, managers, finance, marketing, IT and others. At the dawn of the digital era, what are the emergent trends and how to retool talent management to optimize the collective human capabilities?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.5+million page views with about #3100+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The New Book “Thinkingaire” Introduction: Chapter 10 Professional Minds

11:05 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

There is a set of professional mindsets which get trained and sharpened can uplift digital progress and improve both business and societal maturity with accelerating speed.

 Generally speaking, a profession is any type of work that needs special training or particular skill, often one that is respected because it involves a high level of education. To dig even deeper, there is a set of professional mindsets which get trained and sharpened can uplift digital progress and improve both business and societal maturity. A professional mind goes beyond your profession, we can always learn more about the thought processes from varying professionals, in order to cultivate a multidimensional digital mindset.


A philosopher’s mind: Philosophy is the history of ideas and an ongoing inquiry into the nature of things, based on abstract reasoning rather than empirical methods. Philosophy involves examining basic concepts such as truth, existence, reality, causality, and freedom. Philosophy comprises logic, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology. Due to the digital new normal such as complexity and uncertainty, the philosophic mind is in high demand to provide abstract thinking for reducing complexity and to provide multi-dimensional lenses for navigating through uncertainty. The philosophical mind can set guidelines to solve problems. You have to define a problem before you can try to solve it. The purpose of the philosophical mind is not only to solve problems, but to dissolve them.
An Entrepreneur's Mind: An entrepreneur’s view is usually positive, dynamic, creative, flexible, and resilience. As the world advances into the hyper-connected and over-complex digital era, the ultramodern mindsets need to be recrafted continuously to spur the next level of innovation. An entrepreneur has a curious beginner’s mind that is in a “learning” mode, they naturally treat each situation with freshness and novelty. An entrepreneur enjoys exploring new possibilities or pursuing different ways of doing things. An entrepreneur’s mind is like an elastic spring or a growing tree. It’s hard to imagine an entrepreneur who has never failed before, the ups and downs of experience make an entrepreneur’s mind open, flexible, resilient, and strong. Such a mind can tolerate risks and focus on opportunities; Such a mind is like a spring: bend in order to straighten up, retreat in order to move forward; recharge in order to accelerate; driven, but not extreme, dynamic and elastic to be adapt to digital disruptions.
An Ecologist’s Mind: Digital is an overarching business ecosystem. An ecosystem is a community of living organisms in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment. No single ecosystem is identical to any other, but all have unique and identifying characteristics. Can ecosystems think? What distinguishes an ecosystem? What sets the boundaries of an ecosystem? What is the difference between an ecosystem and a non-ecosystem? Is there thinking outside of an ecosystem? Ecosystem Thinking is a systematic thinking about the ecosystem and environment. Everything is interconnected and the Earth “thinks” as a giant ecosystem. Thinking about the ecosystem and the environment in terms of Systems Thinking seems to be the best route to take to develop viable, long-term solutions to a great many of the issues we are facing today. Hence, learning from an ecologist's mind about Systems Thinking and holistic thinking. An ecosystem is living, dynamic and continually emergent, therefore, such a mind is a growth mind with adaptability and creativity.

There is a set of professional mindsets which get trained and sharpened can uplift digital progress and improve both business and societal maturity with accelerating speed. Regardless which profession do you have, you can always learn from other professionals, put yourself in the other person’s position, understand their thought processes, inspire new perspectives for seeing things differently. It's also important to set high standards for building digital professionalism, to be at the best in professional development or life pursuits, and to co-create the big story better, for the progress of mankind and societal advancement.



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Five Characteristics of Digital Ready IT

11:02 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

A digital-ready IT is a thresholding competency of the organization.

 The organization’s digital transformation is not just about designing a fancy website or play fancy gadgets. It has to take an overarching approach to build digital competency, optimize business processes, innovate business models, and digitize the touch points of customer experience. Here are five characteristics of running a digital ready IT.






Digital delight: IT is the business, to unleash the digital potential of IT, organizations need to understand that IT is not just technical or scientific, but also artistic and delightful. At the dawn of the Digital Era, IT needs to become a strategic partner of the business, to unleash the digital potential of the organization. There must be a very clear understanding and agreement between IT and the business about the role of IT in the organization. Both business and IT have to stay on the same page and weave IT into the business strategy, in order to build a bridge between IT and business. IT leaders can identify the critical business issues by working closely with a business partner from a long-term perspective, and leverage technology to improve interactive communication, enforce innovation management, and capture customer insight and business foresight across the enterprise boundary, and ultimately delight customers.

