Five Pitfalls for Why Strategy Fails

“You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things so that all the small things go in the right direction.”   ― Alvin Toffler

Crafting a good strategy is more challenging than ever.  In a 2011 survey conducted amongst 140 companies, 54% cited market volatility and 38% mentioned alignment with corporate goals as the leading pressures facing strategic planning. From another cross-industry survey: 65% of organizations have an agreed-upon strategy. 14% of employees understand the organization’s strategy. Less than 10% of all organizations successfully execute the strategy. More specifically, what are pitfalls to cause the majority of strategy fail? Or does strategic planning need a strategy?

1. Not all senior executives have well-developed strategy muscles

 People are the weakest link to craft a good strategy and execute strategy effectively. Many business leaders today are CINO-Chief In Title Only, with the functional silo mindset, only represent their specialized area to compete for the business resource or spend most of the time at the operational level, without taking sufficient energy and time on holistic thinking of business’s long-term strategy and growth.

A good strategy takes 3”C”s: Context, Creativity, and Cascading. When describing particular (cross-cutting) factors/concerns that may be the cause of strategy failure, namely; leadership and culture. There are a number of problems in dealing with intangible factors such as "leadership" and "culture", including deciding "formal" models of representation, and how to diagnose these business problems, how to set up the guidelines on actions, and how to measure result, etc

The remedies for the issues are designing a culture (rather than simply having one by default) and honing leadership effectiveness so as to be better able to craft a good strategy and inspire the team. Both efforts (stronger culture and leadership) also act in harmony to inspire idea sharing, complement multiple points of view, to avoid the blind spot in strategic planning, and the well-defined business strategy will help attract people to the company who are well-aligned with "who" the company is and where the company is heading.

That being said, managers, especially senior executives should exercise their strategy muscles more often. The right way to set strategy effectively during today’s uncertain time is to bring together, much more frequently, the members of the top team, who are uniquely positioned to surface critical issues early, debate their implications and make timely decisions

2. Think Strategy framework as equal to strategy

 Many managers may get training on general strategy frameworks, fit in classical strategic style-—five forces, 7-S Framework, blue ocean, and growth-share matrix analysis are all manifestations of it. 

On the other side, framework alone is not a strategy, the executives need to study, understand, and internalize the economics, science, psychology, enterprise architecture, and laws of their industries, etc so that context can guide them continually.

A good strategy takes vision, some executives explore in depth top ten trends that would shape the industry over the next decade, more time than ever, technology becomes creative disruption in bringing organizations cross-sector both opportunities and risks, strategy makers should discuss both the trends themselves and their implications for the supply and demand, value chain/stream for the organization’s products/services.

Crafting a good strategy also takes courage to shape the business ecosystem, focus beyond the boundaries of their own organization, often by rallying a formidable ecosystem of customers, vendors, and even competitors, more precisely, cooptitors (Cooperators + Competitors),  their cause by defining attractive new markets, standards, technology platforms, new business models, and management practices.

Methodologically, expanding the group of executives with the cognitive difference in strategic dialogue should boost the odds of identifying the company or industry-disrupting changes, follow the trend to catch the wave of next opportunities.

3. Lack of Scientific Process to Do Strategy

 Complexity, uncertainty, disruptive changes, and interdependence are the new normal facing business today. What’s stopping the business executives from making strategy in a way that fits their circumstances? One critical reason is lacking a systematic way to craft it—a strategy and scientific process for making a strategy.

Strategic planning is a management practice, management is both art and science, as technology becomes more pervasive than ever, the strategy has also moved further to become a science. 

A good strategy can be classified into following logic steps:

1)Diagnose the business problems
2) Set up a set of guideline
3) Take a series of Actions
4) Measure the result. 

More analytically, how do you set your strategy planning which constrains the kind of strategy you develop that the most successful are already doing—deploying their unique capabilities and resources to better capture the opportunities available to them, but with barriers for competitors to catch on.

More analysis scenario may include:

--The predictive analysis in strategy: how accurate can you forecast corporate performance, competitive advantage, market expectation, supply chain, and business dynamic., etc?

--Competitive analysis: To what extent can you or your competitors influence such factors?
--Diagnosis Analysis: What are key business problems you need to fix, the leverage and trade off., etc.? 

--Prescriptive Analysis: base on above analysis, how to set up a set of the guideline, and recommend actions for business to execute?

Methodologically, a more adaptive strategy-development process places a premium on effective communications from all the executives participating. Also, convert these initiatives into an operating reality by formally integrating the strategic-management process with financial planning processes, governance processes or other key business processes.   Create a rigorous, ongoing management process for formulating the specific strategic initiative

4. Strategy is an Annual Plan

 More surveys also highlight that while an annual planning rhythm is still dominant, frequent planning processes are becoming popular.

Inflexible annual strategy plan maybe the plan to fail, as in such a fast-moving, reactive environment, when predictions are likely to be wrong and long-term plans are essentially useless, the goal cannot be to optimize business effectiveness and efficiency; rather, the strategy must be to engineer flexibility. Accordingly, planning cycles may shrink to less than a year or even become continual.

 Thus, the starting point is for business leaders to increase the time they spend on strategy together to at least match the time they spend together on operating issues. Involve the top team, and the board, in periodically revisiting corporate strategic planning and making any business transformation in strategy planning.

Increased Frequency of Planning Cycles--A comprehensive approach is required to improve agility in strategic planning. Organizations need to build advanced foresight and scenarios by focusing on key topics. Cycle time needs to be reduced to develop rapid response capabilities across all organizational levels.

 5. Execution is not Part of Strategy

As old saying: strategy without execution is a daydream; execution without strategy is a nightmare.

Regardless of how good a strategy is, unless it gets executed effectively, it will either fail or fall short of its potential. There's a big difference between someone who works just to keep their job and someone who is engaged and enthused. Two important keys to the proper execution of a great strategy are having a strong culture and having inspiring leadership.

