The Best “Adventure” Quotes of “Digital Master” Feb, 2020

Digital leadership is the adventure to explore unknown and has confidence and insight for steering the organization on the right path of reaching the destination.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Adventure” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Innovation is not an aimless adventure, but a business value-driven adventure: There are many areas within a company where the innovation process can be applied to create value.

2 As the saying goes, "on an adventure, there is no risk." In order to accomplish the impossible, one must be able to see the invisible.

3 It would be the adventure to explore different paths to experiment with better ways to do things, accelerate business performance and unlock its potential.

4 Digital leadership is the adventure to explore unknown and has confidence and insight for steering the organization on the right path of reaching the destination.

5 The well-educated individuals who can challenge their mentors, criticize theories, think beyond the education box, and continue to take opportunities in life adventure by taking advantage of education as means to end, to move the world progressively.

6 “Good managers” are the ones who try to stay on the straight and narrow, following the experience and industry best practices to make the job done, lack a sense of adventure.

7 Running a future driven and innovative digital organization is an adventure to explore the alternative business models and create a process to examine possible alternatives by addressing some critical questions such as who are your target customers? What needs are met for the customer? Which offer will you provide them to address that need?

8 Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology both horizontally and vertically. Through leadership consciousness, the organization will not be blind to underlying organizational challenges for such an exciting and imperative digital adventure.

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IT Dysfunctional Symptoms and Root Causes

IT organizations are interlaced systems which have their own purpose, and the processes are determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. 

Forward-looking organizations empower their IT to drive changes and lead the digital transformation. In reality, the problems of many traditional organizations are silo mentality, incoherent processes, overly rigid hierarchy, fractal structure, or bureaucratic management style.

To improve the organizational maturity, IT needs to not only look at dysfunctional symptoms but also dig through root causes, reinvent itself as a strategic partner of the business. IT transformation is a significant step in the business’s digital transformation. It takes visionary leadership, solid governance process, talented people and the latest technologies or tools to climb up organizational maturity. Here are three IT dysfunctional symptoms.

IT is not involved closely with the business part of the organization: A company is made up of silos called functions. The majority of IT organizations still run as siloed functions and get stuck at a lower level of management maturity. The disconnect between the business and IT is still one of the root causes to fail IT and business as a whole. With the exponential growth of information and fierce competition, IT becomes less about “operating” and more about “generating differentiation for the business.” The link between IT and line-of-business peers can only increase to ensure the company as a whole accelerates business performance.

To bridge the gap between IT and business, spend the time to improve the language gaps between IT and non-IT. It is the responsibility of the leaders to initiate his or her team to break down silos, enhance cross-functional communication and collaboration and create a seamless organization when in pursuit of a strategy. The IT department is not a silo by itself and it draws its energy from within the organization. Like any other organization design effort, structuring IT group to leverage its core and distinctive competencies. From alignment to integration, there is more potential to innovate and create value, more so when the collaborative competency of the IT organization is strong.

IT organizational structure is misaligned: The main reason corporations need to create new structure schemes and organizational designs in IT is because business goals are not being met with current design and structure. The digital organizational structure design should delayer the unnecessary business hierarchy to enable digital flow and inspire “digital holism.” Before you could create a new IT organizational structure, you have to make sure it’s not just in alignment with the organizational culture, but also helps to cultivate the culture of innovation in the entire company and improve business performance.

Organizational structure is change, and change is never for its own sake, rather than ask "what factors drove your restructuring," ask "what are the problems we're having meeting our goals," and go from there. Organizational leaders need to check: If you redesigned the IT department, what factors drove the restructuring? How is the structure of your IT department aligned with the organization? A mature organization is a different story in optimizing the structure and improving performance. Design an IT structure to optimize business processes, improve productivity, encourage employees to be innovative and embrace digital mindsets, methodologies, and practices.

Inconsistent approach to process and procedure management: Processes underpin capabilities, and capabilities underpin strategy execution. When productivity is low and change is stifled, further analytics is needed for an understanding of the cause whether it is due to the change curve, inefficient processes or procedures. Inconsistent process management is often caused by a lack of policies and governance procedures that define processes. Progressive IT leaders should, in fact, take the lead in introducing process management into the company and integrate processes across the organization for improving effectiveness, responsiveness, and maturity.

IT organizations are interlaced systems which have their own purpose, and the processes are determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. The goal of process/procedure optimization is to eliminate unnecessary complication, but also encourage desired complexity such as design, improve operations to reduce the burden on the company while trying to stay current with ever-changing technologies and dynamic business environment. Besides the process-oriented perspective, IT leaders should leverage outside-in view and seize the opportunity to take a fresh look at the processes through which IT creates value for its customers and improving systems.

