Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1248

The professional maturity gap: How to Bridge it

Maturity is about Ripeness, Thoughtfulness, Quality, Balance, and Wisdom.
Basically, in our understanding of maturity, it is just the opposite of being immature; it is that maturity is meant to be the idea, the goal. Maturity is a state we want to reach, a behavior, as in a sense of action. Professional maturity means you are fully developed in some way to fulfilling a role or function. As often people are the weakest link in running high-performance businesses. There is the obvious gap in professional maturity, and how to bridge it?
Lack of either right attitude or desired aptitude will lead the maturity gap:  Maturity is the combination of capability and potentiality. It is the ability of an individual to gauge or measure the capability or potentiality of a candidate for responding to a particular query - action- behavior- delivery of any thought processes, based on the level of response received at to receiver's end. Maturity in person can be defined as the person’s ability to react, behave and respond to the situation encounter; or one faced and how he or she apply his or her thought process in manipulating the situation with respect to the timeframe and thereby coming at appropriate and best possible solutions or response towards it. When a person knows the rules of life and has trained him/herself to great levels of capability or skill, the person becomes fully developed and thus has achieved maturity in the role.
Lack of emotional intelligence will make a person look immature: Maturity is also a phrase we are using today to describe a decent level of emotional intelligence at work, understanding what to say to whom and when to say it. Maturity can be seen from people responding to every situation according to its severity level. Also, knowledge of talking to various people in different ways. Maturity refers to having a sound understanding of basics and making a fair judgment. Maturity is the clarity of thoughts along with self-control which helps in choosing the most appropriate reaction (or inaction: deciding not to react) to any given situation. Maturity is the ability to wait, think, and respond to a situation without responding with a knee-jerk reaction. It’s the ability to weigh in the impact of what we are planning to do and who will be impacted because of the intended action. Maturity is the balance between courage and consideration. (Steven Covey) If a person can express his or her feelings and convictions with courage balanced with consideration for the feelings, and convictions of another person, he or she is mature, particularly when the issue is very important to the both parties. This thing makes the person be aligned towards the maturity factor and makes oneself undertake and performed in a real way.
Lack of understanding adaptation can enlarge maturity gap: Maturity is about adaptability to various situations and age groups. Communicating, but not winning a small battle of ego. It is the thinking ability and understanding ability. Maturity means you not only see the things but also perceive; you are not only knowledgeable but more importantly, being insightful and wise. 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 other.Maturity is more about wisdom rather than experience. It is related to handling a situation wisely, taking responsibility, being accountable for both what you say and what you do.  
Sometimes maturity ends up as a sort of the abstract opposite of immaturity in settling for a definition of this word. A fruit or vegetable is mature when it is ripe and ready for consumption. Maturity is not associated with age, maturity is a manner to handle life. Maturity is also not about how you are good at following conventional wisdom, more about being mindful of decision-making or problem-solving. Professional maturity gap is the reality. Maturity comes to a person when he/she tried to understand their responsibility and their role in life and works towards others, or in another way when someone shoulders the responsibility to them. But maturity can be both gained over time, as per experience and intellectuality.
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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 2/23/ 2017