Companies in today’s uncertainty need a more adaptive approach, whereby they can constantly refine goals and tactics and shift, acquire, or divest resources smoothly and promptly execute it in cascading format.

Integrating Strategy Formulation and Strategy Execution: at execution stage, the business also should focus on prioritizing a few, not too many key business issues, favor quality over quantity, measure result accordingly. 

Therefore,  the failure in any step of strategy may fail the whole strategy-execution scenario, on the other side, not every failure is made equal, one prefers to fail faster, fail forward, to ensure long-term success when executing strategy holistically.

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Is Architecture Part of Engineering?

An engineer tries to figure out “what” and “how”; an architect more focuses on “why” and “what.”

Architecture and engineering are interrelated disciplines. Is the architecture part of engineering? In 1970^th, a team of cognitive scientists and psychologists in Europe did surveys at engineering and architectural schools as well as among practicing engineers and architects, the thousands of results showed that they did not share the thinking process to solve problems, however, there’s an intersection between two disciplines.

 1. Think Differently, but Architecture Overlaps with Engineering

• Architecture requires a different perspective from engineering. While architects are exposed to the concept of engineering, they do not follow an engineering process in how they solve problems. The way that architects solve problems comes from design thinking, not just the engineering way of thinking. But, there is some truth that architecture overlaps with engineering.

• An architect's viewpoint is different from an engineer's: An architect must consider the whole, and their purpose is to achieve the goals for the thing being architected. An engineer, on the other hand, should also think about the goals, but their first concern should be meeting the narrower requirements that their aspect of the overall design must meet. An engineer must be able to design down to the last detail, whereas an architect need not be concerned with all of the contexts.

• Architecture is part of the engineering process. An architect must know the relevant aspects of engineering. Otherwise, they cannot make good decisions about the architecture: they will design a building that cannot be built. Knowing how things actually work and how they are done is indispensable to an architect.

•  There is an intersection between two Disciplines: Engineering (HOW) is important but only in the context of architecture (WHY); architecture (WHY) is important but only in the context of engineering (HOW). Architects identify the complete set of components that must be engineered. The engineer takes one of them as a logical whole, and figures out all of the elements necessary for the component-level outcome - the component architecture.

• EA vs. Engineering at Multitude of View: At information view, architecture and engineering are parallel and overlapping; at process view, architecture occurs prior to engineering with feedback loops, at structural/organizational view, each company will set things up in their own way,  but it is rare to find a company where architects flourish while reporting to engineers and similarly, it’s rare to find a company where engineers flourish while reporting to the architect; the more productive teams thrive when they are independent of one another structurally; at career progression view, more typically, architects are either independently trained or engineers transition to architecture roles over time. The other direction seems rare.

2. Architecture and Engineering are different points on the same continuum

Because architects and engineers think differently, it does not mean that architecture and engineering are not part of a continuum. Perhaps the architects are those among the engineers who are able to think holistically.

• Two Level of Design: The attempts to draw a hard, bright line between architecture and engineering will be doomed to failure, as they’re two levels of design. Any "architected structure" tends to evolve through various stages of abstraction: Contextual; Conceptual; Logical; and Physical. The exact architecture/engineering cross-over point is a matter for architects and engineers working together.

• EA Decomposing the Complexity: Think complexity! The major issue at hand in architecture is effective partitioning (leading to effective decomposition to handle the complexity). You can logically, naturally partition a complex business. You can then use this business partitioning to come up with a logical, natural application partitioning and infrastructure partitioning. What you cannot do is to come up with a logical, natural application or infrastructure partitioning without first considering business partitioning.

• Both are ingredients of planning & designing: Though thinking like an architect is different from thinking like an engineer, the point about the continuum is that architecture is mere an ingredient of planning and designing something, just as engineering is.

• EA Bridging the Silos: Silos come in multiple flavors, some are cultural, some are geographical. some are organizational, some are linguistic, some are even technical. Different stripes, different colors; An architecture can be consist of multiple aspects, and the multiple aspects could be architected in their own right. Both are equally valid perspectives.  It may also be a subordinate architecture of some larger, higher level, architecture. These are not mutually exclusive ways of looking at the world, or at enterprise architecture.

3. An Architect Ensures System Effectiveness, an Engineer Ensures System Efficiency

• An engineer ensures that a company builds a system right (efficiency); an architect ensures that a company builds the right system. (Effectiveness).

• An engineer ensures the project implemented fitting for specification; an enterprise architect ensures that the organization fits for the purpose.

• Architecture does make sure all of the elements necessary for an outcome are present; engineering makes sure those elements are put together well.

• An engineer tries to figure out “what” and “how”; an architect more focuses on “why” and “what”; though a good engineer may also need to frequently ask “why,” and a good architect may also know-how at a certain level;  

• Engineering a wrong system may cost a lot more time and money than Architecting a wrong system;

• An architect is also the "chief engineer" of a system, in which the architect must make sure that everything works as a "system", not just from a technical perspective,  but from the perspective of the system's goals. So the architect does also have the role of ensuring overall integrity.

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The Principles and Practices to Prioritize IT Projects

 IT project priority should reflect business priority.

IT project priority is critical for many organizations, as most of IT organizations are still at lower level of maturity, being perceived as cost center, slow response to business’s request, spend most of the resources on “Keeping Light On,” it’s a department usually under-budget, overloaded with projects assignment, and with reputation on over-promise and under-delivery. Many IT leaders cite mistakes in managing the demand pipeline, either by not communicating and setting priorities well with the business units, or just taking on too much and crushing their team. So how to prioritize IT project is a starting point to improve IT maturity, here are five steps to evaluate IT project priority more comprehensively:

1. The Projects need Align with Business Strategy/Culture

IT project priority should reflect business priority. The project evaluation is part of the Strategic Business Plan, priority is based on the business priority as identified by the main stakeholders to meet the identified business strategic objective. The series of questions need be asked to evaluate a project’s strategic value may include:

• What is Business Value?
• What does the project mean to my customers?
• What does the project mean to the Organization’s stakeholders?
• What contribution can I expect from the stakeholders?
• How do I measure Business Value?
• How do I ensure that the correct Business Value is delivered?
• What is CIO’s role to set IT project priority?