IT is at the crossroad to either become irrelevant or transform it as a change engine of the business. IT leaders need to handle various conflicts between classic style and digital style of management and take an integral management discipline to ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces. The purpose of IT management is to optimize IT resources and catalyze business growth, enable the business to move forward smoothly and unlocking business performance continuously.

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The Monthly Systems Wisdom Summary: Apply Systems Wisdom to Digital Organizational Design Feb. 2020

Systems Thinking is the ability to think the "whole," and understand the interconnectivity of its parts as well.

Systems Thinking is about understanding interrelationships between parts and the whole. It helps digital leaders and professionals discover the interconnectivity and interdependence of the digital business ecosystem, help them get behind the "surface" validity and give them deeper insight into the nuances of why and how, and ensure that the digital business as an organic system growing and evolving with its environment in harmony.

Apply Systems Wisdom to Digital Organizational Design 

Design a Digital Organization from Multiple System Perspectives Running a digital organization is to connect the old and new, mix the solid and fluid to enforce digital confluence, foster innovation, and achieve people-centricity. Organizations generally consist of varying intersecting and interacting systems. But the strictly mechanical business architecture framework perhaps do not know how to address the business and people system dynamic. How to leverage flexibility as a guiding principle to design a highly responsive, self-adaptive and high-performance digital organization from multiple systems perspectives?

Leverage Systems Thinking to Understand and Enforce Digital Characteristics The hyperconnectivity nature of digital organization breaks down the functional, geographical, or even organizational border. The businesses today become much more nonlinear, interconnected, and interdependent than ever. Systems Thinking has emerged as a type of digital thinking to deal with unprecedented complexity and uncertainty, understand and enforce digital characteristics. In essence, Systems Thinking is nothing more than a good combination of analytic and synthetic thinking, understanding the interrelationship between parts and the whole and seeing the trees without missing the forest.

Three Critical Underpinning for Running a Digital Organization: Organizations today are hyperconnected with their business ecosystem because today, the geographical, functional, business or even industrial borders are blurring. Digitalization is not just about the single-dimensional technology upgrading, it has to expand to almost every dimension of the business. At the high maturity level, companies need to embed digital into the very fabric of the business and explore digital transformation in a structural way.

Is Hierarchy Good or Bad for Systems? As complexity is pushing the boundaries of the thinking and traditional systems, what we do know is "those larger and more complicated systems" do not have the requisite agility to adapt to more complex and adaptive environments. The more nonlinear, interconnected, and interdependent the environment, where uncertainty and emergence become more prevalent, hence accelerated rates of change, the less likely ordered hierarchical systems are to be the answer due to the rigidity. Hence, we need to adapt to the Systems Thinking and reimagine the digital organizational structure. Systems Thinking is the ability to think the "whole," and understand the interconnectivity of its parts as well.

How to Leverage Systems Thinking in Designing a Digital Organizational Structure Digital shift is inevitable, the digital revolution is reshaping the way we live our lives and the way we work. It’s forcing a fundamental digital transformation of business and our society. How to design organizations to maintain viability and deliver tactical actions for strategic effect, given weak, noisy, or evolving feedback signals due to systemic adaptive complexity in its environment? What would be the balanced design principles to enable successful emergent behavior and function of the organization in order that its structure is emergent as a self-organizing, self-redesigning team of teams? Or to put simply, how to design a digital organizational structure with the well-aligned resources, processes, and rules?

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about 6500+ 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 “Calmness” Quotes of “Digital Master” Feb, 2020

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Calmness” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 When you learn to create inner space of clear, calmness in the storming mind of thoughts, emotions, sensations, imagination, and reasoning, insights can be perceived.

2 There is the time to keep passion up, there is also the time to calm down and dispassionately analyze and make sound judgments in order to keep the right track of change and digitalization.

3 Just like the ocean, our mind can be calm and beautiful, but it is never still, creativity flourishes in such a solitude.

4 When we find calm inside, we sense the aura outside too: We feel we create a kind of vibration around us. That enthusiasm, energy, optimism, and love oozes out our bodies. that is the positive aura nurtures creativity.

5 Continue to see the importance of dealing with blind spots by learning how to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, provide calm inquiry clearing the blind spots to help find out what is really happening.

6 Remaining a calm exterior, no matter how panicked you may be inside, is a massive leadership skill.

7 Compared to many other states of mind, a peaceful mind is one of the ultimate levels of thinking (or non-thinking). A peaceful mind is like a calm sea, open, profound, quiet and flow.