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking, brainstorming and innovating. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.7 million pageviews with 3500+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight about digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.
  The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO”  2/23/2017The Philosophy, Psychology, and Technology behind Digital Transformation: Digital transformation represents a break from the past, with a high level of impact and complexity,  Transformation efforts need to be undertaken as the means of getting to a differentiated capability to accomplish a defined goal. It is important to leverage multidisciplinary knowledge as well as taking a structural approach to making radical changes in the underlying processes and functions. Here are philosophy, psychology, and technology behind the digital transformation.
A Renewal Board: How to Synchronize the Board Evolution with the Digital Transformation: The contemporary corporate board as the top leadership team plays a significant role in advising and monitoring business management. The BoDs should also walk the talk to digitize the boardroom with strategic imperative because often the digital tone is set at the top and echo spirally to all levels of the organization. So, how to synchronize the board evolution with the digital transformation and re-energize BoDs to get digital ready?
The Monthly Performance Insight: IT Performance Management Feb. 2017 Corporate Performance Management is a management control from strategy till shop floor. "If you can't measure, you can't manage," legendary management guru Peter Drucker once asserted. He was right. Managing performance means understanding results, setting metrics, fixing plans, and making decisions to ensure it happens. It takes multifaceted approaches from multidimensional perspectives.
CIOs as Chief Innovation Officer: Can you Clarify the Business’s Expectation from IT via Innovation Lens? As businesses embark on the “Digital Era” of computing and managing, with the changing nature of information & technology, IT is always in the changing environment creating unexpected situations and requiring quick and appropriate responses based on the conditions. IT has to change with the faster speed and also drive the business transformation practively. The nature of the digital IT leadership needs to focus on information and innovation, and the primary role of the CIO needs to become the "Chief Innovation Officer," to not just running IT as a support center, but as the innovation engine to catalyze business growth and build the organization’s differentiated competency and long-term winning advantage.
Three Aspects of IT Maturity? All forward-thinking organizations are on the journey of digital transformation, and IT plays a critical role in leading changes. Since the biggest challenge to business success is IT; often, IT maturity is proportional to the maturity of the entire company. However, the majority of IT organizations get stuck at the lower or mid-level of maturity, to keep the lights on and running in a reactive mode. So, how to improve IT maturity via achieving its strategic value, speed, innovation, and changeability?

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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What’re on your Digital Transformation Scoreboard

Forward-looking organizations are on the journey of digital transformation. Which management metrics should you apply to measure the progress of changes? Proactive or reactive? On the track or too slow? Healthy or sick?  How would you calculate the digital maturity score of your organization? The balanced scorecard is a strategy performance management tool that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. So, what are on your digital transformation scoreboard?
The performance indicators of Digital Transformation: “Digital Master” refers to those high-performing, high innovative, and high-mature (less than 15%) digital organizations; they have both clear digital vision and well-crafted digital strategy; they are courageous to be in the vanguard of digital transformation with a quantum lead. But they also proactively develop more advanced and unique digital capabilities step-by-step and build a digital premium into their very foundation of business, such as digital mindsets, culture, agility, intelligence, and structure, and they achieve high performing results through strong digital governance discipline and reach its zenith as the digital world continues to expand and diversify. Hence, a well-defined scorecard for digital transformation should contain a good mix of outcome measures or long-term strategic value along with performance drivers to track the progress in the short term (operational measures).The balanced scoreboard is a concise report about strategy execution. A scorecard assesses the progress to strategic goals, it provides the business management a holistic view about the progress of digital transformation offers a way for a corporation to gain a wider perspective on its strategic decisions about digital transformation by considering the impact on finances, customers, internal processes and employee satisfaction. A well-defined scorecard should include digital capability & capacity vs. digital transformation performance. The performance indicators could include: - Strategy execution capability and capacity - Risk management- Level of customer satisfaction-Degree of employee engagement- The level of digital maturity and measurement
Scorecards help greatly with prioritization: The scorecard helps you a lot when it is into execution mode, not in the paper mode. The success of the strategy is not only based on how well you have planned but how well it is executed. A balanced scoreboard is very useful for facilitating discussions and ensuring decision makers understand the various trade-offs. You also need to consider, among other things, the overall strategic balance, dependencies, and constraints between components, individuals, and overall risk exposure; and it is to provide the “balanced” view of trade-off variables. The Balanced Scorecard framework is a great way of selecting, scoping, and aligning specific projects to overall strategic objectives and the budget. At the corporate level, there's one crucial clarification in: Are you intending to evaluate the capacity/potential to change or innovate, or the level of past performance  (more of a performance measure)? So the additional indicators may include things like: - The organizational structure and process tuning-Innovation management-Performance management
How to score the organization or individual as a Digital Master: First, you have to clarify what/who you are referring to by Digital Master? Are that individual digital master (people who have high mature changeability) or companies/organizations/ conglomerates. How would you calculate a Digital Master’s score? Some factors that could be used to measure digital transformation score within a company could be resources invested (human and financial), employees motivation (Top management encouragement and support, challenging activities being involved, level of autonomy given), number of projects/initiatives being launched, and organizational culture (Mission, vision, structure, networking collaboration with partners), etc. Set “SMART” goals to link individual performance to the strategic initiatives. Measuring the success of strategy execution comes from experience. Good organizations do follow a process and tick the boxes. Better organizations measure the important issues as they go along and adjust the plan/objectives /goals accordingly. Logically, it is as simple as achieving the execution of the strategic initiatives and the benefits arising from them. The complication is that this achievement is managed through the activities of individuals whose goals are linked to the strategic initiatives, so each of these individuals and their goals (SMART) must be actively managed to achieve the success of digital transformation.
The digital transformation scorecard allows you to focus on. Without scorecards, it will become like searching for a needle in the haystack. It helps you to search things really matter. One of the strengths of the scorecard is that they enable practical use of the success factors and performance management concepts. It puts these key success enablers in the spotlight for all team members and unifies their efforts to achieve the common goals. The indicators vary depending on who is doing the measuring, and how they are measuring. It is contextual, from individual to culture to organization as a whole, the well-designed scoreboard should motivate changes and innovative actions, and inspire talented people and the business to become digital masters.