With the possible exception of projects that involve the replacement of obscure pieces of infrastructure that the business has little to no exposure to, the majority of projects should not be called "IT projects". With that said, the short answer is: IT resources should be allocated in direct alignment to the vision and strategy of the enterprise. In organizations with lower IT maturity, CIOs may be CITO –Chief in Title Only, In one sense, they don't "set" priorities at all, mainly CEO or CFO makes final decisions on project investment. However, in high mature business & IT, CIO has a seat in the big table, to co-develop business strategy, and co-make key business decisions, as IT becomes the catalyst in business, CIO should play a more pivotal role in deciding project priority from his/her own unique position.

Internal IT projects are prioritized by the IT leader based on how effective they are in achieving the IT Strategy. CIOs don't set priorities in vacuums. Rather, they'll use the enterprise's strategy and business objectives to determine which capabilities are needed to enable it to achieve those objectives and then execute projects to build or solidify those capabilities. Depending on the enterprise, the CIO may play a partnering role in determining the strategy and business objectives to begin with. Furthermore, the most mature organizations succeed across a number of dimensions. These successful organizations are, in particular, strong at linking projects and programs to business strategies, establishing strong cases for change, and maintaining a good “project culture”. Success is less about the fact that a set of project management standards exists, it has more to do with the quality and commitment of people, the collaborative culture of project delivery (business and technical) and the maturity of ingrained project delivery practices within the organization.

2. Leverage the Priorities of Different Stakeholders

Business value to both the organization’s internal stakeholders and their customers are well analyzed subsequently, this business value needs to be defined in simple terms based on Cost, Time, and Quality (CTQ), effectiveness, efficiency and flexibility on the other side. Each of these terms is meaningful and allows for the natural relativity between the priorities of different stakeholders. But at least, we all know where a job lies in the local scheme of things and it provides everyone with a common language, rather than clouding the issues with mismatched numerical scoring.

As operations and business partners always have an endless list. This is when you have to do the hard thing once the impact, ROI, integration etc. factors bubble sort the projects. Then you ask for the best and brightest from the business for further feedback. Once you show the C-Levels the project list and what is above and below the line, under& behind the scene, they'll speak their minds with knowledge, business authority, and the financial investment wisdom behind it.

Most of the common project failures due to there's a disconnect between the business process innovation that business units want and the basics that IT is getting ready to deliver. Thus, how to leverage the priorities of different stakeholders is strategic critical:

• To leverage finance discipline: Companies should always align these IT decisions with conservative principles of financial management: Underestimate revenues and overestimate costs.

• To leverage marketing/business perspective: Which technology area has grabbed the attention of non-IT partners? for instance,  if we had surveyed CMOs and their direct reports instead of CIOs and their reports, social networking would be near the top of the priority list. Yet the social enterprise sits at the bottom of IT survey respondents' list due to CIO’s risk concerns;

• To leverage architecture view: Architecture is about finding the prioritization mechanism base on defining the risks, constraints, and trade-offs that a business faces. This may not solve the political battle, but it defines the priorities in a logical and visible fashion.

• To Leverage PPM System views: The IT portfolio is a component of the business portfolio. IT projects and portfolios exist to support and enable the business. The effective PPM systems can support a holistic view of the enterprise through their user-defined capabilities. The ability to define multiple sub-portfolios and views gives each of the stakeholders their unique view into programs and projects in their area of interest.

3. Project Classification & A Common Set of Prioritization Criteria

Again, the days for "IT Projects" are long gone. Projects that once fell under the classification of "IT" must now be classified as strategic business solutions that meet the needs of the organization as a whole or organizational units within the enterprise. That being said, such projects are prioritized along the lines of the goals and objectives of the organization and its constituents. As a result, "IT" becomes a strategic business partner rather than a technical resource.

IT projects = Business Projects. But let us face it, IT undeniably becomes an integral part of any viable business - however still in the back mind of most business leaders, IT is a complex and expensive technological gadgets that enable/enhance business processes and outputs that are sold to clients - could be service to the general public or goods. For some unforeseen future, we will still hear the classification of IT Projects for business enablement activities - such as automation of business process and development/ implementation of core IT infrastructural services. That also being said, unless everyone is sharing a common set of prioritization criteria, there are bound to be problems sooner or later. How to classify project more clearly, and all parties have the same, at least, similar set of criteria to evaluate project priority? For example, the projects can be prioritized, classified into Run, Grow, Transform and Compliance:

• Run the business projects: Prioritize based on the value offered or loss avoidance. These are tactical in nature. Make a special effort to fund projects with a payback of 3 years or less. 

• Grow the Business: These are more difficult to prioritize. Partner with business to understand entry, exist, risk permanence and value generation strategy. It’s critical in M&A IT integration or when business enters new markets. This will help define the delivery model and checkpoints for future expansion.

• Transform the Business: Changing the way of business. Use of new technology, business process, partners, business model, joint product development, supplier integration and use of real-time, accurate, predictive information. 

