Lift the business up to the Hyper-cycle of Digital Transformation

From doing digital to being digital needs to take a lot of brainstorming, thought-out planning, and structural actions.

Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice. "Change" can be a somewhat mechanical implementation of new or different ways of doing something while the digital transformation is more likely to be a sweeping approach to altering a system or parts of it. Running a digital business is complex because all things do interact, particularly in the case of nonlinear interactions and interdependent relationships. How to overcome barriers and lift the business up to the hyper-cycle of business transformation?

Deburearcacry: Generally speaking, business management is about creating orders from chaos. The larger the organization and inputs are, the larger the amount of 'rules' are necessary for its functions to keep dependent variables and deliver stable output. Traditional management discipline brings a certain level of business efficiency. However, it is criticized by the lack of system perspective, encourage bureaucracy with characteristics such as inflexibility, inefficiency, silo, stagnation, unresponsiveness, or lack of creativity, etc. From the management perspective, in many cases, business managers don’t understand their ever-evolving dynamic business environment because they never look outside the problems boundaries. However, to keep information flow, business dynamic, and enforce the hyper growth cycle, the organization must step out of their comfort zone, flatten the overly rigid hierarchy, and battle bureaucracy which often stifles changes and creates bottlenecks for cross-functional communication and collaboration. Digital businesses are hyperconnected and interdependent, thus, business optimization and integration need to be done with a “big picture” - keep the business architecture in mind and make the business synchronized to ensure that every part of the organization operates in harmony to take a digital leap. Digital organizations are like living things which keep growing, they need to be in flow to operate smoothly. The more effortlessly you can guide, align, integrate, and optimize important business elements such as people, process, and technology, the closer you can accelerate business performance and lift the business up to the hyper-cycle of digital transformation.

Demystify innovation: Innovation is to have a new perspective on things, and it is the process that transforms novel ideas or knowledge into business value. Being competitive will have an innovation component, a new capability that unlocks a new market or revenue stream. Organizations should ideally have a sustainable approach to manage innovation, with a structured process and a set of practical tools for reaching high performance, making the profit, saving of resources, gaining the satisfaction of customers, or making collective progress etc. The business needs innovation silver lining from specific tools rising to an overall problem-solving system environment, and expand its influence with the ability to co-create and amplify innovation effect in a dynamic digital ecosystem. The challenge is how to get out of the daily burden and spend more resources and time on innovation-related activities. Exploring the business innovation should fully cover wide enough directions, and ultimately discover the path to demystify innovation and walk through the innovation labyrinth smoothly. Businesses which are able to innovate successfully at a breakthrough level and manage a balanced innovation portfolio with the right mix of incremental innovation and radical innovation can increase the likelihood that they will prosper in exploring blue ocean new business model or market and lift their business up to the hyper-cycle of digital transformation.

Delight people: Consider the world as to self-organized but interlaced environments, and humans are vehicles of natural and cultural solutions. Organizations are made by people and run for people. Thus, people are essentially the most important creative engine to lift the business up to the hyper-cycle of digital transformation. Investing and delighting people is critical for unleashing the potential of the business. People are always the weakest link in organizations, but the most invaluable asset and capital to invest in the business. The part of the digital transformation journey is actually to prepare people for the new structures and to recognize this is a crucial step. Thus, people development is crucial for the business’s long-term success. People should be encouraged to take initiatives of stepping outside of the box, seeking additional knowledge and experience, brainstorming fresh ideas, and focusing on the learning opportunities provided by assignment, rather than on the status quo. In fact, an employee's "book value" can be viewed as a function of what investments have been made in them and how they bring higher-than-expected business value.

From doing digital to being digital needs to take a lot of brainstorming, thought-out planning, and structural actions. The purpose of going digital is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of business performance for the long run. Ideally, the digital organizations are like the self-adaptive system which is able to re-configure their own structure and change their own behavior with its adaptation to environmental changes and lift the business up to the hyper-cycle of digital transformation.

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The Monthly “Dot Connections”: Digital Attitude Dot Connection Feb. 2019

The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Organization of the Future is an organization designed openly for anyone with ideas on how human organizations ought to be contrived in the face of the strategic imperatives of the digital era. The work is not the place you go, but a live organization and an experiment lab you can connect the future dots.

        Digital Attitude Dot Connection

Positivity vs. Optimism? Optimism comes from the Latin word Optimus, meaning "best," which describes how an optimistic person is always looking for the best in any situation and expecting good things to happen. Optimism is the tendency to believe, expect or hope that things will turn out well. A positive mental attitude is focused on strength, opportunities, and inspired actions. It is about being your best, not beating another in a negative way.

Egotism vs. Egoism The word ego means a 'sense of self,' which means that you are aware of your physical, mental, and emotional presences. Ego is an interesting world with both positive and negative connotations. Originally, Freud used the word ego to mean a sense of self... Ego-awareness is the ability to know that one is consciously making decisions.