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The Monthly “Change Insight”: Setting Principles for Digital Transformation 2017

Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice within an organization, but too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crisis, and demands. This is the bureaucracy’s way of meeting the challenges. A digital transformation is achieved via dynamic Strategy-Execution-Change life cycle management, though it is not all linear steps, but an iterative, ongoing and upgoing change continuum. How to set principles, ride ahead of the change curve and lead change effortlessly?
The Principles and Practices for Digital Transformation  Setting Principles to Run a High-Effective IT? Principles are general rules and guidelines, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about fulfilling its mission. The style of the principle should be short and recognizable. Its definition describes "what" the principle means in the language understood by stakeholders. The motivation describes "why" the principle is important to achieving the organizational mission. The implications describe "how" the principle changes behavior. The Principles and Practices to Encourage Creativity? As businesses get more cut-throat in the face of fierce competitions and unprecedented changes, this puts stress on the labor force that is not conducive to creative, experimental thinking. As a business leader, what are the common solutions to encourage creativity? Will you allow people to make mistakes? Spend time on something with no guarantee of  ROIs? Work on what interests them? Which type of work activities, roles, industries, require great deals of creativity? How do you, as leaders involve all people in creative thinking and actions? And how can you help improve the harvest of the creative seeds? Doesn't the real solution to innovation, creativity begin with inquiry? Would it not be prudent to focus on ensuring all levels of the organization are well founded on asking learning questions?  
Three Core Principles in Accelerating Digital Innovation? Innovation is the specific phenomenon of the knowledge-based economy. It is about having new knowledge and new processes. It is also about too much knowledge in terms of too many good creative ideas and too little available resources. Innovation is about prioritization as well - via a systematic discipline that can "smell" the right idea at the right time and place, make it tangible, and achieve its business values.
What are the Set of Principles to Harness Communication? Communication is a very powerful tool in breaking barriers, building trust, and enforce collaboration. In order to harness communication, start by identifying the barriers you think hinder effective collaboration and work on them. We can achieve an effective communication when we make sure our desired thought is interpreted between multiple entities and acted on in the desired way. Here is the set of principles to harness communication.
The Five Principles to Manage Digital Workforce? People are the most invaluable asset in the business, however, in many organizations, talent management, and performance management are dysfunctional, silo, quantity-driven and short-term focused, lack of holistic approaches to managing performance, innovation, culture, and talent more cohesively. So what are the set of principles to follow in managing today's digital workforce effectively?.
Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Digital Executives’ Set of Core Digital Leadership Capabilities

