The Monthly “Change Agent CIO” Book Tuning: IT Enabled Change Scenario Apr. 2020

Digital transformation isn’t just an extension of continuous improvement of the current business, but a quantum leap with radical change.

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. What are digital CIO’s profiles and how to reboot IT to get digital ready and cultivate the culture of learning and innovating?

      

IT Enabled Change Scenario 

IT Enabled Change Scenario Due to the exponential growth of information and the “disruptive power” of digital technologies, organizations large or small are living in the digital sea today, and they have to change with the "tide” all the time. IT is in a unique position to manage business information and capture the oversight of the entire company and become the business linchpin. The change agent CIOs have a combined understanding of people, processes, and technology in translating the company's change agenda into a step-wise IT-enabled change scenario.

Take a Logical Scenario to Drive IT Change Management Digital transformation isn’t just an extension of continuous improvement of the current business, but a quantum leap with radical change. It requires a unique vision and the tremendous courage to pursue it. Due to the exponential growth of information and “disruptive power” of digital technologies, IT needs to become a “Change Department” because it is in a unique position to manage business information and capture the oversight of the entire company. Organizations reach the turning point when their top business leaders can think outside the current constraints and comfort zones, empower IT to break down silos, and take the bold move to drive changes in a structural way.

Charting Digital Paradigm Shift by Exploring Rationale, Intuitive, and Strategic Side of IT Information Technology is permeating into every corner of the organization. IT organization is in the middle of a sea change. It is important to realize that there are basic principles and rules that make it work and there are different styles of mentality and methodology to run IT today. Practices and actions depend on the organizational maturity, competition, and customer expectations, High-mature digital organizations always look for opportunities across the business ecosystem to increase the usage of abundant information and emergent digital technologies, explore the rationale, intuitive, and strategic side of IT accordingly, and chart digital paradigm shift seamlessly.

The New Book “The Change Agent CIO” Introduction Chapter 3 The Digital IT Change Agenda With change as the new normal happening at a faster pace and high velocity, IT faces an unprecedented opportunity to refine its reputation, also needs to take more responsibility as a true business partner. Change is a dance between the top management and the affected parts of the organization, the CIO needs to take the logical scenario to gain change curve awareness, proactively participate in business conversations and get the IT change agenda ready.

Running IT as the Change Engine of the Digital Business Digital is about change. IT is in a unique position because they can oversee the whole organizational processes and they should have the program skills to implement digital transformation successfully. Thus, in forward-looking organizations, IT has become synonymous with the change department. Change Management needs to be the mechanism embedded in the multitude of IT management disciplines, in order to run IT as a change agent.

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.

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The Best “Overlook” Quotes of “Digital Master” Apr, 2020

High potential is usually more innovative because they see unique patterns and make fresh connections that others overlook.

"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 “Overlook” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Innovators are often visionaries and pathfinders who can come with foresight to envision a need that others overlook or ignore and a willingness to forge ahead to satisfy their vision.

2 Traditionally, business people equal creativity with chaos and overlook the potential for solving problems the way designers work - starting with little certainty and heading for the unknown.

3 In a culture obsessed with measuring short term results or quick wins, we often overlook the important role of the inspiration-the inner driver to pursue meaning or achieve big.

4 High potential is usually more innovative because they see unique patterns and make fresh connections that others overlook.

5 There is an ongoing problem with highly structured GRC approaches that seem to overlook the very human and social-behavioral factors that underpin real GRC success.

6 People who are learning agile continuously seek new challenges, solicit direct feedback, self-reflect, make fresh connections that others overlook and get jobs done resourcefully.

7 It's easy to overlook that at its core, governance is ultimately about the willingness to act.

8 Even there's only one destination but it may have multi-routes to get there. If people try to come to a consensus via one single choice, this can overlook key points of information.

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Apply Business Architecture to Solve Wild Problems

Organizations need to assign their resources and time carefully and solve problems that really matter. 

As we learn and understand more about this interdependent and hyper-connected digital world, which is a lot more complex than we realize, there’s an imperative need for systematic problem-solving.

Fundamentally, running a business is an iterative problem-solving continuum. Problem-solving has a very wide scope today, digital leaders and professionals can leverage Business Architecture (BA) as a problem-solving framework and practical tool for taking multifaceted disciplines to solve problems effectively.

The BA works at a fine level of detail to fully understand the current situation and problem to be solved: With “VUCA” new normal, problem-solving thought-processes and practices will not be simple for many vexing problems. The more complex the situation is, the more different approaches and role gaming is needed to reach for in-depth understanding. Business Architecture is a useful tool to gather inter-related data and facts, analyze and frame the right problems, if needed, break down the large problem to smaller pieces, in order to solve problems effectively.

Many of today's problems come from yesterday's "solutions." Until the underlying problem is addressed, the symptom or result will continue to return. Every situation has choices, every situation has unknown unknowns, the only way we get to understand these is by not giving up and using a higher level of thinking and practical tools such as BA to fully understand the current situation. It’s always critical to gain empathy, capture insight and come up with a fresh perspective on getting to the heart of issues before putting effort to solve it smoothly.