Confidence vs. Arrogance Confidence is one of the most important leadership qualities to overcome challenges and deal with criticisms. Confidence is about having the right dose of ego to show self-respect, self-worth, self-esteem, self-awareness or self-actualization; but not about the overdose of ego showing arrogance or egotism. The management guru Peter Drucker has pointed out the greatest impedance to organizational success is too much ego or arrogance. This can be seen to encompass hubris. So, from the leadership perspective: What are the differences between confidence and arrogance? And how to become confident, not arrogant though?

Likability vs. Respect vs. Trust Respect is based on being trustworthy and authentic. Likeability is subjective, people often like people who are similar to themselves, or have a certain charisma. Being likable or popular does not always earn you respect. Trust starts with respecting. There are differences between likeability vs. respect. vs. trust.

Persuasion vs. Manipulation "Persuasion is the action or fact of persuading someone or of being persuaded to do or believe something." "Manipulation is the skillful handling, controlling or using of something or someone. " (dictionary.com) Persuasion is not manipulation, but whether the one is more negative than the other depends on who is making the assessment, and what’s the best way to solve the problem. Is persuasion more informative and manipulation more forceful?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with about #5300th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 25 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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Taking a Systematic Approach to Lead Change and Drive Digital Transformation

Digital transformation efforts need to be undertaken as the means of getting to a designated different capability to accomplish a defined goal and manage a seamless digital continuum.

With overwhelming growth of information and continuous disruptions, looking forward is not always so easy, often it’s cloudy. Driving progressive change is even more difficult. The most complex topic during transformation is how to deal with uncertainty especially when you change many things such as people, processes, culture, systems, and organization as the whole at the same time. It is a complicated moment for all people in the organization at all levels and at the same time. How to take a systematic approach to lead changes and drive digital transformation smoothly?

Make structural inquiries: Change without good reason and adding value is futile and useless. Asking questions, besides telling is an important tool to build consensus and make a positive change. To lead change systematically, do not just ask one or two random questions, ask them in a structural way continually. Before jumping into big “HOW,” the big “WHY” and “WHAT” sort of questions help to clarify the purpose and goals of changes; also help people envision the preferred future that will influence them in the present, and pull them into that direction. Digital organizations are like living systems interwoven by many interdependent systems. Framing the right set of questions helps business leaders and teams become aware of the other "systems" that they interact with and the relationships between these systems, such as: “What is the bigger picture here?" "How is your current problem or goal related to your team, departmental, organizational, or industry context?" Lead by questions. Business leaders and managers do not just provide answers, more importantly, they should evoke more questions to deepen the understanding, and they should facilitate to get collective feedback and embrace multiple answers to the questions. It's not a matter of whether you should ask or tell. It's important to do what is right in a situation and discuss things as appropriate.

Leverage multiple perspectives: To explore the emerging digital horizon with multilayers of nonlinear business relationships, marketing dynamics, hyperconnectivity, and interdependence, it’s important to step outside of the system and adopt different perspectives to gain an in-depth understanding of interrelationships rather than isolated things, understanding patterns of changes rather than static snapshots, get to know the external changing connected environment or the entire business ecosystem. Systems Thinking engenders new perspectives or actions as part of the process of creating a cross-disciplined understanding of the business, and focus on managing a portfolio of relevant cross-border strategic synergies and business interdependence with the appropriate mix of enabling organizational elements and maintaining the right level of digital balance. It ensures that the enterprise is connected to all appropriate eco-system, lattice or otherwise, touch points, for improving knowledge flow and catalyzing business change and growth.

Make good assumptions: To deal with high velocity, unprecedented uncertainty, and dynamic business new normal, business leaders and professionals have to challenge automatic assumptions or some industry best practices because they might be already outdated, some new information and emerging events keep evolving. Perhaps you will never have complete information for strategic decision-making. It’s critical to gain a contextual business understanding, look for something “hidden,” which is not always obvious, read between the lines, in order to eliminate pre-conceptual assumptions or unconscious bias. It’s also important to leverage Systems Thinking for making necessary and logical assumptions which are based on some important bits and bytes of information and knowledge-based perception, discover interconnectivity and interdependence, in order to evaluate a new market, new technology or any business growth opportunity, and steer the business forward with cautiously optimistical way.

Encourage creative brainstormings: In a high mature digital organization, the majority of the employees at all levels are open to new ideas, experimenting with new ways of doing things to spark innovation. Digital adaptation is faster if made with the full involvement of people by breaking down silos and communication barriers such as outdated processes, procedures, practices, etc. People can take initiatives to step outside of the box, seek additional knowledge and experience, brainstorm fresh ideas, and focus on the learning opportunities provided by assignment, rather than on the status quo. Business management leverages feedback mechanism, builds multiple pathways for enforcing communication effectiveness and impact, inspires creativity, and instills positive energy. The collective creativity is not just a sum of creative pieces, but the creative competency of the business for making meaningful business achievement and leading the organization up to the next level of the growth cycle and innovation maturity.

