The Monthly “Digitizing Boardroom” Book Tuning: Shaping Digital Board for Leading to the Future Feb. 2019

When we jump into the digital future of “VUCA” new normal –Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, the digital leadership today must be able to steer the organization in the right direction. 

Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in the right direction and achieve expected business results. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must have the agility to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals. How to shape a digital board for driving changes effortlessly and leading to the future confidently?

      Shaping Digital Board for Leading to the Future

Five Trends to Shape Up the Digital Board Businesses large or small across the industrial sectors are on the long journey of the digital transformation. Metaphorically, the company is like a ship, the sea is the ecosystem environment, the old world is the past, and the new digital world is the future. The corporate board takes tremendous responsibilities for steering the business ship through uncharted water, so you don't have any choices but to change your sails to move forward in the right direction. The path for digital transformation can be iterative, evolutionary, revolutionary, or disruptive, can you predict the future trends and catch the upcoming tides, shape up the digital board for leading change confidently?

Build a Future-Oriented “Synthetic Board” The directorship in the modern organization plays a significant role in business advising, strategy oversight, and performance monitoring, etc. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, BoDs should also set tones for changes and digital transformation. An effective board needs to practice synthetic leadership, enables and directs management towards good outcomes, advocate synthetic problem-solving, and ensure the business is on the right track to reach well-defined business goals and maximize its digital potential.

A Board with High Changeability Contemporary corporate boards play a critical role in overseeing strategy, advising management, and monitoring performance. They also set the tone for digital leadership and business transformation. Change is the new normal, the speed of change is increasing in the digital era. However, many well-run and governed organizations often fail to change or innovate and we are seeing the world where challenging change and innovation is a constant threat to established organizations.

The Further-Looking Board The digital enterprise consists of an amalgam of socio-systems, techno-systems, bio-systems, and Econo-systems. BoDs as the top business advisor role need to have sufficient knowledge to understand the business ecosystem and sense that the digital transformation is multifaceted; they should have the business vision to predict the emergent trend of business, technology or industry. Therefore, to make the role highly effective, digital BoDs not only need to be forward-thinking, but they also have to be further looking, thinking longer term, guide the executive team toward the right direction and play the management advising role effortlessly.

The “Futuristic” Digital Board When we jump into the digital future of “VUCA” new normal –Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, the digital leadership today must be able to steer the organization in the right direction. Corporate boards today mostly composed of seasoned business executives are no longer just the controller to ensure business compliance, they should have a clear business vision to predict emerging trends in the business, technology or industry. So, they can guide the executive team in the right direction and play the management advising role effortlessly. To discuss further: What is the profile of the “futuristic” digital boards, what’s the business insight those boards can offer and what are the great benefits they can provide for the business’s long-term prosperity?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with 5300+ 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; 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 your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book  Quote Collection 3

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book  Quote Collection 2

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book  Quote Collection 1

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 8 A Culture Savvy Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 7 A "Talent Master" Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 6 A "Governance Champion" Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 5 An IT-Friendly Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 4 An Innovative Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 3 A Performance-driven Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 2 A Strategic Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 1 23 Themes of Digital Boardrooms Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Preview

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Introduction, Slideshare Presentation

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The CIO as “Chief Innovation Officer”: Manage IT-Driven Innovation as a Cautionary Tale

Innovation is a cautionary tale which has to be managed via well-aligning talented people, robust but not overly rigid processes, and the latest technology tools.

Innovation is about transforming novel ideas to achieve their business value. Statistically, innovation has a very low success rate, most innovation management initiatives are not successful and are incredibly wasteful. Innovation fails because there are too many disconnects that occur between the birth of a vision or concept and the process of turning it into a reality. Thus, innovation as a management process needs to be monitored and fine-tuned for making continuous improvement. The CIO as “Chief Innovation Officer” - how to manage IT-driven innovation as a cautionary tale?

A dynamic innovation path brings about variability relating to cost and budget models: Although innovation is the light every organization is pursuing; in reality, most traditional IT organizations spend about two-thirds of their total IT budget to keep the lights on only. Thus, an essential question for IT leaders is whether their IT budgeting matches the level of IT-driven innovation they expect. Are they accepting risks for the potential reward? Can they manage a balanced innovation portfolio which includes all different flavors of innovation? Did you sacrifice the long-term viability of the innovation portfolio for short-term rewards only? A dynamic innovation path brings about variability relating to cost and budget models. It's important to build an innovation governance model that’s participative and proactive. For every need-driven and customer-centric innovation initiative, work closely with clients to articulate their important needs; define the most compelling and novel approach to addressing their needs; analyze the benefits per costs of that approach, and quantify why the chosen approach is better than the competition and alternatives. Take the four-step innovation scenario - needs, approach, benefit per costs, and helps organizations manage innovation in a systematic way to improve its success rate.

