Three Pitfalls in Problem-Solving

Problem-solving has a very wide scope and takes the interdisciplinary approach.

Human progress is fundamentally achieved via an iterative problem-solving scenario. Either individuals or businesses will be more successful when they realize that one of their greatest strengths will be their problem-solving capability. The art of problem-solving is that there are all sorts of problems and there are no one-size-fits-all solutions. The science of problem-solving is that there is the logic behind any problem, the more complex the problem is, the more important to leverage both analysis and synthesis for both breaking down the problems into smaller problems, as well as integrating different pieces of the puzzle to come up with a holistic solution without causing other problems or side effect. Here are three pitfalls in effective problem-solving.

Try to fix the wrong cause of a problem: Problem-solving includes both framing the right problem and solve it in the right way. A solution is nothing if the problem is not perceived comprehensively. Therefore, creating the awareness of the problem is the first step to making a solution be understood and accepted, realizing “We can't stay the same.” And people lacking the real critical thinking usually never question what is exactly the problem because "it's the way things should be." Problem-solving in the majority of organizations today is woefully inadequate. Often, events and patterns are observed on the surface, and then the action is taken to fix the symptom, but that is too early. After observing events and patterns, there are the underlying structures, the mechanisms, that cause the problem. There is a shortage of effective management which could be translated to the capacity shortage for both defining and solving the right problems. Often times, people have a tendency to try to fix a symptom which results from the actual cause of the problem. Until the underlying problem is addressed, the symptom will continue to return. When they do this, they throw good money after bad. They allow problems to grow under the surface, out of sight, out of mind, until it’s too late. There needs to be a better appreciation for problem-solving intelligence and capabilities, to examine a situation from multiple angles and develop new approaches. So, trying to fix the wrong cause of a problem will waste time and resources, increase anxiety, and reward mediocrity (even problem-creators). Problems that arise in organizations are almost always the product of interactions of parts, never the action of a single part. Complex problems often do not have simple solutions, some may look simple, but there is a lot of effort need to put in. So, the goal is to pursue an optimal solution to fix the real problem.

Lack of creativity for problem-solving, use the logic of yesterday to try fixing the emergent problems: Businesses fail most of the times because of too much dependence on analysis and one's temptation to keep on following the approach from the past which may have become irrelevant. We all have walked in the shoes and seen the problem or situation from the others’ point of view. At times, when you only want to see things from your own point of view- see what you want to see, or, hear-what-you-want-to-hear, often you miss the point to understand the real problem as well as how to solve it creatively. When problems arise, it’s usually best to pause and reflect before reacting, and it is so important to practice multi-dimensional thinking processes. Most decisions on problem-solving are based on ‘logic.’ However, the logic should be updated as well, to consider the emergent events and ever-changing circumstances. It is important to apply the deep critical thinking which includes many other thinking processes such as analysis, synthesis, creative thinking, strategic thinking, holistic thinking, etc., to scrutinize such a problem-solving logic. This requires one to slow down with the way they think; as some people are prone to immediately jump to conclusions based on what they see and not necessarily based on what they know or how they perceive, as well as how to leverage the different viewpoints. A complex problem rarely has a simple solution. 'There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong. We all build a reputation as a problem-creator, problem-framer, or creative problem-solver. In many situations, this will clarify the part you have played in the problem, and that’s a great place to start fixing it!

Focus on finger-pointing, not problem-solving: From the business management perspective, it is important to build the culture of problem-solving and leverage the limited resource, time and the best talent for solving problems collaboratively. First, the blaming culture should be erased from the individual’s mindset. To blame an individual department, who is merely a cog in the wheel, is ignorant. Blame is a destructive method and can further depress a company that is failing. The good leaders focus on solutions, not on blame. So as far as who is to blame, per se, anyone who contributes to the decline of an organization can own some fault it in its demise. Instead of finger-pointing, you have to sit together to build a solid strategic planning, break down silo thinking.  Effective leaders routinely zoom out to see the larger system and their part in the mess. It takes extraordinary discipline to carve out the time for this type of reflection and it is always important to develop the healthy habit of problem-solving.  You think critically when you begin to focus and delineate the factors associated with the problem. You will need to take a few steps back trying to get the real picture of what happened based on facts and figure out the best next move toward the right decisions.