Business Architecture needs to focus on reality, leverages tools and methods to untangle current business puzzles: Business Architecture aims to give visibility to and increase shared understanding of problems and proposed changes; leverage diversified viewpoints to view problems from a different perspective, unfold systemic relationships, and to tame seemingly-wild issues. There is no definitive formulation of a wild problem, in fact, defining wild problems is itself a wild problem. Every wild problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem. Multi-dimension and complexity are two key factors in wildness.

A problem is a difference between an expectation (intention, vision) and the actual situation (current reality) Business Architecture has the tools and methodologies to deal with multi-dimensional complex issues and untangle current business puzzles. Some architects do have the skills to find the right balance between these tools and methods, apply their "natural" skills, excellent communication and soft skills together with good tactics and the ability to handle problems smoothly.

Business Architecture helps to "dispassionately" examine the alternative for solving problems effectively: In the digital era, you will be confronting a number of high-complex problems in the hyper-connected world. The border of knowledge domains is blurred and the scope of knowledge is expanded in the continual base. It’s important to apply BA as a practical tool to solve problems strategically via multi-dimensional thinking and multiple choices of solutions.

There are three possible strategies to "solve" a wild problem: authoritative, competitive and collaborative. Wild problems need innovative and alternative solutions. A business architecture would look for leverage within the ecosystems, industries, and domain knowledge that defines the business interactions and interrelationships, reference and intelligence, etc. It helps to dispassionately examine the alternatives and come up with the premium business solutions which often require an integration of different sets of knowledge and digital fluency across multiple disciplines.

Organizations need to assign their resources and time carefully and solve problems that really matter. They don’t set priorities in a vacuum. Rather. they'll apply the enterprise's strategy and business architecture to determine which problems are critical to solving and leverage multidimensional competencies to formulate creative or unconventional solutions to resolve problems systematically.

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The Insight of the Week 4/3-4/10 “Future of CIO”/2020

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking, brainstorming, innovating and sharing.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with 6600+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to businesses and society.

The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight of digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Use IT Architecture as a Practical Tool to Improve Organizational Maturity Due to the pervasive technology update and information penetration, businesses today not just use IT as a digital extension, but leverage IT across the company to maximize the business value.IT architecture has two purposes: one is to support the “maintenance” by describing how IT should be in its current states to “keep the lights on” efficiently; the other is to describe how IT enables business change, especially the large scale digital transformation when the well-defined vision is implemented and in the various stepping stages on the way to reach the higher level of organizational maturity.

The Characteristics of Digital-Ready Board The digital journey for organizations today is inevitable and unstoppable, it is important to understand that digital transformation is multifaceted, business optimization and integration need to be done with a “big picture.”Digital savvy Board of Directors as the advising role is responsible to steer the organization in the right direction, understand what's required and how as a high-level basis of going digital means to the business. A digital-ready board with the following characteristics has the advantage of pulling enough resources and pushing the business forward confidently.

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

Capture Multiple Views to Describe the Future State of Business The business transformation journey is full of velocity and uncertainty, thus, a clear vision is in demand and it’s important to capture multiple views to describe the future state of the business. You will also need to tailor the communication of these views to different stakeholders, focus on defining what would appear to be the goals of the business in x years and how the organization and systems would be structured to meet that.

The Monthly “100 Digital Pitfalls” Book Tuning: The Opposite of Digital Mentality Apr. 2020 Digital makes a significant impact on how we think, live, and work. There is a mix of old and new, physical and virtual, order and chaos. We are in a time of tremendous change, the dawn of the digital age, the path to the next level of digital maturity, also in the era of confusion and information overload. Therefore, it’s critical to identify, understand, and avoid pitfalls, discover strategic and predictive pathways to change, increase confidence, position a brand and leverage resources to make the digital paradigm shift effortlessly.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking about 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 Best “Curve” Quotes of “Digital Master” Apr, 2020

Do not underestimate the learning curve, and do not get overwhelmed by the intensity of change as well.

"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 “Curve” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 The change curve is a model of the states that people who are to change will go through because going through the downs of the change curve has a negative impact on productivity,

2 The curve is applicable to everyone, even those who planned and conceived the vision. The real problem seems to understand the curve and how it relates to change. Do not underestimate the learning curve, and do not get overwhelmed by the intensity of change as well.

3 More often than not, the change curve seems to be a tempting "solution" on how to explain the change process to the people concerned. The curve is ready to be the steps one goes through during change when in actuality they are the steps that come before the change can take place.

4 Having learning curve awareness means to understand how the change capabilities are underpinned by change processes, people, and technology, and how much change capability is really required for the change effort you are kicking off.

5 Curve awareness, contemplation, strength finding and building, practices, and measurement are the logical steps in reaching potential waves and making a seamless digital paradigm shift.

6 To ride innovation curves, it’s important to apply multi-step iterative processes and structural management disciplines, keep optimizing innovation processes by breaking down those structural or management obstacles and enforcing cross-functional communication and collaboration.

7 The business becomes more successful when the corresponding learning curve has reduced the uncertainty to the point where both the strategic synergy and organizational interdependence can be structured.

8 The change curve is a model of the states that people who are to change will go through, it is applicable to everyone even those who planned and conceived the vision.

9 It is about how to ride the learning curve to get into actions in creative, positive, and productive ways that educate, support and celebrate every critical step of the change curve and the business transformation journey.