Resilience is the critical trait to be innovative and an indicative of a state of interdependence that has desirable characteristics such as self-organizing and self-regulating: The fast growth information and the disruptive nature of technology bring abundant opportunities to innovate business, as well as unprecedented risks to the business’s survival. Therefore, innovation is not just a restless adventure, but also a cautionary tale. IT leaders should look at innovation from the perspective of developing business-wide innovation competencies. It’s a natural evolution as most innovation initiatives involve IT, IT-driven innovation management must get a feeler of the business view and improve the strategic responsiveness of the business. Make the innovation process as visible, company-wide, as possible, but not too rigid. Encourage self-management so that the innovation team has full authority on the practices, processes, tools or methodologies they would like to experiment and build innovative products or services to delight customers. The innovation team has all complementary skills from idea generation to idea implementation, make the right architectural and design decisions; present the strong self-organizing and self-regulating characteristics.

Innovation by its inherent nature comes with a risk. The failure is of crucial importance in the process of achieving innovation: The risk is part of innovation, but you can manage parts of these risks. IT organizations that have their own house in order and have mature risk management can move on to greater, more strategic business needs and improve the innovation success rate. Managing IT-driven innovation as a cautionary tale starts at the mindset level. The successful thinking about risk leads to survival by mitigating risks, and the accumulation of enough resources to thrive by capturing opportunities in it and adapting to the uncertainty and changes. It’s the progressive movement from risk mitigation to risk management to risk intelligence. A good innovation governance standard can provide a common corporate "language" as well as work instructions. In other words, proper standards, appropriate business, and user cases, etc., may not let every idea through, but it will certainly bring the ones forward that makes sense. Technically, the primary focus of the risk management would be to identify and control those risks that can be addressed; financing, market understanding, competitor analysis, identifying the space of opportunity, and defining the scalability of the innovative products or services.

For many companies, innovation is still serendipitous. There are various reasons to cause innovation failure. Fail early and fail forward. Innovation is a cautionary tale which has to be managed via well-aligning talented people, robust but not overly rigid processes, and the latest technology tools from the discovery of a problem or new idea, designing a prototype solution to the ultimate delivery of a commercially astute outcome. Like any business initiative, you should invest wisely and spend to make a return.

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The Monthly Foresight: Look Back, Current, and Future in Shaping Digital Business Feb. 2019

Vision is the ability to see beyond what is to what could be. It is the synthetic view of ‘looking forward,” and “looking behind,” “looking beyond,” and “looking around.” 

The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, creativity is the most wanted trait for digital leaders and professionals today, and innovation is the light every organization is pursuing. Which themes shall you set to advocate digital transformation? How to lead to the digital future effortlessly?

Look Back, Current, and Future in Shaping Digital Business

Shaping Digital Business by Looking Back, Current, and Future As changes are expedited for both individual and business, neither business nor life is linear these days. The life cycle of business today grows shorter and shorter because of continuous digital disruptions and fierce competitions. It takes truly strategic thinking and foresight to run a high-performance digital business by learning the lessons from the past, achieving operational excellence today, making long term planning and building differentiated competency for the future.


Look Back and Look Forward to Leading Digital Transformation Confidently: Organizational change and digital transformation are inevitable. As the matter of fact, the life cycle of business today grows shorter and shorter because of the increasing pace of changes, overwhelming growth of information, and demanding of shareholders. The business transformation journey is full of velocity and uncertainty, thus, a clear vision is in demand. Vision is the ability to see beyond what is to what could be. It is the synthetic view of ‘looking forward,” and “looking behind,” “looking beyond,” and “looking around.” But more specifically, how can digital leaders today look back and look forward to leading digital transformation?

The Contemplation about the Past, Present, and Future? Time is continually moving forward. How much time separates, "the future," from, "the present," (if any) and what do we mean today when we talk about, "the future." Are we marking the passage of time? And what does the current thinking about the relationship between the past, present, and future, say about us as an individual, a business or a society? What are those interesting and insightful quotes in manifesting the past, the present and the future?

Three Views to Keep Board Directors Evolving in Exponential Digital AgeThe corporate board as one of the top leadership pillars plays a crucial role in overseeing strategies and leading changes and digitalization. Adopting a different paradigm is like changing the glasses and new possibilities continue to emerge. Those who look through the lens of the previous industrial era see their own reality very differently from those who leverage the lens that the new era has crafted. Thus, the board directors need to learn and master the multitude of digital views of the business and understand the exponential digital age profoundly.

How to Learn from Feedback and Move toward the Future As Einstein wisely said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results." We can live in a split second, or we can extend our presence to include the instance of our previous experience and also the opportunity of our future action. This is a different perspective on feedback because we effectively connect our past learning to our future operation.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with about #5300th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 25 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. 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 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 Wishes and Blessings to Celebrate the Lunar New Year

Should you have the wisdom to- earn from the mistakes of - your past, turn them into - something brighten your future, freshly. 

The lunar new year is just around the corner. It is special because it’s both the new year celebration and also the spring festival, it’s cold and warm because it usually happens at the bridge time of winter and spring. 

