Welcome to our blog, the digital brainyard to fine tune "Digital Master," innovate leadership, and reimagine the future of IT.

The magic “I” of CIO sparks many imaginations: Chief information officer, chief infrastructure officer , Chief Integration Officer, chief International officer, Chief Inspiration Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Influence Office etc. The future of CIO is entrepreneur driven, situation oriented, value-added,she or he will take many paradoxical roles: both as business strategist and technology visionary,talent master and effective communicator,savvy business enabler and relentless cost cutter, and transform the business into "Digital Master"!

The future of CIO is digital strategist, global thought leader, and talent master: leading IT to enlighten the customers; enable business success via influence.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Creativity vs. Insight

11:42 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Knowledge is the power, but do not let knowledge deter your imagination, stifle your creativity or block your insight.
Creativity is an innate process to create novel ideas, it is a type of “out-of-box” thinking; insight is thinking into the box after thinking out of the box. Creativity is a result of living in your intuitive space. It is an action or a reaction to the world. Insight is the deep intuitive understanding of things, and it often breaks through the conventional wisdom. Insight is not only about trying to "think outside the box," but an intuitive expression and alternative path that takes you wherever it needs to go, without boundaries, with the goal to think beyond the surface and break through conventional wisdom.


Insight takes both creativity and reasoning: There is a critical link between creativity and intuition. While imagination helps us expand our idea, knowledge helps us refine our idea of what is economically feasible. Insight takes both creativity and reasoning, intuition and logic, the power of acute observation and deduction, questioning, connection, penetration, discernment, perception. So insight does not just fuel creativity, but also make creativity more tangible and embed creativity with other thought processes to create value and produce the new knowledge. Insight is the ability to see underneath the surface, discovering the "truth" requires some analysis to understand multiple opinions and emotions which in many cases are among differing views and distorted facts, the inner and outer self is the struggle between what we know as reality and what we feel as our connection to the wholeness. Insight is crucial to remove the unconscious bias or silo thinking, and creativity explores the new lenses to understand things with the new way to solve problems.


Creativity is about connecting the dots, and insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect in a specific context: Having knowledge is a good thing, debating, sharing exploring what to do with that knowledge and connecting disparate ideas that don't seem to fit together naturally will lead to the true imagination and further spur creativity! Insight is being able to identify the root cause of a problem or the core issues of a situation which leads to understanding and resolution. Too often people may take the easy path, think and work at a superficial level rather than spend the time to understand what is going on underneath. Insight is an understanding of cause and effect based on the identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario.

Creativity is the higher level intelligence, and insight is also at the higher level of knowledge life cycle: Creativity is a higher level of thinking because it often imposes a higher cognitive load as you think 'harder' and consciously use different kinds of thought processes such as association, perspective shifting, opposites etc., when you are wanting to come up with a creative solution to a challenge. Insight is captured from information, and the information is based on data. Sufficient, especially interdisciplinary knowledge is fundamental to spark creativity and gain insight. Though it doesn’t always mean the more knowledge you have, the more insightful you become, or the more creative you are. The disconnect, comes when we lose our vision, the attitude, people close down conversations because their personal exploration of an issue has either been exhausted, or tic-tac-toe like, they have found no way of resolving what's before them and, therefore, believe nothing more can be done. "it can't be done," or "if it could be done, someone would have already done it"; both of these opinions could impede imagination. It is also true that if you have too much knowledge on a topic, you will be bounded by this knowledge, hampering being more imaginative about other things. Do not let knowledge deter your imagination, stifle your creativity or block your insight.


Creativity is the most wanted skill in the 21st century, and insight is the most needed vision in the Digital Era. They are both based on knowledge, but not limited by knowledge. Creativity often means you need to apply the previous knowledge to the different context, and insight means you have to digest knowledge, and not just understand it on the superficial level, to “see” things or make connections others can not.  When you are on a higher plane of thinking, you are not confined by walls such as conventional wisdom, you can connect the unusual dots to spark creativity and dig through cause-effect to capture insight.

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Five Focal Points of Digital Board Room

11:39 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

BoDs are leadership roles, they should not only oversee business strategy and monitor business performance but also set the tone for the culture and be talent master.