Solve problems systematically: Change is never for its own sake. Fundamentally, making changes and running businesses are the problem-solving continuum. Generally speaking, a problem is a difference between an expectation (vision or intention) and the actual situation (current reality) coupled with a negative feeling, there are some issues need to be fixed. It’s important to take a structural way of identifying the root causes and solving problems effectively. More specifically, the business management should determine why problems happened; how problems escalated; which areas of the organization were affected; develop a sound process to identify and prioritize alternative solutions, test every assumption if possible, and weighing in varying factors to come up with the premium solution. Many of today’s problems are not isolated, it’s also helpful for leveraging Systems Thinking to identify multiple, perhaps interconnected problems, so later, the business can figure out the holistic solution to fix them without too much side effect.

Digital transformation efforts need to be undertaken as the means of getting to a designated different capability to accomplish a defined goal and manage a seamless digital continuum. It's important to leverage systems thinking for understanding the variety of business relationship, take logic processes and stepwise scenario for leading changes and driving digital transformation in a more structural way.

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The Monthly CIO Debates Collection & “Digital IT” Book Tuning: How to Keep IT Fresh Feb. 2019

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 better ways to do things and improve management capabilities. Here are the monthly CIO debates collections about how to run a high-performance digital IT organization.

          

How to Keep IT Fresh

How to Keep IT “Fresh” and Get Digital Ready? The majority of IT organizations are perceived as monolithic, isolated, and stereotypical support centers with heavyweight hardware boxes, focus on “keeping the business lights on.” IT running in an industrial mode as a business controller or a restraint no longer fits in the dynamic business circumstances or volatile digital new normal. Digital transformation represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. To build IT reputation as the business partner, IT leaders should ask themselves on how to keep IT “Fresh,” and get digital ready.

How to Set Digital IT Change Agenda? Digital businesses become more dynamic and hyperconnected, change is the new normal with faster pace and velocity. IT faces an unprecedented opportunity to refine its reputation, also needs to take more responsibility as a true business partner. CIOs have to get the IT change agenda ready, have access to both internal and external resources for achieving the desired ROI and running high-performance digital IT organization. IT needs to proactively participate in business conversations. Change is not for its own sake, every change needs to have a noble business purpose and a well-set business agenda. Change is a dance between the top management and the affected parts of the organization, and change is an ongoing business capability.?

Why Is so Hard for Running IT “Out of the Comfort Zone” Technology is pervasive, information is growing exponentially. Business transformation or change initiatives today nearly always involves some form of information and technology. All forward-thinking organizations across the industries claim they are in the information management business. To adapt to the increasing speed of changes, organizations have to be more nimble about updating technology and managing information effectively. Hence, IT organizations today can no longer get stuck at the lower level of maturity to keep the lights on only or get struggling to make an alignment with the business. Digital IT organization must get “out of the comfort zone,” to explore better ways of running IT as a trusted business partner, proactive change agent, and hyper-connected innovation hub. "Continual improvement" is the IT mantra in the digital era.

Why is So Critical for Running IT as a Change Agent In the industrial age, IT is often perceived as the department which is slow to change, acts as a controller only, and gets stuck at the lower level of maturity. However, nowadays, with increasing speed of change and exponential growth of information, IT is like the business's digital engine, CIOs are accountable for critical part of the business that is constantly changing and evolving and IT is also in a position to dig through underlying functions and processes of the businesses. Therefore, it is imperative to speed up IT and run it as a change organization of the business for accelerating digital transformation.

How to Run Differentiated IT to Reach the Zenith of Digital Maturity? IThe majority of IT organizations today still limit their role as a support center to keep the lights on. Bottom line thinking is one of the great limitations of the modern IT organization. The true IT value is hard to derive from support services since measuring productivity can be elusive and difficult to quantify. Also, with explosive information flow and disruptive digital technologies, all forward-thinking organizations claim they are in the information management businesses. Hence, IT as an information steward of the business has to be run as a strategic partner and a key differentiator of the company, in order to improve business competency and reach the zenith of digital maturity.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with 5300+ 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 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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Design Thinking and Problem-Solving

The purpose of design thinking is common sense thinking involving the right people in the solution; finding the simplest and best value solution that fits for the purpose.

Fundamentally, running a business or living a meaningful life is a problem-solving continuum. Problem-solving is a multi-stepped process that includes both problem resolution and solution implementation. Digital is the era of people, option, or simply put, "personalization." It is the age to connect the dots between science and arts; analytics and intuition, logic and design thinking in order to solve problems unconventionally and deliver products or service from functioning to delight.

Design thinking is a type of problem-solving mindset: The traditional problem-solving approach is usually analytical, break down the bigger problems to the smaller pieces in order to be understood, and solve them step by step. What is significant about the rise in Design Thinking is that it provides a counterpoint to the analytical, to help solve problems creatively. Design Thinking is not linear; it is NOT dedicated to perpetuating the status quo. The best-practice methodologies are mainstream in the industrial age. But design thinking is not predicated on following a single method. At its core, it is not the kind of thinking that got you into whatever mess you're in the first place, it encourages different types of thinking for solving problems creatively. There are different tools and ways which you may or may not use to bang away at the issues, focus on constantly building collective competency to think critically, solving problems creatively, understanding things systemically and engaging in conversations using a type of design thinking with a strategic mindset.