The intention of becoming a digital leader is to catalyze changes and drive digital transformation; to inspire and innovate, to improve and advance, to facilitate and encourage, as change is often uncomfortable, yet necessary part of reaching the future and sustain the success. Digital makes everything so transparent, and dynamic, it raises the leadership bar as well. Not only do you need to have hard skills and soft qualities, but also you should build the full set of digital leadership capabilities which are not isolated, but interdependent and coherent to improve digital leadership effectiveness and maturity.
Multidimensional thinking capability: Digital leaders today needs to be highly intelligent and highly influential. Digital leaders today not only need to show solid conventional intelligence such as “IQ” and “EQ,” but also have to present a set of unconventional intelligence and multidimensional thinking capabilities such as critical thinking, creative thinking, strategic thinking, Systems Thinking, holistic thinking, etc, for dealing with over-complexity and hyper-competition of the digital new normal, and handling unprecedented uncertainty and ambiguity seamlessly. They must apply multi-intelligence properly and practice independent thinking all the time; it means to be authentic, practice real thinking, break down outdated rules or traditions, and improve leadership effectiveness and maturity.
Innovation capability: Innovation is about how to transform novel ideas and achieve their business values. Digital executives’ innovation capability is about how well they can play a role in both management innovation and innovation management and set the tone to build a culture of innovation. An innovative leader has the leadership traits such as creativity, openness to the new ideas, out of the box thinking, inquisitiveness, risk tolerance, etc. Innovative leaders can connect wider dots to extract and impart learning from any situation to the new circumstances; they must be like a conductor leading the orchestra with a not yet completely written symphony. Innovative leaders not just follow the rules, but have the courage to break down some outdated rules and set updated digital principles for further harnessing the creative atmosphere. So they can strike the right balance of best practices and next practices, and help the business build innovation as a core capability.
Learning agility: With the exponential growth of information, shortened knowledge life cycle and commodity knowledge only a click away, and the overwhelming mix of signals and noises; false and truth, learning knowledge is even not enough, capturing insight is the must. Today’s digital leaders must have learning agility to learn and relearn all the time, they must have the attitude to keep learning, as well as have learning aptitude and intelligence to learn fast and smart. The qualitative leaders must be very open to knowledge, desire for insight, and hunt for wisdom. At the hyper-connected digital era, to break down stereotypical biases or any types of career ceilings, learning agility, continuous delivery, expert power, and dynamic digital footprint become the very significant part of being “who you are,” to present digital leadership authenticity and sharpen a set of core leadership capabilities.
Problem-solving capability: Fundamentally, leadership is about future and change. Leadership practice, is, at its heart, a problem-solving process. We all develop reputations for being problem creators, problem definers or problem solvers. The problems-solving capability is critical to improve leadership effectiveness and maturity. Because sometimes, even you have a good intention to solve problems but perhaps just fix the symptom, and causes more serious problems later on. Hence, digital leaders today need to understand that the linear management skills are not sufficient to lead today’s nonlinear digital world with the deep learning curve; it is crucial to exemplify leadership via self-leadership discipline, keep focusing on building the new and nonlinear skills and shaping multi-layer, recombinant capabilities for problem-solving and innovation.
Strategy management capability: Top leaders today spend a significant amount of time on both crafting strategies, leading and overseeing strategy execution.  Strategic Management is a process of evaluating a company’s mission, establishing the company’s design, developing the company’s organizational relationships, whilst guiding the company’s plan to execution, to ensure that the management is consistent with the company’s strategy. Hence, the digital leaders should have in-depth understanding of the business, able to view the complete business system as an ecosystem with all its dependencies and interconnections; they are also able to tie these things together in order to develop actionable plans; identify key leverage points where the non-proportional impact can be made; and the well-set goals can be achieved smoothly. Hence, the top leader's strategy management capability help them achieve leadership vision and improve leadership maturity.
Change capability: Today’s digital leaders must be the change agent themselves in order to lead digital transformation seamlessly. Because change is no long just once a time business initiative, but an ongoing capability to adapt to the digital new normal.  The implementation of any significant change process usually succeeds or fails because of the leadership of that change process. The digital leaders today must understand the psychology behind changes, and lead change at the mindset level. Turn around the tough situations. Hence, the advances of digital leadership mindset and maturity of the leader’s changeability directly impact on how further the change can go forward and how deep change effort can permeate. A change agent leader is a problem-solver, enjoy understanding the complexity and guide people through it; finding common ground and initiative dialogues. The challenge is how you move the ‘needle’ forward, and really mind the digital gap to accelerate your organization’s digital transformation.
Decision and judgment capability: Today’s digital leaders need to lead their organizations to the uncharted water and blurred digital territories. It’s the difficult challenges.The top leadership roles need to spend significant time on making both strategic and tactical decisions on the daily basis. Top digital leaders today must have the ability to make sound judgment and effective decisions, especially at the strategic level. In order to make effective decisions, it is more important for senior executives to frame the right questions than hunting for the right answers. Due to the complexity, uncertainty, interdependence, and ever-changing business dynamic, sound judgment is a hardcore competency which often does not just come from “gut feeling,” but based on updated information, solid knowledge and decision wisdom, as well as the humble attitude to master to full learning cycle.
Digital leadership capabilities are harder and multidimensional, and it takes time to build. Even many have the passion for leading, if you lack of an integral set of leadership capabilities, your leadership influence will be compromised, and your leadership reputation will be tarnished. Digital leadership is both art and science.








