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.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

The Monthly Decision Making Insight: Decision Making in Digital Way Oct. 2016

Decision making is the arena across the art and science, gut feeling, and data-driven, confidence and humility.

Making a decision
is one of the most significant tasks for business leadership, however, the high ratio of strategic decisions have been made poorly and cause the catastrophic effect. How to avoid such decision pitfalls, and to make effective decisions both strategically and tactically?



Decision-Making in Digital Way? One significant effect of digitization is increased velocity, complexity, unpredictability, and a need for a faster response to changes in business and industry based on effective and efficient decision making. How is that possible? What’s the digital way to make the right decision? And how to avoid the pitfalls of making bad decisions?


Is Customer one of the Biggest Influencers of Decisions in your Enterprise? Being customer-centric means to really live on the mantra everyone is already familiar with: “Customer is King or Queen”, take a look at the business via outside-in customer’s lens, and build business capabilities to optimize customer experience. However, to what extent do you feel comfortable to make customers one of the biggest influencers of decisions in your organization?


The Value or Bias behind Decision Making? Business leaders and managers spend the significant time on making both strategy (long-term) and tactical or operational (mid or short term) decisions, and those decision effects will directly impact businesses’ top line growth and bottom line surviving. Some use gut feeling more often to make decisions, few are good at doing data oriented decision making. Sn order to decide smartly, what’s your perspectives of value or bias behind decision making??


How has Russell Ackoff's Work influenced on Decision Making? Russell Ackoff's work influences on management and decision-making through his work on systems learning. He saw effective decision making when people looked at an organization as a whole rather than single items. That means the effective decision making is based on understanding relationships between activities inside as well as outside an organization. For many business leaders, Russell Ackoff's work enhanced understanding of systems thinking, understood organizations as marketplaces: People in organizations tend to see each other as peers, superiors, or subordinates - while in a critical sense, they are customers and suppliers for each other. Understanding these dynamics enables much more effective analysis and design of organizations.


Tuning Digital Mindset: A Decisive Mind? At today’s digital new normal –uncertainty, complexity, velocity and ambiguity, the capability to make an effective decision becomes more crucial leadership competency. An effective decision can be defined as an action you take that is logically consistent with the alternative you perceive, the information you get and the preference you have. Digital Pros, how should you shape such a "Decisive Mindset"?


The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.5 million page views with about #3100 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. 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.

The New Book “Thinkingaire” Introduction: Chapter 12 Mind vs. Mind

Approaching problems at behavior level only helps to fix symptoms, but digging through the mindset is the way to cure the root cause.

People are different, not because we look different, but more crucially, we think differently. The variety of thought makes the world diversified, innovative and sophisticated. It’s hard to say whether we can make an “apple to apple” comparison of mind vs. mind. The truth is that each of us is a complex blend of contrasts: positive and negative; intuitive and logical with imperfect judgment. When we use our different perspectives to complement each other’s thinking, we can overcome common challenges facing humankind. And surely doing some mind vs. mind practices will help to understand different thought processes from different dimensions with clarity.


Fixed vs. Growth Mind: In a traditional organizational setting, people are hired to do their job with compliance, and managers are hired to manage people or projects with control. However, businesses large or small are now faced with rapid changes and digital disruption. Such static management practices based on the fixed mindset, are no longer sufficient to adapt to the changes. Fixed mindset refers to those who approach the work with the assumption that their abilities are innate and not subject to change, while accelerator or growth mindset refers to those who solve problems or target the goals with growth mind - the belief that their ability level is nothing more than a snapshot in time and eminently changeable as they continue to learn and develop. If a fixed mindset is OK to survive in the industrial era because both the business and the world still live in the silo with the slow pace of changes; and now, with increasing changes and continuous digital disruptions, growth mind is in strong demand because it is audacious, adaptive, aggressive and digital imperative, and digital professionals with growth mind can step out of their own comfort zone easily, walk the talk and lead change confidently.


Systems Thinking vs. Strategic Thinking: Systems Thinking looks at things holistically, with an in-depth understanding of interconnectivity between parts and the whole. Strategic Thinking involves the application of unique business insights and opportunities intended to create customer bonding and competitive advantage for an organization. Systems Thinking looks at the whole, where the parts are never as important and should always work to benefit the whole. Strategic Thinking is analytical, decision-oriented, and directional. A strategy would be enhanced by Systems Thinking because it looks at each part of the business to the profitability and long-term success of the whole organization. Strategic Thinking is about where you are, where you want to be and how to close the gap. You cannot have a strategy without first understanding the system and you cannot have a system without first developing a strategy.