Digital equilibrium: Digital IT is not only faster and lighter, but also smarter and influential. Digital equilibrium is achieved via the harmony of strategy, structure and business performance. There is a key difference between digital and industrial organizations: In industrial organizations, the structure is rigid and hard to change. In a digital environment where change is constantly happening, that handicaps the organization; in the emerging digital organizations, the business leverages digital technologies and tools in enforcing holistic thinking, cross-functional collaboration, and dynamic processes and case management, and it can digitize every touch point of customer experience, also generate revenue and influence business decisions. Digital IT can strike the right balance of growth and stability, innovation and standardization, to reach an optimal stage of digital equilibrium.
  
Digital fit: With the emergent trend of IT consumerism, business professionals request IT to think about the opportunities made available by pervasive digitization and provide the similar technologies or tools that they use in their personal life. Information Management helps to optimize various business management, directly or indirectly related to long-term revenue. The lightweight digital fit technologies have more power, but less wire, the cornucopia of design options is exploited and managed, thus, becomes a crucial factor in an organization's success in producing digitized products and services. Digital-fit IT means hyperconnected with less wire; hyper-competitive with higher capabilities; hyper-integrated via optimization; high-efficient via automation. IT is also shifting from “built to last,” to “design to change.” They require not just make things work but be delightful and innovative to improve their productivity and engagement.

Digital fluency: Digital means flow, information flow, idea flow, and mind flow. IT is shifting from a technology custodian to an information steward to manage the full data-performance life cycle: data -> analysis -> decisions -> performance effectively. Information Management makes information available and useful, exert lots of intelligence to capture customer insight and business foresight. An organization with digital fluency means to break down silos, create the information savvy environment that encourages the utilization and the flow of information and knowledge. An information savvy organization can make sure the right people getting the right information at the right time to make the right decision. The purpose to run IT with digital fluency is to mind the gap between business and IT, leverage the latest digital technologies to craft frictionless business culture, re-frame business processes to bridge silos, and build the optimal sets of business capabilities to delight customers.


Digital premium: Digital premium means a lot, such as business effectiveness, agility, innovation, intelligence, and people-centricity. Organizations which operate this way have happy staff and customers, superior business capabilities, strong balance sheet, and positive social influence upon the environment. IT effects radical digital to reach digital premium is to be an integrator in knitting all important business factors, to improve business agility, flexibility, and innovation; to deliver the tailored business solutions for accelerating digital shift and provide efficient tools to empower employees and improve their productivity, and to achieve the ultimate goal of building a customer-centric digital organization.


In today’s digital dynamic and technical environments where IT is being used more and more around the globe for revenue generating initiatives and the business is becoming IT. IT is moving up its maturity from functioning to firm to delight, running full speed with less friction, unleash its full potential via improvement, and improve its maturity via intelligence and innovation. A digital-ready IT is a thresholding competency of the organization. It is an enabler of business digital capabilities, goes beyond an IT-business alignment, and move up to integration and engagement stage. IT can weave all necessary business elements, either hard or soft, to orchestrate a digital symphony.

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Saturday, October 1, 2016

The Spotlight on Digital CIOs Oct. 2016

11:48 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges.
Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges. It is not sufficient to only keep the light on. Regardless of which industry or the nature of organization you are in, being a digital leader will need to master the art of creating unique, differentiating value from piles of commoditized technologies, but more specifically, what are the digital-savvy CIOs doing to run IT as a value creator and innovation engine? Here is the monthly spotlight of the CIO.       

  The Spotlight of Digital CIOs  Oct. 2016
  • CIOs as “Chief Innovation Officer”: Taking a Systematic Approach to Run an Innovative IT: Doing more with innovation is the mantra for any forward-looking organizations. Though every executive should make their voice heard on this front, have an opportunity and responsibility to participate in the innovation dialog and to come up with innovative ideas, CIOs generally have greater opportunities to stand out, and take leadership in driving innovation across their companies. Because most of the functions can make process innovation within their division, IT, on the other hand, has much more of an opportunity to enable incremental top-line and bottom-line value across the business, not just within IT, but across the functional border because IT is in the unique position to oversee business processes underneath, also foresee the latest technological trend, capture information-based business insight to either delight customers or catalyze business growth. In practice, how to take a systematic approach to run an innovative IT?  