 The modern corporate board plays a significant role in guiding the business in the right direction and achieve the expected business result. Due to the complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity, and volatility of the digital age, the directorship in any organization must have the agility to adapt to changes and build the ability to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goal. Here are the five focal points via the length of the digital boardroom.


Strategic focus: The board plays a critical role in overseeing business strategy, it is important to keep the board strategic focused. Also, the board as the top leadership team advise business strategy, it doesn’t always mean Board itself is being strategic enough. The board represents the ownership and they really cannot do a good job if they don't have the knowledge to challenge and set the broad strategic goals. They need to educate themselves by hearing different views about the organization, its environment & digital ecosystem, strategic alternatives and develop a clear vision on how to move the business forward. Sometimes board members’ time is stretched thin so they do not allocate enough time to understand key issues and in many cases, board members are not motivated to be strategically focused. A strategy-focused board not only has oversights of strategy but also influences the process as well. The process of strategic planning is the best indicator of how well a board really understands and invests time in learning about their companies and also identifies the levels of collaboration, synergy, trust, and confidence that exist between the board and executives of the organization.
Performance Focus: There is no question that business performance is the priority for boards. Many boards think that the role of the individual director is conformance, which has the result to stifle probing questions and the natural tensions that allow for good decision-making. The Board's role, in large part, is to make good decisions that enhance the value creation for the organization. They need to focus on their own performance as well as the performance of the management team; and, that performance is not limited to financial performance, but also to the firm's performance in creating value for employees and customers. To some degree, conformance is inherent within the value-driven performance. More specifically, the "performance" responsibility of BoDs should be focused on the maximization of
(1) Capital allocation
(2) Company performance
(3) Shareholder value.
It's not only about the performance now, but also about the future and that means an open mindset to change, with a long-term perspective.


Governance Focus: Business governance is the other important responsibilities of the corporate board. Governance is a sophisticated process that if well executed, will lead to better decisions. It will allow not only to protect the existing value but also to create new value for its shareholders. With the increasing speed of changes and digital velocity, if the boards that are still using traditional risk management frameworks and management showing graphs and curves to the board are often moving forward by driving through a rear mirror view. And because the biggest risk for business is beyond those traditional graphs and curves, Boards need to master risk intelligence to identify both business risks and opportunities, keep focusing on governance effectiveness and risk intelligence.
Information savvy: Information is the lifeblood and one of the most invaluable assets in digital business today, technology is the disruptive force in digital transformation. Therefore, Digital BoDs need to become information savvy and technology-smart. The foremost thing for BoD is to realize that IT is strategic; and as such, it should be a distinct part of the business strategy telling how to maintain compliant and secure and how to enable business growth. An IT-savvy board will focus on more with KIDM: the knowledge - information and data management to capture business insight and customer foresight for strategic oversight and governance practice. The speed, accuracy, and precision of the decision which in this new market has a new level of importance and competitive value. An information savvy board also becomes more strategic and agile to fit the digital new normal.
Culture Influence: Many think boards do not pay enough attention to the culture within the company, since the culture can undermine strategy, they certainly should be concerned and seek assurance that the culture is aligned with the strategy and that the values that form the foundation of the couture are aligned with the expectations of customers. The board has to pay more attention to the culture, which will "eat the strategy" otherwise. The company needs to determine its direction, and then assure that the culture supports that strategy. The board as a top-level leadership team should set the tune to build a culture of learning and innovation. Because the business culture is reflected and influenced by policies, practices, rewards, and incentives which are often made and influenced by the board. Often, executives and the board assume that these things are correct, but employees know they are not and can tell you what gets in the way. When culture is inspired at the board level, it can unlock powerful synergies that drive performance, especially in today's world that relies so much on collaboration and teamwork.


The modern digital board has many responsibilities, also gets a lot of distractions. It has to laser focus on the most critical things to steering the business toward the right decision. BoDs are leadership roles, should not only oversee business strategy and monitor business performance, but also set the tone for the culture and be talent master, and walk the talk to become more learning agile, information savvy and innovative to adapt to the digital dynamic.