Critical Thinking vs. Creative Thinking: Critical Thinking is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion. Creativity is an inward process to produce novel ideas and build unique value. Both Critical Thinking and Creative Thinking are vital in a workplace. The more creative you are, the better you are at solving problems. Creativity and intuition are the key skills, but both of them depend on critical thinking as well. Because current economy demands new and innovative ways to look at things. Creativity deals with any sort of idea necessary to solve a situation which definitely requires a critical analysis skill. These skills, hand in hand, help drive the growth of an organization and its employees as well as enabling effectiveness, efficiency, and agility in solving problems and making decisions.

Approaching problems at behavior level only helps to fix symptoms, but digging through the mindset is the way to cure the root cause. So we should approach problems at mindset level, and mind assessment is about evaluating multidimensional intelligence and cross-disciplinary transcendence. It is the mind that allows us to learn, understand, grow, and mature.



Thinkingaire" Book Chapter 12 Mind vs. Mind Introduction
Thinkingaire" Book Conclusion

CIOs as "Chief Innovation Officer":Tapping the Digital Transformation Power of IT

Tapping the digital transformation power of IT means that IT should play even more crucial roles as a business solutionary, value creator, and digital orchestrator.

Technology is pervasive, IT touches both hard business processes and soft human behavior. Digital transformation or business initiatives today nearly always involves some form of technology implementation or information analysis. And history reveals that IT needs to be understood and harnessed by all stakeholders, to fulfill its potential and strategic importance as a strategic differentiator of the company. But more specifically, how can forward-looking organizations tap the digital transformation power of IT to improve business efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness, and maturity?


Transformation requires first shifting mindsets, and then building new skills and reinforcing and embedding new practices/reflexes: For example, there are a lot of business success factors including culture, and IT can be the most effective and the least expensive option to reinforce high-performing culture. IT departments usually have the necessary project management skills and experience; therefore, it’s a natural choice when it comes to heading up transformation. Skills and situations have become more subtle, more multi-layered and, therefore, complex, what's needed every now and then to any individual, team, organization, society, and on up to the entire planet's population, is a little or a lot of energy to re-focus, kick-start or 'game-change.' IT can empower employees to communicate and collaborate cross-functional boundary seamlessly via leveraging efficient digital platforms and tools. With evolutionary digital technologies, the scientific breakthroughs is connected to human communication dynamic. The trend of IT consumerization indeed provides unprecedented opportunities for IT to get more touch base with end customers, and empower employees as well, IT acts more as an ‘orchestrator,’ to conduct an information-mature, customer-centric digital organizations.


Tapping the power of IT to focus on problem-solving: Proactive problem-solving starts with creative communication, sets alternative choices, and then you have to make best decisions you can, based on connecting unusual dots, identify and prioritize alternative solutions. IT has to proactively work with the business, ensure that the top (and other non-IT executives) leadership is appropriately engaged, C-levels have the right resources, and they are paying close attention to customers and partners, and successful in relationship building. Collective wisdom is often the secret source for creative problem solving. IT is a differentiated factor in co-creating alternative visions and dream into existence of new solutions, these are the capacities of humans who are not trapped in 'the same level of thinking' as others or even former personification of 'selves.' Once the business problem has been defined, the multi-disciplined and diversified group with mutually respectful and sufficiently open-minded team members will be able to resolve it. The executive leadership must be motivated and managed by single customer-centric objective and the success should be defined by accomplishing a business goal, not just a theoretical solution.

Tapping the power of IT to reinvent an innovative workforce: The pervasive digitization requires both business and IT professionals to rethink how things are done in organizations. The 'reach and range' flexibility that now exists removes barriers that have existed in the past. if businesses can recognize the barriers and overcome the obstacles, be open to the diverse viewpoints, connect the dots in the interdisciplinary domains, and take calculated risks, it can empower employees to apply technology to perform their work in a way that benefits the enterprise. Knowledge now is only a click away. People and organizations could now learn faster by leveraging the latest technology and learning tools in a time when leading strategists were arguing that the only sustainable advantage was to learn faster than your competition.


Tapping the digital transformation power of IT means that IT should play even more crucial roles as a business solutionary, value creator, and digital orchestrator. IT can keep business areas up to date with the opportunities emerging technology provides. Businesses are looking for IT to add new innovative methods for management of complexity, information delivery, improving quality, agile construction, and competency building, etc. Foster an innovation culture to create innovative IT-enabled business models and business capabilities through a combination of existing and emerging technologies. Deliver the innovative capabilities to capture first-mover advantages.



Monday, October 3, 2016

The Monthly Performance Insight: IT Performance Management Oct. 2016

CIOs need to focusing on managing IT performance effectively via selecting key indicators, measuring both the right things and measuring them in the right way.

Corporate Performance Management is a management control from strategy till shop floor. "If you can't measure, you can't manage," legendary management guru Peter Drucker once asserted. He was right Managing performance means understanding results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to ensure it happens. It takes multifaceted approaches from multidimensional perspectives.

