The Monthly “Change Insight” Book Tuning: Digital Organizations with High Changeability Apr. 2020

The new paradigm that is emerging is a digital organization that is more responsive, holistic, vibrant, self-driving, innovative, and above all enhances and supports the living organization. 

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, crises, 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.

    Digital Organizations with High Changeability

The Digital Organizations with High Changeability Change is the new normal with increasing paces. You have to define the change situation and the desired results before plowing into any effort, from measured progress to critical survival. The traditional organizations with pyramidal hierarchy usually enforce silos, encourage bureaucracy, and slow down the business speed.

The Very Characteristics of Organization with High Changeability With continuous disruptions and fierce competitions, organizations can make major leaps forward in developing change capability and capacity by involving the entire organization in digital transformation efforts that support key business strategies to drive performance improvement and accelerate business speed. Here is a set of the very characteristics of digital organization with high changeability.

Three Dimensions of Changes for Tuning a Digital Organization The very nature of digital is about change, and change is multifaceted with increasing speed and velocity. The change shouldn’t be just some random business initiatives, it has to fix an imbalance in those elements by involving executives in IT, operations, or talent management, and take a structured approach to manage three dimensions of changes for tuning a highly responsive digital organization.”

Changeability as the Digital Characteristics The digital organization starts with a changing nature. Uncertainty, ambiguity, unpredictability, velocity, etc., are the digital new normal. The emergence of potential opportunities for exploiting digitization is likely to follow a nonlinear pattern as the pervasiveness of an organization's digitization journey increases. The digital business dynamic allows the organization to morph as the business conditions and organizational capacities change to allow a better fit. But change is never for its own sake, one of the good reasons for the change is to keep the organization fit, and a fitting business has better changeability and higher business maturity as well.

Organizational Autonomy and Digital Transformation? Digital disruptions are inevitable, and digital transformation is unstoppable. Organizations shouldn’t just respond to them in a reactive way. The new paradigm that is emerging is a digital organization that is more responsive, holistic, vibrant, self-driving, innovative, and above all enhances and supports the living organization. In fact, autonomy becomes one of the most critical characteristics for digital organizations to thrive as well as the symbol of achieving high-level digital maturity.

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 “Overwhelming” Quotes of “Digital Master” Apr, 2020

Due to the increasing speed of change and overwhelming growth of information, IT is only increasing in importance and relevance with each passing day.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Overwhelming” quotes in “Digital Master.”



1 The overwhelming growth of information and fierce competition forces IT leaders to get really creative about how they drive changes and ensure IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next and guide the business in the right direction

2 The role of the CIO continues to evolve rapidly in the midst of overwhelming information growth and accelerating changes in technology.

3 Many IT organizations suffer from overloaded tasks and overwhelming growth of information, face a lot of obstacles and encounter many distractions stopping them from laser focusing on achieving strategic goals.

4 With overwhelming information and the abundance of knowledge, one of the true tests of a professional is to know when you don't know, cultivate healthy digital attitudes to keep learning, adapt to change with the right speed, practice a profession and improve professional skills.

5 Due to the increasing speed of change and overwhelming growth of information, IT is only increasing in importance and relevance with each passing day.

6 With the overwhelming growth of information, dynamic business conditions, and fierce competition, IT management has become an art out of necessity to address both the business surviving and thriving issues.

7 The digitalization shouldn’t stall. With the overwhelming growth of information and continuous business disruptions, today’s digital organization simply just can’t standstill.

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The Aspect of Business Strategy and Capability Mapping

The quality capability model allows business leaders to establish important business goals relevant to the capability and identify goal dependencies to establish a high mature enterprise.

With rapid changes and continuous disruptions, competition is fierce across many industries, business capabilities are fundamental pillars to achieve the corporate strategy. The business capability provides differentiation and the more ability to do things and finish tasks in a consistent manner.

The enterprise consists of a set of capabilities with the right mix of competitive necessity and competitive differentiator. The organization then uses these capabilities to understand its environment, create new products/services and then deliver them seamlessly to delight customers. Capability underpins the business strategy, the point is how to do business strategy and capability mapping systematically?

To identify the capability gap and convey the key capabilities required by which an enterprise is composed: There are multiple perspectives of organizational capabilities, the top tier is a common executive or management view of the condition/suitability of capability to support the intended future operating model and implement a well-defined business strategy. Perhaps you also have to go down to a second-tier, or even a third tier, at the operational level, to get to the point where there is enough differentiation between capabilities that you can build then map against different roles in the organization to achieve business objectives and make continuous deliveries.

To provide an insight into condition and relationship/dependency, executives are sufficiently aware of the "general condition" of the various capabilities to provide input into a qualitative assessment by identifying capability gap in the context of future need, or capability dependency, for example, business capability reliance on information technology as a linchpin. You must also be aware of the integration of a single functional capability into a holistic portfolio of digital capabilities across all enterprises, to build unique and sustainable business advantage.

The value of capability maps is the ability to identify capability patterns of the enterprise to make holistic investment decisions: Usually, capability abstracts away from functions to remove any sense of who, where or how, which enables broader consideration of options in developing and strengthening the target business competency. Take a viewpoint, risk-based approach, identify capability patterns of the company and the risk profile of the enterprise performance deficiencies. If you cannot "see/read" your strategic competencies and capabilities, then it's a great question to ask of the executive and strategic planning team.