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Friday, May 27, 2016

The Monthly Insight of Culture Change -The Collective Mindset May 2016

11:03 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice within an organization, but too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crisis, and demands. This is the bureaucracy’s way of meeting the challenges. How to understand the mentalities behind the change as the first step, especially the collective mindset -culture, in order to fine tune the process of Change Management, and overcome the obstacles to managing a digital transformation smoothly?

 

  Culture Change - The Collective Mindset

  • What’s your Organization’s "DNA" and Personality? Organizational culture is the collective mindset, attitudes, and the set of behaviors, expectations, and assumptions that people have about "how things are around here." Further, it is like an iceberg where the visible elements, such as behaviors, make much sense with recognizing and understanding the underlying mindsets, expectations, and assumptions. Many also think culture is an organization’s DNA or personality. So what's your organization's personality?
  • Is Culture the Pathway to the Changes Culture is perhaps one of the most invisible, mysterious, but critical success factors for business strategy execution. Who does create the corporate culture? Is it the top leadership team who unilaterally in a willful act establishes a particular corporate culture? Or is it that at the beginning of a company, there are just a few people working in the organization, and in their interactions a corporate culture emerges? How is it developed? How can it be remained for years or centuries? Can culture be changed? And how to fine tune a high-performing culture?
  • How to “Harden” the Soft Business Element Like Culture? Culture is better defined by the "collective mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors of people in an organization. There is no question that culture can make or break an organization. However, many leaders fail to realize that culture will "happen" whether they understand it or not. So it's better to be deliberate about it. What are the principles your organization believes will make it successful? Where does one start with the importance of corporate culture? Who are the stewards of corporate culture, and how can you harden the soft element like culture to make it more visible and manage it more effectively?
  • How to Change the Culture - The Collective Habit Effectively To change your culture, it’s about changing the habits of your people. We all know how challenging would be to change a bad habit; at corporate level, culture eats strategy for breakfast, but changing the collective habit of people is one of the most difficult things in running a high performing business; and at national or global level, changing an outdated culture that perhaps existing for centuries is like boiling an ocean. It is a tough journey, but in order to make a collective progress and advance humanity, shall we or can we make it work?  

  • What’s your Culture Expression? Business culture is the most critical “soft” key factor to decide business’s success for the long term. However, it’s invisible and untouchable; so what’s your culture “expression”? And how to communicate it and measure culture effectively? If there was a system for real-time measurement of culture, what should its main focus be? What aspects of culture would you most want management to focus on getting right and why?
Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.

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Three Levels of IT Agility

10:58 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

IT maturity enables business maturity and IT maturity is based on overall business maturity as well.

Information is the lifeblood, and technology is often the force of digital disruption. The irony is that many IT organizations are often perceived to be too slow to adapt to the changes in the majority of companies. IT now plays a pivotal role in digital transformation, IT needs to focus on the fastest speed available - because that is where the main threat is to competitiveness, and IT is the key enabler to not only improve its own speed but overall business speed and agility.