 IT Performance Management


Three Challenging Aspects of Performance Indicators? You can only manage what you measure, Performance measures and management is not a simple task though, approximately there’re more than ten thousand KPIs around today, a bit overwhelming, let's not forget that there is a "K" in KPI for a reason: Why do you select the certain set of performance measures? What’re the most challenging aspects of working with KPIs? How to leverage the right set of performance indicators in measuring whether the organization is functioning well or dysfunctional? Which management metrics shall you apply to measure organizational overall health and maturity? Who and what tools are being applied to measure if an organization is healthy or sick? Proactive or reactive? Intelligent or dumb? Customer-centric or operational driven? And what are those challenging aspects of performance measurement??


Five Digital Capabilities to Improve IT Performance IT plays a significant role in building business competency and driving digital transformation. IT needs to continually assess its own capabilities and evaluate overall performance via multidimensional lenses and via a set of questions, such as: How to map IT strategy to business strategy? What things are in place that will enable the business strategy? What can be done to strengthen them? What things are in place that will inhibit or endanger the business strategy? What can be done to minimize them? Are the right skills in place? Are projects delivered not just on time, on budget, but more importantly on VALUE? Are costs in line with the long-term plan and short-term goals? How can IT make a continuous delivery of improving its own performance and overall business results?


How to Improve IT Performance via Objective Assessment? Many IT organizations are at the inflection point for digital transformation, they are also reinventing themselves from a cost center to a value-added business partner, and continue to improve IT efficiency, effectiveness, and agility. Therefore, making an objective IT assessment helps IT management to diagnose the early signal for dysfunctional IT, as well as help to take a critical look at IT strength and weakness, in order to move up its overall maturity.


Three Aspects of IT Performance Management: Traditional IT organizations were running inside-out operation driven, CIOs and technique managers assess IT performance via the lenses of IT, and mainly about “keeping the business bottom line.” Hence, business partners perceive IT as a cost center, or support desk only, because they don’t have a clear picture with quantitative information about contemporary IT's value proposition, and thus, lack of knowledge on how critical IT contributes to the business’s top-line growth and customer satisfaction. Thus, managing performance and improving IT reputation means understanding results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to ensure the strategic goals are on the right track to get implemented, and communicated effectively at the different level of the business. In order to reinvent the tarnished reputation of IT, CIOs need to focusing on managing IT performance effectively via selecting key indicators, measuring both the right things and measuring them in the right way.


IT Management Dashboard The dashboard is an effective method to show IT value. The dashboard is also a good tool to provide input to the decision maker such as IT leaders and managers. Further, it encourages the IT departments to create their own marketing plan for dealing with their different 'customers inside and outside of the organization.?


The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.5 million page views with about #3100 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. 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.

The New Book “Thinkingaire” Introduction: Chapter 11 Anti-Digital Mindset

Technology shift is perhaps momentum, but mind shift is more fundamental to drive changes and sustain progression.

Digital Transformation requires mind shift. In additional to set point change, transformation requires first shifting mindsets, and then building new capabilities and skills, reinforcing and embedding new practices and reflexes. With the increasing speed of change in the hyperconnected digital ecosystem, some industrial mindsets with “status quo” types of thinking, authoritarian attitude, and bureaucratic decision-make, are outdated, turn to be a "dragger" of the business innovation and a laggard of the digital paradigm shift. More specifically, what are those anti-digital mindsets, and how to shift them to digital thinking styles?


Silo Thinking: Silo is a universal problem facing businesses, especially large, established companies and our society today. But most people don’t realize how much pain it is causing or the cost to the organization. Though back to its root, the purpose of the functional silo is to achieve the certain level of efficiency, but often silo thinking causes negative internal competition. At its heart, silos are not a structural issue, they are the result of poor thinking, or more precisely, lack of holistic thinking, systems thinking, and strategic thinking. From a business perspective, silos are nothing more than the barriers that surface between departments within an organization, causing people who are supposed to be on the same team to work against each other. For example, people are focused inward, protecting budgets and power structures rather than focusing outward on customers and problem solving. Silos cause slowness and small-thinking. Whether this phenomenon is called departmental politics, divisional rivalry or turf competition, it is one of the most frustrating aspects of life in any large organization.


A Stereotyping Mind: Stereotyping is when you judge a group of people who are different from you based on your own opinions or encounters. Stereotype as a word has a negative connotation. Many times, the mind can and will play tricks on you, based on past experiences only or outdated perception. Even two people from the same family could be totally different, thus, stereotyping is a type of superficial thinking lack of in-depth understanding. Stereotyping one another is a human issue - one that you need to keep weeding out of the culture. To fix such an outdated mindset, perceive each other with insight, not just a superficial outlook. Our minds are not a blank sheet of paper but filled with all kind of information as part of the socialization process. The key to diversity is inclusiveness beyond what is commonly understood by it. To truly break down stereotypes, knowing that you are conditioned to stereotype others is a good start, and you have to make a concerted effort to know and understand each other from the mindset level, and give each other the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. Practice critical thinking to understand things deeply, and be open minded to catch up the digital speed. Apply wisdom to break down any superficial, stereotypical and other negative mindsets, and to equip yourself with a learning, growth, adaptive, and highly mature digital mind.  