To improve business performance and reach a high level of organizational maturity, a missing but necessary capability must be created or purchased, or the strategy must be revised. The viewpoints of strategy-capability mapping would be selective, not comprehensive. Abstraction would be a key tool for balancing the cost and effort of analysis and synthesis of a dynamic capability such that appropriate investment decisions can be made in a timely manner without compromising the returns sought through outcome realization.

The value of a capability map is a tool to visualize the end-to-end enterprise: The organizational ecosystem environment is constantly changing, forcing the business to keep adjusting. Products are becoming more commoditized and there is a lot of pressure on pricing, margins, and investable budget dollars. Business leaders today need to look ahead and be proactively looking for opportunities to improve. The strategic capability mapping helps to visualize the end to end enterprise and bridge the “gap of opportunity” between where you are and want to become.

When you want to make a change to one of those capabilities for executing the strategy, then your business model - capability mapping assists with a high-level impact assessment and delivery approach. To break down silos, capability modeling facilitates the process of identifying and recognizing duplicate capabilities and opportunities to close enterprise capability gaps and optimize the business for achieving the high-level business capability coherence.

The quality capability model allows business leaders to establish important business goals relevant to the capability and identify goal dependencies to establish a high mature enterprise. It is important to take the logical steps for making an objective assessment of business capabilities, do the strategy-capability mapping, identify and close business capability gaps and build organizational competencies for achieving strategic business goals via making continuous deliveries.

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The Monthly “Unpuzzling Innovation” Book Tuning: Innovation Competency Apr. 2020

 Digital is the age of innovation, Innovation is always a tough journey, not a flat road.

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. Digital Master refers to those high-performing, highly innovative and high-mature (less than 15%) digital organizations; at the individual level,

Digital Masters are those cross-generational digital professionals who are equipped with advanced digital minds and build a unique set of digital capabilities. 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 is a lot of confusion about innovation and there is no magic sauce to guarantee its success. Innovation is not serendipity, but a discipline.

           

   Innovation Competency

Innovation Architecture and Competency Innovation is a managed process of transforming novel ideas to achieve its business value and it is the development of a new combination of available resources in a way that solves real-world problems in a suitable way. This is especially true if you are looking at new sources of value that haven't been tapped before. Managing innovation to fit the market often requires strategies, architecture designs and product introductions that build towards the long-term perspective. You have to manage it in the right way with the right elements strategically and systematically to achieve consistent business results.


Develop a Learning Organization and Build Breakthrough Innovation Competency With the increasing pace of changes and cutting throat competitions, to effectively respond to the digital dynamics, companies must begin thinking about ways to build their innovation competency, broaden their ecosystems and revenue streams. In reality, true innovation always spurs certain disruptions otherwise it is not innovation. Nowadays innovation can occur anywhere in the organization, and frankly, it has to occur in every aspect of the organization, information is the most time-intensive piece of digital innovation. How can companies develop a learning organization and take a structural way to manage innovation, especially breakthrough innovations which are disruptive and will change their organizations in many fields? You need new technology, new processes, new knowledge, maybe a new business model. All that makes them very risky but on the other hand, you will get very great chances and opportunities for achieving leapfrog results.

Running Digital Organizations with Differentiated Business Competency The characteristics of digital business are dynamic, volatile, uncertain, and hypercompetitive. Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way business is conducted so that simply adopting new digital technology isn’t insufficient. You have to continuously scale-up and dig underneath, optimize organizational processes and develop business capabilities, transform the underlying organizational structures and functions to ensure the business as a whole presenting the differentiated business competency and running with digital speed. Here is a set of differentiated business competencies.

The Enterprise’s Innovation Appetite, Attitude, Aptitude Digital is the age of innovation, Innovation is always a tough journey, not a flat road. Digital innovation is coming at a seemingly much faster pace, and there are more potential disruptions, with a broader scope, scale, and impact on the business’s long term surviving and thriving. Companies have to be prepared to lose some to gain more for the longer term. They need to make an objective assessment of their innovation appetite, attitude, and aptitude and manage an innovation portfolio strategically and systematically to achieve great business results for the long term.

Three Levels of Innovation Management Maturity There is no doubt innovation is becoming more important whereas technology turns to be so advanced and the pace of change is increasing significantly. In practice, innovation focus and capabilities an organization demands depend on the circumstances the business is in. Different organizations have different strengths and competencies to innovate.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 6600+ 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 “Preference” Quotes of “Digital Master” Apr. 2020

Traditional business thinkers have a preference for reliability, getting the same result every time. Designers prefer validity; getting the right result this time.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Preference” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 At any rate, "change" predictably involves numerous factors like Motive, Fear, Preference, Sensibility, Means, and Memory.

2 It's important to distinguish the difference between bias and values: Values inform bias. The values are much like your core beliefs and your bias is like preference.

3 You need a new paradigm that integrates this meta-process with everyday work into a flexible anticipating customer preference change.

4 From an anthropological perspective, it’s important to take the outside-in view, identify the customers’ preference by constructing a platform from customers’ experience.

5 Traditional business thinkers have a preference for reliability, getting the same result every time. Designers prefer validity; getting the right result this time.

6 The newly established behaviors will be in harmony with organizational principles and preference, and ultimately achieve the next round of performance improvement and lead to the next level of digital maturity.

7 Timing matters to catch the right opportunity for business growth or prevent the potential business risk before it becomes too severe. It is TIME to address factors influencing business velocity, performance, profitability, preference, and customer preference.