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Knowledge Architecture and Design Maturity

High mature design-driven innovation is not spontaneous or serendipitous, but an architectural effort, a managed process, and cross-disciplinary practice.

We live in the digital era with knowledge abundance. Knowledge fuels imagination. Knowledge architecture is a useful tool to develop the design competency of the business.

The forward-thinking leaders understand how things like design thinking can fundamentally change organizations, build a strong brand, and whether and how they can build knowledge architecture as a practical tool to improve design thinking and maturity.

Knowledge Architecture is a useful tool to empower design thinking: Neither architecture nor design are “events” of creativity, but are in fact, creative and thoughtful activities that extend over time. Knowledge is power, however, there are the inherent dangers of too much knowledge particularly because of the inconsistencies and incoherence in the body of knowledge that surrounds us. Thus, more attention needs to be placed on the conditions that allow knowledge to flow, connect dots to create new ideas, and generate business value by designing an interactive knowledge architecture and taking dynamic knowledge disciplines.

Knowledge cycles drive the emergence, extend through and beyond any chosen organization. Knowledge Management needs to be well embedded into the key business processes to enable design, Knowledge Architecture has the visual ability to “see” ideas and express them in visual terms via interactive way. It’s a useful tool to empower design thinking and improve design maturity from design-by-default, in which design just happens and design is dictated by status quo policies, procedures, tools, and traditional mindsets to design by practice in which design becomes the key ingredient of innovation strategy and one of the very purposes of knowledge architecture.

Knowledge Architecture helps to bridge the silos and encourage structural design practices: Design Thinking is not just about wireframes and visual designs. It has a broader scope with interdisciplinary knowledge and structural processes. Design is largely considered a byproduct of solid engineering discipline. But art, science or engineering, etc, are all interconnected disciplines at the core of problem-solving to improve design maturity.

In practice, silo stifles design thinking. Silos come in multiple flavors, some are cultural, some are geographical, some are organizational, some are linguistic, some are even technical. A knowledge architecture can consist of multiple aspects, and the multiple aspects could be architected in their own right to bridge siloed knowledge. Methodologically, tools for design are user personas, scenarios, and storyboards, etc. Rather than focus on one method, as a team with broad expertise across a range of disciplines, there are choices of tools or methods appropriate for the challenge. Design maturity requires a design-driven, cross-domain knowledge discipline, varied methodology, and across-functional paradigm facilitated by an effective knowledge architecture.

Knowledge Architecture helps to decompose the complexity of design work: There is an emergence-vs-design-paradox thereon across the business complexities around the multi-faceted business world. The knowledge architecture and design are locked in a reciprocal feedback loop, co-evolve and therefore that actual designs have a large emergent aspect. All types of intelligence such as design have a certain level of complexity in it. Knowledge Architecture decomposes the complexity of design work via effective partitioning, leading to effective decomposition to handle the complexity smoothly.

It’s important to apply design thinking to develop intuitive products and services, keep things simple and optimize the business from functioning to delight. That tacit and explicit knowledge and learning from design practices and experiences are essential aspects, components, parts or facets of the knowledge architecture-design feedback loops. Companies that are skilled at leveraging knowledge architecture for managing design complexity such as highly productive complexity, value/cost/risk ratio complexity, can gain advantages by pushing the boundaries of a more sophisticated business mix and improving the organizational maturity.

In the industrial era, very few companies can arrive at the top of the design maturity pyramid due to the reductionistic management discipline focusing on efficiency and functioning. The distinctive advantage of being design-centered is that you prioritize in making things likable rather than just making them functioning. High mature design-driven innovation is not spontaneous or serendipitous, but an architectural effort, a managed process, and cross-disciplinary practice.

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The Monthly Foresight: Leverage Multiple Views to Drive Digital Transformation Apr. 2020

 In order to best understand a subject or a problem, digital leaders and professionals today need to define it, shape multidimensional views and perceptions. 

The effects of an increasingly digitized 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 desired 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 toward the digital future effortlessly?

   

Leverage Multiple Views to Drive Digital

Capture Multiple Views to Describe the Future State of Business The business transformation journey is full of velocity and uncertainty, thus, a clear vision is in demand and it’s important to capture multiple views to describe the future state of the business. You will also need to tailor the communication of these views to different stakeholders, focus on defining what would appear to be the goals of the business in x years and how the organization and systems would be structured to meet that.

The “Profound” Views of Simplifying Complexity and Driving Progressive Changes We live in a complex world with hyper-connectivity and interdependence, people often complicate the simple things when they don't have the answers. In order to best understand a subject or a problem, digital leaders and professionals today needs to define it, shape multidimensional views and perceptions such as diagnostic, strategic, structural, interactive, or design, to name a few, eliminate the unnecessary complexity, not just reactively look through the real problem or react to the business ecosystem; they actually proactively plan and architect the change they want to see and solve problems elegantly.

The “Zoom In, Zoom Out, & Diagnostic View” of Digitalization Organizations’ digitalization is surely a transformation journey, as it has to permeate into business vision, strategy, communication, culture, and processes. etc. Before taking action, start a deep observation to understand your business by capturing a multifaceted view. Cognition, resources, information, motivation, or complexity of each dynamic affect the pace of transformation and the timing of subsequent progress. Here is the “zoom in, zoom out, and diagnostic view” of digitalization.