Either for problem-solving and making collective progress. For humans to move to higher ground, we must have a different view, but share the common ground as well. To quote Russell Ackoff: 'The only problems that have simple solutions are simple problems." The only managers that have simple problems have simple minds. You can give most people skills easily when compared to trying to give/develop the ability, attitude, flexibility, intelligence, practicality, pragmatism for problem-solving. Problem-solving has a very wide scope and takes the interdisciplinary approach. It is important to focus on coordination and facilitation, build the culture of problem-solving and innovation.

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Three “I” Factors in Digital Innovation

Innovation happens only at the organization with the culture of learning to encourage idea sharing and risk-taking.

Digital era is the age of innovation. And digital innovation has the broader scope and three phases: Discovery of a problem or new idea, designing a prototype solution and the ultimate delivery of a commercially astute outcome. Innovation is not serendipity, but a systematic process to transform novel ideas and achieve their business values. At the enterprise scope, innovation management should focus on building a healthy innovation portfolio to establish business competency. Here are three “I” factors in digital innovation.

Information: Innovation as the management discipline covers information management, knowledge management, and technology transfer, entrepreneurship and it is closely related to several other disciplines. Compared to the industrial age with the scarcity of information, digital is the era of information abundance. Information is one of the most time intensive pieces to the innovation puzzle because there are some critical pieces of information needed for accelerating idea validation such as facts about business ideas, definition, benefits and shortcomings, applications, and competing technologies, as well as managing innovation flow effectively. Digital organizations as the information hub can become the hotbed to nurture and incubate great ideas, And the insight abstracted from information not only fuel creativity but also make creativity more tangible and embed creativity with other thought processes to produce the new knowledge. The effective information management enables the digital organizations to build dynamic capability for idea creation, selection, prioritization and improve the success rate of innovation management.

Interaction: Innovation happens only at the organization with the culture of learning to encourage idea sharing and risk-taking; innovation happens when the service people interact with customers; innovation happens when the team’s creativity is inspired and motivated by the leaders, who see, understand and appreciate the merits of different people. And you can feel the creative tension when you see it when you sense the freedom to be creative, the harmony not via compliance only, but through idea sharing and thinking differently. It is important to build a creative workplace which stimulates passion, encourages insightful cognitions, and inspire learning agility. Innovation will happen when people are given free space to be creative without rigid structures and without holding them back. if the working environment with delightful interaction is stimulating and challenging, and then the brain can thrive from new stimulus to generate new ideas. Through these healthy interactions, the innovation leaders can also identify their idea creators, idea facilitator, and idea implementers, and build a highly innovative team with complementary skills to expedite innovation delivery and improve innovation management effectiveness.

Implementation: From idea generation to innovation implementation - plan, do, check, act is not the scenario made of linear steps, but an iterative continuum in the digital era. If idea creation is more art than science, and then idea implementation is more science than art. The nature of how the implementation of the idea has to follow a logical path for the solution and provides a great opportunity for the digital organization to shine based on its scientific discipline. Digital innovation often evolves the full ecosystem or the methodological environment which covers the whole innovation management scenario, from processes in managing ideas or idea handling systems to idea implementation and promotion. Innovation Management is also situational, it should be managed top-down, bottom-up or middle out accordingly based on the innovation flavors and management styles. A highly innovative organization can leverage the robust, but not overly rigid processes for idea filtering an implementation, to improve innovation management efficiency and maturity.

For cracking serendipity code to achieve digital innovation premium, organizations should build a healthy working environment to encourage idea brainstorming, leverage effective information/knowledge/process management, and take the scientific approach to implement ideas. The key to the success of the innovation effort in an organization is to have the right people in place to manage information, enforce idea creation and interaction, and improve the success rate of innovation management.

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The Monthly Book Tuning “Digital IT: 100 Q&As”: Five “HOWs” in Digitizing IT July 2017

Debating is not for stimulating conflicts, but for brainstorming better ways to do things.

Due to the changing nature of technology, IT leadership role also continues to involve & shift the focus, to move up the maturity level. More and more CIOs are requested to take more responsibility and many CIOs present the breadth of leadership competency. The proactive IT debates help IT leaders to brainstorm innovative and better ways to do things and improve management capabilities.