Leverage design thinking to reframe the problem and solving it creatively: The "methodologies" being put into the design thinking bucket are somewhat unique and previously outside of the business norm, but have the potential to reframe the problem which in itself is a pretty huge contribution. The art, design, and humanities are interconnected, teach people how to recognize patterns, perceive invisible behind the scenes, and solve problems in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. This is not to say that Design Thinking is a panacea. It's not. But it helps to think of problem-solving as being on a continuum with analytical, traditional business-thinking on one end and Design Thinking on the other end. Smart business leaders know this and balance their organizations with both types of the problem-solving scenario for running an innovative business.

Design thinking addresses problems in a non-linear way that is more in keeping up with the pace of technology and updated methodologies or practices: Design starts with a need and tests the solutions with experimentation. The purpose of design thinking is to think about how to address a problem creatively; to organize and facilitate ideas; to mapping from here to there and the stops and steps in between. While doing actual work using Design Thinking, you must end with solutions, but you do need to understand that those solutions may come through back doors and side windows. Therefore, always be careful about examining the potential points of engagement, rather than jumping to the “we'll fix this" mentality. Design decides nothing on the basis of semantic completeness or conceptual neatness. If you cannot afford to fail you cannot apply design techniques alone to solve the problem.

As going forward towards more radical digital transformation, the problems become over-complex and interconnected, solutions need to be made from a much broader and encompassing view that is not possible in linear thinking. Thus, the design does need more recognition as thinking and problem-solving process and the digital management discipline.

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Awakening innovation and Unlocking Business Potential

Awakening innovation requires vision and passion. To create the new requires not just one skill, but many, not just old experience, but new perspectives.

Digital is the age of innovation. Innovation is what leads to differentiation. Talking about innovation is not new nowadays, everybody, every business now is talking about innovation. However, there are a lot of confusions about innovation. The majority of organizations still use innovation as a buzzword or treat innovation as serendipity. How to awaken innovation from the center of the business and unlock its full potential?

Disrupt the outdated systems, business models, processes, or practices: Organizations today are the mixed bag of old and new. There is a poor fit between the new business and the old system. Dysfunction, silo, complication, or rigidity are all barriers to business changes. Many leaders are trapped by conventional thinking and get stuck inside the familiar box which limits their knowledge and perspectives. Innovation is the most wanted change, to awaken innovation, “disruption” and “stimulation” makes sense, taking into consideration that many businesses seem not satisfied with the current circumstances that there are not enough innovations happen in their businesses. When systems are bad, silo thinking or bureaucracy are propagating, functional gaps are enlarged, you know some breakdowns are needed to stimulate innovation. When people are not working via the system to solve the real problems but play the system to stifle innovation or create frictions to changes, you acknowledge the system is dysfunctional; when systems beat good people every time, you know the systems are “bad,” and you know disruptions are necessary. When organizations only seek examples to follow, rather than develop their own tailored solutions to emerging problems; you can tell that the system has problems; when the system stifles innovation and decreases productivity, you know the system needs to be fixed. Some stimulations are needed such as fine-tuning organizational structures or processes, adopting powerful digital technologies, rejuvenating organizational cultures, or creating new business models. Disrupt and then reconstruct. The highly innovative companies usually have a powerful innovation navigation system which involves tapping the business ecosystem for a collective perspective and integrating critical business elements into innovation competency.

Practice corporate entrepreneurship: Corporate Entrepreneurship has been recognized as a potentially viable means for promoting and sustaining organizational performance, renewal and corporate competitiveness. To awakening innovation in the well-established organization, business leaders should think as an intrapreneur and act as a startup manager, communicate with people at the different level of business hierarchy as well as varying sharing holders, business partners, customers, etc, to understand their needs and collect feedback for sparking creative ideas, managing innovation and recharging business model from the business lens. The entrepreneurial activities help the business develop new businesses that create revenue streams, enhance a company’s success by promoting product, service, process, or business model innovations. Businesses need people who are passionate about exploring new opportunities to work at the heart of the enterprise to awaken innovation and build competitive business advantage. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. Corporate Entrepreneurship activities can improve organizational growth and profitability and, depending on the company’s competitive environment, their impact may increase over time.

Spot innovators and develop the culture of creativity: Awakening and practicing innovation is about creating the future via learning, experimenting, and discovering. Employees should be encouraged to think out of the box, take reasonable risks, go beyond their defined roles and demonstrate intellectual capabilities to bring positive changes. Developing people’s innovative mindset and business innovation competency raise different "learning" issues that organizations must deal with smoothly. Creativity manifests in a collective environment, and there is no innovation without diversity. Highly creative people in the team or across the teams are collaborating, clarifying, building on each other's ideas, discovering nuances and building a highly innovative organization. Innovation requires fresh ideas, and fresh ideas require the Mavericks. Organizations should hire, retain, and recognize innovators who can help organizations catalyze the culture of creativity and create an optimal environment for innovation. In an ideal digital working environment, self-motivated leaders, teams, and employees have the passion to make things happening, catalyzing innovation, streamlining business transformation scenario, building on the organizational knowledge and responding to rapidly changing conditions effortlessly.