  • Raising the Profile of Digital CIOs? Contemporary digital CIOs wear multiple hats, play different roles with multiple personas. There is a distinct difference between a great CIO and an average CIO in terms of identifying and implementing competitive advantages and being a great leader. What are modern CIOs’ digital profiles, and how can they improve leadership effectiveness and shift their role from transactional managers to transformational leaders?
  • The CIO’s Situational Leadership for IT Digital Transformation Many IT organizations are on the inflection point for digital transformation, to transform from a cost center to a growth engine, from a back office function to a digital brain front yard, and from a help desk to an innovation hub. CIOs are wearing multiple hats, practice situational leadership to bridge the industrial age with the Digital Era, to focus on information management, process optimization, business innovation, and overall organizational maturity. Many think IT is shifting from a static function which is often controlling or even lagging behind the changes to a people-centric changing organization. Here are a couple of leadership and management roles CIOs need to balance well for improving IT efficiency, effectiveness, and agility.
  • Digital CIOs as “Thinkingaire”: How to Master Multidimensional Digital Thinking Effortlessly: Due to the changing nature of IT with overwhelming information and fast growing digital technologies, IT becomes overcomplex with high velocity. The CIO is not a static management role, but a dynamic leadership role. Digital CIOs must wear multiple hats to play situational leadership, and the CIO’s responsibilities can be quite varied even with the same title or position. In order to lead effectively with broader vision and comprehensive strategy at the age of digital with "VUCA" characteristics, CIOs need to be the “Thinkingaire” who can master multidimensional digital thinking, and lead digital transformation effortlessly?
  • CIOs as Change Agent: Three Focal Point in Change Management: Business Change Management is managing everything that is necessary to get people to adopt new ways of working such as stakeholder management, communications, process or organizational change, business readiness or technical change management, etc. More than two-thirds of Change Management effort fails to achieve the expectation. How to get ahead of change curves, what are the focal point to frame the right problems to solve, make change tangible rather than fluffy?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.5 million page views with about #3100th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

Read More

The New Book “Thinkingaire” Introduction Chapter 9 Metaphorical Minds

11:43 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

The mind is like the software, you need to keep tuning and create delightful experiences working on it.

 Nature language is the means to express our thoughts. Language and its expression of the thinking process change because of its relativity of context. But is there thought without words? Can there be thinking without memory? What about reading between the lines? What about creative explaining through the use of metaphors? Psychologically, creative, metaphorical and poetic impulses and language congeal over time into systems of thought and take on a quality of being permanently true, through being institutionalized, systematized, and professionalized. Is language a pure art of the mix of art and science? And further, can we articulate digital minds via metaphors vividly?
A tree-like mind: The tree is the symbol of the life. Metaphorically the shape of the tree helps us vividly visualize the mental representation of our human minds. The branches of the tree represent the mental structure of human consciousness. Just like a tree, our minds can be developed following the blueprint of their own nature, and nurtured by positive circumstance. Digital means change, Digital is the age of abundant knowledge. Digital professionals today have to consume, comment and create content while mastering the subject matter and connect, collect and collaborate in keeping their minds growing and their knowledge updated, just like continually growing a strong mental tree. just like when we cultivate a tree, a digital mind arises from both nature and nurture, and is willing to accept change, knowing that change is inevitable. So when a leader thinks and decides, it has to be from an open-minded and impartial perspective as the world continues to evolve. It takes persistence to continue learning and mastery to shape a growth mind.
A Child-like mind: Children are more explorative because they don’t yet have a strong frame for how things work. Child-like thinking is more intuitive because they are open to unknowns and they seem to have a more connected relationship with nature, and their intuitive mind can connect the dots boldly, to create a flash of insight or unconventional wisdom. Childlike thinking can produce innovation because they have the beginner's mind and enjoy experimenting and there’s no rule to limit their imagination. A child-like mind is full of imagination, As Einstein well put, “Knowledge is limited, but imagination encircles the world.” Children are not afraid of blurting out their thoughts, experiment and explore things in a nature way. It is important to release our childlike qualities, which we all still have, take off the shackles of always following conventional wisdom, and not be afraid of being different, being open, being curious and being free to think creatively.