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The Various Causes of Dysfunctional IT

 IT failures are often fatal, and the health of IT management directly impacts business success in the long run.

The contemporary organizations have different functions, structures, layers, and systems with Information Technology as the linchpin. The digital paradigm shift has come to a change in organizational forms away from the overly rigid hierarchies managed through command and control to more fluid and responsive network forms.

However, many managers still apply old silo management mindsets and take classic management practices. There are various causes of dysfunctional IT. Information management ineffectiveness decelerates the business speed and limits the full business potential.

Disconnect: IT management is complex and multifaceted, IT expertise has to come at every level though, not just technical, but also in product management, business architecture and analysis, project/portfolio management, quality assurance, and others as appropriate. Often, the "disconnect" part is the bigger issue that causes dysfunctional IT systems, miscommunication, and slows down the speed of business change and innovation. The disconnect occurs when the wishful thinking at higher levels detaches from the reality (where the rubber hits the road) at lower levels, due to the IT strategy management misalignment or IT skill gaps, so the business and IT gaps are enlarged, and functional walls go up.

To bridge the disconnect and achieve strategic coherence, highly influential IT leaders have to understand the “three sides of the coin”: IT, business, as well as the interaction between IT and business. Take multiple successful IT management approaches where they have people who are experts in their areas and where the leadership was tightly connected with them. This ensures that the IT organization builds something that solves business problems that need solving holistically and that the solution works and is implemented within the constraints.

Incompetence: When IT systems are dysfunctional, silo thinking or bureaucracy is propagating; when value proposition fails to be translated into meaningful operational deliverables; when the work is not done right and needs to be redone, then disasters emerge. IT incompetence perhaps further causes the business mighty fall.

To dig deeper, the dysfunctional IT systems are possibly caused by complicated processes, inflexible procedures, or incompetent people. The elements of an outdated IT system are built using depreciated tools, running on out-of-favor platforms, or documentation not matching the actual system. Keep in mind, IT management is about People, Process, and Technology. The first is people. Highly competent IT leaders and professionals will drive the processes and technology and knit all crucial elements into unique competency.

Weak governance and risk management: IT investment is costly and risky, mismanagement is the reality, such as IT planning deficiencies - too much staring at spreadsheets and reports, and too little focusing on concrete deliverables, governance, risk management, and real progress tracking. There is a myriad of information, much conflicting, the major factor is lack of honesty about the realistic and reasonable plan that can be achieved without the worry of executives and others pulling the plug. In some circumstances, IT management seems to miss a relatively important measure of success or failure, the ability to be agile; or the ability to change to meet the needs of the business.

IT fails due to the lack of governance structure when dealing with complex IT management that involves a high level of change at the process, people, product, or technology level. The weak governance symptoms include, but not limited to:

-fixate too early on resource availability rather than working out what skills and personal attributes will be required.

- short change risk management; too many generic and templated risks accepted by teams

-not build up a body of knowledge about underlying attributes for success

-Some key IT management roles go under-resourced or promoted and often misunderstood,

-sometimes fixate on methods adherence and not use a wider and more pragmatic range of approaches and adaptations of methodologies

-Suppliers/ subcontractors fail to keep promises on delivery

Information Management is not just about IT, but about the business across the enterprise scope and IT is at the unique position to oversee the functionality underlying the entire organization. Thus, IT failures are often fatal, and the health of IT management directly impacts business success in the long run. Whether IT needs to work within, on or across the systems depends on how you define the system scope and the integrated components of the system. The solid IT management disciplines and strong IT GRC will improve organizational maturity and accelerate business transformation.

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Learning "How to Learn" - The Perspectives of Meta-cognition

Examining metacognition- the learning process enables you to develop effective learning and teaching approaches.

Meta-cognition is the higher-order thinking that enables understanding, analysis, and control of one’s cognitive processes, especially when engaged in learning.

A big part of metacognition and more importantly, why metacognition is important, is to give the learner an opportunity to be aware of and understand their own strengths and weaknesses so that they can learn or adapt their skills and strategies to build professional competency.

Metacognition assessment: Metacognition assessment is all about measuring learning effects (acquisition, skills, behavior, understanding). We can measure the results - the 'things' that have been learned.

Meta-cognitive processes can be demonstrated in behavior, and when you measure the behavior, you begin to see if metacognitive thinking is taking place over time and with more proclivity, metacognition would be where the individual is aware of reaching the point of "not knowing," and then developing strategies to resolve it to "knowing," like how to induce or abduct hypotheses and reflect on them and question them.

Learning methodology: Meta-cognition or meta-learning is about learning how to learn. At the core of all learning needs to be a deep understanding of systemic thinking and the psychology of how people learn. We live in an era with the exponential growth of information and abundant knowledge, meta-learning is a vital element of developing independent learning and building a learning mature organization.

The point of learning is to gather the details around the subject under scrutiny and then and only then, can you be selective. For example, be selective about the sources you are going to take information from. Discover how and where to find valuable information, not just the information itself. You select what you learn, but also learn what to ignore. From a learning management perspective, by supporting staff to learn how to learn, critically examine their thinking and reflect thoroughly on what behaviors helped them learn, they will become more competitive and better problem solvers.