There are both lanterns and flowers as the decoration, it could also be the holiday to bridge East and West. Here is a set of great New Year wish and blessing collection to celebrate the Year of Pig.

Just as you usher-

 in lights, 

lanterns, all sorts of forms of -

illuminations to -

welcome the New Year, 

Hope the New Year usher in -

for you new hopes, dreams, aspirations.

This Lunar New Year may your life hold for you,

 as much assortment as-

the different periods of the moon.

 With each passing moment, 

let us embrace -

the New Year with-

 a brighter, colorful, 

joyous future.

When the midnight bell rings, tonight, 

let it signify new and better things for all of us, 

let it signify-

 a realization of all things, 

we wish for;

let it signify-

 a year of courage and wisdom, 

wishing you -

a very very very prosperous year.

May the old year take with it,

 all your anger, jealousy, and ego; 

hope the New Year bring with  -

modesty, humility, honesty.

Should you have the wisdom to-

 learn from the mistakes of -

your past,

turn them into -

something brighten your future,  freshly.

Don't curse the darkness –

 light a candle.

Do not fear going forward slowly; 

fear only to stand still.

At the point when-

 the mid-night chime rings, this evening, 

let it -

connote new, better things for you;

let it imply an acknowledgment of everything you wish for;

Let it mean -

a year of strength and astuteness, 

Wishing you an exceptionally prosperous year.

May the new year keep -

your life delights, 

that never blur,

 trusts that never kick the bucket, 

quality that never debilitates. 

Wishing you an extremely happy New Year.

May you always be surrounded by-

 hope and guided by the stars. 

Have a prosperous New Year!

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The Digital CIO as “Choice Generator”

Digital is the age of choice, it provides the opportunity to think the new way to do things, it forces IT leaders to get really creative on how they orchestrate and implement changes. 

The unprecedented digital convenience brought by powerful technologies changes the way we think, live, and work. Embracing digital is inevitable as that is now part of the business venture. The digital era upon us is the era of options, empathy, personalization, and sharing. IT is the linchpin to run a high-performance digital organization. Today’s digital CIOs need to become the “Choice Generator,” envision the emerging technological trends, refine information to capture business foresight and customer insight, imagine the new possibilities and alternative ways to do things, and drive the digital transformation proactively.

Provide choices for businesses about communication content, the method they want, and use their language: IT historically has had poor communication accountability within IT or between business and IT. To reinvent IT as a trustful strategic business partner, CIOs must be able to relay technical ideas in a non-technical manner to business leaders, use the common business language to bridge the gap between business talks and IT talks, make sure IT meets the business environment, and transform IT reputation from a controller to an enabler. To improve communication effectiveness, tell the business what they want to know, not just what IT wants to tell. Provide choices about communication channels and styles. Generally speaking, the strategic communication initiated by top digital leaders are not the top-down one-way street, it should be contextual, creative, cascade, and tailor the varying business audience, in order to close cognitive gaps and deepen understanding. Change adaptation would be must faster if made with the full involvement of people by leveraging effective communication frameworks, efficient communication platforms, channels, tools, and feedback mechanism. To be an effective IT leader, you need to display the hard technical skills and knowledge, but more importantly, you need to be welcomed and invited to the table, be able to share what audiences want to listen and translate business needs into actionable states.

Provide choices for users and customers on how to solve their issues from their lens: Customers are at the center of a digital organization, being customer-centric is the ultimate goal for any forward-looking business today. Business users and consumers are selective nowadays due to the unprecedented convenience brought by digital technologies. The more customer contact points an organization has, the more difficult it is to meet and hopefully deliver on customers' expectations. Thus, it’s important to provide choices for them on how to solve their issues by listening to their feedback. The customer including prospects should be studied, observed, and get involved in innovation processes. Gain a deep understanding of them through empathy and observation by taking a more inductive approach as to what the customer wants to accomplish "next." Engaging customers by providing simplified and intuitive products or services on an ongoing basis to see how their goals are achieved is a good way to orchestrate a people-centric organization. The digital IT trajectory is shifting from being an inside-out service provider to become an outside-in revenue creator and choice generator for delighting customers and driving business growth. Running digital IT is about balancing customer needs and company needs so that both the business and customers come out the winner.

Provide choices for talented employees on how they would like to get the work done, stop micromanagement and foster autonomy: Many traditional organizations still practice command and control management discipline to get the works done in the overly rigid hierarchical organization. The management's job is to control the work by commanding the people. People perform based on fear, not on self-actualization. However, the digital age upon us is about people-centricity, option, and innovation. Digital leaders should encourage and facilitate empowerment of their teams and develop the digital workforce to achieve the higher than expected business results. They need to overcome the tendency of micromanagement, clarify the “why” and “what” part of the business goals, but encourage the individual or the team to figure out “how” on their own. Give everyone a voice on how the organization and the people in it can prosper and thrive. Understand and recognize that everyone plays a "piece of the pie," and enforce accountability. The true value of an employee is demonstrated when the employee acts as an ambassador, change agent, innovator or customer champion of the organization; brings the advanced mindset, proficient knowledge, unique competency, and creativity that translate into expected performance outcomes.