Five “HOWs” in Digitizing IT

• How to Gauge the Success of IT Digital Transformation?As businesses embark on the “Digital Era” of computing and managing, the digital has become ’normality,’ and almost everyone now feels at ease with digital technology, but also feels a bit overwhelming about the exponential growth of information. As the steward of information and technology in the organization, IT is always in the changing environment creating unexpected situations and requiring quick and appropriate responses based on the conditions. So how to shift IT from the reactive support function to a proactive digital engine of the company? And How to gauge the success of IT digital transformation?

• How to Set Right Priorities for IT Digital transformation? With increasing speed of changes and overwhelming growth of information, IT can no longer keep static to run as a support function only. Today's IT plays a more crucial role in discovering a path to strategy building, implementation, and innovation. Business/IT leaders should also realize the breakthrough success in digital businesses requires not only forward-thinking strategies but also having a step-wise approach. But more specifically, how to set the right priorities for making a digital transformation of the company?

• How to Rebuild Trust between IT and Business ? IT plays an unprecedented role in modern organizations today, information is the lifeblood of business; and digital technology is often the innovation disruptor. However, there is still a lack of trust relationship between business-IT, within IT or between IT and vendors. Is it because most of the businesses still perceive their IT organizations as a cost center or help desk, rarely invite IT to the big table to co-create strategy? Is it because IT speaks the technology jargons the business doesn’t understand, or IT plays as a gatekeeper, not an enabler for taking advantage of the latest digital technology trend. Is it also because nowadays technology vendors walk around IT to directly sell their SaaS solutions to the business functions? What are some effective ways to build/rebuild trust in the IT organization? What are the considerations for the non-IT organizations to gain the trust from IT? What are the considerations for a service provider to gain the trust of IT organizations?

• How to Weave IT into Corporate Strategy? Most companies have no effective strategy. That is mostly because organizations lack focus and clarity on what they do. Rare business is ready to cognize itself and achieve self-consciousness (develop a strategy), and perhaps its leaders are also a lack of self-reflection upon who they really are. Thus,  this is not because of business - this is because of human nature. In order to reach higher business maturity, how to craft a good corporate strategy and how to weave IT into a business strategy to deliver high performing result?

• How Important an Information System can be in Digital Business Success? At the industrial era, the majority of IT organizations are supporting functions to keep the business light on; the cost center to maintain legacy applications and infrastructure, and the gatekeeper to control status quo. Nowadays IT and its value implication to the business have changed drastically; information becomes the lifeblood of digital business, and digital technology is lightweight but more powerful than ever. The question is –How important an information system can be in today, can you separate technology from an information system in order to achieve the intended results? And how to make Information Management as 'powerful' and 'worthy' to an organization as possible?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with 3900+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes 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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Introduction

Chapter 1 Digital IT Leadership Q&A

Chapter 2 Digital IT Fitness Q&A

Chapter 3 Digital IT Innovation Paradox Q&As

Chapter 4 Digital IT Management Dilemmas

Chapter 5 Digital IT Potential Q&As

Chapter 6 Digital IT Priority Q&As

Chapter 7 IT-Business Gap Q&As

Chapter 8 Digital IT Performance Q&As

Chapter 9 IT Branding Q&As


Chapter 10: Digital IT Talent Management Q&As

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Enforcing Three Fundamental Business Factors for Improving Business Maturity

The journey of improving business maturity is more evolutionary than revolutionary.

Forward-looking organizations are reaching the inflection point from doing digital to being digital, from being digitally disrupted to be a digital disrupter. Digital Maturity matters, because digital transformation discipline is not just about some stand-alone initiatives, it requires a vision for 'WHY' and a solid strategy for "WHAT" and "HOW" you want to transform radically. Companies are gradually opening up to the next practice to enforce digital ways and build up digital competency with a set of unique capabilities. More specifically, how to enforce these fundamental elements of the business: People, process, and technology, in order to expedite change and improve business maturity.

Organizational structure and business process tuning: The forward-looking organizations always continue to learn and strike the right balance between “old” and “new” way to do things and keep building a differentiated set of capabilities. Digital is the age of customer-centricity, seeing the customer as a highly integrated part of the organization’s processes. Digital business processes become more customer-centric or customer value-driven process orientation. Processes define how basic and routine functions are executed consistently across the organization to implement the strategy. Any existing business function that is in conflict with a dynamic digital strategy is an issue, and the processes associated with that function are therefore problematic. Thus, tuning organizational structures and business processes become a continuous journey to improve business efficiency and organizational maturity. You can optimize the company's processes, implement process automation, implementation and monitoring which will eventually enhance and improve an organization’s efficiency; which would increase its productivity and profit in the market. It helps in reduction of time to market, improved customer satisfaction, achieved cost efficiency and maximize revenue. Moreover, it helps in reducing waste through value stream design, management system design, employee empowerment and enhancing digitized operations.