Meta-cognition essence: Meta-cognition, or learning how to learn, is a vital element of independent learning in an era of rapid and relentless change. In the past, many learners, in all disciplines, built a kind of 'dependency' on their teachers/trainers and developed a form of “learned helplessness.” Digital professionals today need to become continuous lifelong learners and adapt more readily to whatever changes life/work throws at them. Attempting to 'measure' this type of thinking about thinking can be worthwhile for both teachers and learners in order to shape the future of the knowledge workforce.

Examining the learning process enables you to develop more effective learning and teaching approaches. If you know more about how people learn, you can work toward developing strategies that stimulate and support it as effectively as possible.

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The “Outside-In” Quotes of “Digital Master” Apr. 2020

The outside-in view stimulates design thinking and develops a highly innovative digital organization.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management.

It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Outside-In” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Either for individual innovators or organization innovators, outside-in lenses enable them to understand problems from other people’s perspectives or understand issues from different angles.

2 Gain a deep understanding of the motivational construct of the customer from the outside-in lens, in order that the innovator can become "anticipatory" of what the customer will likely "want next.”

3 From a design perspective, you don't do certain things in a certain order; you just look at things from a non-business-standard point of view until the form emerges. The outside-in view stimulates design thinking and develops a highly innovative digital organization.

4 The “Lost in translation” syndrome is caused by mistakes that most organizations make in business communication that fails to translate the high-level language of strategy into the professional language of the various staff specialty for execution. If these symptoms exist, it's important to reinterpret business-IT conversation from the outside-in business lens.

5 It’s critical to take mixed top-down, bottom-up, inside-out, outside-in, middle-out, and cross-functional system-wide approaches to go digital in a multidimensional way.

6 The board provides an “outside-in” view to the business management by overseeing the strategy and monitoring performance management.

7 The difficult challenge is not just launching a successful team, but maintaining their motivation and focus, from inside-out operation driven to outside-in customer focus.

8 Running an Outside-in IT starts from mind shift of the IT leaders, the CIO plays a change agent role in business transformation via systematic thinking and well-thought-out planning

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The “Nice to Have” Factors to Drive Change Management Success

We live in a world in which change is the norm, it is nevertheless true that change itself has become unpredictable and evolutionary.

Change is always happening around us, with increasing paces. Change is a dance between the top management and the affected parts of the organization. Digital transformation implies the full-scale changes in the way the business is conducted, such as mindset, talent, capabilities, structures, processes, technologies, etc.

The effective Change Management approach is logical and iterative, with the goals to build a high-responsive, high-intelligent, and high mature digital organization.

Have an advocate for change on the Board: Leadership is all about direction and change. Change leadership concerns the driving forces, visions, and processes that fuel radical change. if you want meaningful change in an organization, it will not really happen until you get buy-in and sponsorship from senior leadership teams such as the corporate board. Without this, you will get chaos and some temporary change, but not change that moves the business forward solidly. Leadership vision is to serve as an enabler, being coherent with their organization's vision.

“Change management" is the overarching umbrella that encompasses extensive planning, developing a shared vision, discovering the pitfalls of failure, addressing fears and resistance, communicating valid and compelling reasons for cooperation, recognizing the sacrifice and incremental success. The top leadership team such as the corporate board must push the change agenda, and pull the resources to achieve it.

Have Change Management processes that actually enable change: Most of the changes are complex processes, there is a learning curve behind them. The more transparent about a change management scenario, the less uncertainty there will be about the effort. The process of preplanned change shouldn’t be too rigid or overly prescribed, otherwise, it could create the bottleneck for streamlining change scenario. In fact, the dynamic change management process must be open to new insights and adaptable to emerging events. It is also good to look at processes in terms of the very characteristics such as flexibility, risk intelligence, value contribution, reproducibility, reusability, etc.

It’s important to have the team own a process by bringing them in early and getting their involvement in creating the process of change and enforcing clarity and transparency in communications, Make continuous engagement through formal and informal methodologies and best & next practices. Train employees across all levels as change agents, with leaders being enablers and facilitators.

Have a Center of Excellence for change: The large scale of change such as digital transformation is complex and risky, the CoE (The Center of Excellence) is often made as a competency center for enterprise-wide change deployment. The part of the CoE purpose is governance which is implemented more as guidance with flexibility through established guardrails rather than adherence to a rigid track.

In practice, often CoEs are created with the right intention, but limited success. As it takes the time to mature such practices. Most of CoEs are at an enterprise level; some do attract good people but are still limited in effectiveness due to constraints they have to work with and resistance from the LOB. Some attempt to follow a trend without enough preparation, knowledge or skill. Others adopt an authoritarian management style and give people a sense of hierarchical structure.

It’s critical to build a strong team composed with specialized generalists such as architects - who facilitated new initiatives with design and proofs of concept, and senior subject matter experts - who acted as liaisons to the business for both upcoming project needs and current project requirements, etc. If a COE is well planned, it is quite beneficial from both the value perspective and cost point of view.

Have the change mechanism embedded into the multitude of management disciplines and align the organization to create synergies: Change can be an opportunity, but at the end of the day, it needs to be all about moving the business numbers upwards. Change Management needs to always go hand in hand with strategy management, program/project management or talent management; concentrate on the multitude of business systems - cultural system, moral system, social system, material system, functional system, and the holistic digital ecosystem. with a clear business purpose and focus on getting change sustainable.

Business Change Management is managing everything that is necessary to get people to adopt new ways of working. In reality, though, Change Management in many organizations seems to be at the crossroad. Many times, teams have worked very hard to refine the processes involved with a change initiative, but if change mechanism is not embedded into the holistic business management disciplines, or change is managed as the other layer of workload or an isolated effort, it could be too costly or drag down productivity and lose the focus. Synergy creation requires process alignment and ecosystem coherence.