Shaping a Holistic View -Seeing both Forest and Trees Holistic thinking involves understanding a system by sensing its large-scale patterns and addressing the big picture. In terms of a holistic viewpoint,' one does often need to integrate different stereotyped or mechanistic viewpoints; it is the integration and searches for new viewpoints that are holistic. At times, when you only want to see things from your own point of view, see what you want to see, or hear what you want to hear, often you miss the point to understand the real problem holistically as well as how to solve it creatively or systematically. Here are three aspects of shaping a holistic view of digital transformation.

What’s your System View of the World Both business and the world become over-complex and interconnected, the linear thinking often applied in the industrial age seems to be too limited to see the intriguing and interwoven picture of the world. When we do linear thinking, we do not see the impacts and consequences of our thinking and actions socially, environmentally, locally and globally. The systems thinker looks at their business as being part of a larger system, the socio-economic system, which is part of a larger system - the natural environment. So is a systems view of the world needed? How can this kind of thinking and perception become mainstream and promoted in such a way that it is adopted as a serious alternative to linear thinking?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6600th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 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 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 Characteristics of Digital-Ready Board

The corporate board takes tremendous responsibilities for steering the business ship through uncharted water, so you don't have other choices but develop your strength, change your sails for leading forward step-wisely.

The digital journey for organizations today is inevitable and unstoppable, it is important to understand that digital transformation is multifaceted, business optimization and integration need to be done with a “big picture.”

Digital savvy Board of Directors as the advising role is responsible to steer the organization in the right direction, understand what's required and how as a high-level basis of going digital means to the business. A digital-ready board with the following characteristics has the advantage of pulling enough resources and pushing the business forward confidently.

Accountability: The corporate board sets the tone to enforce accountability and plays a significant role in taking ultimate accountability to shareholders. The corporate board’s accountability goes hand in hand with the delegation of authority or power. It is the effectiveness of the Board of Directors in delegating to the senior management team and holding them accountable that supports the management team in achieving business outcomes.

Shared accountability or collective accountability involves shared ownership, empathetic communication, team responsibility, etc. Organizations have to consciously fight against establishing a culture of no accountability, starting at the board room. The true measure of accountability is about resilience. As board directors, one of the fundamental accountability is to phrase your contribution, or potential contribution, in the economic, technological, social and environmental ramifications of the organization's activities.

Diversity: Contemporary organizations are diversified with multigenerational and multicultural stakeholders. One of the biggest challenges in running a complex business today is that we need different perspectives, different knowledge, different voices and different ways to solve problems. Corporate Boards that are too homogenous are at a much higher risk of making poor decisions or not asking the questions that need to be asked. To keep the business dynamic, the composition of the corporate board should reflect the diverse nature of its shareholders and character of their organization.

The issue of raising the board director’s profile must be addressed through better grooming and selection of board candidates, and help to bootstrap their members to the level of knowledge and sophistication required to fill the board oversight and fiduciary responsibilities. The greatest success is achieved on the digital boards that added directors with a cognitive difference, diversified experience, T-shape expertise, variety of worldview, rather than the traditional understanding of diversity (gender, races, etc), to provide a perspective that goes beyond the gaps in board discussion and shares the insight about the multitude of cognitive processes, business disciplines, and practices.

IT savvy: The fast growth information and disruptive nature of technology bring both abundant opportunities and unprecedented risks to the business today. Given how applying IT is becoming so intrinsically important to so many different enterprises across industrial sectors in the worldwide scope, corporate boards can no longer avoid, delegate, or ignore the need for technical competency among their ranks, and they need to ask more insightful questions for effective board oversight of information technology.

Information Technology is rapidly becoming an integral part of many companies’ strategic plans. There are potential issues related to the increased risk of the IT department and more and more organizations put IT oversight in their boardroom agenda. BoDs need to understand that IT is critical to their companies. IT fundamentals need to get more attention in the boardroom. Directors are particularly involved in overseeing and understanding more traditional IT issues, such as the status of IT project portfolio, their companies’ annual IT budgets, risks related to compromising customer data, as well as understanding the importance of IT to the company’s business model innovation, etc.

Adaptability: Adaptability is to be understood as the ability to adapt fast to changed circumstances. The adaptive BoDs have open mindsets to adjust their thinking processes according to the changes in the business environment and have a collaborative attitude, learning agility, and collective creativity to frame strategic problems, practice governance, and monitor risk management effectively.

The digital corporate board leadership today needs to be future-oriented, highly adaptive. Self-adaptation is a phenomenon strictly linked to seeing learning and knowledge increases if shared and consumed, board directors with a learning mind can absorb all necessary knowledge and abstract it into insight and wisdom, steer the organization towards the digital journey with a clear vision, a highly effective board agenda and a set of best and next practices.

Resilience: Resilience is the ability to respond to change and to recover quickly from setbacks. Strategic risks are about unprecedented levels of uncertainties, inherent variability and the unknown interdependencies among sources of risks that could have an effect on the delivery of strategic objectives. The corporate board with strategic resilience can sense failures, overcome challenges, and deal with setbacks with a positive attitude. A business system can gain more energy until it crosses the point of system resilience.