IT-business integration: The digital CIO is an inherently cross-functional role, to help bridge the business and technology, the information and wisdom, the organization and the digital ecosystem, the silo industrial age and the digital era. IT proactively works as an integral part of the business to capitalize on opportunities via leading the transformation, or IT delivers the tailored solutions to the business problems which meet the business’s requirement or satisfy customers' needs. To improve the overall organizational maturity, IT needs to keep moving forward from IT-business alignment to the IT-business integration stage. Therefore, the top management team should work on identifying opportunities for enhancing IT- business relationship and clarify strategies and business goals, empower IT leaders to drive changes and take the step-wise approach to lead the digital transformation. The high integration of business and IT can improve the overall organizational responsiveness, effectiveness, performance, speed, and maturity.

People’s attitude and professional maturity are an important success factor to drive changes and catalyze digital evolution: Many leading organizations are reaching the inflection point for digital transformation. It’s the act of inflecting or the state of being inflected. The inflection point is the moment when the way business is being conducted changes more radically, it creates new opportunities for businesses that adept at executing and operating. It's the time to be more aggressive to expedite and also the time to be more cautious to avoid pitfalls. As our digitized world becomes hyper-connected, over-complex and interdependent, from leadership development and talent management perspective, the advanced digital workforce should continue to depoliticize working culture, dismantle bureaucracy, solve business problems via multidimensional thinking and multiple choice of solutions. High-Quality digital leaders and professionals can make sound judgments and effective decisions; who are clear about their responsibility and added value in the organization and the world, and who have the expertise and integrity to substantiate what they stand for, who works according to the principles, but with the courage to break the rule, if it’s out of date. There is also an increasing focus on cultural elements and behaviors in the organizations and how that affects the organizational effectiveness and maturity. Organizations need to pay more attention to creating shared and admirable goals and then encourage the teams to compete and collaborate as they deem fit. Clear- define digital principles and specific expected behaviors and provide a framework in which to operate (strategy, structure, people, processes, and rewards) that supports those behaviors. If you are truly interested in culture change then you need to understand how cultures evolve to dramatically accelerate the digital transformation and to increase the likelihood of sustainable change. When high-competitive teams laser focuses on the shared goals of the organization, they compete professionally and complement (when needed) towards the attainment of the shared goals and that creates a conducive environment for the collective potential to unleash and collective capability to flourish.

The journey of improving business maturity is more evolutionary than revolutionary. It is necessary for the coherent use of various already known concepts. It is certainly critical to put the stronger emphasis on empowering people, the source of knowledge, innovations/adaptations and customer centricity. It is not easy to calculate the ROI especially on soft competency, it takes the time to monitor and prove it. There is no magic formula to improve the digital maturity of the business. It takes practices, practices, and practices more to enforce digital processes and sharpen all crucial business success factor to get digital ready.

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 7/28/2017

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2 million page views with 3900+ 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” 7/28/2017

• CIOs as “Chief Innovation Officer”: How to Improve Organizational Innovation Maturity  Many say digital is the age of innovation. Today, innovation can happen anywhere, anytime; it expands both horizontally and vertically. It’s the business’s unique capability to gain a competitive advantage in the face of fierce competitions and business dynamic. More fundamentally, it’s the state of mind to think and do things from a new angle. Innovation is no longer “nice to have,” but “Must Have” differentiated capability of the organizations who want to stay competitive on the market. However, innovation management has a very low success rate, how to manage innovation effectively and improve the organizational innovation maturity?

• Discover Three Hidden Gems to Shine Through Digital Transformation Journey: We are in a time of tremendous change, the dawn of digital age, the path to next level of innovation, also the era of confusion and information overload. Digital businesses nowadays are fast, always “on,” highly connected, interdependent, and ultra-competitive. They have to continue to discover their strengths, build differentiated capabilities and unleash their collective potential in order to build the competitive business advantage. Here are three hidden gems to help them shine through the journey of digital transformation.