Strategic Agility: An agile and responsive IT means a lot of things for the digital transformation: speed, innovation, agility, integration, modernization, optimization, intelligence, value creation, and maturity, etc. IT plays a crucial role in building up an agile business which can succeed in combining two distinct, cohesive, and also interconnected business capabilities: strategic responsiveness and business flexibility. IT also plays a significant role in shaping a culture of change and innovation that promotes responsiveness and adaptability across the enterprise ecosystem. IT needs to provide input for strategy making because often IT leaders’ technological vision will directly impact the business’s direction as business leaders across the industries claim they are in the information management business. Top business leaders need to sense change, develop the proper strategic response, the business can improve the success rate of strategy execution if it reaches the higher level of business agility.
Operational agility: Although IT should spend more time and resource to improve the strategic advantage of the business, “keep the lights on” is still fundamental for the business. More mature IT organizations can focus on radical digital transformation; but for many other organizations at the lower level of maturity, there are perhaps more of a back office support challenge they have to overcome first. IT is at the unique position to oversight business processes which underpin digital capabilities of the organization. IT has to not only improve its own speed, but also overall organizational agility. The type of speed issues: such as IT slow to change, comes from gaps created between IT and the rest of the company. Therefore, IT needs to run like the business in the daily routine, not as an isolated support function, but an integral part of the business to optimize business processes and  improve operational agility. When there is no willingness to serve users and on the other way round, no appetite from users to involve IT, the gaps get bigger and dangerous behaviors may get introduced. IT leaders have to follow agile principles to enforce interactive communication; incremental delivery and continuous improvement.
Portfolio agility: In philosophy, agile is the state of mind and a set of principles to run today’s business. In practice, agile is the emerging methodology to manage a balanced project portfolio. Agile development techniques focus on solving the problems that arise because customer's needs evolve over time. There are still projects and environments that are very good at fixing and holding the product requirements over time, but most of the businesses no longer afford to manage large multi-year projects in a rigid way, often they need to break down the large projects to the smaller one, and make continuous delivery to adapt to the customers’ need due to the increasing speed of change and market conditions. In all cases, the common element of a proactive IT is business engagement - whatever and wherever the business needs are, IT needs to proactively solve the problems with setting priority right. Agile development is characterized by frequent rapid delivery of useable software by self-organizing teams with regular adaptation to change. Working software is the principal measure of progress; and increased throughput (velocity) by reduction of bottlenecks, is the primary measure of efficiency.
IT organizations can be either leading or supporting, depending on the nature and maturity of the organization and the traits of IT leadership. IT agility is critical to implement overall business agility because IT is a key enabler of the business capability. IT maturity enables business maturity and IT maturity is based on overall business maturity as well. If the organization does not take advantage of, or expect the IT department to innovate or drive change, then in the age of the digital era, IT is unlikely to be delivering the maximum value for its customers and shareholders. Further, if IT is leading, it has to master at these three levels of agility in order to deal with increasing speed of change effortlessly.


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Thursday, May 26, 2016

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 5/27/2016

11:33 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Blogging is not about writing, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with 2800+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight about digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO”  5/27/2016
  • Is Digital Leadership Constructively Disruptive: Many think digital is the age of innovation. Digital is a disruption with rapidly increasing speed and hyperconnectivity to break down silos and rigid hierarchy. Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way business is conducted so that simply adopting a new digital technology may be insufficient. You have to transform the company's underlying processes, cultures, and organization as a whole with adjusted digital speed. Otherwise, companies may begin a decline from its previous high performance. Digital border is not made of sharp lines, but cursive dots need to be widely connected to spark the next level of innovation. And in order to lead more effectively, does a digital leader have to be constructively disruptive?
  • Three Silo Effects to Stifle IT Innovation: Forward-looking organizations are reimagining the digital potential of IT and reinventing IT reputation from a cost center to an innovation engine. However, the majority of IT organizations still get stuck at the lower level of maturity, running as a siloed function. Despite the mountain of evidence pointing the detrimental effects of these silos, they still seem to be quite common in the organization. What are the root causes to silos? Are silos a mere product of organizational design? Or is their nature tied to human nature? What are silo effects which stifle innovation, and downgrade IT effectiveness and performance? What would be some ideas to assist in breaking down silos in an organization where they are present?