8 There is a full cycle of emotions behind innovation, such as dissatisfaction-to explore the new possibility, conflict - to stimulate creative energy, passion - to experiment, calm - to solve problems logically, persistence - to overcome many challenges.

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Innovation Governance as a Continuum

Governance, risk, and compliance are not a single process, but a continuum via a collection of cohesive processes with other governance mechanisms such as roles and technologies. 

Innovation is a managed process of transforming the novel idea to achieve its business value. Innovation governance is to advocate, steer, and sustain innovation effort to achieve business value.

If innovation management is like the pedal to accelerate speed, and then innovation governance is the steering wheel to keep a straight line or take a turn at that velocity of innovation management. Innovation governance as a continuum is an important perspective to improve the innovation management success rate.

Governance needs to set a framework for innovation management: Innovation management is not just about generating fresh ideas, but rather the processes to take ideas to value. When there is an innovative idea; the governance mechanisms dictate how that idea is fostered from inception to retirement. Governance is to frame innovation management, it should orchestrate the change, not police the creativity, do it with trust and flexibility.

Statistically, innovation management has a considerably low percentage of success rate. There are both learning curves and barriers on the way. The “hard” issues to stifle innovation is that the systems, processes, or technology many organizations are using to capture innovation value are becoming inefficient in this rapidly changing world; or the organizational culture is too conventional to stimulate innovation. Thus, a well-defined innovation governance framework steers and sustains innovation to manage risks and maximize its business values systematically.

Innovativeness is a mindset, and that's where governance comes in: Governance is steering. It isn’t just about putting restrictions on what you can do, it is also about monitoring and knowing when things are not going to plan so that you can take appropriate actions at the right time. Sometimes governance "standards" can be taken too far and become their own bureaucracy. In that case, innovation would be stifled. If governance is deemed to stifle innovation, then it is wrongly implemented, or indeed wrongly understood.

Digital innovation has to connect the wider dots within the business ecosystem. Innovation governance is neither linear nor single dimension, the governance aspect and innovation don't immediately come together depending on the context in which innovation is used. It is critical in adopting a social-technical-ecological perspective of governance models, in order to improve innovation effectiveness and efficiency.

A good governance standard provides a common corporate "language" as well as work instructions: The problem with governance is that the people enforce governance normally have a frame of reference based on their own experiences and a view of the existing business capabilities. It is important to set rules for safeguarding the status quo, but not stifling innovation, provide a common language, set proper standards, appropriate business and use cases, etc, encourage cross-functional communication and collaboration, and develop the best and next practice to enforce innovation governance.

Innovation cannot be separated from a specific business purpose and in a broad context, governance is critical for meaningful innovation. A good governance standard helps to nurture a creative culture with the very characteristics such as strong vision and leadership, outward-looking rather than insular, willing to accept a degree of risk and experimentation, etc. Innovation governance is the best part of an innovation strategy that eliminates bureaucracy. Sound Governance is part of eliminating risk and doing the right thing.

Governance, risk, and compliance are not a single process, but a continuum via a collection of cohesive processes with other governance mechanisms such as roles and technologies. When governance is done properly, it actually is a great tool to facilitate innovation and improve innovation management maturity.

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The Monthly Connecting Dots: Intelligence Feb. 2020

 Information answers the questions. Intelligence questions the answers.

A digital workplace is all about people-centricity, empathy, innovation, agility, and high-level business maturity. Digital organizations are always on, inter-dependent and hyper-connected, people are always the most important asset in any organization before, today, and future. In an ideal digital workplace, the organizational structure is solid enough to keep people or things in order; but fluid enough to keep information and idea flow.

                  “Intelligence” Dot Connection

Human Intelligence vs. Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence is the intelligence presented by computers or software. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be viewed as the ability of a computer to learn and reason. The root of artificial intelligence is artificial philosophy. Will AI become the big helper to advance society or serious "troublemaker" for humankind?


Information vs. Intelligence: Is Intelligence Jewel on the Information Crown Information answers the questions. Intelligence questions the answers. Information is air in the digital era, however, information is only the means, the prerequisite for intelligence, only through action-based intelligence, one can solve problems, to turn the world into a better place. 1. What are I&I: Information vs. Intelligence According to Dictionary .com: (1) Information: Information is defined as knowledge communicated or received concerning.