• The “Talk the Walk” in the Boardroom: How to Communicate Well and Make Good Policies The purpose of the board of directors is to direct the organization in the right direction and monitor its performance. The modern digital board has many responsibilities, such as leadership advising, strategy oversight, governance practices, performance monitor, and resource provision. The board directors as senior directorial roles have both privilege and responsibility to “talk the walk,” communicate thoroughly via multiple channels, abstract the insight from the variety of experiences, multidisciplinary knowledge and all sorts of feedback, set digital principles and make good policies to guide digital transformation smoothly.

• Three “P” Factors for Assessing Digital Fitness: Digital fit starts with people fit. People are always the weakest link in organizations. So, part of the digital transformation journey is to prepare people for the new paradigm shift and to recognize this is a crucial step. The point is that how you know for sure that people being called “talent,” are really fit, how do you know you are putting the right people in the right position to solve the right problems? Here are three “P” factors for evaluating digital fitness.

• The Digital CIO’s Scoreboard Due to the overwhelming growth of information and disruptive nature of technology, IT becomes more and more significant in driving organizational changes and catalyzing business transformation. Digital IT leaders today must have the right mindset, skillset, and toolset to lead change in a structural way. From IT performance management perspective, You can only manage what you measure, IT Executive scoreboard is an effective tool to enable executives and leadership team to improve management of IT via quantifiable and qualitative data. IT Executive Scorecard should have pre-built key performance indicators that reflect best practice measurement areas across IT holistically. But more specifically, how to build an effective IT management scoreboard and set the right performance indicators for evaluating overall IT management health and improving IT organization maturity?

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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The “Change Agent” Board of Directors

Leadership or directorship is about setting directions and inspiring changes.

Change is the only constant, and the speed of change is increasing rapidly. The board directors should become interactive change agents that represent the organization, stockholders, and senior management, make a significant influence on setting digital tones and shaping the digital mindset of the organization, both walk the talk and talk the walk and set the digital tone for others to follow.

The board of directors set policies and principles for changes and digital transformation: Change is the new normal, and the speed of change is increasing, without well-preparation, major changes in an organization’s ecosystem can have unforeseen consequences that negatively impact the company’s productivity and performance. More than 70% of Change Management effort fails to achieve the expected result. Thus, it is important to bring the CHANGE wave to the boardroom as well. Digital leaders including board directors should contemplate the big "WHY" and know the dynamic of change and adapt to the ever-evolving business circumstances. Change leadership at the board level is important because change management is an interdependent ecosystem that includes many business factors such as, the company goals, policies, internal control requirements, customer experience improvements/customer satisfaction, etc., all should be synchronized without compromising the need for any item. The well-setting policies and procedures for managing changes should help to track every process, every expenditure of time, money, or energy, and every assignment of resources directly relate back to the "Why," to ensure change is not for its own sake, or add the new layer of complexity, but improve business effectiveness and performance.

Strike the right balance of “Push” and “Pull” in Change Management: Change is the new norm and happens the whole time thereby delivering faster and increasing market share. Change is a dance between the top management and the affected parts of the organization. Change Management goes hand-in-hand with Strategy Management, the board oversee strategy, and it should also evolve change oversight to ensure smooth strategy management, to enhance the effective communication and deep engagement around change. Change is driven by a combination of the “pull” of the leadership and the “push” of the self-managed teams. There is a distinction between types of organizational change - incremental and transformative. An organization can be observed to have a predominant change culture that is inherent in their approaches, tools, and resourcing. To achieve that, the change agent BoDs need to gain deep insight into how things work just by analyzing the aggregates (not necessary to dive into the details). Change cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the organization, with the guideline from top leadership and policy setting via the board directorship.

Directors of the board with the change mind are more skillful to ask ‘right’ questions:  Asking good and pertinent questions are critical for governing changes so the directors would have to be able to quickly assess any numbers and facts they are given, against applicable benchmarks and detect relevant hints for further questioning or confirmation.  The board directors as “change agent” can ask more skillful questions to scrutinize change effectiveness, especially for large-scale business transformation:  Do the senior leaders truly understand the time and impact on the organization, do they have the intestinal fortitude to hold up to corrections in the face of quarterly earnings report pressure? Do the business possess the ability, will, and discipline to cope with change along the way, no matter what happens? Do businesses build change as an ongoing capability? A change agent board has the advantage of pulling enough resources and pushing the business model of technology, trustworthiness, prepare and launch change, innovation, and mastering with digital fluency to make profound leadership influence.