  • Three Aspects to Enhance IT Value Proposition Forward-look IT organizations work hard to reinvent IT reputation as a value creator and innovation engine. IT is an enabler of current and future capabilities of both the organization and its ecosystem. IT needs to deliver value to the organization in order to help the business build competency and implement business strategy. Thus, CIOs need to maximize IT value via pursuing strategic, innovative, and tactical alignment and integration with the business. Maximizing IT value really means a lot: from enabling business strategy via capability to adapting to the changes via agility and flexibility; from revenue growth to business resilience, from “doing more with innovation,” to “doing more with less” (efficiency). Here are three aspects to enhance IT value proposition.
  • What are Common Change Pitfalls? Organizations today are more dynamic than ever, there are Big’C’ changes such as digital transformation, merging organizations with overlapping or duplicate functions, and little ‘c’ changes such as implementing a new software tool, reorganizing a department, improving a new process to do things more efficiently. Big ‘C’ Change requires buy-in via digging through the ‘big why’ behind the change, sets success criteria and to hold managers accountable,; and little’c’ change needs to have a step-wise approach on ‘how’ to make change more efficiently. Still, more than two-thirds of Change Management effort fail to achieve the expectation, what are the pitfalls on the way?
  • The Agility Impact on Digital Transformation Agile is both a philosophy and methodology to run a digital organization. The purpose of agile is to provide value to the business by delivering a product that is beneficial to end users, either internal or external customers. All Agile methodologies define a set of best practices, but true agility is much more than the practices defined in a given methodology. Agility involves the whole ecosystem, including all the stakeholders, from the customer's requirement to the delivery. Agility plays a significant impact on digital transformation. It's to change what the organization currently values in regards to process: Look at transformation goal as more often an enterprise strategic decision for the organization to achieve goals related to financial, market etc. And common understanding is an essential input towards this transformation.

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Success

11:29 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

The most successful people are driven by an unfathomable passion for their craft, differentiated by unique capabilities and uncommon experiences - fortunate or unfortunate.

Like the most things in this world, success is a relative term, there is no absolute definition of it, as well as no “one size fits all” formula to achieve it. Generally speaking, success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. Success comes from believing in what you are doing and making a positive impact, feeling fulfilled, getting rewarded, and contribution to others as well. Should you measure success more via the journey one seeks personal fulfillment and self-satisfaction at a work well done or a measure of economic self-sufficiency at all cost? Is success more personal or based on conventional wisdom? Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s success?
Which traits are more crucial to make some people more successful than others? In a positive environment with a healthy culture and professional competition, successful people are often more positive, confidence, persistent, disciplined, healthy and open minded, with clearer vision, having the problem-solving expertise, capability, and knowledge supporting proactive decision making and dedication to a goal, mission, and performance tracking. Being successful is feeling well with yourself via innate feeling. Success is built on the true belief in what you are trying to accomplish. Strength in follow through and confidence in one's team. Successful people have goals they believe they can achieve and don't let themselves become discouraged. They keep their attention on the goal and take cohesive actions that are in alignment with the goal. They stay focused which is unshakeable! The most successful people are driven by an unfathomable passion for their craft, differentiated by unique capabilities and uncommon experiences - fortunate or unfortunate.


Success and failure are two sides of the coin, which lessons can you learn? Success is sweet, make you touch the height of the life; and failure is bitter, let you experience the depth of the life. They are different scenes in the life journey. You will hit many bumps in the road to pursue success, and you cannot be discouraged. There will be people who try to put you down, but you have to block the negativity unless they are actually giving constructive criticism. Success is being focused in pursuance of your set goals and taking a setback as lessons learned to redirect your path, learning from your failures as well as other people’s failures. If you never experience failure, success can become the pitfalls to make you lose gravity or present the shallow understanding of human nature; people will become wiser and more mature after being through both stages. True success means one is able to see the seed of failure in every success and within every success the possibility of failure. The wise people know that every smile face in front of you could mean many cold arrows behind you. It means that one must always be humble enough to know that failure is always an option and on the way!
Is success more as a journey or as a destination?  Success starts with one's philosophies as from our philosophies our attitudes are born, and from those attitudes, actions follow. What you do daily will determine what you become permanently; success is more as a journey with a compelling vision, determining the WHY of the journey you will take to make it meaningful, be clear on the values that will keep you on the road, have the courage and determination to get on the way, success is an adventurous journey. Therefore ! if you need to have a life plan and the disciplines to stay on track, you will achieve whatever SUCCESS means to you. From the business perspective, maximum business success is usually a mixture of innovation, timing, and market applicability. Make the right product at the right time to the largest market segment. Success is staying on the track, being focused and solving problems that hinder economic growth.

There is no magic formula to be successful - there are so many variables. Besides, it changes with time. It also depends on the organizational and societal culture. In a healthy and positive environment, success is achieved via vision, competency, you must have certain qualities such as positive mindset, perseverance, a hard work ethic, and a good attitude. It's a mixture of character, vision, capabilities, and relationships. No one thing brings success. Successful people understand, that success story is full of win-lose stages. Success is a state of mind and a journey.