Corporate boards need to work closely with the senior management for mastering risk intelligence, identify both emerging business risks and opportunities and keep focusing on doing fundamental things right. They are able to keep working and focusing, even during stress and disturbance, rather than reacting to stressful situations, in order to steer the business in the direction with calm and confidence.

The corporate board takes tremendous responsibilities for steering the business ship through uncharted water, so you don't have other choices but develop your strength, change your sails for leading forward step wisely. Board directors with the above digital characteristics can build solid thinking blocks; have sufficient expertise and unique insight and become the digital provocateur to drive changes and set the leadership tone for digital transformation.

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Use IT Architecture as a Practical Tool to Improve Organizational Maturity

IT value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like collaborative value or collective advantage, useful tools like IT architecture, and effective measures such as multi-layer ROIs,

Due to the pervasive technology update and information penetration, businesses today not just use IT as a digital extension, but leverage IT across the company to maximize the business value.

IT architecture has two purposes: one is to support the “maintenance” by describing how IT should be in its current states to “keep the lights on” efficiently; the other is to describe how IT enables business change, especially the large scale digital transformation when the well-defined vision is implemented and in the various stepping stages on the way to reach the higher level of organizational maturity.

Perform “As-Is” study, at the same time, understand the business value and future business goal of IT organization: IT architecture is the visualization of IT strategy that describes how to encompass organizations from “as-is” state to future state. Making an objective IT assessment helps IT management diagnose the early signal for dysfunctional operation, take a critical look at IT strengths and weaknesses, and assess all things that matter to improve overall IT performance.

More specifically, IT assessment needs to include techniques such as pure health check techniques, customer feedback, business partner relationship analysis, cost estimation, and those can be applied to give a holistic picture of what is working or not. Making an objective IT organizational strength assessment by leveraging business/IT architecture allows IT budget, resources, and talent aligned with the business strategies/ objectives to improve IT effectiveness, and helps IT organization refined to the point that it is nimble for adapting to changing business demands in a timely fashion.

Gap analysis and IT investment calculation: There are natural frictions between different functions of the company, thus, it is important to make a gap analysis between business and IT, the current state and future state of IT, capability evaluation (capability gap in the context of future need, or capability dependency or business capability reliance on technology capability, etc,), investment calculation, etc. Why should the business invest in what you are proposing? Each organization has specific measurable goals and objectives they have to hit through investing in IT. IT leaders can use IT architecture as a useful tool to create an abstraction for conveying to the business the value of change by making wise IT investment.

IT investment is often one of the most costly investments for running a contemporary business. Traditional IT organizations are perceived as the cost center. CIOs need to show the value of IT with Return on investment and tell the business management how well an IT investment repays the company. You should not spend to meet a quota, nor should you avoid spending to stay within a quota. You should spend it to make a return. It’s about spending the money right and getting the right business results. Regardless of the analysis and design, architecture purity, and numerous spreadsheets of proven tangible and intangible benefits, IT leaders might be also interested in a summary of the IT ROI and TCO - as a business case for change.

Leverage IT Architecture to create a decent IT-enabled business capability map and use that to frame activities/artifacts: IT Architecture is a high-level diagram describing the key IT-enabled business capabilities and flows, helps IT management create an organizational strategy-capability mapping and make a road map that sets goals for strengthening the strength and building differentiated IT-enabled business competency, The important architecture components (Components = different artifacts) include such as capabilities, functions, processes, roles, events, rules, data, services, processes, goals, objectives, events, performance, market, risk, resource, etc. The IT architecture is used as a collaboration instrument to create a decent capability map. The value is not in the technology itself but in how to use it, having clearly understood how your business works and what their goals and strategy are.

Capabilities may include dependencies - one is part of another or depends on another. The value of capability maps is the ability to identify capability patterns of the enterprise, offer insight to senior management in developing focus on what they truly do well and make holistic investment decisions. Then, you can use the capability map to drive IT portfolio management which is a collection of programs and projects that are designed to help the organization achieve its targeted performance, guide management to refocus on what is truly a core competency and use that to frame activities/artifacts.

IT plays a critical role in driving changes and leading digital transformation.IT value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like collaborative value or collective advantage, useful tools like IT architecture, and effective measures such as multi-layer ROIs, for improving the growth capacity and maturity of the business and rebrand IT as the trustful business partner.

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The Monthly “Digital Maturity” Book Tuning: Make Accomplishment and Build Digital Competency Apr. 2020

Digital transformation is a long journey, and the path for digital transformation can be iterative, evolutionary, revolutionary, or disruptive. 

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, processes to technology, both horizontally and vertically. The digitalization flattens the organizational hierarchy and blurs the functional, organizational and geographical borders in the business ecosystem.

It is like a gigantic puzzle with many misplaced pieces, you have to put them all in the right places to discover the real meaning and unleash its full potential. You cannot make a true digital paradigm shift without an in-depth understanding of the digital interconnectivity and embracing the multitude of digital maturity.

   Make Accomplishment and Build Digital Competency 

Three Accomplishments Imply You are Perhaps at “the End of the Beginning” for IT-Led Digital Transformation  Digital transformation is a long journey, and the path for digital transformation can be iterative, evolutionary, revolutionary, or disruptive. Information Technology is often the driving force behind digital transformation as IT continues to grow in importance to organizational growth and as a competitive advantage. IT-driven digital transformation inspires growth mindset, catalyzes innovation, and unleashes organizational potential. It’s a long journey, here are three accomplishments that imply that you are perhaps at the “end of the beginning” for digital transformation, and reach the inflection point to accelerate transformative changes.