Awakening innovation requires vision and passion. To create the new requires not just one skill, but many, not just old experience, but new perspectives. It's important to ensure the right people with creative abilities have been assigned to the right role for stimulating creative energy, building highly innovative teams to deliver innovations continually.

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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 2/22/2019

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

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with 5300+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 27 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight of digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.

Running Digital IT as Business Performance and Productivity Booster Information & technology management is not for its own sake, but to deliver quality services and solutions that drive business growth and improve organizational maturity. Improving productivity and accelerating business performance are some noble business goals behind running a digital IT organization. This includes all aspects of the company, such as information management, logistics, application throughput, employee engagement, and overall health of the organization, etc. But more specifically, how to run digital IT as business productivity and performance booster?

Shape a Strategic Boardroom by leveraging Balanced Scorecard and Developing Digital Practices The corporate board is one of the most critical leadership pillars in modern businesses. The level of the board accomplishment may vary but the essential competencies will remain the same, BoDs need to be insightful, strategic, effective, and influential. In reality, the time of board members is stretched too thin so they do not allocate enough time to understand strategic issues and many boards aren't active enough to catch the derailment of strategies. In practice, how to shape a strategic boardroom by taking a rational approach, leveraging balanced scorecard, and develop the best and next digital practices?

How to Overcome Learning Inertia? Digital means the abundance of information and a shortened knowledge cycle. As companies around the world transform themselves into the digital business that is based on ‎information, their ability to explore intangible assets such as information and knowledge has become far more decisive to build competitive business advantages. Both at the individual and organizational level, if you fail to climb the learning curve, you will get static and lag behind. Business leaders should be aware of learning curves or learning inertia, make an objective assessment of their organization’s learning competency.

How to Close Motivation Gap Motivation is not only about the feeling, but a combination of several emotions also describes the trajectory of behavior. All motivation is a form of consciousness. It gives you the energy to do everything that you must do. Motivation is the "cognitive momentum" that comes from consistently applying the habits congruent with the achievement of the goal. You are motivated to move away from something because it is painful and also move towards something which is inspiring.

Driving Change with a Full Cycle of “Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Transforming” The digital era upon us is all about the increasing pace of changes, technology-driven disruptions, and "always-on" businesses with blurred functional, business, or industry territories. Going digital is about breaking down silos, applying the holistic digital management discipline to enter the next business growth cycle and expand organizational horizons to reach a higher level of business maturity. Organizational change management is not just about a few spontaneous businesses initiatives for reacting to business dynamic. It needs to drive changes systematically with a full cycle of “forming, storming, norming, performing, and transforming.”

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 Best “Reimagining Digital Business” Quotes of “Digital Master” II Feb. 2019

 “Digital organizations today have to strike the right balance of being transactional to keep spinning and being transformational to make a leap.”

“Digital Master” is the series of guidebooks (25+ books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, advises on how to run a digital IT organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “reimagine digital business” quotes in “Digital Master.’

10 “High mature digital organizations stretch out in every business dimension.”

― pearl zhu, Digital Master: Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity

11 “Organizational maturity is not just about technical excellence or process efficiency, but also about business effectiveness, agility, innovation intelligence, and people-centricity.”

― Pearl Zhu, Change Insight: Change as an Ongoing Capability to Fuel Digital Transformation

12 “Digital organizations can become hyper-connected and “super-creative” via dealing with innovation dilemmas collectively.”

― Pearl Zhu, It Innovation: Reinvent It for the Digital Age

13 “Organizational democracy will begin to become a fundamental management practice to update the hierarchical command-control systems.”

― Pearl Zhu, It Innovation: Reinvent It for the Digital Age

14 “The business’s potential depends on how it unleashes its information potential and talent potential.”

― Pearl Zhu, CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of It

15 “Today’s digital organizations simply just can’t stand still. Bridging the 'gap of opportunity' between where you are and want to become is a welcomed challenge.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Gaps: Bridging Multiple Gaps to Run Cohesive Digital Business

16 “Organizational success comes when IT and business act from “IT vs. business” to IT is business” - a true partnership.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital It: 100 Q&as


17 “A high-mature digital organization is shifting from “pushing” stuff to the digital channel into “pulling” resources up for problem-solving.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital It: 100 Q&as

18 “Metaphorically, organizations are like vegetable gardens, where each capability is a different type of vegetable growing in the garden.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Capability: Building Lego Like Capability Into Business Competency

19 “Digital organizations today have to strike the right balance of being transactional to keep spinning and being transformational to make a leap.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Capability: Building Lego Like Capability Into Business Competency

20 “High mature digital organizations have high-mature digital capabilities not only to implement the digital strategy but also to drive enterprise-wide transformation.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Capability: Building Lego Like Capability Into Business Competency

21 “The key to organizational success is to integrate the next generation of leaders, tap into their way of looking at the world, solve problems in a very collaborative working style.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&as

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CIO as "Chief Improvement Officer": Three Management Aspects of Improving IT Maturity

IT should continue to evolve the digital dynamic and reinvent itself as a strategic business partner and improve its organizational maturity.