Digital is the age of choice, it provides the opportunity to think the new way to do things, it forces IT leaders to get really creative on how they orchestrate and implement changes. Be experimental to try new things, be adventurous to explore the “art of possibility,” and be cautious of potential risks. The vital goal of running IT as the "choice generator" is to ensure IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next, delight customers, engage employees, and improve the IT organizational maturity as the trustful business partner.

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The Monthly “Digital Master” Book Tuning: Voyage to the Digital New Normal Feb. 2019

 The outlines of the fully digitalized world have long been sketched, but the great digital architectural design with vivid pictures are the ongoing stories. 

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. Digital Master refers to those high-performing, highly innovative and high-mature (less than 15%) digital organizations; they have both clear digital vision and well-crafted digital strategy; they are courageous to be in the vanguard of digital transformation with a quantum lead. Digital leaders must realize that you cannot wait until there is an immediate pressing task, continuous adaptability is necessary in an ever-changing world, in order to run a future-driven digital organization.

    

Voyage to the Digital New Normal

Voyage Into “VUCA” Digital Dynamic With the increasing pace of changes and continuous digital disruptions, businesses today have no choice but ride change waves skillfully, catch rising tides timely, and voyage into “VUCA” digital dynamic courageously. A digital paradigm is an emerging ecosystem of principles, policies, and practices that set limits or boundaries; but also offer guidance for problem-solving or create something new from old. The purpose of the digital transformation is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of business performance, responsiveness, and organizational maturity.

Three Aspects of Running Highly Adaptive Digital Organization? Digital means fast-paced changes, continuous disruptions, overwhelming information, and shortened knowledge life cycle. How successfully the individual or the organization can handle such “VUCA” digital new normal depends on how fast and capable they can adapt to changes and overcome upcoming challenges. Here are three aspects of running a highly adaptive digital organization.

Shaping Digital Business by Looking Back, Current, and Future? As changes are expedited for both individual and business, neither business nor life is linear these days. The life cycle of business today grows shorter and shorter because of continuous digital disruptions and fierce competitions. It takes truly strategic thinking and foresight to run a high-performance digital business by learning the lessons from the past, achieving operational excellence today, making long term planning and building differentiated competency for the future.

Discover Digital Landscape at the Vista Point Digital makes a significant impact on almost every aspect of our word from people, process, to technology, both horizontally and vertically. The outlines of the fully digitalized world have long been sketched, but the great architectural design with vivid pictures are the ongoing stories. Continuous digital disruptions today allow for “new” energy to flow and bring with it something that would not be born without it. Today’s business leaders are capitalizing and operating on digital ecosystems that are expanding due to the confluence of digital technologies, broader scopes of communication and collaboration, and multifaceted resource alignment. Can they reach the right vista point, look forward, look around, look above, and look underneath, to capture the multidimensional views and enjoy the digital landscape with unique scenes?

Take a Holistic, Integral, and Iterative Approach to Go Digital? We are living in a complex world where inventions, developments, and conflicts are continuously changing and that makes it impossible to have complete knowledge and understanding of many issues facing the business today. The traditional management which is based on a tacit assumption that organizations can be compared to machines as a mechanical system with efficiency driven, inside out process perhaps work in the considerably static business environment, but may not fit for the dynamic digital business with varying characteristics such as hyper-connectivity, hyper-complexity, and interdependence. Business management needs to break down silos, update their “divide and conquer” methodologies, and take a holistic, integral, and iterative approach to go digital.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with about 5300+ 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; 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 your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.

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The Best “Digital Fit” Quotes of “Digital Master” II Feb. 2019

The purpose of “Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit“ is to share insight about multidimensional enterprise fit from digital characteristics, organizational structure, change, knowledge, and talent perspectives; evoke critical and paradoxical thinking about digital “fit vs. misfit,” spark healthy debates on how to define and develop true digital fit, and build a fitting working environment to inspire creativity and accelerate digital transformation. 

10 Digital transformation is to optimize the whole via bridging the gaps between separate silos.

11 The future belongs to those fast learners who can test and run, walk the talk, and ultimately become a digital master.

12 The future of digital organizations is complex enough to act intelligently and nimble enough to adapt to the change promptly.

13 High level of autonomy is the symbol of digital maturity.

14 The future of digital organizations is complex enough to act intelligently and nimble enough to adapt to the change promptly.

15 Business will be more successful when they realize that one of their greatest strengths will be their change capability.

16 A changeable organization is to creating organizations where change is the norm and happens the whole time.

17 Insight is a perception beyond the thought, the multi-dimensional cognizance, and it’s the experience to explore oneself, surrounds and beyond.