Have access to key metrics: Quantitative measures do play a valuable part in assessing, measuring, and quantifying change results. Change Management should make a measurement assessment via questioning: How do you design metrics to measure what changes and how these changes are measured? What are the relevant metrics and how can they be quantified and validated? The metrics need to be "SMART" so people can see what the outcome will look like throughout their transition.

The problem with many KPIs is that they are created and applied at a subordinate level without taking into consideration the possible implications for the organization as a whole. You can leverage a balanced scorecard in measuring the outcome of the change - in terms of the variability of outputs such as the delivery rate or quality level. Perhaps the most challenging area in which to measure change is with respect to changing a culture - how to harden the soft –measure the culture and sustain the culture through change management and PMO practices.

We live in a world in which change is the norm, it is nevertheless true that change itself has become unpredictable and evolutionary, and if we don't embrace it, accept it, roll with it or make it happen, we're not going to be successful. Digital enterprises are inherently complicated, the highly intensive changes do not happen in isolation from each other in predictable ways, but act as a complex system feeding, amplifying and ameliorating the change effect. Change Management is no longer a one-time initiative, but an ongoing organizational competency and iterative business continuum.

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The Monthly “Digital Master” Book Tuning: Raise the "Digital IQ" of the Organization Apr. 2020

The ever-evolving digital organization with high digital IQ understands the value of information, fine-tunes smart processes, develops the intelligent workforce, and achieves measurable business profitability.

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 high mature digital organization.

Raise the "Digital IQ" of the Organization  

Raise the Digital IQ of the Organization With rapid changes, the exponential growth of information and continuous disruptions, the beauty of the digital landscape is the fresh insight of the great architectural design and business ecosystem dynamic. Organizations today need nothing less than a paradigm shift in their thinking about the fundamentals of how organizations work, as well as how to build an ever-evolving digital organization with high digital IQ - understanding the value of information, fine-tuning smart processes, developing the intelligent workforce, and achieving measurable business profitability.

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Tuning: The Digital Savvy Board with High “Tech IQ Although Information Technology nowadays makes significant impacts on almost every aspect of the business, there is still a propensity to try to make the technology changes "go away" or to ignore them. The matter of fact is that the changes sweeping the world are hugely disruptive and there is nowhere to hide. While directors bring many competencies to the table, most do not have access to information about technology-driven innovation and its potential related to the businesses they oversee. So how to build the board with high “tech IQ,” to produce a wave of response at board level, improve directorship effectiveness and innovate digital leadership?

Running IT with High Digital “IQ” Organizations across industrial sectors are on the journey of digital transformation. Digital IQ is a measure of how well companies understand the value of technology and weaves it into the fabric of their organizations. Therefore, the assessment of the digital maturity of an organization includes: Can your company rely on an IT system that is a commodity (standardized usage of technologies), or is the IT system the core of your business? The approach depends on the company business and the role that IT plays in defining its positioning in the market. Here are three “I” aspects of fine-tuning digital IQ of IT and overall business:

Building the Bona Fide Strength of Digital BusinessWith rapid changes and overwhelming growth of information, neither business nor life is linear or static these days. The digital organization’s long-term advantage is based on its unique strength which can be built and stretched through the combination of talent, resources, processes, and technologies to perform a set of business activities and achieve high-performance business results. Here are three efforts to build the bona fide strength of the digital business.

Running IT with both High Digital “IQ” and “EQ” At the individual level, we know that leadership effectiveness is based on the good combination of “IQ +EQ” (and beyond at today’s digital new normal with “VUCA” characteristics); at the business level, how agile and mature the organization is also based on how “intellectual” it can make effective decisions, detect the growth opportunities and manage risks, as well as how excellent it can adapt to changes via the collective mindsets and attitudes (Culture). From IT management perspective, how to run digital IT as a “digital brain” of the business with both high “IQ” and “EQ” traits?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 6600+ 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 “Coordination” Quotes of “Digital Master” Apr. 2020

 Digital communication is sophisticated, but it’s the coordination mechanism to inspire, motivate, persuade, negotiate, and clarify, to make progressive change possible and allow a group of people to function as a cohesive team to achieve more.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Coordination” quotes in “Digital Master.”


1 Dialogue is a means of coordination based on expertise and responsibility. Communication, whether verbal, non-verbal or digital, "is" the coordination mechanism that makes organizations possible and keeps them "real."

2 It is important to develop an open atmosphere with effective and candid communication, fortify cross-functional coordination based on information, expertise, and responsibility.

3 The need for leadership has changed from being just traditional/transitional to being transformational today, leaders are in more need of basic 3C's capabilities- Communication, Collaboration, and Coordination.

4 Digital communication is sophisticated, but it’s the coordination mechanism to inspire, motivate, persuade, negotiate, and clarify, to make progressive change possible and allow a group of people to function as a cohesive team to achieve more.

5 The transparency in IT value proposition to the business plus more engagement in partnership is needed to achieve coordination toward the strategic business goals.

6 The premise that information systems are a means for communication and coordination could be said that enterprise architecture should be about designing dialogues with consideration of cohort improvement factor

7 The business processes should be optimized to support the people -the most important asset of any organization, and not the other way around, tighten coordination and collaboration with business partners and engage the workforce to accelerate changes and foster innovation.