Information is permeating into every corner of the organization; technology the backbone of modern businesses across vertical sectors. IT has to expand its impact in every dimension to improve the company’s operational excellence, business responsiveness, performance, flexibility, digital fluency, and maturity. Maturity is the state of ripeness, quality, fluency, balance, and resilience. Here are three management aspects of improving IT maturity. 

IT leadership vision and charisma: To move up IT maturity from a reactive support center to a proactive change agent takes leadership vision and a good strategy. As a leader, the CIO has to be able to inspire and encourage with his/her vision and generate conviction and enthusiasm for the strategic goal of the company and the mapping objectives of IT organization. A clarified vision articulates the destination the organization intends to get and informs the business change agenda. Unfortunately, many CIOs today lose focus of the vision and get stuck at the “keeping the lights on,” and only take care of the immediate problems mentality. To keep IT relevant for the long run and reenergize the business for reaching the next growth cycle, a clarified vision allows IT leaders to steer their organization in the right direction, ride the learning curve well ahead of the rest of the company, give people confidence on where to go and how to get there, support them and also stretch them to live to their full potential and reach their professional maturity both individually and collectively.

Business -savvy: IT maturity is proportional to overall business maturity. Thus, to run a high mature IT organization, CIOs have to become business savvy. They need to participate in forming the organization's strategy, its implementation, and assessing its performance. They have a strong understanding of what the business does, how it does it, and have a comprehensive business oversight. Within their understanding, they are responsible for highlighting evolving IT to the board members and their impact on the organization and its strategies. They also need to make sure that all IT investments are aligned with the organization's strategy and the approved priorities. Business savvy CIOs can take an outside-in lens, articulate the business benefit realized through IT investment, truly run IT as a strategic business partner. Those organizations in which business management is technologically evolved and keeping up with digital technology developments around them for the desired synchronization can reach the next level of business maturity.

Portfolio management: Modern business has three fundamental components: People, process, and technology. The role of contemporary CIO is to weave them all into differentiated business competency and manage a well balanced “run grow, and transform” portfolio. Identify and blend the ways that information and technology can assist and shape the business by linking all critical business ingredient together to enforce the business value creation. Organizations today have to manage a large number of business initiatives in order to beat competition and delight customers.  A healthy IT portfolio is crucial for improving organizational maturity. All IT spending must be rationalized against the business benefits. You aren't sacrificing the long-term viability of the portfolio for short-term gain. Portfolio management is essential to successful corporate governance and as such, a comprehensive fusing of a firm's strategic business competencies.

IT should continue to evolve the digital dynamic and reinvent itself as a strategic business partner and improve its organizational maturity. It takes a very concerted and systematic effort and a strong desire to make changes happen and sustain. The goal is to help the business “playing to win,” not just try not to lose, and improve overall business competency, resilience, and maturity.

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The Monthly “Digital Boardroom” Book Tuning: Shaping Digital Board from Mindset to Altitude Feb. 2019

The Corporate Board is one of the most crucial leadership pillars in modern businesses. 

 Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in the right direction and achieve expected business results. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must have the agility to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals. Here are the multiple perspectives of digitizing boardroom.

    Shaping Digital Board from Mindset to Altitude

A ‘Mindful’ Board Corporate Boards are there to oversee business strategy, to ensure reasonable governance, and hold the senior executive team accountable for execution. Modern Board as high-level governance body plays the crucial role in business advising, monitoring, and setting key tones in corporate culture as well, these are all significant responsibilities, thus, mindset, more precisely, mind shift or mind flow is so critical to director selection criteria. But what are the characteristics of those mindful BoDs and a mindful board overall?

Three “Altitudes” in the Boardroom Digital organizations are dynamic, self-evolving, and self-perpetuating. When jumping into the digital future of “VUCA” new normal –Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, digital leaders today must be able to steer the organization in the right direction. As one of the top leadership pillars, the corporate board plays a critical leadership role in setting guidelines, envisioning the future of business, and empowering changes.

Shape a Strategic Boardroom by leveraging Balanced Scorecard and Developing Digital Practices The corporate board is one of the most critical leadership pillars in modern businesses. The level of the board accomplishment may vary but the essential competencies will remain the same, BoDs need to be insightful, strategic, effective, and influential. In reality, the time of board members is stretched too thin so they do not allocate enough time to understand strategic issues and many boards aren't active enough to catch the derailment of strategies. In practice, how to shape a strategic boardroom by taking a rational approach, leveraging balanced scorecard, and develop the best and next digital practices?

Three “P”s to Digitize Boardroom The Corporate Board is one of the most crucial leadership pillars in modern businesses. Because they have a significantly broad effect on setting business policy, overseeing strategy, tuning business mentality and personality, driving motivation, defining the appetite of innovation, sharpening leadership skills, advocating learning, pulling teams, and improving risk intelligence, etc. However, many boards today still get stuck with a view of the rear mirror mindset and focus on compliance-driven agendas. Digital board directors exemplify leadership influence. Digitalization starts from the top down, here are three “P” words to innovate boards for achieving directorship excellence.