18 The knowledge you select becomes “part’ of you, and shapes the lenses you perceive the world.

19 The right people have the right mindset, they are high-positive, high-innovative, high-influential and high-mature.

20 What truly makes a human as an intelligent being is our thinking capability.

21 Digital fit should be defined as “mind fit,” and then following with attitude fit and behavior fit.

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High Mature Digital Leaders with “Discovery Eyes”

Today’s digital leaders need to have digital mindsets with multidimensional intelligence allowing them making sound judgments and discovery eyes enabling them discerning patterns or qualities.

Due to the increasing pace of changes and exponential growth of information, forward-looking digital organizations have to navigate through the uncertain future, explore new possibilities, manage risks and build the business competencies so that the organization does not only 'earn enough from today,' but 'thrive in the future,' That’s what really matters from the longer term perspective. Therefore, today's digital leadership has to be continually reimagined, refined, refreshed and re-energized. The high mature digital leaders are not only cool-headed to steer their organizations in the right direction, but also have a pair of “discover eyes” to see intangible, perceive invisible, and reimagine the “art of possible” in order to run high performance and high-innovative digital business.

Discover patterns: The digital organization is the system. System = Pattern. Patterns are defined as “solutions of problems in a context,” with a body of “descriptions of forces.” The digital leaders today need to be the systems thinkers who can recognize pattern languages. When patterns work together to solve problems in a particular area, these patterns are called a pattern language. The pattern language is the system of rules that say how patterns can be combined in ways that "make sense" syntactically and add insight semantically. Tie pattern thinking and systems thinking work together to understand and develop the framework for digital transformation. Patterns are containers for articulating relationship for enabling problem-solving and design thinking. Particularly there is the way we can navigate from pattern to pattern to learn about a problem space and to apply different solutions in combination. Fundamentally, running a business is an iterative problem-solving continuum. The examination of systems thinking and recognization of pattern language help to understand a business system is a necessary precondition for effective intervention and diagnose the root causes by peeling back different layers and address the real problems systematically. It helps to reduce business frictions, tensions, and conflicts that arise, enforce interrelationship and cross-functional communication and collaboration.

Discover untapped leverage: Digitalization implies the “always on and hyper-connected” business with "VUCA" (Velocity, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) characteristics. Digital transformation represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. Businesses have many variables. If you pick the right one to change and discover the untapped leverage, perhaps you could make a huge impact on accelerating business performance disproportionately. Sometimes, you need to leverage all tradeoffs, retreat today’s performance a step back in order to accelerate the future. Thus, it’s important for digital leaders and managers recognizing the limitations of their perspectives, methodologies, and tools of traditional management approach when addressing and dealing with varying business circumstances and working with relevant business systems, balancing the varying viewpoints in order to discover untapped leverage for catalyzing business growth. In essence, what distinguishes one company from another is about people, products, and technologies. Many organizations perhaps still think their IT as the support tool and cost center. But leading organizations across the vertical sectors declare they are in the information management business, no question information and technology are the competitive advantages or your untapped leverage. Because technologies can even push you out of business overnight if you do not adapt to the new business model and capture the uprising trends timely. Quality Management is another untapped leverage in many businesses. If you only think that quality management is the business of one department, you might miss the point; as a degree of quality is everything people do and experience. It requires engaging all the people involved working together as a team to excel in quality products and services deliveries for building the business advantage.

Discover the “diamond in the rough”: see apples, imagine the “apple pie”: Insightful digital leaders with “discovery eyes” can see through the characters, discover potentials, capture the substance, and abstract quintessential. Potential is about future performance, not past performance. Unleashing potential either for individuals or businesses is about how to discover the “raw” or innate abilities, and how to strengthen the strength to develop a unique set of competencies. From a business management perspective, discovering potential is an investment for catalyzing the business, designing new business models, and improving revenue growth based on the core set of the business competencies. From the people management perspective, if you want to create a truly high-performance team, you have to understand your people at the deep level, discover their character - “the diamond in the rough.” The thought process, behavior, and outcome need to be assessed cohesively, to truly understand the talented employee as a whole about “who they really are” consistently. Then, cultivate the culture of authenticity to encourage creativity, recognize people's potential by their unique insight, mastery of new roles quickly and effectively, learning more rapidly, thinking or doing things innovatively, and empower them to become “who they want to be.” Also, discourage mediocracy which is often the root cause of negative vibes in the workplace, and stop unhealthy competition which stifles innovation and decelerate business progress.

Today’s digital leaders need to have the digital mindset with multidimensional intelligence allowing them making sound judgment and discovery eyes enabling them discerning patterns or qualities, in order to drive businesses in the right direction, lead changes confidently, refine the culture of innovation, accelerate business performance and unleash the full business potential.

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The Monthly “Unpuzzling Innovation” Book Tuning: Scale Innovation to the Next Level. Feb. 2019

 Innovation has to result in something which leads us to a better state than where we are today. 

Digital is the age of innovation. And innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. Talking about innovation is not new nowadays, everybody, every organization now is talking about innovation. It's been at or near the top of the business or economics agenda for a long time. However, there are a lot of confusions about innovation and there is no magic sauce to guarantee its success. Innovation is not serendipity, but a discipline.