As a Leader: Are You Optimistic or Pessimistic about your Strategy Accomplishment According to an industry survey, most executives don’t think their company’s strategy will lead to success, and the interesting point is that the management is complaining about themselves. So as a leader, are you optimistic about your strategy progress, or pessimistic about its final result?

Goals vs. Objectives: Can you Guarantee Achievement of them? The term OBJECTIVE really starts out in the publication of "The Practice of Management" by Peter Drucker. He defines the term ‘objective as the larger 'endpoint'. He further defines OBJECTIVES as being achieved through a sub-collection of 'supporting goals' - the children of the parent objective; and then the story further illustrates that 'objectives' are 'owned' by the 'institution 'the team' and the corporation, the organization. Goals are owned by individuals as personal contributions to the 'collective achievement' of the Objectives.

Digital IT Sense of Achievement The majority of IT organizations today are often overloaded and understaffed, running as a support center, being stuck at the lower level of maturity, and not getting fully respected by business peers. In most cases, the IT department isn't producing anything that is saleable and, therefore, many in the organization will view IT as something that seems to ceaselessly suck up money with very little return on investment. Digital CIOs as top business leaders, how to renovate the tarnished IT image and manage IT with a sense of achievement?

The Digital Transformation Success Formula The organization or company may be in business for many years but has not matured its management disciplines and structural flexibility. The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all shapes and sizes to reinvent themselves and make the digital paradigm shift. The purpose of such radical change is to make a significant difference in improving organizational efficiency, effectiveness, responsiveness, performance, and maturity. Forward-looking organizations are reaching the inflection point from doing digital to being digital. Digital transformation represents a break with the past, having a high level of impact and complexity. Can businesses across sectors figure out their success formulas to make a seamless digital transformation?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6600th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to 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 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 “Implicit” Quotes of “Digital Master” Apr, 2020

Much of our knowledge is implicit. Implicit knowledge is adaptive, creates schemes and automatic reactions that are necessary for survival.

"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 “Implicit” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Implicit cognition is automatic, unconscious or intuitive (gut feeling) cognition. Gut feeling and other implicit cognition are very good at prediction as long as the environment is highly predictable and stable.

2 Much of our knowledge is implicit. Implicit knowledge is adaptive, creates schemes and automatic reactions that are necessary for survival.

3 Because in many circumstances, the knowledge is not accessible, it is not possible to revise any erroneous notions. Implicit knowledge cannot, therefore, adequately reflect the complexity and non-linearity of the world in which we live.

4 With all of these "well-known" analytic tools, SWOT indeed is a valuable tool, there’re more letters implicit in SWOT analysis. In some organizations, a SWOT analysis has moved from being a ”gathering-pot” of executive (and other) opinions to a better organized, fact-based analysis that can be discussed and verified.

5 Knowledge Management is about making all types of data and information (including implicit, explicit and tacit) accessible in situations and contexts as needed so that viable options materialize.

6 The challenge is developing a set of replicable steps for capturing tacit and implicit knowledge and turning it into explicit knowledge that can be accessed by an entire enterprise when needed.

7 It seems that the development of implicit knowledge relies on distinct areas of consciousness.

8 The core skills of critical thinking include analysis of argumentation, both explicit and implicit reasoning, the ability for examining inference via analyzing, evaluating, and producing coherent argumentation.

9 A company's culture, which is heavily ingrained, implicit and not directly perceptible, is also very hard to change and changes slowly if at all.

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Capture Multiple Views to Describe the Future State of Business

 The future state is very fluid, it can be defined in the present moment but will change while we are trying to reach it. 

The business transformation journey is full of velocity and uncertainty, thus, a clear vision is in demand and it’s important to capture multiple views to describe the future state of the business. You will also need to tailor the communication of these views to different stakeholders, focus on defining what would appear to be the goals of the business in x years and how the organization and systems would be structured to meet that.

And then, the futuristic business leaders and architects work backward from an expected future state and apply holistic management for both improving business performance and maximizing its potential.

 

The visionary view: The vision thing is not just about “seeing,” it is the perception about the future. Vision sparks the imagination and opens the mind to new concepts and ideas. To drive a seamless digital transformation, it is important to envision the “To-Be” state first, because it creates a paradigm shift in your management approach to building the future state. Progress comes from innovative "vision statements" stories of the future. Having a story in mind for dynamic visualization is critical to business success from the current state to future state for enablement and implementation of business strategy. The visionary view can inspire and motivate, help people navigate through difficult changes and achieve their goals smoothly. And a truly innovative story of the future can literally revolutionize a culture of creativity. It is a clear choice among future scenarios that advocates future trends and promotes certain behaviors.

Business leaders need to envision and share their perspectives on digital transformation with vast stakeholders of the companies. A visionary view can be unconstrained by your current situation and need not be granular in detail. It helps leaders become more future-oriented and discover the path to where you need to go and be persuasive to lead others in the right direction. Competence with a vision is a good thing for moving toward the future and rolling vision into a reality confidently.