Three Aspects in Digitizing the Boardroom Due to the increasing velocity and variety of changes in the digital era, corporate board, as one of the most significant governance bodies, also faces the unprecedented changes, including new perspectives of boardroom composition, unprecedented board dynamics, and emergent best or next digital practices. In short, digitizing the boardroom is inevitable, because as the top leadership team, the board just has to step into the digital vision, exemplify digital leadership effectiveness, and walk the talk in driving the business transformation.?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with 5300+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.

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The Best “Reimagining Digital Business” Quotes of “Digital Master” Feb. 2019

“One of the formulas to build a successful business is to nurture an “adaptability trait” in an organization’s culture.”

“Digital Master” is the series of guidebooks (25+ books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, advises on how to run a digital IT organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “reimagine digital business” quotes in “Digital Master.’

1 “Today’s digital organization is more like an organic living thing thriving at the expanded business ecosystem.”

― Pearl Zhu, 12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices

2 “Either running a successful business or living a progressive life is a problem-solving continuum.”

― Pearl Zhu, Problem Solving Master: Frame Problems Systematically and Solve Problem Creatively

3 “Digital organization is essentially a dynamic, people-centered ecosystem.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Master

4 “Digital age of business and world shall move up from apathy, to sympathy, to empathy.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Master

5 “An intelligent organization is not about the “cleverness” of one analytics team but the insightful nature of the entire business.”
― pearl zhu, Digital Master: Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity

6 “The future of digital organizations is to be complex enough to act intelligently and nimble enough to adapt to the change promptly.”

― Pearl Zhu, CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of It

7 “A hybrid nature of organization strikes the right balance between “virtual world” and the human connections.”

― pearl zhu, Digital Master: Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity

8 “One of the formulas to build a successful business is to nurture an “adaptability trait” in an organization’s culture.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digitizing Boardroom: The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital Ready Boards

9 “Hyper-connectivity is the nature characteristic of Digital Organization.”

― Pearl Zhu, Digital Master: Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity

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Overcoming Barriers on the Path of Going Digital

Digital transformation is all about improving the business flow by dismantling bureaucracy, taking an end-to-end response, and discover the viable path of going digital.

Organizations large or small are on the way of going digital, it is not an overnight phenomenon, but a well-planning journey which will not be flat. It's the bumpy road with ups and downs, curves and blocks all the way. Digital transformation is worth its weight, not just because of its high cost, but because of its high impact on the business’s long-term prosperity. It represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact. From a change management perspective, what are barriers and pitfalls on the way and how to lead change successfully?

Fear of the unknown; fear of failure: Though change is inevitable, but many organizations cannot take bold actions and move forward fast enough because of fear - fear of unknown. Most of the time, the company executives’ nervousness or procrastination stems from the fear of failure and to some extent loss of control. It takes vision, courage, and strategy for making a smooth change and the large scale business transformation. Without a clear vision, change either turns to be chaos or for its own sake. Though business leaders today can’t predict every turn or curve on the digital journey, quality information and business insight allow them to envision emerging opportunities and predict risks. Clear vision and planning help business managers navigate through velocity, uncertainty or ambiguity in a dynamic business environment and internalize change effectively. To overcome fear and build confidence into teams, there should be a credible, rational and benevolent commitment from top down of the organization, change ("why" to change, "what" should change, and "how" to change) has been communicated throughout the organization. It is also critical to take a stepwise approach by implementing substantial changes in cultural, processes, and structure, mitigating risks for leading business transformation smoothly.

Competency at all levels: From one generation to the other generation, over time things change, people are developing and growing, competition and choice are part of that evolutionary process. However, the unhealthy competition will damage the spirit of progression and innovation. Fierce competitions sometimes also result in a "wick” or evil-doing. It can create unhealthy rivalries that result in workers resenting one another or encourage unprofessional mentality or behavior. From a business management perspective, due to silo thinking and internal competitions, too often transformational change is acted on the basis of improving one part of an organization at the expense of other parts of the organization. Silo self-perpetuates when the soft elements of the organization such as leadership or culture cause change inertia, short-sightedness or unhealthy competition. Silos have individual goals, but strategic goals need to be shared and common to ensure the entire organization accomplishing the high-performance business results. Competition and collaboration are both natural in a business environment or human society, the point is to understand the special context and situations and encourage high professionalism. It is always a good start when working to build a positive working environment, understanding where each is coming from and building trust, with the goal to encourage innovation and accelerate collective human progress.