Leadership or directorship is about setting directions and inspiring changes. Change Management has a very wide scope and is a relatively new area of expertise, it needs to focus on coordination and facilitation, follow the right set of principles and take the best or next digital practices.

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CIOs as "Chief Innovation Officer": The Digital Traits of Digital CIOs

The role of modern CIO is to identify and blend the ways that information and technology can assist and shape the business by linking all digital aspects together to enforce the business value creation.

Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing businesses, To stay competitive, companies must go beyond just experimenting with some digital technologies and commit to transforming themselves into a fully digital business powerhouse. Due to the exponential growth of information and frequent technology update, IT plays a pivotal role in leading a digital transformation in their organizations. Traditional CIOs who act as the tactical IT managers and controller’s mentality can no longer fit in the digital dynamic today, Digital CIOs should have digital traits and wide range skill set to become the top business leader and lead digital transformation smoothly.

The CIO’s business acumen on the rise: The role of modern CIO is to identify and blend the ways that information and technology can assist and shape the business by linking all digital aspects together to enforce the business value creation. CIOs tend to have a unique overview of the organization that can only be an advantage. Unfortunately, too many CIOs are seen as just techies by the business side of the house, and the business partners see CIOs as tactical IT managers who speak different languages and don't have enough hands-on business experience. If CIOs only talk about 'features' rather than 'benefits,' focus on IT efficiency rather than on business effectiveness, and don't invest in learning the business and advocate innovation, you are just the support managers running a cost center. Hence, in order to be an effective Digital CIO, you must understand every aspect of the business. Especially for those IT ranked CIOs, it is important to learn the business and gain an in-depth understanding of end customers as well. CIO must find the connection with the business in order to deliver the tailored business solution. Setup idea forums to engage the business and build business liaisons proactively to help shape the problem or opportunity. Make IT more shared, integrated, lightweight, responsive, flexible, reliable, and fast. Communicate with common business language to bridge the gap between business talks and IT talks and digital CIOs are responsible for making sure that the IT meets the business requirements, works as the strategic partner of the business and makes the continuous delivery with faster speed.

The magic “I” in CIO’s title represents as INNOVATION: Nowadays, due to fierce competitions and rapid changes, business doesn't have a choice of innovation. They can choose to direct it rather than just let it happen. Innovation becomes the “must have” differentiated business capability to gain the business advantage for the long term. IT should move the mantra from “doing more with less,” to “doing more with innovation.” Businesses are looking for IT to introduce new practices for innovation management because information is the gold mine of the business and technology is often the digital disruptor. IT is, in fact, one of the most critical ingredients in building the business’s differentiate capabilities and improving organizational level maturity. When looking at business/organizations, the most powerful of these processes involves tapping the organization's ecosystem (people-centricity) for the collective perspectives/insights of those who makeup and know intimately their parts of the system. Either Information & Technology or innovation as a general concept is the means to the end, it should either benefit your customers or your employees. Innovation is certainly messy but would you agree that it is a key requirement in IT given all the moving parts and strategic changes that happen in business. Being innovative is a state of mind, IT leaders need to be equipped with such a mindset to cultivate the culture of creativity and manage a healthy “run, growth, and transform” IT portfolio, enable the business to adapt, improve, grow and integrate,  assess problems and come to solutions in novel ways

Every CIO is unique: Like all digital leaders today, CIOs should discover WHO they are and WHY they want to lead.  Each of the senior managers has a different view of the job, what it will take to be successful, and how the goals are measured. How CIOs provide the appropriate leadership and how they convey to leverage IT for business value depends on CIOs' vision and leadership strength and style. Do not just blindly follow others or the industrial best practices only, build your own unique mindset, skillset, and toolset for practicing situational leadership. Every CIO is different and whatever the management team needs or wants at the time out of the CIO will also be different, and by type of business needs will be different as well. It’s whether you can be what is needed at the time and execute to those expectations. Unique CIOs are often outlier visionaries who are good at the perception of technology trend, business solution or alternative talent pipeline. Every CIO is unique, every leader is also unique, the leadership roles such as CIO need to share the unique point of view, to break down conventional wisdom and lead their organization up toward the next growth cycle and catalyze business transformation.