8 The higher the complexity of the organization and the complexity of the environment in which it operates, the higher the requirement for business connectivity (communication, coordination, and control) in order to meet performance baselines and generate value, allowing different roles to work together in harmony.

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Business Architecture as a Master Planner of the Organization

 Business architecture can be used as a body of knowledge and experience, as well as a master planner in guiding and managing knowledge and change, communicating, designing and facilitating, scaling up, and developing dynamic business competencies.

Digitalization is the state of dynamism, continuum, and interaction. Compared to the mechanical nature of the industrial organization, digital organizations are like the living systems that keep self-adapting and self-renewing.

To thriving in the “VUCA” digital new normal, Business Architecture (BA) as a master planner tool can bring greater awareness of intricacies and value of the ever-evolving business systems, interwoven processes, technological advancement, resource alignment, and help to craft the future state of the organization with the following business artifacts:

Strategic planning approaches: The idea of strategic planning is to identify some of the uncontrollable elements in the business environment and make some “educated guesses” as to the impacts of these and emerging elements into the future state in the ever-changing world with increasing paces. Business Architecture is a great strategic planning tool for corporate leaders to gain a systematic understanding of how relationships, ecosystems, market dynamics, interconnectivity, and orchestrate the organizational interrelationship between people and processes. The degree of planning has a positive correlation with the degree of uncertainty and unpredictability.

In fact, making long-term strategic planning is a must-do “thing” in uncertain times to embrace change proactively. Because it is easy to look like you are making progress by focusing on tactical issues, but “getting lost” of the big picture for the long run. It requires courage and skills to really tackle what is wrong at the strategic level. BA is a useful tool for a dynamic and iterative Strategic planning process that needs to be monitored and controlled (inside vs outside, internal vs external factors). It helps to navigate the full set of “Ws: Why, What, How, Who, When and Where, etc,” for implementing well-set strategic goals of organizations, constantly questioning if the vision and strategic direction are being chosen smoothly.

Organization structures: The challenge for the business across vertical sectors is to fine-tune a successful organizational structure that delivers what customers need and architect an organization to bring value to customers while also creating value for the business itself. Business Architecture as a master planner provides a unique and highly valuable viewpoint about organizational design and structure, and experiments with different types of organizational structures to enforce business alignment, enablement, communication, collaboration, and harmony.

In reality, the pyramidal structure in many traditional organizations brings up a certain level of efficiency, but an overly rigid hierarchy sometimes becomes the very obstacle to stop the digital flow and stifle innovation. Ideally, the digital organizational structure needs to be solid enough to “keep things in order,” but fluid enough to interact with the expanded digital ecosystem seamlessly. Digital organizations can leverage BA as a master planner tool for reconfiguring the organizational structure, and changing their own behaviors; a collective of business partners will emerge working collaboratively, for their adaptation to ever-evolving business dynamics.

Product/service developments: Products, services, applications will become much more interrelated as we move to a world of systems-of-systems where constraints govern how and what we develop. BA is a great tool to prioritize requirements, qualities and cost factors while comfort zone and market trends taking place when architecting business solutions. Process and procedures help to eliminate poor delivery. It’s important to apply architectural design thinking to see how the business solution being built will perform with respect to their quality attribute goals. The vision/idea is executed successfully with the methodical and valuable assessment to eliminate major risks associated with cost, time and resources.

BA is the right tool for product development teams to gain an in-depth understanding of the business and customers. Sometimes the amount of up-front work you would need to do to get an idea in front of varying stakeholders to know how valuable it takes more work than coding it, shipping it, and testing it. You need to understand how to shape a product/service to maximize appeal, you need to be proactive in pushing stakeholders toward concepts audiences will like and finding the right “tipping point” for coming up with premium solutions.

People engagements: It’s a hybrid, networked, extended modern working environment, there is an ever-greater ability for businesses to create engagement around very specific goals, such as employee retention, customer satisfaction, talent acquisition, benefits administration, wellness, or multi-generational workforce facilitation. It's important to build tremendous trust and user-focused engagement and focus on Respect, Relevance, Intelligence. There are many different views of people's engagement. The very goals of applying the BA perspective to improve people's engagement are to well align corporate goals with employees’ career goals, encourage talent growth, create synergy by putting the right talent in the right position, aligning resources, exploring the best practices and next practices for building high-performance workforce and high mature business.

The BA as the master planner plus emerging digital computing technologies as effective tools enable the seamless integration of physical and virtual organizational structures, empower workforce sharing the thoughts and ideas, engage customers and partners to voice the concerns and feedback, and encourage the broader conversation and interaction within its business ecosystem. People (employees, customers, shareholders) appreciate it when you listen and treat them with respect and concern, and also give them the optimal platform choice to communicate with your brand.

Governance archetypes: Governance is one of the most important tasks of BA. A Governance Model is an architectural description that addresses the concerns of the stakeholders who want to ensure that the strategy execution is aligned with intent. It evolves multiple artifacts such as governance structure, governance process, governance mechanisms, governance practices, and governance metrics, etc. Corporate governance discipline can fulfill its purpose as a high-level corporate enabler by providing a structured communication bridge between shareholders/investors and top business leaders such as corporate directors.