          

                 Scale Innovation to the Next Level

Tipping to Scale Digital Systematically? Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way businesses are conducted. It is important to understand that digital transformation is multifaceted. Digital management is responsible for designing, enabling, and enforcing a collaborative, innovative, intelligent, inspiring and inclusive working environment for engaging employees, delighting customers, and unlocking business performance. Leading organizations are able to identify the critical spot to scale up, and leverage the framework approach for reaching the next level of business growth and organizational maturity systematically.

The Tao of Developing the Scale of Innovativeness Innovation is what leads to differentiation. It is largely due to the fact that innovation in the digital dynamic has become increasingly complex in nature and expands its horizon for impact. It doesn’t mean though innovation management should always be complicated. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation.

Three Aspects to Scale Digital Organizations’ digitalization is surely a transformation journey, it has to permeate into business vision, strategy, culture, communication, and processes. etc. It represents the next stage of business maturity which will improve how the enterprise works and interacts with its ecosystem. During the journey, there are many accumulated steps from doing digital to going digital to being digital. Here are three aspects to scale digitization and make a leap of digital transformation.

The Amplification of Innovation Effect? The definition of innovation is simple - to gain benefit by doing something different. Innovation has to result in something which leads us to a better state than where we are today. Digital innovation has a broader scope with a full-color spectrum. In the hyperconnected and interdependent digital ecosystem, innovation can happen anywhere, anytime, it expands both horizontally and vertically. How to amplify innovation effect to benefit the widest audience of the digital ecosystem though?

How to Develop a Comprehensive Innovation Framework? Innovation is not serendipity. Working in an innovation garden not only takes passion but also needs the process and hard work. A systematic innovation approach is to depict innovation as a system, rather than a traditional process. Innovation performance depends on the alignment of its various components (people, process, resources, actions, controls, measurement, etc.). Though there's no single structure that will work in every organization, the comprehensive innovation framework with all important enterprise components is the great tool to intensify innovation with focus and manage innovation in a structural way.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with about 5300+ 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; 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 your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way to human progression.

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Amazon Order Link

"Unpuzzling Innovation" B&N Order Link

"Unpuzzling Innovation" iBook Order Link

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Slideshare Presentation

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 1 Innovation Classification

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 2 Innovation Principles

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 3 Digital Innovators

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 4 Connecting Innovation Dots

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 5 Digital Innovation Best & Next Practices

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 6 Innovation Paradox

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 7 Innovation Gaps and Pitfalls

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Chapter 8 Innovation Measurement

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Conclusion Mastering Innovation in a Structural Way

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Quotes Collection I

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Quotes Collection II

"Unpuzzling Innovation" Book Quotes Collection III

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The Best “Digital Fit” Quotes of “Digital Master” Feb. 2019

The purpose of “Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit“ is to share insight about multidimensional enterprise fit from digital characteristics, organizational structure, change, knowledge, and talent perspectives; evoke critical and paradoxical thinking about digital “fit vs. misfit,” spark healthy debates on how to define and develop true digital fit, and build a fitting working environment to inspire creativity and accelerate digital transformation. 

1 “The digital paradigm shift is inevitable, keep digital fit means the fitting mindset, fitting attitude, fitting structure, and fitting speed.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit

2 “Digital sophistication implies intelligence, profundity, uniqueness, urban fit, and multidimensional understanding.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit

3 “Doing digital is about taking a few actions, and being digital is the fundamental shift from the mindset to behavior.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit


4 “An organization is on the road to success when change is part of its nature.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit


5 “We need to choose to continue to learn, grow, and empower people to learn and grow as well.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit


6 “At present time, we cannot separate knowledge and creativity if we want to stay competitive on the market.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit


7 “An understandable mind is a step closer to innovation, and two inches deeper to wisdom.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit

8 “It is critical to put the right people in the right position from sowing the seed of creativity, growing the innovation fruits, to reaping innovation benefits.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit


9 “diversity in thought” is the gold nugget to be found in embracing diversity in the digital era.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Fit: Manifest Future of Business with Multidimensional Fit

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Shaping the Modern CIO as “Digital Designer”

Modern CIOs as the “digital designer” enables IT to shine based on their new-developed design thinking and solid engineering disciplines. 

With the overwhelming growth of information and lightweight digital technologies, IT is no longer just the mechanical or monolithic hardware pieces to keep the business spinning or the mechanism for realizing a vision described by other C-level executives. Modern CIOs need to think like the digital designer, be open-minded and creative, reimagine the “art of possible,” show constructive dissatisfaction, understand the risks and potential bear traps, in order to reinvent IT as the strategic business partner and innovation engine of the business.