The pragmatic view: When building the future state of the business, make sure that you break it down into looking at the ideal future first, followed by the practical view via resource, schedule, and talent assessment. And then ask questions to clarify: What does revenue look like? How has the business model evolved? How to fill the gaps in building business capabilities, what are barriers and how to overcome them, how to manage risks, etc? The pragmatic view will be more granular and include inputs and constraints from your current state.

It’s also important for the leadership team to mitigate the impact of uncertainty or risk by enabling a team to encounter uncertainty and deal with them strategically and systematically. Leveraging the pragmatic view and taking the approach to deal with uncertainty and unpredictability also include planning in a short time and taking incremental effort, allowing the acquisition of new information along the way while engineers work forward in time even if they are iterating alternatively on solving problems large or small. By framing a pragmatic view, business management deliberately makes the close alignment among the company’s strategic direction, its most distinctive capabilities, and most or all of its products and services to achieve strategic goals in a step-wise manner.

The multi-dimensional change view: When we jump into the digital future of “VUCA” new normal, people often talk about change as though it is uni-dimensional, or a universal commodity. The great leaders stand up as high as they can and look in every direction they could view the landscape from a different angle and steer digital transformation holistically. A multidimensional change view helps business leaders let go of the current reality and think outside the current constraints and comfort zones for allowing an unknown future state to emerge and manage changes dynamically.

In order to adapt, an enterprise has to be linked to the many and varied “touchpoints” between itself and the marketplace environment of which it is a part. A multidimensional change view connects the previously unconnected dots, helps to understand where and how you can and should improve and get the biggest effect and scale-up across the digital ecosystem effortlessly, visualizes the destination the organization intends to get and shapes the digital landscape of the business effortlessly.

Digital leaders need to observe, perceive, and pay attention to the myriad of internal, external, national, or global forces that define and influence the way they do business these days. The future state is very fluid, it can be defined in the present moment but will change while we are trying to reach it. Capturing multiple views to describe the future state of the business enables business management to lead forward confidently and implement the business strategy systematically.

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The Monthly “100 Digital Pitfalls” Book Tuning: The Opposite of Digital Mentality Apr. 2020

One of the most important perspectives of Change Management is to understand the psychology behind the change and how to keep digital fit from the mindset level.

Digital makes a significant impact on how we think, live, and work. There is a mix of old and new, physical and virtual, order and chaos. We are in a time of tremendous change, the dawn of the digital age, the path to the next level of digital maturity, also in the era of confusion and information overload. Therefore, it’s critical to identify, understand, and avoid pitfalls, discover strategic and predictive pathways to change, increase confidence, position a brand and leverage resources to make the digital paradigm shift effortlessly.

The purpose of “100 Digital Pitfalls: How to Overcome Pitfalls on the Path of Going Digital” is to throw some light on how to identify, understand, and overcome common pitfalls on the digital journey, dig underneath the surface, and take a holistic approach to integrate both hard and soft elements for improving the long-term organizational competency and reaching the high-level of business maturity. Slideshare Presentation

The Opposite of Digital Mentality 

Be Alert of the Three Opposites of “Digital Mentality” Many organizations are doing digital - applying some fancy gadgets or taking a few business initiatives. But very few are taking a holistic approach to go digital and be digital. The fundamental difference is the digital mind shift. One of the most important perspectives of Change Management is to understand the psychology behind the change and how to keep digital fit from the mindset level. This is related to a function of things such as basic mental framework, cognitive intelligence or emotional brilliance. Be alert of the following three opposites of “digital mentality.”

Three Mentalities Enlarge Digital Gaps Businesses and the world are hyperconnected today, the oceans, mountains, and deserts can no longer divide us, however, there are still walls in people’s hearts, and there are gaps in people’s minds. here are three mentalities or thought processes which enlarge digital gaps, and stifle digital flows.

Anti-digital Mindset: The Cause and Effect of Silo Thinking Silo is perhaps one of the most paradoxical symptoms in running the business at the industrial era, on one side, most of the organizations are still operating in the functional base to improve efficiency; on the other side, the digital nature of hyper-connectivity and interdependence makes it inevitable to break down the silo, because more often than not, the silo thinking becomes the root cause of ineffective leadership; the silo team fragment the strategy, stagnate execution, motivate the unhealthy internal competition and cause more problems than benefits. More specifically, what’s the cause and effect of silos and silo thinking?

The New Book “Digital Gaps” Chapter 1 Introduction: Cognitive Gaps Cognition is the mental process of acquiring knowledge through thoughts, experiences, and senses. It is a perception, sensation, and insight. People are different, not because we look different, but because we think differently. Cognitive gaps enlarge problem-solving gaps because it will cause the blind spots for either defining the real problem or solving it. Cognitive gaps cause innovation gaps which disconnect many things that are supposed to be interconnected, it becomes the barrier for connecting the dots to stimulate creativity. There is a multitude of perspectives on the cognitive gaps, as well as how to close them.

Three Gaps Caused by Bureaucratic Thinking The word "bureaucracy" is often seen in pejorative circumstances. Generally speaking, bureaucracy is a system based on a hierarchy of authority and division of workforce functioning in a routine manner. At the industrial age, most of the organizations are running at silos, with the top-down organizational structure, bureaucracy thinking is perhaps understandable, because “command and control” is part of the business culture. However, at the digital environment in which business functions become more dynamic and hyper-connected, the environment changes quicker than the 'speed' with which rules and processes can be changed, the gaps caused by bureaucratic thinking stop the change and turn to be the mental barrier to stifle innovation and the very obstacle to making effective decisions.