Intuition vs. Big Data: Think Fast & Think Slow? Don't ignore gut feelings, but on the other hand, don't be a slave to them. Gut feeling is important but this needs to be supported by good logic/data. Big data has the ability to provide good reasoning and it can support when somebody has gut feeling but is unable to convince with good data. In fact, people have a gut feeling about any case can provide good input for big data analytics, hence there is no reason for gut feeling becoming irrelevant. No matter how valuable the Data is, we still need the human factor in making final decisions,

Statistics. vs. Data Mining vs. Artificial Intelligence vs. Machine Learning "Intelligence = REASONING ABOUT KNOWLEDGE." Statistics, Data Mining, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning are all interrelated concepts: Statistics is a field of mathematics. Statistics are at the base of Machine Learning and the application of Machine Learning enhances the field of Data Mining. Data Mining is a step of Knowledge Discovery from Data.

Intelligence vs. Complexity The intelligent things may not always be complex, but a critical level of complexity is required for intelligence to appear. "Intelligence" is from Latin word “intellego” -Inter-lego: Bind together, read between the lines, or connect the dots. Intelligence has been defined in many different ways such as in terms of one's capacity for logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, emotional knowledge, memory,.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6500th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The “Determination” Quotes of “Digital Master” Feb, 2020

Success requires determination, persistence, discipline, dedication, and practice in the present and a continuum.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “Determination” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 Building the bridge between today and the future requires enthusiasm, belief, determination, hard capabilities, soft touches, and commit to a more responsive way of working in general.

2 Success requires determination, persistence, discipline, dedication, and practice in the present and a continuum.

3 If you do not have the passion for what you do, determination, creativity, talent, and strategy become hard work which in turn disables determination, etc.

4 Passion does play a critical role in creative pursuits. If we do not have the passion for what you do, creativity and talent become hard work which in turn disables determination, etc.

5 Innovators are at their very heart visionaries who also have determination, dedication, passion, and motivation.

6 The digital aims of the organization are to determine what the future needs to look like and what the transformation must look like, how to overcome roadblocks, avoid pitfalls, and deal with change inertia.

7 People must be engaged when the strategic choice is actually being made, not after. Implementation will then be a piece of cake.

8 Vision comes from values, successes come from both attitude and aptitude, and altitude comes with grit and determination.

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IT Enabled Change Scenario

IT-enabled change scenarios will support the company's vision. Change Management needs to be the mechanism embedded in a multitude of IT management disciplines. 

Due to the exponential growth of information and the “disruptive power” of digital technologies, organizations large or small are living in the digital sea today, and they have to change with the "tide” all the time.

IT is in a unique position to manage business information and capture the oversight of the entire company and become the business linchpin. The change agent CIOs have a combined understanding of people, processes, and technology in translating the company's change agenda into a step-wise IT-enabled change scenario.

IT needs to engage with the business units to find out what the pain points really are: Nowadays change is the new normal with increasing speed. It is a big "responsibility," but also full of opportunities for IT to reinvent itself as the “change department” of the company. Every change needs to have a noble business purpose. IT needs to proactively participate in business conversations. It is important to have IT resources, assets, and talent aligned with business strategies and objectives and refined to the point to make sure that IT is nimble and adaptable to changing business demands in a timely fashion and it can be reapplied to altering business priorities.

With continuous disruptions often driven by technologies and an unprecedented level of uncertainty, IT leaders should be able to leverage information and knowledge to envision not only where a company believes it is going but how it will get there and how it might be missing out on opportunities. They have to play a critical role in channeling business flow, fine-tuning underlying organizational structures, and optimizing business processes to streamline communication flow, knowledge flow, idea flow, and therefore, business flow for adapting to changes and achieving a digital premium.

Developing change capability by running IT as the business change engine: IT is at the center of changes. High mature IT organization has become synonymous with the change department and creates the business synchronization of all functions running at the multiple levels of the organization seamlessly. It means involving the entire organization in major change efforts that support key business strategies to drive change and accelerate performance. CIOs need to develop IT-driven change management practices to reach the next level of business maturity and run IT as the change engine of the digital business.

Change is a dance between the top management and the affected parts of the organization. The CIO needs to see the business in terms of IT-enabled solutions, other C-levels might not be able to. Change Management is no longer spontaneous activity but an ongoing business capability. It is all about balancing the main elements impacting change such as people, strategies, processes/ procedures, Information & Technology. IT is an integrator to glue all-important change elements seamlessly and make people change, process change, and technology change sustainable for the long term.

Information Technology should be seen by any business as a “digital game-changer”: The digital transformation is the large scale of change, the purpose of such radical change is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of business performance and organizational maturity. Business and IT are inextricably linked in the hyperconnected digital era, IT provides an important structure and framework to streamline processes and lead digital transformation in a structural way. “Change Agent” IT can orchestrate processes, tools, and people into differentiated business competency to drive business transformation from strategy to deployment.