The transition from a maintenance mindset to design and value creation mindset is a stretch for some IT leaders: Creativity is the core of what makes IT strategic in any company. Running an innovative IT shouldn’t focus on technology or fancy gadgets, it’s about how to leverage design thinking and the powerful digital technologies to advance business objectives. It’s important to leverage the high-level design thinking to develop tailored and intuitive products or services for satisfying varying user groups from functioning to delight. IT is mainly an engineering discipline. Engineering is not just about hard science; the artistic side of engineering is about imagination, designing, and invention. Engineering is a piece of art because it involves design thinking, personalized judgment, experimenting, and intuition. Thus, digital CIOs need to wear their design thinking hat to tap the creative side of IT for meeting the company’s long term goals, building a strong brand and improving the overall organizational maturity.

Invent the business model based on the technologic vision, design thinking and on the mega-trends: Every corporate venture comes with a business model, it’s about how the business makes the profit. With the emerging digital technology trend and abundant information, modern CIOs should be equipped with “design thinking” mentality, discover the potential business model by capturing the emerging digital waves early enough and being able to build the core competencies. They need to ask open-ended questions and take an adventure of exploring the new possibilities. The starting point for a business model differs based on the objectives and nature of an organization. Business leaders should apply the “whole-brain” thinking, to take both intuition and logic, methodologically review a list of levers for business model components, and systematically build the list of potential business model options, and implement the best ones based on their core competency and maximize the multidimensional business value. A strong business model is difficult to copy because it is based on the core competency and unique strength of that specific company, it takes time to shape and take practices to build and implement.

Leverage design thinking to deliver customer-friendly products or services: The limitations of the CIO’s “industrial mindset” have made a negative impact on how IT can deliver successful business outcomes in the digital age. To keep IT relevant, the strategic objective of design thinking is to truly understand what customers’ need, how to improve their experience, help the business orient itself towards those needs in order to achieve strategic business goals. IT needs to be well aligned with the business, but even more crucially, be closer to the end customers and leverage design thinking to deliver customer-friendly products or services. From IT leadership perspective, it is absolutely necessary for leaders to create discomfort and get others thinking differently as well. In practice, to incorporate design thinking as part of the organizational culture, the management has to understand its value and put a lot of effort into it. Creativity in design is uniquely challenging because the products of the creative design must fit inside very strict constraints and need to be done under extreme pressure of time, cost and functionality. 

CIOs can no longer act as tactical managers only. Modern CIOs as the “digital designer” enables IT to shine based on their new-developed design thinking and solid engineering disciplines. They need to rethink IT as an innovative and business leading organization composed not only of technical ‘gurus’ but rather of business ‘gurus’ as well as “design gurus,” who also happen to be technically proficient. Digital CIOs are in a unique position to oversee the business from different angles so they can gain a multitude of business views and take the interdisciplinary management approach to reinvent IT as the game changer.

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The Monthly “Change Insight” Book Tuning: Change Impact Assesment Feb. 2019

The change must be defined and evaluated in its base elements and associated benefits to be achieved via financial, market share, or productivity perspectives. 


Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice within an organization, but too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crisis, and demands. This is the bureaucracy’s way of meeting the challenges. A digital transformation is achieved via dynamic Strategy-Execution-Change lifecycle management, though it is not all linear steps, but an iterative, ongoing and upgoing change continuum. Here is a set of blogs to address change impact assessment and measurement.

   Change Impact Assesment

Change Impact Assessment Change is the new normal with increasing pace. The only certainty leaders of organizations will have is that their business will change. It is only a matter of time. Either individually or at the organizational level, change readiness is an important indicator of the business competency. Corporate change can be a simple modification of strategy, a business process improvement or a more radical digital transformation. The change must be defined and evaluated in its base elements and associated benefits to be achieved via financial, market share, or productivity perspectives. The strong support for continuous improvement is an essential strategy. Overall speaking, Change Management has a very low success rate, how do you assess an organization that is ready for change? How can you optimize the process of change management to ensure it's effective rather than fluffy? How can you measure change readiness and result objectively?

Change Assessment and Measurement? The speed of change is accelerating, organizations are shifting from the industrial speed to the digital speed; from inside out - operation-driven to outside in - customer-centric. Change is no longer just a one-time business initiative, but an ongoing business capability. Change Management becomes one of the crucial management capabilities to accelerate strategy execution and improve business performance. But how to assess and measure change more effectively?

How do you Assess an Organization is Ready for Change? Change is inevitable, and the speed of change is accelerating. However, adaptability and resourcefulness -the response to change are woefully underrated by business as keys to sustainability and success. How do you assess an organization that is ready for change? How can you measure change readiness? How do you engage with today's management and make them change themselves into the role needed today for modern Change Management? What is needed to be done in order to execute a successful change when you have a different level of leadership quality? And what are the further aspects of managing change successfully?

How to Measure Changes? We can only manage what we measure. Is change so hard because it’s so hard to measure Changes? Organizations have so much difficulty measuring change for a variety of reasons such as miscommunication, hidden agendas, unclear goals and mission, poor leadership, "doing the same things over and over and expecting different results." Change is a process with known/ controllable and unpredictable/unknowable variables. Change is ALWAYS happening around us at work and outside work. Perhaps the difficulty in measuring change management is that the very thing we are measuring is changing. There is an inherent oxymoron in the term change management. We want people to change, and manage or control at the same time. That's like trying to drive with your foot on the brake and the accelerator at the same time. So to put it simply, how to measure changes, or more precisely, the change outcomes?