• Business Compliance Projects - Plan and Execute (No analysis paralysis). The project can also be classified into: (1) Immediate/urgent: should be reserved for those items that are genuinely serious, immediate risk to personal or corporate safety & security; (2) Mid-term: the project helps business growth, such as integration, process optimization., etc. (3) Long-term: project for business transformation, such as new process, business model or service/product development., etc. .Or some organizations require CIO to put a document in great detail where the current IT dollars are being spent. There are three main categories: The first category is to keep the lights on, maintaining the already implemented architecture, upgrades to hardware and software security etc. The second category is to work currently under development identifying the approved resources by the project with a 12 month forward looking accounting for each. The total resources for categories one and two may account for 100% of IT's approved resources. The third category lists the requested "NEW" work for which there are no resources committed. The further questions can be digging through: 

           -How are you feeling about your team's IT project portfolio? Optimistic?
           -Will some of your top projects save the company money along the way? Will all of them?
           -When it comes to budgeting and setting expectations, are IT managers upbeat?

4. Effective Process to Prioritize IT Projects

How to well define the process to not only prioritize project but also manage project lifecycle more effectively? The key element in the solution is to establish a method & process in which the realization of Business Value is the primary focus on prioritizing, planning, scheduling, and execution of the project. More specifically, here are some checkbox questions:
-What’s the proposal required against other competing projects?
-What do you use to argue for limited funds and resources?
-Are your projects being selected on the basis of the power or politics of the project sponsor?
-Do “bad” projects find their way into the mix because risks are understated, or ignored?

As CIO, you know which projects out of your pool are important to 'the business' and what is the business's desire level. Then you can evaluate your internal resources (manpower, required expertise skills, budget, time requirements, dependencies ...) and make the first draft of a prioritization list of projects. Splitting the list into a time scale, you can remove those who can't fit for various reasons. With this list, you can do the same round with CxO peers and do agreements, deals, seeking sponsors and support, once finished, you have a list of projects that are liked and supported by the business and that you know you can manage with your staff.

The further interesting question is: WHO “officially” sets priorities? CEO, CFO or CIO? Priority setting is another name for making purchase decisions within the bounds of finite resources. Ideally, this is a business-driven portfolio-management process, and it takes collective effort to set project priority, the level where Business Value should be managed as following:

• CxO level
• Steering Committee members
• Senior Program / Project Managers and Delivery Directors Senior Account Manager
• Audit to comment on the validity of the post-implementation measurement process. 

In reality, unless the firm applies a structured PPM process, to build and manage portfolios of properly evaluated projects, there will be an enormous waste of time, money and resources, often leading to business failure. On the other side, the right process should be effective, not bureaucratic, streamline, but not stiffened. The effective project priority process should unify disconnects in the joined-up-management of the organization, also provides an essential basis for dialogue between parties, especially when each party publishes their prioritized work-in-progress schedules. Key stakeholders must be involved and fully understand the nature of projects, their impact, and relation to business objectives. As business needs, priorities change, so will the priority of the IT projects. An effective process also level the playing field and cut through the politics and culture.

Agility is the theme of IT delivery at the digital era, so the larger size, multi-year projects should be prioritized in pieces and in conjunction with other companion initiatives. Focus should be on near term and long-term value and strategic impact. In addition, many companies structure their reward systems—that lead managers to become risk averse or unwilling to tolerate uncertainty even when a project’s potential earnings are far larger than its potential losses. Thus, the effective process can evaluate project risk more intelligently.

 5. Continuous Project Review

At today’s fast change business dynamic, organizations need regular reviews to ensure that previous assignments remain valid. Such reviews provide excellent opportunities for stakeholder engagement and dialogue, which adds to the integrity of the organization, make a strategic adjustment and dynamic project planning. 

At project portfolio management level, the continuous project review includes doing investment optimization, proposal/asset analysis, senior management strategy review, business benefits realization., etc. Either PM, PPM or project prioritization, besides process, people are still the weakest link to make a fair judgment. Especially at “C” level, an effective executive should be surrounded by the best and brightest available who draws on and complement & concatenates their thinking and takes on a role of being a 'reasonability check' of the proposals and insights presented.

Review Business Value measures objectively and frequently. If requirements change, the project content also has to change with them.  Plan and schedule each phase of a project to deliver specific improvements to the Business Value measures:

- Linking projects and programs to business strategies
- Establishing strong cases for change
- Maintaining a collaborative “project culture”
- Quality and commitment of people
- Maturity of ingrained project delivery practices

- Measure the project deliverables using Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Time-based (SMART) Business Value objectives

In conclusion, project prioritization takes a collective effort, effective process, and strategic alignment. IT project priority is part of business/IT governance discipline, it takes both business and IT parties working seamlessly to understand business strategy, priority adjustment, and market changes, it should share the common set of criteria, and evaluate all sort of variables, one thing is certain--as now business change is accelerated, project portfolio may need to be managed more dynamically, and reviewing business value of project more frequently, strive to balance even in your prioritization.

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An Influential Mind:Three Degree of Influence

“You don't have to be a "person of influence" to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they've taught me.” ~Scott Adam    
                                

 Leadership is an influence. An influential mind is inspiring, persuasive, rational and empathetic.  

1. What is Influence?

 Metaphorically:

• Influence is like water, permeating into where it flows…
• Influence is like light, brightening up the surrounding…
• Influence is like a seed, nature made via nurturing environment to sprout it up;
• Influence is like a tree, keep growing to the shadow birds can rest on;
• Influence is like a bee, pollinating flowers, becomes ambassadors in the natural world;
• Influence is like the butterfly effect, a minor change in circumstances can cause a large change in outcome.
• Influence is like the theme of Spring, fresh and energizing; 
• Influence is like the color of autumn, enriched and enchanting;
• Influence may not be as loud as thunder, and influence is more like wind, soothe our skin and touch our heart;
• Influence may not be as overwhelming as storm, and influence is like a rainbow, to bridge the rain and sunshine;
• Influence & Trust: Influence begins with trust, but influence does not necessarily come as a giving to a person with a high trust index. It’s a skill to be learned, a persuasive communication, exemplary leadership, personal sacrifice, all held together by a collection of confidence. Trustworthiness without influence is like an activity report, not an insightful book; Influence without Trustworthiness is like a book cover without context & content.