More specifically, IT plays a change agent role in Business Transformation via systematic thinking and well-thought-out planning, to ensure IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next, and ultimately becomes the change agent. IT leaders are in a unique position to drive systematic change because they can see the whole organization and should have the program skills to implement transformation successfully.

IT-enabled change scenarios will support the company's vision. Change Management needs to be the mechanism embedded in a multitude of IT management disciplines. The success of the change program is measured by results that are important values to the organization, and the cultural adoption of these goals is part of that measure, with the ultimate goal to run IT as a change agent.

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The Monthly “Performance Master” Book Tuning: IT Performance Measurement Feb. 2020

 A measurement system is a necessary foundation for making continuous improvement and building a strong IT value proposition.

Corporate Performance Management is a management control from strategy to the shop floor. "If you can't measure, you can't manage," legendary management guru Peter Drucker once asserted. Managing performance means understanding results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to ensure it happens. It takes multifaceted approaches from multidimensional perspectives to unlock digital performance and catalyze change.

  

        IT  Performance Measurement

Measure Things Matter to Drive IT Digital Transformation Irrelevant measurement indicator will waste time, increase management complications, and decrease business effectiveness. Forward-thinking IT organizations reach the inflection point of digital transformation. A strategic inflection point is a time when the business fundamentals such as people, process, technology, or cultures are about to change with accelerated speed.

Taking a Logical Scenario for Measuring IT Performance Organizations rely more and more on information and technology. IT is a key enabler to build almost all differentiated business digital capabilities nowadays. IT needs to be run as a business in the business. IT performance has to be clearly linked with business performance and IT should work with stakeholders to develop the right set of measurements that shows how IT is improving business execution and enforcing business capabilities.

Three Aspects of IT Performance Measurement A measurement system is a necessary foundation for continuous improvement. With constant changes and frequent disruptions, highly effective IT leaders have to be prepared to constantly realign technology against the enterprise's business needs and measure things really matter to organizational success. The art and science of IT management are to optimize its usage, achieve business value, and develop long term business competency.

The Pitfalls of Performance Measurement Performance Management is not a bunch of paperwork, but a combination of management approaches leading to constantly improving business results. The purpose of managing performance is about setting performance metrics to evaluate the status of strategy management, making objective assessments of business results, and understanding performance measurement contextually.

Three Metrics and Measurement Aspects of Shaping IT as the Growth Engine of the Digital Business The performance measure setting should focus on achieving the ultimate goals of the organization as a whole, not just the individual or the team’s performance. Forward-looking IT organizations re-invent themselves from a cost center to the revenue generator. A measurement system is a necessary foundation for making continuous improvement and building a strong IT value proposition.

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6500 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The "Performance Master" Quote Collection I

The "Performance Master" Quote Collection II

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The “Obsolete” Quotes of “Digital Master” Feb,. 2020

With today’s business dynamic, if you do not innovate, your competitors will and make your current successful products or services obsolete.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “obsolete” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 It's never a bad idea to revisit from time to time the assumptions embedded in the original system design to check for latent or accomplished obsolescence or, for originally invisible errors.

2 Obsolescence or errors in foundational embedded assumptions in principle would make for obsolete or erroneous outputs.

3 Breakthrough innovation is powerful. It’s often disruptive and changes the competitive landscape, potentially making entire industries obsolete. If managed well, it can bring significant opportunities for the business to reach the next growth cycle and deliver the higher business value.

4 “Disruption” and “stimulation” makes sense, taking into consideration that many businesses do not seem to be satisfied with the current circumstances because there are not enough innovations happening in their businesses to disrupt obsolete mindsets, systems, processes, cultures, business models, or practices.

5 With today’s business dynamic, if you do not innovate, your competitors will and make your current successful products or services obsolete.

6 Make sure there is dissatisfaction with the current situation. People who make up the organization must see a compelling need to change from risky practices, obsolete ideas, or outdated processes and do so proactively before issues materialize.

7 The people that make up the organization must see a compelling need to change from risky practices, obsolete ideas, processes and do so proactively before issues materialize. It also helps when people believe things will improve by changing, innovating, and upgrading, etc.

8 It’s critical to embed risk mechanisms into business strategy management processes for monitoring and mitigating risks that would prevent the execution of the strategy or operational plans from achieving the stated aims or that would even make the strategy and operational plans completely obsolete.

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How to Deal with the “Organizational Design” Problem Skillfully

Organizational design is actually a cohesive effort of strategy management. The more effortlessly you can align, integrate, and optimize the important business factors inside an organization, the closer you can accelerate performance and lead digital transformation smoothly.