Comfort with the status quo or complacency: The world is constantly changing, and digital is all about flow. But complacency is at the heart of resistance to change. A complacency mind gets used to reacting, not being proactive. If you stick to the comfort zone too long, you might lose the “mojo” to move forward. When business leaders or managers are comfortable with the status quo, they often miss the big picture and become complacent. Some say it is not complacency that is at the heart of the resistance. It is the unknown and being afraid of new things and it will be the same for the word "complacency." Numerous changes or business transformations run, complete, and then slowly crumble away as people slowly revert to old ways of doing things, and get stuck with complacency. Once that complacency barrier is broken, people become more creative and learning agile, a positive change process can commence. They can take a proactive approach to build phenomenal long-loved transformations and make a significant difference in mindset, attitude, and aptitude.

Timing: Pace and timing are absolutely critical for innovation and change. Too slow or too fast are as much a problem as backing the wrong disruptive technology or fresh ideas. It is often said that a wrong decision taken at the right time is better than the right decision taken at the wrong time.” Timing matters. Either for driving changes or managing innovations, timing is a critical factor in the decision-making and problem-solving scenario. Many organizations which get the timing wrong are surprised when many years later, the other company gets the timing right for the same disruption the original company underachieved. Fundamentally, driving changes and running the business is a series of decisions need to be made timely for solving the right problem and push change forward. Thus, listen to your data, collect feedback and make information-based decisions to drive changes timely. With the right leaders empowered with the right information take in charge in the right place at the right time in a change management cycle or business condition, the path of digital transformation will be natural and easy.

Blind to a need or a path: With frequent disruptions and exponential growth of information, high velocity and uncertainty, business leaders today should realize that there are known unknown and unknown unknown, they have to admit that everyone including themselves have blind spots, which cannot be ignored, otherwise, they perhaps steer their organization in the wrong direction, blind to a need or a path of making smooth changes. Without self-awareness, learning the decision techniques, you will continue on the lives in blindness. The perspective of change unfolds into a wider multidimensionally systemic business continuum. It perhaps invokes further reflections of the focal scope and purpose of changes, as well as the generic perspective of running a high-performance digital business.

Digital transformation is all about improving the business flow by dismantling bureaucracy, delayering the organizational structure, leveraging multidisciplinary knowledge and insight, taking an end-to-end response, and discover the viable path of going digital.

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The Monthly Digital Principles/Practices Summary: A Set of Digital Practices to Improve Business Maturity Feb. 2019

The high mature digital organization today needs to be sophisticated enough to act intelligently and nimble enough to adapt to changes promptly. 

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. Here is a set of best and next practices to improve business maturity.

A Set of Digital Practices to Improve Business Maturity

Three Digital Balance Practices for Leading to the Future? With fast-paced changes, shortened knowledge cycle and fierce competitions, no one can rest on a static mindset, past accomplishments, or the wishful thought that everything is perfect the way it is. The digital workforce is a new breed - it's the super-connected generation with a multitude of varieties - multi-generations, multidimensional intelligence, multi-cultures, and multi-devices. The digital organization is the self-organized but interlaced and hyper-connected ecosystem. The high mature digital organization today needs to be sophisticated enough to act intelligently and nimble enough to adapt to changes promptly. The traditional management discipline based on silo thinking, linear logic, and reductionistic approach is outdated somehow. Here are five thinking forces to lead the digital transformation.

Three Practices to Enforce “Antifragility” of the Digital Organization Digitalization is not equal to digital information or technology only. At the high maturity level, organizations have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving radical business transformation and exhibiting distinct characteristics in various shades and intensity. The more effortlessly you can align, integrate, harmonize, and optimize the important business factors inside an organization, the closer you can accelerate performance and lead changes effectively. Business is a system, antifragility is a property of systems that increase in adaptability, flexibility, resilience, or robustness as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, disruptions, or faults. The digital organizations with ‘antifragile’ characteristic can better survive and thrive in volatility and uncertainty of the digital dynamic. Here are three practices to enforce the antifragility of the digital organization.

Three “Digital Fit” Practices to Run High Mature Organization: Digital is all about the exponential growth of information and the rapid speed of changes. From the business management perspective, one of the good reasons for change is to keep the organization fit, and a fitting business has better changeability and higher performance. Digital organizations need to keep both the business balance cycle and growth cycle, develop the best and next practices to “run, grow, and transform.”

The Digital Leaders and Best Practices: The Goldilocks Kind of Thing? Generally speaking, the best practice is a recommended way of doing things. Whatever the activity, there is one best way of performing it; the way that uses the least resources or takes the least time and still meets quality standards. That method is the best practice. However, the best practice is contextual, Best Practice can mean different things in business, and how the “best practice” is used is important for running the business. Often the industry best practices shared with different companies are average workflow. If you work for “the best practice,” you will be at the average. Are the relationship of the digital leaders and best practices, the Goldilocks kind of things?

Three Digital Practices to Read Digital Sentiment Insightfully Leadership is all about future and change; direction and progress. From an agricultural society to the industrial age, and now we slowly but steadily move into the fast-paced and information abundant digital era. A digital paradigm is an emerging digital ecosystem of principles, policies, and practices that set limits or boundaries. Digital leaders today have to read digital sentiment insightfully, set the guidance for problem-solving or creating something new under the digital rules, keep information flow and achieve a state of dynamic balance.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 2.8 million page views with about #5300th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 25 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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