2. What are your Influence Styles?

• Influence is made via inspiring, to encourage others toward your vision by communicating in depth and breadth;
• Influence is made via asserting, to present ideas via confidence & persuasion and expertise;
• Influence is made via negotiating & exchanging, to get others’ see your point of view, make tradeoff or compromise;
• Influence is made via bridging: to rely on reciprocity, attempt to influence outcomes by uniting or connecting with others;
• Influence is made via rationalizing,  influence style is not always poetic, it can be made via logic and reasoning; data and statistics;

3. Every Role Has its Influence:

• A leader’s influence: leadership is an influence, the leader’s influence is based on courage to inspire, confidence to assert, wisdom to negotiate, and uniqueness to bridge; 

• An Educator’s influence: Educator is an engineer for human’s soul, the influence is based on the power of knowledge, to open the gate in progression and humanity. 

• A writer’s influence: The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence. Don DeLillo 

• A technologist’s influence: is on inventing or innovating the new product/service to change the world for advancement.

• An entrepreneur’s influence: is based on 3Cs: Curiosity, Creativity, and Capability, to inspire the world via the spirit of adventure.

• A philosopher’ influence: is to abstract, conceptualizes & blueprint the world to  reach agreement in the universal humane way.

• A Historian’s influence: is like a mirror, reflects thousands of years’ human stories. Every profession and role has its unique influence in the world, and the world has been moved forward via such an abundance of influence.

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Seven Questions to Evaluate IT Vendor’s Innovation Capabilities

Businesses are looking for “absorptive capacity,” and innovation capability from their partners.

Evaluating IT vendors is both art and science, besides five common criteria to evaluate the vendor’s attitude and aptitude we discussed earlier, innovation is a key capability for IT vendors to satisfy customers, but some may argue innovation itself is sometimes intangible, even ambiguous, how to manage vendor & trust them to deliver high-quality, flexible, and innovative service?  

Here’re seven questions to evaluate IT vendor’s innovation capabilities.

1. What exactly do we mean by Innovation?

Innovation has a broader definition including process/service innovation, business model innovation, leadership/culture/communication innovation, cost structure optimization, and it’s also tangible and quantifiable. It can be measured on the bottom line for cost saving, or top line growth such as creates new markets and new streams of revenue.

Now every organization strives to be agile, innovation is a level of response to business entities and its challenges, with technology as the enabler, not necessarily a rapid response but a creative, unconventional solution. And by large, it’s situational and varies upon the challenges, and challenges are possibly driven by cost compulsion or business execution/ operating model or infrastructure/skill gaps or regulatory /environmental reasons.

2.  Why do we expect IT vendors to be business innovators?

Every IT project is a business project with clear business goals, especially today's software project is not only for automation's sake, the purpose of many of complex projects are optimizing business processes and deliver the better result with lower cost, so innovation is key from many perspectives.

The innovation capabilities IT vendors can provide to their clients are to connect the dots. Those IT vendors work with their clients across industries, across cultures, accumulate many success stories and, even more, failure anecdotes to benefit their client,  for adopting the best solutions and avoid pitfalls, modernizing legacy application via borrowing the fresh idea from totally different industry or culture.  

In addition, for IT vendors, innovation is the application of technology to customers’ business processes…which means knowledge of business processes is as essential as technology toolkits. The superior IT vendors provide services associated with business processes that the client side depends on for competitive advantage

With the proper structure, accountability, and balance of security and transparency, the digitized work environment that favors innovation, instead of the current status quo, which can be extended to anyone internally, co-innovation partners, or outsourced contractors. Never know where the next great idea, innovation will come from -- geniuses are born every day, often in places we least expect, so it's wise to be open mind and be ready for it.

3. What are Risks need to be considered when evaluating vendors' Innovation Capability?

In most organizations, the risk is the primary reason not to outsource core level innovation. However, it's also true that we live in a very complex web of relationships now in most industries with co-innovation, multi-faceted partnerships, co-ownership of ventures and companies, contracting, etc. etc.  

Customers may also concern about sharing sufficient information regardless of legal protection with the vendor, as for very good reason-- the vendor has a strong incentive to share that knowledge with competitors in selling the same system across the global economy. Thus, knowledge sharing and risk concerns need to be carefully leveraged when evaluating vendors' innovation capabilities.

So systems that attempt to manage the knowledge and innovation process must be not only secure but provide sufficient adaptability to foster innovation with whoever is to be included in the loop, internally or externally, which requires a menu approach tailored to the situation.

 4. Does sharing the rewards result in a bigger piece of pie for every party?

It’s also paradoxical on what works best, motivating the innovators through financial penalty or financial incentives, does sharing the rewards result in a bigger piece of pie for everyone? Well, that's the entire core issue about intelligence, learning, and innovation -- there is a very strong disincentive not to share case studies as what you seek is among the most valuable competitive differentiators in business.

In Reality: The CIO community is frankly not famous for rewarding innovators, but rather rewarding handsomely those who exploit innovators. Most of the real innovators in the enterprise today are absolutely paranoid about sharing anything. For example, global vendors have proven to promote any competitive advantage found in a client otherwise to their entire ecosystem, thereby destroying much of the substantial investment from the client who should have been rewarded for taking early stage risk, not punished. The problem only gets worse as the percentage of market share grows in a particular sector. When a market leader has 20% of the overall market, it's not nearly the problem as when a market is dominated north of 60%-- at that point primarily only one company, or a functioning duopoly, benefit from innovation, and while they can command enormous pricing, there is very little competitive differentiation for customers. That's the situation in most of the enterprise market today.

5. How do you write up SLAs for innovation?

Service-Level agreements are how we make sure we’re getting our money’s worth—and they’re even more important as we move a wider variety of IT functions to outsourcers. However, from the industry survey, just 16% classify SLA as very effective.