Digital organizations are organic integrated systems to keep evolving. They need to integrate Organizational Design (OD) into business process design and organizational re-engineering. The structure of the organization is varying. Different companies are at different stages of the business life cycle and evolve with different speeds for adapting to the rapid change outside the organization.

Forward-looking organizations need to deal with their organizational design problems skillfully and develop a high mature business with fluidity, adaptability, and high performance.

The interdependence enabler: The digital transformation is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations all shapes and sizes across the vertical sectors to reinvent themselves. The “organizational design problem” would be to build the “best” mix of organizational elements that enable the organizational interdependence and coherence. In practice, with emerging digital technologies, dismantling bureaucratization is inevitable because of the ever-increasing speed of changes and expanding interdependence.

The larger the organization and inputs, the larger the number of rules necessary for business functions and to keep dependent variables and outputs delivery stable. To look at all key business elements such as organizational structure, process, culture, technology, including the human element, as an integrated system and functions as organic living things. You have to look at the “organizational design” problem domain holistically and apply “simplicity” principles to architect and design an ecological organization and proactively plan the total enterprise ecosystem to either make a profit for shareholders or generate prosperity of constituencies.

Hyperconnectivity transcendence: Connectivity is the nature of the contemporary business which has a better capability for dots connections across the geographical, functional, industrial, or generational boundaries. With emerging digital platforms and efficient collaboration tools, hierarchical structures will be transcended to the interconnected and networked structure that can balance welfare, freedom, and responsibilities.

In the corporate scope of modern business, some organizations are too complex and need to be more flexible and reorganized in a simple way for accelerating business performance. To handle the “organizational design” problem smoothly for adapting to the increasing speed of changes and emerging business events, the two organizational structures - hierarchy and relationship structure wrap around each other to ensure high responsiveness and accountability.

The different kinds of “control”: In many traditional companies with overly rigid hierarchy, the top-down “command and control” management style often stifles innovation and decelerates business speed. With the exponential growth of information and continuous disruptions, either individually or collectively, we should humbly let go and accept when circumstances are beyond our control, analyze known unknown and unknown unknown, and manage uncertainty skillfully.

To deal with organizational design problems smoothly for streamlining the business flow and unlocking business potential, design business processes by state flow instead of activity flow, and by using various categories of rules instead of the usual “command and control” rules. Define a framework for activities, and at the same time, keep the necessary flexibility in place, and pursue the different kind of control - the control of desired outcomes, keep the end in mind, not overly control the process of “how.” The “command & control' changes from commanding What to do, When, How and by Whom (micromanagement) towards “command & control” by defining the desired outputs, but encourage alternative and better ways to do things, without getting stuck with “we always do things like that” mentality.

Today’s digital businesses are nonlinear, volatile, interdependent, uncertain, they also face fierce competition and ambiguous digital environments. The “organizational design” issue is really about how to build the best mixture of organizational elements that enable the organizational interdependence and harness adaptability through less hierarchy, frictionless processes, and hyperconnected business dynamic, to enable the business responding to changes promptly. Organizational design is actually a cohesive effort of strategy management. The more effortlessly you can align, integrate, and optimize the important business factors inside an organization, the closer you can accelerate performance and lead digital transformation smoothly.

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The Monthly Digital Principles & Practices Summary: Principles & Practices for Building Digital Workplace Feb., 2020

Shaping digital workplaces are about building an environment with the abundance of information and the culture of innovation, to put people at the center of business.

The digital workplace is all about people-centricity, empathy, innovation, agility, and high-level business maturity. Digital organizations are always on, inter-dependent and hyper-connected, people are always the most important asset in any organization before, today, and future. In an ideal digital workplace, the organizational structure is solid enough to keep people or things in order; but fluid enough to keep information and idea flow.

        Principles & Practices for Building Digital Workplace

Three Principles in Building a Creative Digital Workplace Digital is the age of people, and the digital work environment needs to embrace the abundance of information and the culture of innovation, put people at the center of business, and to both engage employees and delight customers. How can digital leaders set principles to encourage creativity, build creative digital workplaces and open the new chapter of digital innovations?

Three Practices to Build Creative Workplaces and Workforce People are always the most important business asset and investment, but also one of the weakest links in organizations. The important perspective of digital transformation is to put people at the center of the business, and to both engage employees and delight customers. One of the key determinants of whether an organization can move to new digital structures is the development level of the people, build a creative workplace and innovative workforce.