Governance is like a steer-wheel, to ensure enterprise running in the right direction and wellhead to the destination. Governance= Superior Management. The architect needs to understand how decisions are made in the organization in order to get an impact on BA work. Governance can begin with a framework and policies to be put in place, depending on the nature, scale, and complexity of the organization, to gain an in-depth understanding of one's risks and conduct. BA as governance enabler can be used to raise visibility and awareness for many things that are captured at the different levels of the organization, and bring them in front of leadership without the audit or regulatory compliance stamp on them.

As the digital world becomes hyperconnected, interdependent, and dynamic, the industrial silo and old boundary has been broken down. It’s critical to use business architecture as a body of knowledge and experience, as well as a master planner in guiding and managing knowledge and change, communicating, designing and facilitating, scaling up, and developing dynamic business competencies.

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The Monthly “CIO Master” Book Tuning: IT Management Dashboard Apr. 2020

A well-designed dashboard is an effective management tool to enable business leaders to make better decisions.

Compared to the other executive positions, the CIO role continues to be shaken up, refined, reinvented and reenergized. The magic “I” of the CIO title sparks many imaginations and modern CIOs need to wear different hats and play multiple roles.

Here is a set of blogs for brainstorming on how to reinvent IT and improve IT performance to get digital ready.

      

         IT Management Dashboard 

Three Essential Information from an IT Management Dashboard Due to fast-growing information and emergent digital technologies, IT becomes more significant in driving organizational changes and catalyzing business transformation. You can only manage what you measure, how to build an effective dashboard and setting the right performance indicators to measure IT performance can be the right step to improve IT effectiveness, efficiency, and overall organizational maturity. As IT leaders, here are three pieces of the essential information you should get from a well-designed IT management dashboard.

Does IT Need A Dashboard to Show Value to the Organization? As internal IT faces competition for the first time from end-users with their own devices and App Store solutions and cloud providers that are trumpeting “better” economics and faster time to value, one has to ask the question, “how IT “markets” its activities and benefits to the organization it serves?” “How is IT showcasing the value it brings?”

The Multifaceted Aspects of IT Management Dashboard A Dashboard is a support decision instrument, gives instantaneous information about the organization's main drivers. In other words, it is a tool that is a part of a management system. The feature of the dashboard is to display information that can be customized and categorized to meet a user’s specific needs. Here are the multifaceted aspects of the IT management dashboard.

The CIO's Dashboard  A well-designed dashboard is an effective management tool to enable business leaders to make a better decision, from an IT management perspective; a dashboard should present the topics that you manage. CIOs shall ask themselves what are IT business objectives towards your organizational strategy. Then, translate it to smart KPIs. Smart is in a sense of how to cover all important business objectives, but not too many KPIs, to measure the progress, and not only the final result, to show the status at a glance without the need to drill down too much and so on. Typically, CIOs would need to remain on top of various parameters such as costs, production Issues (especially business-critical applications), risks, technology, customer, long-term business transformation, etc. A comprehensive CIO Dashboard should include the IT management quadrants with a combination of the following aspects:

IT Management Dashboard The dashboard is an effective method to show IT value. The dashboard is also a good tool to provide input to decision-makers 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 minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6600 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating 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.


CIO Master Order Link on Amazon

CIO Master Ordre Link on Barner & Noble

CIO Master Order LinkOn IBooks

“CIO Master” Book Preview Running IT as Digital Transformer

“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 9 IT Agility

“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 8 Three "P"s in Running Digital IT

“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 7 IT Innovation Management

“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 6 Digital Strategy-Execution Continuum

"CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 5 Thirteen Digital Flavored IT

“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 4 CIO as Talent Master Introduction

“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 3 “CIOs as Change Agent” Introduction

“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 2 “CIOs as Digital Visionary” Introduction

“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 1 “Twelve Digital CIO Personas” Introduction

"CIO Master - Unleash the Digital Potential of IT" Introduction

"CIO Master - Unleash the Digital Potential of IT" Book Preview

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The Corporate Board with High “PQ”

The paradox is like the two sides of the coin, they are not just opposite, but also complementary, to make it a whole. BoDs need to be strategic, insightful, influential, and highly effective.

The paradox is “a situation, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.” It is the result of two opposing truths existing side by side, which can be both right. With “VUCA” new normal, there are many concepts that seem to be opposite, indeed, they are complementary to keep the world balanced.

A corporate board with high paradoxical intelligence (PQ) can set the tone to practice situational leadership, advocate changes, and strike the right balance of toughness and softness, no silo thinking, no binary or extreme thinking.


Candor and diplomacy: The more complex the situation is, the more different approaches and role gaming is needed to search for insight and pursue true knowledge. Senior leaders such as board directors play a critical role in setting digital principles and policies, overseeing strategies and monitoring performance. True critical thinking and constructive criticism are very important at the round table; “Thought candor” is offering a different way of thinking about a situation or a problem that fills the blind spots and moves the strategic conversation forward in the boardroom.

The corporate BoDs with high “PQ” can accommodate the value of alternative perspectives, respect diverse opinions, assess and converge the diverse thoughts into sound judgments. To get into the deep, deep digital reality, diplomatic board leaders present the strong "intellectual persuasiveness" skill, have vision, knowledge, insight, and wisdom to make a profound influence. Leadership is an influence, influence comes from progressive mindsets, profound understanding, diplomatic attitude, and step-wise actions.