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.

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The “Opinion” Quotes of “Digital Master” Apr, 2020

The perception of being 'better' is just opinion until pre-defined measures of success are applied to the decision process.

"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 “opinion" quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Independent Thinking means you do not follow others' opinion blindly, but analyze and synthesize all sources of input and information to form your own opinion. 

2 When you judge something, you form a critical opinion of it based on facts, discerned data, and preconceived notions. Many times people make poor judgments, not because of ignorance, but because of the lack of insight.

3 The perception of being 'better' is just opinion until pre-defined measures of success are applied to the decision process.

4 Often people follow conventional wisdom or others' opinion and get stuck only at the level of content understanding, explain things based on the linguistic meaning or make an observation on the surface level.

5 Being objective means you are not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; but make judgment or decisions based on unbiased fact, dispassionate examination, and an objective opinion.

6 We have seen people debate what is right and what is wrong. We do not change our opinion to suit the needs or define some form of respect for others.

7 Giving people the time to voice an opinion or perspective is a powerful way to demonstrate your respect and build trust. Remaining calm and offering a view with perspective will make people want to engage you on any topic.

8 Opening your mind to the diversity of culture and opinion is extremely important in learning empathy. In today's global marketplace and interconnected world, such flexibility is becoming a necessity and even imperative.

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What are the “Worst Mistakes” Causing Business Decision Ineffectiveness

The “worst mistakes” can be avoided by identifying blind spots, pulling all resources, complementing knowledge and filling insight gaps in order to improve decision maturity.

In fast-moving competitive digital business environments, the flow and sequence of the subsidiary decision implementations all encounter a different set of context dynamics. From a business management perspective, the variation in decisions to be made vary tremendously across the developmental spectrum.

Enterprise Architects play a significant role in synthesizing all the enterprise factors into a decision framework and facilitating appropriate business initiatives to execute the strategy. To improve decision effectiveness, what are the worst mistakes EAs perhaps make, causing decision ineffectiveness and business failures?

Develop wrong assumptions in terms of stakeholder requirements: In traditional companies, big or small decisions are often based on static or outdated information available and the “gut feeling” of decision-makers. Enterprise Architects are not talking about mistakes they may have made in the technological sense; rather than developing wrong assumptions in terms of stakeholder requirements because they do not listen, question, or understand carefully, and lose buy-in due to the lack of empathetic communication.

Enterprise Architects value in humanistic terms, they shouldn’t lose the sight of all requirements and relationships. As requirements are gathered, managed, and discussed with executives and teams, facilitating requirements negotiations is very beneficial to keep everyone involved and close decision blind spots. Enterprise architects understand where all the functional boundaries are and who is organizationally associated with each requires managers having a holistic perspective to communicate and prioritize, focus on those requirements whose improvement has the most benefit to the business, and keep the stakeholders focused on them. If a decision negatively affects a stakeholder, make sure the stakeholder understands why the decision is the best in the "bigger picture," and ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces.

Forgets to think about or question what that decision might mean to the company's end customers: Too many people in traditional organizations think that the customer is not in their territory. Or sometimes, Enterprise Architects focus on what the executives want but forget to think about or question what that decision might mean to the company's end customers. The customer is everyone's business in the digital era, and if a group of departments does not embrace this mindset, then the decisions made are too inward-looking and processes are destined to not reach exceptional performance and achieve the vision to build a customer-centric organization.

Digital leaders and professionals are all facing pressure to make either strategic or tactical decisions every day, be intelligent with humility, keep the right balance between information and intuition. The most important thing is to be willing to listen and probe to identify the goal of the customer experience improvement. The two prime questions any business should understand about customers are: What do they buy and why do they buy it? Ask customers need-based, issue-based or gap-finding questions; then, follow-up with clarification of questions, in order to make customer-centric decisions.

Strategic decision-making lacks the updated information and much needed essential iterative process dynamics: Sometimes the decision is managed as the end effect, not the beginning. The importance of the process becomes critical as decisions become highly complex and involve diverse stakeholders. Decision effectiveness relies on an agreed common approach, not a predetermined set of "one size fits all" planning. The entire decision-making processes include understanding the need, engaging key stakeholders, ensuring effective communication, assessing alternatives, developing consensus, planning, executing, and following up. They are not linear steps, but iterative continuums.

Most of what poor decisions have boiled down to lack of updated information, decision-maker bias, ineffective processes, etc. The abundance of information flow and the advanced digital technologies make it possible to gain real-time insight and business foresight if organizations are truly being digitized underneath, at the process level. If the right people can get the right information and the decision-making process is fine-designed and well-executed, you have the highest probability of getting the best outcome in the state of knowledge accessible at the time of decision.

There is fuzziness in the decision because there is fuzziness in conflicting criteria, and there are hidden barriers on the way. Try to challenge your logic and assumptions. It is the responsibility of each individual to examine their mental strength and to make sure they are open to true understanding. The “worst mistakes” can be avoided by identifying blind spots, pulling all resources, complementing knowledge and filling insight gaps in order to improve decision maturity.

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