At the core of SLAs are service-level targets or objectives—promises made by a service provider to a service consumer, commonly around availability, performance, security, compliance, and data retention. The ability to negotiate SLAs comes down to two main elements: Who has the highest perceived value, and what are the options available to either party? From an innovation perspective, an effective SLA will develop “team” mentality”, capture valuable information/knowledge, if not innovation; incentivize contributions whether used or not; and to prevent costly liability and/or litigation.

The dilemma is: Frequently boilerplate agreements from lawyers tend to prevent innovation, not invite, and only go so far anyway for protection in the real world. That is assuming one is even trying to measure innovation, but most outsourcing relationships probably measure innovation solely in terms of gradually reducing costs or operational innovation over time, thus,  many still seem to believe that measuring it is equivalent to inhibiting it.

6. How to involve EA in Evaluating IT Sourcing Partners?

Architecture is about finding the prioritization mechanism base on defining the risks, constraints, and trade-offs that a business faces. This may not solve the political battle, but it defines the priorities in a logical and visible fashion.

IT vendors, especially outsourcers are usually not exposed to strategic corporate plans, do not control the architectural stack and are tasked with delivering what being considered non-core, commodity services. How do you expect a vendor who does not know your business model intimately, lives the daily challenges and ultimately understand the end client to have a clue about innovation?  Sure they can help streamline development, provide better quality code (one would hope) and deliver at lower costs (perceived lower costs).  But without the intimacy, innovation is insurmountable.

In addition, how can IT vendors technically innovate when their customers insist on maintaining control over the architectural “stack?”? With involving EA to evaluate IT vendors, the biggest leap is expecting them to modernize the business model or finding ways to make technical operations more efficient, maybe, putting together the architectural stack for custom cloud development, perhaps vendors are normally not incentivized to even find operational improvements. With the context of holistic EA, a proper structure can be taken in place, including security parameters, data, and modules that related to each other between the organization, groups, project teams and knowledge worker, vendors can also be instructed to take extra miles, present their innovation capabilities properly.

7. What are the dimensions of innovation in a multi-vendor sourcing situation?

Businesses are looking for “Absorptive Capacity,” and Innovation capability from their IT service providers. They are expecting for vendors to figure out ways to perform the IT lifecycle, whether they are doing hardware or software or a combined integration, with less drain on their organization, they also expect vendors to deliver flexible, innovative and high-quality customer-tailored solutions.

The next generation of IT vendor relationship is about how to well manage the mixed bag of diversified vendors, either cloud service provider, IT consulting firms,  multi-faceted partnerships, co-ownership of ventures and companies, contracting, etc., their expertise are not only technical specialty, more importantly, they can also deliver the outside box thinking & expansive talent pool, culture wisdom and process innovation.

Most of  IT organizations take the multi-sourcing model and manage vendors more strategically-including innovation in the tender process, treating suppliers as strategic partners, crafting output-based contracts, measuring deliverables more than just SLAs.

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Decode CIO Leadership: Does CIO stand for "Career Is Over"?

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.  Max Planck

According to a recently released global CIO survey & report from EY, too few CIOs are currently regarded as true members of the executive management team, limiting their potential for change. They appear to be C-level in title only. Less than half say they are deeply involved in strategic decision-making;  about one-third (35%) admit that they are strongly in need of advice on how best to develop their career.

There are also many in-depth debates regarding the CIO’s career path, and enriched discovery of magic “I” in the CIO’s title, however, there are similar concerns about CIO’s role:  What are opportunities and risks as CIO today? Does CIO stand for “Career is Over”?  If not, still the question remains - where to move from the CIO position?

1. CIO as Chief Information/ Integration Officer: Career is Ongoing

From the variety of industrial surveys: about 65% of CIO interviewees enjoy the scope and remit of the role of the CIO making this a desirable career destination for most — with about two-thirds being content to see their role as a final career destination and half remaining ambitious, hoping for a true invitation to the top table.

For a pure IT professional, the CIO is the highest rank - there is nowhere to move to. But a pure IT guy would never make it to CIO in the first place as the position requires far more than IT knowledge, skills and experience.

But only 17% of CIOs have a position in the executive leadership team, the need to discuss technology issues in terms of the business value they bring — whether costs saved, revenues gained, customer satisfaction achieved or similar — rather than in terms of uptime, gigahertz, and terabytes.

Most leaders aim to keep any discussions with the CIO centered on IT budgets, with few seeing this as a chance to engage in a wider discussion about the value of technology. There’s a common understanding that the C-suite prefers a CIO who is simply stable, consistent and doesn’t rock the boat much.

How to change such outdated perceptions?

• Change is Opportunity: Technology is changing. At the time of the event of IT, no one would have thought of this arena and the need of the system. The position of IT / CIO will never curtail, however, it depends on person to adopt the new technology or not.  it could become a ceiling as the role really depends on the vision and strategy that the CIO creates for the organization

• CIOs are strong generalists – with exposure to all the different business areas. only a few other executives have the opportunity to develop such a deep understanding of the wider business. Business acumen seems to be the critical success factor for the CIO to position themselves well to get promoted to CEO or COO – with sector-specific variances.

• IT/Software Delivery Competency: The world and business changes much faster than ever in era of digitization, IT also need to be become more swift, elastic and agile to be perceived as value center, than cost center, it's time to gain competency via customer-centric mindset, cross-functional collaboration and agile project/ methodology, CIOs see IT potential to add value to the business

• IT becomes more critical to business, so does CIO role.  Nicholas Carr’s article from 10 years ago “IT doesn’t matter” is not becoming a reality. On the opposite, today's IT is more pervasive and aggressive, IT becomes the key differentiator for business's growth. CIO role is also not becoming irrelevant, it’s a fulfilling role need wear many hats such as business strategist, inspiring leader, technology visionary and tactical manager.