Digital organizations as the information hub can become the hotbed to nurture and incubate great ideas, to design robust, but not overly rigid processes and dynamic capability for digital transformation. CIOs need to be strategic business leaders first, and tactical IT managers second. Modern CIOs with digital traits can lead more as conductors than constructors, with the ability to connect IT capabilities to business strategy, focus on integration and orchestration,

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Can You Explore the “Blue Ocean” in Your Mind?

The profound mind is like the deep ocean.

Our mind is a complex system of complex systems and many of them are very difficult to understand and grasp. Like the blue ocean, often hard to predict, but full of treasures and mysteries. The thoughts piled with thoughts also like the waves cascaded with waves to push forward on the sea.

On a bigger scale, there is the thought that we are creating our experience moment to moment, bringing our reality into existence as we go, just like those thinking rivers and thought streams merging into the sea. It evolves all sort of thought processes and creates strong brainstorms. The point is that, as the digital professional today, can you explore the blue ocean in your mind?

Creativity flourishes in solitude: Just like the ocean, our mind can be calm and beautiful, but it is never still, creativity flourishes in such a solitude. With quietness, you can hear your thoughts, you can reach deep within yourself, you can stay focus. Human creativity has a quintessential facet with the integration of multiple thought processes. Thinking things differently and making imagination roll into reality is creativity. Creativity is not just about being knowledgeable because creativity is at the intersection of knowledge and imagination, and it is able to expand the boundaries of knowledge. Creativity happens in both unconscious and conscious level as well. Creativity is sparked by an implicit rather than explicit underbelly of knowledge. Creativity is all about change. Creativity is a higher level of communicating or perceiving the beauty and balance of natural creation, or what being called the law and source of the natural phenomena. Creativity can start on an unconscious level (just like many miracles happens under the sea), and then when ideas start shaping, it is brought into our conscious awareness. Therefore, it is important to create conditions so that the creative potential can manifest, and innovative ideas can be incubated. It is surely not about “boiling the ocean,” but creating a healthy ecosystem for nurturing creativity and making innovation blossom.

Systems thinking, and thinking, in general, is more about discovery: Digital professionals today need to learn how to explore the variety of thinking in their mind, just like taking the adventurous journey to explore the blue ocean. You can dive into the underneath ocean for discovering unique creatures or precious treasures. Systems Thinking or thinking, in general, is about discovery, to understand things with widely different perspectives and what the holistic system looks like. It is the thinking process to understand the interconnectivity of parts and the whole and see the connections around us. It allows us to embrace uncertainty, identify interconnections and interdependencies, understand flows or the lack of them, and identify emergent business opportunities. It encourages looking at the wider aspects around any problem space and then understanding the effect of imposing boundaries within that space, in order to frame the right problem and solve it in a systematic way. Just like the journey to discover the deep ocean, System thinking provides better and more accurate understanding of the overall situation and problems, and hence better defining the problems and subsequently how you should go about solving them and in what sequence!

From linear to nonlinear thinking could be evolutionary: The concept of "non-linear" thinking as a concept is representative of what you term emergent properties. The digital world today with “VUCA” new normal is just like the blue ocean, not always calm, but full of turbulence and unpredictability. The reason linear thinking is in many cases, not so effective for solving the complex problem because there is always a temptation to use simple linear models to understand highly complex, nonlinear scenarios. So many people do not know how to connect the dots within complex systems, nor think dynamically, inclusively, and holistically. The route from linear to nonlinear thinking could be evolutionary. At the beginning, you often make a one-dimensional, linear, arithmetic concept of accumulation, but at the end, when you have gone through the mufti-dimensional analysis or process, nonlinear thinking helps you understand things systematically, to embrace the emergent changes or properties, comprehend dynamics, inductions or deductions, understand variables, interfaces, and interaction. One characteristic of nonlinear systems is that small changes can have large impacts. There is flexibility, abstract, and pliability in the concept of a system and system of systems.

The profound mind is like the deep ocean. Digital thinking is like the running river, or live steam, keep flowing, keep open, keep cleansing; keep touching, to prepare for merging into the sea. It allows the mind to seek new possibility or emergent trends. It requires that we move from mind SET to mind FLOW, from fixed mind to growth mind. What is needed right now is continuous change and flexibility of our mind, completely away from being set in a fixed way, to put another way, we have to learn how to explore the blue ocean of the mind, adapt to the changes and take the journey of digital transformation as a discovery journey.

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