Command-Control Mind: We are in the age of information abundance, with all kinds of knowledge only clicks away. Knowledge workers are purpose driven and self-managing. Therefore, collaboration, openness, sharing, and integrity are fundamental for joyful and productive teamwork. This is radically different from the command-and-control (C&C) style of management of the industrial age. The issue with “C&C” thinking is that it’s process driven, and does not begin with the end in mind. The point is you can control people’s behavior, but not their mind. Though from conventional wisdom, management’s job is to control the work by commanding the people. The problem is that tools are often used inappropriately, and command is a skill, not a right. Even worse, “C&C” type managers blindly make decisions without understanding the real problems. “C&C”style is ineffective if you are excluding things like listening, accepting feedback, and no wonder it is often used as a euphemism for “bad, authoritarian management.” It is important to shift to digital styles of leadership for establishing the environment of autonomy and self-accountability and to encourage innovation and mastery.

We list many other types of anti-digital mindsets in this chapter of the book "Thinkingaire," the intention is not just about criticizing, but to brainstorm the better way to think, make sound judgment and effective decisions, and to lead digital transformation effortlessly. As the saying goes: The quality of life depends on the quality of your thinking, be a high-quality digital leader/professional with high-quality thinking, and be a digital "Thinkingaire"!


Thinkingaire" Book Chapter 12 Mind vs. Mind Introduction

"CIO Master" Book Tuning #110: Running IT as a Digital Solutionary

Running IT as a digital solutionary is to shift from internal IT operation driven to outside-in customer-focused.

IT organizations today are reinventing the tarnished image from a cost center to a value creator; from a troubleshooting help desk to a customer-centric digital solutionary. Digital CIOs today also have to switch the leadership style from “command & control” to coach and advise, they must have the business acumen to gain an in-depth understanding of the business strategy as well to capture the customer insight of the company.

Hence, CIOs should be able to make the partnership at peer level in other departments so that they have knowledge of key business issues as well being a member of the senior management and should be able to give their opinion/solution if being asked. To put briefly, CIOs today need to become the digital solutionary to their company.  


The role of IT today for many forward-thinking organizations is a solutionary for Information Management: The role of IT in the current business environment should be able to enable business outcomes. Business is no more interested in IT if it continually delivers projects without delivering value. IT organization is usually the information steward of the business. Information potential directly impacts the business's potential for the organization. The potential value of information all depends on how the information will be used again in the future and this is often exceptionally uncertain. Running IT as a digital solutionary is to effectively manage information life cycle and ensure the right people getting the right information timely to make the right decisions, also the company climbs the data-information- knowledge-insight-wisdom pyramid with accelerating speed.


A digital solutionary IT will continue doing consolidation, modernization, integration, and automation in order to achieve business efficiency and agility: The emergent SAAS based managed services allow organizations to assemble a unique and agile portfolio of services consumed by third parties whilst maintaining control of their strategy and direction. The main drivers remain access to capacity, skills, and flexibility over ramping up and down according to project demands, amongst others. The real goal of IT, as is the case with every part of the organization, helping the business become, stay, and increase profitability via both improving products/services, as well as decreasing cost and redundancy! In order to become a better business partner, IT value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like collaborative value or collective advantage and multi-layer ROIs.The role of IT in the current business environment should become a digital solutionary and be able to enable business outcomes.

The role of IT today for many organizations is not only a digital solutionary, but also a digital transformer to become a change organization: The intimate Business-IT partnership is the ultimate status for IT to deliver better fit, right-on and cost-effective solutions, to manage a balanced portfolio for “run, grow, and transform.” Even you can not fulfill all business’s demands, but you deliver what you promise, and you do what is the best fit for the business’s strategy and goals. And you are humble enough to listen to customers, but confident enough to say 'NO' with fair reasons. By seeking out and developing a trustworthy partnership with the value proposition for those leaders who most agitate for speed and change, CIOs will start to transform their organizations and the perception of IT, to go beyond just a service provider, but a solutionary of Information Management, and a conductor of digital orchestration.


Running IT as a digital solutionary is to shift from internal IT operation driven to outside-in customer-focused. The value of information is qualitative, measurable, and defined uniquely to an organization. IT must bring to the table innovative solutions that meet customers’ needs, while reducing the cost to market, without the sacrifice of strategic goals. If done well, information achieves its value, and IT helps to unleash the full digital potential of the business and rise up to the upper level of maturity.