• Back to fundamental “I”-Information: Information & Knowledge Management are the absolute key to unlocking both the potential and the competitive advantage of a business no matter in which sector. The CIO, in the era of big data, has far more of a focus on the middle letter of his/her title than ever before.

• IT is an Integral Part of Business: The combination of business and personal life has never been more prevalent. IT can no longer sit in the data center building servers and simply tell people what apps to install. IT need to be much more integrated into the business, the business model and even the thought process of the users and their needs. Cheif Integration Officer is BEST suited in current scenario since CIO is expected to participate in board/strategy meetings unlike being considered as cost center traditionally. CIO as Chief Integration Officer, career is ongoing.

• CIO’s DNA: The role of the Chief Information Officer is a very tricky one and hard to fill. The problem is heavily masked because the position is often filled with the wrong person. On one hand,  the CIO needs to have a sound business mentality and communication skills to deliver on business objectives and decide the strategy. On the other hand, the CIO needs to be a geek to manage the operation within. The CIO does not need to be technically directly involved, but a technical background is good to have to be able to manage the team. The team needs to be able to trust the CIO and the CIO needs to understand them to be able to manage them. That said, a CIO with the correct position and opportunity must not retreat into the technology. Unfortunately, it’s happening where the ultimate technologist was promoted to the position. Without grooming to include a good business background, this CIO may retreat to the familiar and the comfortable ground.

2. CIO as Chief Innovation/Intrapreneur Officer: Career is Outrun

From the survey, about three-quarters (75%) of CIOs rate project and change management skills as crucial for their role, while 77% regard an analytical approach and organizational skills as similarly important. CIO's aren't left with "ONLY" being integrators. There are so much change and new innovation afoot all around in where opportunities for innovation are omnipresent. CIO with innovation hat will outrun the peers and bring business value to the table.

• CIO as Innovative Business leader: “Change is Opportunity”. The CIO role must keep a close eye on trends in technology AND trends in his/her respective business. Some IT trends are Fads and some have real business value. The CIO must understand all aspects of the business, all aspects of technology, quickly assess opportunities for improvement where business and technology meet and ultimately execute the plan. The effective CIO can determine which trends will bring value to their respective business. Next they must sell these trends as valuable benefits to the business and finally they must execute. The CIO that can navigate the rapidly changing IT trends, align them with the business and deliver true business value will never be classified as “Career Is Over”. 

• 3-Stage Innovation Scenario: Innovation is to “making changes to something established by introducing something new.” CIO as Chief Innovation Officer need more focus on "I" than T, information is living blood in any business today, and all industry leaders claim they are at information business cross-sectors; Today's innovation definition broadly includes services, processes, business models, communication, and cost structure improvements across the enterprise, IT today plays significant role at either disruptive innovation, sustainable innovation or efficiency innovation,:
  Stage 1 Data Processing leads to Information
  Stage 2 Information processing leads to Knowledge
  Stage 3 Knowledge processing leads to Intelligence

• Business Growth via IT Perspective: How often have we encountered business leadership deciding to venture into a new market or acquire another company, but not all that concerned about exactly how those initiatives get accomplished? A CIO, on the other hand, is very much concerned with the details of successfully meeting such challenges. Nothing wrong with those two perspectives - it's just the nature of the job and, of course, the people in the job. 

• Provide Innovative End Customer Service: CIOs are in a unique position, often holding a helicopter view of what’s going on in the business. As CIO role is changing and encompassing a wider spectrum within the organization, focus on making a difference in the business, figure out how to provide end customers with a better service, CIOs usually do have some advantage to introduce something new, the new apps to delight customers, the new process to engage employees, or the new trends perceived via Big Data to influence next generation of products and services.

Being creative and innovate, Often and your Career won't be over, and even outrun.

3. CIO as Chief Influence/Inspiration Officer:  Career in Overdrive

From same global CIO survey, 81% of CIOs cited leadership as a crucial skill for their role, as did 79% for communication and influencing skills, well ahead of IT know-how. But despite this recognition, it is also clear that too many CIOs don’t know what it takes to join the executive management team.35% of CIOs also prioritize internal politics more now than they used to.

How does the role of CIO change in the world’s largest companies, those with revenues of at least US$1b? The survey highlighted some subtle, but important, distinctions:

1. CIOs in large firms typically have a greater recognition of the need for stronger front-office relationships. They also see more clearly how such relationships can boost their career.

2. CIOs at bigger businesses are more aware of the need to gain exposure to other parts of the business, to communicate business value and to deliver on major transformation programs. They are also more likely to see the value of having experience in another business.

3. CIOs at large firms are far more likely to recognize the value of a business degree in broadening their skills. They are, unsurprisingly, usually more ambitious. As such, they are more attuned to the need for leadership in their role, while smaller company CIOs still put more emphasis on their technology know-how.

• CIO’s new DNA: The business world becomes hyper-connected, over-complex, and interdependent. All this requires CIOs to stop ignoring the inevitable and start changing — before they are forced to: vision, pragmatism, tenacity and a desire to execute are CIO’s new DNA:
  
   a. Vision: The ability to see the wood for the trees, think outside the box, notice even small nuggets.

     b. Pragmatism: Cannot think wild thoughts that are impossible to implement.budgets are a reality and business needs must be met.

          c. Tenacity: Where there is a wall, there is a door, shovel or ladder close by. 