Logic and creativity: The nonlinear vertical business logic comes through different characteristics such as mixed structures, diversity, volatility, ambiguity, unpredictability, and increased flux. Being an innovative board director means you need to break down silo thinking, breakthrough conventional wisdom, and if necessary, challenge the status quo. That is not easy for many top seasoned board directors who have decades of experience and enriched knowledge in certain areas. Creative board directors would be good at asking ‘Why’ and ‘Why not” questions, putting aside all the trained thoughts, systems, and boxes, letting the open possibility come naturally, keeping everyone involved and fostering an environment of creativity.

In the executive suite, you need a balance of both logic and creativity. Be creative enough to "dream" big and "sell the dream," but be logical enough to make dreams come true. It is absolutely correct that the logical mind with critical thinking is very important for board leadership. More often than not, the BoDs are the "framer" of complex problems, leveraging Systems Thinking for problem framing helps to take on a broad open perspective and solve them via “putting them together” seamlessly without creating too many new problems.

Confidence vs. humility: No challenge is one problem; overbearing interventions is another. One of the biggest challenges in this complex, multi-polar world is the fact that we need different perspectives and alternative ways to solve problems. The board understands the fine line between management and governance. They have to show humbleness and respect and start to listen. You are open to learn both about yourself, others and love new ideas. Talking and actively listening to one another. Being humble to ask thought-provoking questions improves leadership effectiveness and maturity.

Keep in mind, humility is not about being unsure or afraid to try new ways to do things. Rather, it speaks to a person’s openness to feedback, learning agility and continuous improvement. It is good to be confident in a natural way and there is no egotism in that. When you identify with your higher self, strength, spirit, or some other definition of the higher part of you which is not ego, you feel totally at peace to keep your mind flowing and amplifying leadership influence.

Reinventing business to get digital ready is an evolutionary journey with ups and downs, promises and perils on the way. The paradox is like the two sides of the coin, they are not just opposite, but also complementary, to make it a whole. BoDs need to be strategic, insightful, influential, and highly effective. The high-quality board leadership has very characteristics such as vision, learning agility, openness, and high PQ, etc.

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Decomplexifying IT via Holistic Management Discipline

Decomplexifying IT means to improve IT organizational maturity from functioning (have redundancy) to firm (work solidly), to delight (“just right” simplicity)

Information Technology is the linchpin of contemporary business. Though by its nature, IT is complex, it doesn't mean IT should continue to complicate the matters or increase unnecessary complexity without discipline.

The breadth and depth of IT management include people (skills & capability), process (workflow, effectiveness & efficiency), organizational architecture design, and IT portfolio management. The long-term IT management success requires cross-functional teams working closely to reduce the waste and optimize processes, decomplexify IT via holistic management disciplines.

IT Architecture: IT management systems have an architecture, a good architect and architecture design can help to manage IT complexity and optimize the organizational cost significantly. IT complexity is often caused by short term goals, to run IT as a silo, with overcomplicated, poorly architected application/platform infrastructures, etc.  Architect thinking advocates big picture understanding and a good architecture design can easily handle new requirements without code change. Digital IT leaders must get really creative on how they architect and implement changes and handle IT management, dismantle organizational bureaucracy, to ensure IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next.

Architects suggest implementable solutions. There should not be any imbalance between the solution communicated and what the programming team understood it to be. Architecture is an investment and should be considered as a governance enabler, meaning that you will need to set up the environment for implementing solutions such that it becomes hard to not do good design, also it becomes hard to not develop generic code, or it becomes hard to not follow sets of principles and processes.

IT Process Management: In a corporate world, you will find the attitude of complicating things in processes, procedures or systems. Bureaucracy = Process Inefficiency. No Bureaucracy ≠ No Rules. IT management should consolidate, modernize, integrate, innovate, and optimize its processes, products, services, and capabilities all the time. The goal-driven process is primarily defined prior to process implementation. The goal of process management or procedure optimization is to eliminate unnecessary complications, improve IT operations to reduce the burden on the company while trying to stay current with ever-changing technologies and dynamic business environments.

To dig into the root causes, inefficient processes or procedures, inconsistent process management is often caused by a lack of policies and governance procedures that define processes. IT organizations are interlaced systems which have their own purpose, and the processes are determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. Strong business processes have a better chance to deliver better results, manage IT complexity, and keep IT digital fit. To run a proactive IT, progressive IT leaders should take the lead in introducing process management into the entire company and integrate processes across the organization for improving business effectiveness, responsiveness, agility, and maturity.

Project portfolio needs to be managed holistically: The goal of IT portfolio management is not only about the strategic alignment and value leverage; it's also a mix of short, mid and long term projects that need to make up a project pipeline. PMO should focus on setting leadership principles and providing program/project guidance, rather than micro aspects of the projects via asking more tough questions both at the strategic and tactical level, such as: What’s the size and complexities of the organization's business goals? What are the objectives of portfolio management? Has it been determined a need to develop a planned road-map for delivery optimization being agreed upon? Etc.

In order to improve IT organizational maturity, the PMO must be viewed as a business function by directing its mission and activities towards the success of projects as measured in business outcomes such as improved profitability, cost reduction, revenue growth, employee engagement, or customer satisfaction. Once the PMO reaches a high level of maturity, then it becomes a true value-add.

Decomplexifying IT means to improve IT organizational maturity from functioning (have redundancy) to firm (work solidly), to delight (“just right” simplicity). The purpose of decomplexifying practices and holistic management approaches is to improve the project success rate, share resources, reduce waste, enhance overall business capabilities, and increase business effectiveness, efficiency, and speed.

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