A Jigsaw like mind: Life is just like a jigsaw puzzle. There are so many pieces with blended colors. At the beginning, you feel confused, and don’t know how to get started, but it is an exciting adventure. There are two ways to begin to solve the complex jigsaw puzzle: The first one is that you have knowledge about what the final solved puzzle should look like and you can just compare the pieces and fit it. However, life is more like the second way to solve the puzzle, we have lost the box and do not know what the final puzzle should look like, so we have to take a guess, connect the dots, match the colors, and give different things a try, solving the puzzle by discovering the pattern and cross-checking all the time to see if all the pieces have fit in. Pattern thinking is a type of problem-solving thinking, if you look at patterns, you will find that they are containers for describing relationships because that is what gives them their sense. They are defined as “solutions of problems in a context,” with a body of “descriptions of forces.” Pattern Thinking is also a type of Creative Thinking because it requires you to keep your eyes open and keep your mind out of the box, in order to shape the bigger box and actively seek out new ideas wherever you can discover them.

Categorizing mindset with a set of metaphors is truly about practicing creative communication for understanding our mind profoundly and articulating our thought processes vividly. The mind is like the software, you need to keep tuning and create delightful experience working on it.


Thinkingaire" Book Chapter 9 Metaphorical Minds Introduction
Thinkingaire" Book Chapter 10 Professional Minds Introduction

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Three Personas of the Digital Innovators

11:39 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Innovators find more viewing spots than the rest.

 With the increasing speed of changes, fierce competition, and unprecedented uncertainty and ambiguity, creativity is the most wanted skill in the 21st century. But who are the innovators? Are innovators belong to a rare breed, or are innovators just among us and within us? With “VUCA” characteristics, what are important personas do digital innovators present today?



Bigger-Box Thinker: Creativity is analogized as “Out-of-Box” thinking, more precisely, innovators today need to be bigger-box-thinkers because the borders of functions, firms, industries, and geographical regions are blurring due to the hyperconnectivity of the internet and the latest digital technologies. Being a digital innovator means you need to break down the silo thinking, breakthrough conventional wisdom and challenge the status quo, push and encourage you and the entire team to "think in bigger boxes" (think outside of your job description and consider company and industry and even societal impacts). Being a bigger box thinker also means to leverage nonlinear thinking and let the creative mind run free for a while, engage all people in the team in improving both thought processes and optimizing working processes. Assume that every problem has multiple solutions, ask yourself and others for both framing the right questions and managing alternative ways to solve them. Thinking in bigger-box also means you need to be in a continuous learning mode with interdisciplinary understanding, embrace critical thinking and creative thinking to challenging existing thoughts or standards and to seek additional knowledge and experience, for connecting dots to catalyze innovation.


Pathfinder: Being creative also means you need to get used to stepping outside that old box to unfamiliar territory, you discover and explore your own path. An innovator is often a visionary and a pathfinder. Because innovation comes with the foresight to envision a need that others overlook or ignore and a willingness to forge ahead to satisfy visions, in spite of a risk of failure. Discovery is 'the journey of life' as each day we discover something previously unknown to us. Discovery is the choice to look at something differently and by that choice never look at anything the same. The word "Discovery" refers to "Knowledge,” or more precisely, insight, you discover something others ignore, or you take the path without just following in others’ footsteps. Vision grows for those who learn to see and enter into the experience of simple perceptual connection with the wide open personal completion into the moment's happening. As one develops full participation at the moment, so does the perceptual envisioning dexterity, expanding reception and reach. The world needs more of creative thinkers who can handle the ever-increasing complexities and discover the new path for leading digital transformation.  
Multidimensional viewers: Innovators find more viewing spots than the rest. They find angles to wiggle through where most are unable to even envision a place where there is an angle. They have the ability to connect the unusual dots and see things via the broader lens. In short, innovators obviously think differently, and problem-solving is part of their DNA. Creative minds with cognitive differences are good at asking open and thought-provoking questions because the good question brings a multifaceted perspective. Creative people are typically disrespectful of outdated rules, and their creativity is really their way of breaking out of or reframing how they see the world and try to push the world forward.


Creativity is a high level of thinking and intelligence. Intelligence is the quick and clear perception of any situation, plus the ability to adjust to any circumstances. It is contextual and multidimensional. Digital innovators also need to present leadership skills, master creative communication, understand what is wrong with the status quo, have the good sense and sound judgment to attract and surround yourself with the right people and work collaboratively to do more with innovation.



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