The New Book “Change Insight” Introduction: Chapter 7 Change Assessment and Measurement? Change is inevitable, and Change Management is an important management discipline in running a contemporary and dynamic digital organization. If you could only manage what you measure, can you make an objective and practical assessment of your “Changeability,” what are the promises and perils of change measurement, and how to improve the success rate of the Organizational Change Management via a comprehensive assessment and tailored measurement?

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; 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 your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.

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Three Practices to Enforce “Antifragility” of the Digital Organization

Business is a system, antifragility is a property of systems that increase in adaptability, flexibility, resilience, or robustness as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, disruptions, or faults. 

Digitalization is not equal to digital information or technology only. At the high maturity level, organizations have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving radical business transformation and exhibiting distinct characteristics in various shades and intensity. The more effortlessly you can align, integrate, harmonize, and optimize the important business factors inside an organization, the closer you can accelerate performance and lead changes effectively. Business is a system, antifragility is a property of systems that increase in adaptability, flexibility, resilience, or robustness as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, disruptions, or faults. The digital organizations with ‘antifragile’ characteristic can better survive and thrive in volatility and uncertainty of digital dynamic. Here are three practices to enforce antifragility of the digital organization.

Look for optionality: Digital is the era of options, empathy, personalization, and sharing. The digital organization is more like the organic living thing with its unique identity and strength, in part because ways of doing business and customer expectations both tend to be more flexible than the siloed industrial age. Nowadays, uncertainty and risks are inherent in the marketplace. The anti-fragile loves randomness and uncertainty, which means crucially, a love of errors, allowing organizations to deal with the unknown and deal with changes smoothly. Looking for optionality is all about figuring out alternative ways to do things. Antifragile needs to select what’s the best option. Therefore, to build “antifragility,” today’s business leaders and managers should look at creating digital options for providing organizations with the ability to explore new business opportunities and mitigate risks. They refuse to be bound by constraints and limitations and pursue possibilities rather than impossibilities. The “antifragile” organizations embrace interdisciplinary knowledge, diverse perspectives, and innovative ways to solve many existing and emerging problems. They develop problem-solving competency by doing better pre-work, such as defining the situation and the "success criteria," taking consideration of the range of options, rather than the traditional "jump to solution" problem-solving scenario. By grasping the mechanisms of antifragility, people can build a systematic and broad guide to non-predictive decision making under uncertainty in business and life in general. Such businesses show much better abilities to tolerate volatility or even thrive from it,

Preferably with open-ended, not closed-ended approach: Do not focus on hierarchies but on ideas, innovation, openness, and problem-solving. Antifragility goes beyond resilience or robustness. From a business management perspective, digital leaders need to be dynamic people with vision, openness, inquisitiveness, and growth mindset to find more viewing spots than the rest. The managers and employees should figure out how to frame the open-ended questions to attract great feedback, constructive criticism, and fresh ideas. Innovation becomes possible only if people can keep their curiosity to ask the open-ended “Why, Why Not, What If...” questions. From an organizational structure perspective, centralized, decentralized, and hybrid models can all work given the proper planning and management focus to keep them fine-tuned for improving and being flexible, and build antifragility. Technically, organizational design (structure, which includes policy) must be adaptable, take advantage of the latest digital technology platforms & tools, and provide the open culture for people to develop their professional competencies, exercise their creativity, and unleash collective potential. Logically, an organization can approach the flow zone when the positions in its hierarchy have clear and accountable tasks and people both individually or collectively, can unlock their performance.

Do not just invest in business plans but in people: Organizations are complex adaptive living systems, which are comprised, in part, of people (sub-systems) who are also sophisticated adaptive living systems. All such systems function, grow and prosper by continually learning, innovating, adapting, and evolving. The anti-fragile and high mature digital business can provide a more intensive and creative working environment enabling the organization to get all the right people with the right capabilities in the right position to solve the right problems from right angles. People have to be ready for moving to a fluid structure, hyper-connected digital platforms, the dynamic business state and get used to the vibrant digital ecosystem. People are the most critical business asset and capital to invest on. Companies scale their growth around tangible asset models. Develop collective workforce capabilities so that they can do more for the organization, and keep the business robust, flexible and innovative. People should be the center of digital management and they are the major focus for innovation processes and accomplishment.

If a digital organization has anti-fragile characteristics, it can have much better ability to tolerate volatility or even thrive from it. Antifragility can be enforced by recognizing the interdependence of the digital business, improving the organizational adaptability, and harnessing business flexibility and versatility. Antifragility equals more to gain than to lose; equals more upside than downside; equals asymmetry, likes volatility; and if you make more when you are right than you hurt when you are wrong, then you will benefit in the long run from volatility and thrive with the unprecedented uncertainty and ambiguity.

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