• CIO as Chief Influence Officer:  Though many CIOs are Chief Introvert Officer, the power of introvert is to influence deeply: at a high level, CIOs will need to pay less attention to the underlying technologies they love while focusing more on developing their abilities as leaders, managers and influencers:

a. At business level, CIOs need be perceived as conductor to enable cross-functional project collaboration and coordination, to empower talent to voice out and stretch up; to envision business future and power it on;

b. At industry level, CIOs need become advocate to enforce effective policy, to learn innovative idea cross-industrial boundary;

c. At societal level, CIOs may inspire STEM education, and encourage better understanding of IT and its impact in humanity

• CIO as Career In Overdrive The savvy CIO will seize the opportunity to learn everything about the company/organization and weed out the true business imperatives getting them agreed at the "C" table. Savvy CIO's often find that they ultimately hold a better view of the organization than many of the other more specialized or function focused "C's". This clever (or savvy) CIO now has all of the elements gathered and agreed to create the Strategic Business Plan for the organization which in many companies simply does not exist. "Increase the bottom line btw is not a strategic plan." The true CIO, has an opportunity to document the business imperatives, develop a Strategic Business Plan, present this to "C" peers, drive the inevitable discussion and debate to agreement on what the organization's true Strategic Business Plan for the immediate, mid and long terms are.

So where's the growth path for a CIO? Modern CIOs are innovative, influential, diplomatic, entrepreneurial, knowledgeable, should fit for many roles. A strong CIO "knows the business" as well or better than any other executive level position. Besides moving horizontally - to another company, another industry, or rather vertically to another CxO position, a CIO should be equally qualified to be considered for the CEO positions, as modern CEO and CIO have many common leadership characteristics.

CIO stands for: Career is Ongoing, outrun, and overdrive.

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Success is Failure Turns Inside Out

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”   -Winston Churchill

1.    Success & Failure are the State of Mind

• Success is to ensuring that not a single moment in life, no matter how painful or joyous, is a wasted moment. Either revels in it, or learns from it, but never discard it without obtaining some value from it.

• "Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that lead us to either fortune or failure." Rohn

• Success is being able to achieve your goals in life whilst remaining true to your convictions and principles, especially when it's not the popular view. Since our convictions and principles are internal, despite the outward appearance of subscribing to a broader global/religious/moral code, our personal convictions define our ethics and sense of morality. 

• Success is not measured by what a man accomplishes, but by the opposition he has encountered and the courage with which he has maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds. – Charles Lindbergh. 

• Both success and failure are states of mind: if you work hard, do your best, still fail, you may have a peace of mind, which is called success.

2. Success is Failure Inside Out

• Success is a byproduct of failure and application of wisdom. Success is persistent, punctual efforts with perseverance.Success is-strength focus and determination.

• Success is to turn around: overcome whatever weaknesses one has by turning the weaknesses into strengths. True success means one is able to see the seed of failure in every success and within every success the possibility of failure. It means that one must always be humble enough to know that failure is always an option even when one is on top of the world. And diligent enough to recognize that if learn from the mistakes when failing, one has the ability to turn each of failures into a success. 

• Success is to pick yourself up when you fall and having learned from the fall to continue on;  Success is never ending, failure is never final. Success is.... making a genuine difference; learning from failures; enjoying the journey.

• Both success & failure are time dependent....In some cases, you get more long-term benefit with failures in your life that you never desire at the first place.

• Success is resilience: learning how to fail and learn from it; Success is always the result of the change.

• “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm” - Winston Churchill

3. Success & Failure are Two Scenes in Life Journey

• Success and Failure are only steps away. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Thomas Alva Edison

• Failure is rock at the way, and success is jewelry on the road; Success is a continual journey to the new horizon!!

• Failure comes to you, you need to overcome it; Success doesn't come to you, but you go to it.

• Success is the progressive realization of personal, worthwhile, pre-determined goals. success is a journey, not a destination;

• A wise man once said:  "A success is someone who gets up one more time than he/she gets knocked down.

• Success is to know your goals passion & journey and knowing that success taste better after pains struggle setbacks challenges losses and everything negative that has been thrown at you.

• Success is just another Milestone to achieve higher goals in life. It's also the way one perceives and re-strategize the journey forward in life.

• Success is not a destination at which we arrive, it is a journey that takes a lifetime. With a dream or a vision- one with purpose, one that will expand your natural thinking, one that will need to be continually developed, one that continues to take your breath away even in milestones of goal successes.

• Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration.

• “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.” ----Earl Nightingale

4. Success to Measure the Height of Life, Failure to Measure Depth of Life

• Failure is the chance to teach you the depth of life; Success is the opportunity to show you the height of life; Only experiencing both, you may live a multi-dimensional life

• Success is a matter of degree. Success is relative. How high you have risen in life depends on what depth you came.  Success is the ability to manifest the person you want to be.

• Success is the relation between “who you are” and  “what you do”; "what you want" and "what you have"... Success is filling the gap between "where you are & where you want to be"; Success is being where you want to be, and when you want to be there.

• Success is consistency.....accomplishing what your mind sees, what your mouth speaks, what your heart feels, and what your faith and spirit believes in!!

• Failure is bitter, success is sweet, but without tasting bitterness, one can not enjoy sweetness with healthy appetite;

• Success takes passion and choice, and Failure tests patience and resilience; Success is reaching one's full potential

• If failure is an accident, Success is nurtured; life without a plan is a plan to fail; success is opportunity plus preparation; Success is a habit one need cultivate, failure is habit one need get rid of.

• Failure is 95 % of negative human emotions plus negative actions; Success is an attitude, confidence is the companion of success!

• If failure is an accident, success is never only a good luck,  but a result of hard-work, dedication, determination, focus and drive to achieve the desired goal

5. Success is an Influence, Failure is a Lesson

• Success is not what you create for yourself but what you will leave behind for the others;  success is knowing that you make a difference to others.  

• Success is in "Man's Search for Meaning" that the meaning of one’s life is to help others find meaning in theirs. -Victor Frankl

• SUCCESS IS........ DELIVER THE DIFFERENCE to the world:  Think, Create, and Achieve things in difference ways.

• Success is to find a purpose in the life; success is a reality in life, how to achieve and share the fruits to humanity, helping others achieve or surpass anything you've accomplished.

• Success is knowing your purpose in life, sowing seeds that benefit others, and growing to your maximum potential (Maxwell, 2007)

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