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Three IT Management Dilemmas

11:25 PM  Pearl Zhu  No comments

Dealing with IT Management dilemmas is about how to leverage, balance, innovate and improve overall IT and business maturity.

 Managing a highly effective IT is not an easy job, and improving IT maturity is even harder. IT leaders have to avoid a lot of pitfalls, overcome many change management roadblocks, and deal with quite a few of IT management dilemmas in transforming IT from a cost center to value creator, from a support function to a strategic business partner and innovation engine. Here are three IT management dilemmas.  



Customer dilemma: Running a customer-centric IT organization is the goal, but are customers always right? IT has always gone through the dilemma of "customers are always right" vs. "rational approach in designing a solution." Customers are always demanding, and IT is already overloading. So what’s the right attitude in the face of customer dilemmas?  If IT always sees this as two conflicting forces pulling in opposite directions, you are most likely to get caught and always fall short of business and customer expectations. Instead of just taking the order, IT should turn on the ‘debugging mindset’ to do a root cause analysis. Get the customer to focus on the root cause and get away from a preconceived solution if you believe that the proposed solution is not the optimized solution for both the company and the customer. Discover what is at the heart of the problem, and suggest the solutions that will benefit the customer, the company and the overall direction of IT. Being customer-centric doesn’t mean IT should just take the order blindly, do what customers ask to do without the doubt. Instead, IT needs to play an advisory role in solving the problems more creatively, holistically and intellectually.
Talent dilemma: Shall you invest in your people? What happens if you invest in developing and training the people and then they leave? What happens if you don’t invest and they stay? IT skills gap is not a fiction, but a reality. With the digital dynamic and volatility of the economy, talented people flow around more frequently. There’s no doubt, organizations need to treat their people as human capital to invest in, but not necessarily through traditional approach, talent managers can leverage tailored leadership and talent development approach, as well as informal training to ensure you have a digital workforce with updated knowledge and skills, also build a culture of learning and improve employee engagement. Because employees without the right skills or not at their best performance levels will impact the quality of their work -not only win new and repeat businesses but also meet or exceed customer expectations. Therefore, you should develop your employees so that they can leave, but you should also treat them in a way that they wouldn't want to. As the old saying goes, people do not quit the job, they quit the bad bosses. It is the responsibility of the leadership to maintain and identify the needs of their employees. Influencing people and understanding to cater to their needs are the great qualities of the leaders. Develop the collective workforce capabilities so that they can do more for your organization. If you have these abilities, you can certainly know the right person to be trained and retained for the people-centric organization.
Agile Dilemma: Are managers happy, developers are unhappy or the other way around, if the organization applies Agile methodology? Agile is an emergent methodology to manage IT teams and projects, also a philosophy to run today’s digital organization. Can Agile make everyone - both management and development team happier, or only make one party happier, and the other one less happy? Compared to the traditional Waterfall methodology, will Agile help to improve team productivity, management effectiveness, and product quality? When applying in an effective way, Agile makes the team happier, because it provides more freedom and autonomy for them to explore, make changes as needed, get things done without too many hassles, and deliver value much earlier. The result-driven managers should also be happier if they do not get stuck with the “status quo” or micromanagement, and they should enjoy moving up the level of agile management discipline. The point is that the managers and the team need to have an Agile mindset before they work on a project. That is the biggest miss found in some organizations who say they are Agile, indeed, they only “do agile - take some agile practices,” without clarifying the set of agile principles and cultivating the agile culture to “Being agile.” The very meaning of Agile philosophy is to set the guidelines and build a highly productive and happy working environment for both individuals and teams; for both engineers and managers, with the result to bring happy customers as well.


Fundamentally, these are all IT’s innovation dilemma, to overcome silo thinking, drive changes and improvement, discover the root causes of the problems and pursue the better way of solving them, innovate IT management discipline, grow creative workforce, and improve IT maturity from functioning (keep the lights on), to firm (deliver service on time and budget,) to delight (customer satisfaction and employee engagement.)

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