Three Aspects in Building a Digital Workplace Shaping digital workplaces are about building an environment with the abundance of information and the culture of innovation, to put people at the center of business, and to both engage employees and delight customers. After clarifying the Big Why, there are still many questions haunting around about the Knowing -HOW, though: Is it possible to have an effective digital workplace where the culture is more command and control, where the chosen solutions simply mirror or reinforce the way of working within that hierarchy, but do so very well? Or is it a prerequisite of an effective

Digital Workplace Manifesto A digital workplace is all about people-centricity, empathy, innovation, agility, and high-level business maturity. Digital workplaces are about building an environment with the abundance of information and the culture of innovation, to put people at the center of business, and to both engage employees and delight customers. From alignment to engagement to People-Centricity. From apathy to Sympathy to Empathy.

Three Aspects to Build Flexible Digital Workplace Building a flexible digital workplace is able to “navigate” change and deal with the complexity of the present business new normal effortlessly. Compared to traditional organizations with an overly rigid hierarchical setting and classic management style, the digital workplace is more dynamic, flatter and engaging.

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6500th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc.

The “Digital Master” book series includes 28 books to share insight from the multidimensional digital lens and perceive the multi-faceted impact the digital era upon us is making to the businesses and society. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.

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The “Contradictory” Quotes of “Digital Master” Feb, 2020

The paradox is the process to define as a statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable, ambiguous, that may actually be true in fact.

"Digital Master” is a series of guidebooks (28 + books) to perceive the multi-faceted impact digital is making to the businesses and society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” It perceives the emergent trends of digital leadership, provides advice on how to run a digital organization to unleash its full potential and improve agility, maturity, and provide insight about Change Management. It also instructs the digital workforce on how to shape a game-changing digital mindset and build the right set of digital capabilities to compete for the future. Here is a set of “contradictory” quotes in “Digital Master.”

1 A value-added mindset with contradictory coherence can well orchestrate the key success factors to achieve such a strategic advantage.

2 “Aha” moment refers to that exciting moment when what was perplexing and contradictory suddenly falls into place to create momentum - the thorny problems seem to get solved creatively.

3 The strategic planning and agility need to achieve contradictory coherence with such a delicate balance.

4 A philosophical mind may evoke what we call the paradoxical thinking process, which is defined as a statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable, or absurd but that may actually be true in fact.

5 The lists of values from which individuals, teams, organizations, and even countries might choose should be broadly accepted with common core, but with all the contradictions therein.

6 Due to the open nature and “out of the box” thinking of innovation, it is often contradictory to do that inside of the constraints of "best practices."

7 The paradox is the process to define as a statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable, ambiguous, that may actually be true in fact.

8 Maturity is simply having the ability to live comfortably with contradictory thoughts, and expressing things sometimes courageously by taking care of the feelings of the other persons too, saying your part without hurting the others.

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Architecture, Design, and Engineering Aspects of People-Centric Organization

The architecture captures business insight, design elaborates the elegance of the business and engineering figures out how to make things work technically.

Digital is the age of people and options, it provides opportunities to think new ways to do things, engage employees and delight customers. As the business ecosystem becomes hyper-connected, over-complex and interdependent, digital leaders should develop a people-centric organization so the positive energy can flow and collective human capabilities can really be transformed from architecture, design, and engineering perspectives.

Architecture = Thinking and embodying the quality of human thoughts: Architecture is the art and discipline of designing a people-centric organization. It proactively provides feedback for business betterment, rather than containing knowledge only. Removing complexity such as assumptions and dependencies more clearly reveals the intentions of the architecture and its purpose. The architecture discipline not only embraces models, methods, and theories of management and control but also embodies the quality of human thoughts and brings up multiple perspectives such as systems engineering, linguistics, cognitive science, environmental science, biology, social science or design, etc.

Business Architecture role in designing and planning future enterprise will be both interesting and challenging because it helps to set up the environment for implementing business solutions such that it becomes hard to not do good design, and make a seamless shift from inside-out to outside-in, from static to dynamic; from process-driven to people-centric, from industrial-segregation to digital modularization; and from legacy to modernization.

Design = forming human-made objects to be pleasing and preferred by humans: Either architecture or design is the thoughtful activity that extends over time. The human-centered design begins with deep empathy and an in-depth understanding of the needs and motivations of people from different perspectives. It's important to apply design principles to increase the level of empathy in building people-centric organizations. Design becomes the strategic business driver at a higher level of organizational maturity. The overall design of the people-centric organization that matures itself requires deliberate thoughts, architectural planning, and step-wise actions.

In most organizations, there is a tension between "design-centric" and "feature-centric." The empathize mode is the work you do to understand people, within the context of your design challenge. It is absolutely necessary for leaders to incorporate design thinking as part of the organizational culture and leverage design methodology for delivering intuitive products or services to delight customers. Delivering great customer experiences starts with empathetic design, diligent research, and strategic insights, with ideas flowing through conception, design, development, production and quality assurance. The healthy design cycle is that you design the process, then model, execute, monitor, optimize then again back to design, to make continuous improvement.

Engineering = making things work as scientifically, artistically, and correctly as possible: Engineering is the practical application of principles and practices constrained by the laws of the domain to solve problems often technically. As more people are born into a technology-centered modern world, engineering and the application of technology will become a fundamental skill to make things work efficiently. Engineering is no longer just an isolated discipline only a few geeks work on it, but a common practice everyone has the chance to play around it,

At the high mature level of business management, the scientific side of engineering is for automation, reliability, and continuity. The artistic side of engineering is about imagination, innovation, and invention, etc. The difference between engineering as art and engineering as science is that objectiveness of requirements/design specification. The mature fundamentals of design common to all engineering, the concept of engineering science, and how engineering science is emerged by solving problems effectively and efficiently.

The architecture captures business insight, design elaborates the elegance of the business and engineering figures out how to make things work technically. The fierce competition and continuous disruptions force digital leaders to be proactive and get really creative on how to leverage architecture, design and engineering aspects to shape a people-centric and high-performance organization which is open to changes, informative to act, creative to design, flexible to take alternative paths, nimble to adapt, intelligent to decide, elastic to scale, and resilient to recovery.

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The “Acid Test” in Corporate Boardroom

The corporate board helps to oversee a performance management system that encourages responsible communication, enhances open door listening, enforces accountability, improves decision-making effectiveness, and harnesses process transparency.

The increasing speed of change and ever-evolving digital dynamic brought much-needed oversight and additional rigor to the leadership effectiveness in the boardroom at many forward-looking companies across the industrial sectors.

The corporate board as one of the top leadership pillars plays a significant role in steering the business in the right direction. Digital leadership is the adventure to explore unknown, and have confidence and insight for taking the right path of reaching the destination. Here is a set of “acid tests” to assess the corporate board leadership maturity.

Decision effectiveness: The corporate board's role, in large part, is to make sound judgments and good decisions that enhance the value creation for the organization. "Group-thinking" and lack of courage to ask tough or strategic questions is the chief weakness on Boards today. The common mistakes made by corporate boards or executives include making business assumptions, lack of communication around assumptions, expectations, knowledge, and speculation. If everyone thinks the same, you do not need board governance.

To close blind spots in decision making, the corporate board needs diversity, or even more crucially, cognitive differences, to provide a perspective that goes beyond the gaps in board discussion and close gaps in decision-making. If Boards of Directors do not ask the unaskable in time to prevent a crisis, who will? Having different views and opinions does not mean a lack of teamwork. It is how the differences are conducted that are the real test of the board. As a corporate brand, reputation, culture, knowledge, and risk management are all boardroom concerns, and it is the responsibility of the board to steer the business in the right direction.

Transparency: Business transparency is to transform the organization into the system approach, not through the command-control hierarchy only. Transparency is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed. At the big table, nothing should be personal, it's all about how to monitor the business performance, drive changes, optimize business processes, improve knowledge worker productivity, verify strategic plan effectiveness, and approach GRC in a holistic way.

The higher the complexity of the organization and the complexity of the environment in which it is operated, the higher the requirement for connectivity and transparency in order to meet performance baselines and generate value. Corporate governance has a great impact on corporate performance, not through governance structure directly, but through good governance behavior.

Accountability: Accountability is to be wise and brave enough as a leader to remove and change in time before the problem becomes overwhelming. The corporate board plays a significant role in taking ultimate accountability to shareholders and the account for the performance and conformance of the organization, for the effectiveness of the business direction, the oversight provided, and for the timeliness and caliber of actions taken by the governing body.

The corporate board sets the tone to enforce accountability. Teams of any kind will follow only if the leader is accountable. Leadership and accountability must go hand in hand. To step further, accountability is not only to accept the responsibility for what you do, the actions or behaviors, but also what you say, the knowledge sharing or feedback giving. Digital leaders with accountability have the right dose of risk appetite and a good attitude to manage risks in a structural way and make a shift from risk avoidance to risk mitigation to risk intelligence.

The corporate board sets digital principles and policies, shapes advanced mindsets, focuses on what the needs to look like, alongside the impetus and sense of urgency, and promote certain activities and behaviors toward the destination steadfastly.

The corporate board helps to oversee a performance management system that encourages responsible communication, enhances open door listening, enforces accountability, improves decision-making effectiveness, and harnesses process transparency. They have to keep evolving and gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between the business and its rich environment, and shape the future together for reaching the next level of organizational maturity.

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