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CIOs as Chief Insight Officer: Can you Scrutinize the Opposite of Digital Characteristics

The shift to digital paradigm cuts across sectors, geographies, and leadership roles, and it is now spreading rapidly to enable organizations of all stripe to reinvent themselves. Not only should you know what is the digital all about, but also the digital leaders like CIOs should further contemplate and scrutinize: What are the “OPPOSITE” of digital characteristics, and how to overcome the roadblocks at the journey of leading digital transformation?
Silo: Digital is not just about the fancy gadget or the latest technology only. Digital is the gigantic puzzle with many misplaced pieces. Digital transformation is the scalable expansion toward multiple directions and dimensions. Hyperconnectivity is the very nature of the digital organization, hence, silo is the “OPPOSITE” of the digital characteristics. More often, organizations are too siloed to be able to relate coherently as a holistic business to the digital journey. Most business managers and teams operate with an incomplete and relatively small view of the business ecosystem. Without a cross-functional, end-to-end perspective across the entire enterprise, managers tend to focus on their own functions or departments. Silo thinking creates the blind spot, it is a source of process complexity to slow information flow and stifle innovation. Silo vision and thinking tend to hinder any efforts to systematically reduce operational complexity. In today's volatile economy, nothing impedes progress more than protective silos which are simply a form of bureaucratic management to preserve the status quo. If most managers still apply old silo management mindsets to new ways of organizing and this legacy of the old economy limits many digital organizations from unleashing their full potential. Digital transformation is to optimize the whole, not the separate silos. It is imperative that the management is willing to seek out help, break down silos, and harness cross-functional collaborations as we work to generate new ideas or solve problems.
Stagnancy: Digital means change with the accelerating speed. Hence, stagnancy is the OPPOSITE of digital transformation. At the traditional organizations, people normally 'close' the boundaries of the system, so that less energy is transferred and, therefore, the fewer changes happen in the system. Bureaucratic thinking generates negative energy which stops organizations from moving forward. It is about fear of failure; fear of getting out of old habits or fear to lose the status quo; fear to get out of the comfort zone, etc. Dynamic and changing digital organizations cannot operate with the static mindset and unchanging people. Mostly the management wants to see a different result of all combined efforts. So methods or people held responsible for those results 'has to change.' Organizations, like individuals, need to be in flow to operate smoothly. Digital means flow, data flow, information flow, knowledge flow, mind flow, and business flow. Many times, teams have worked very hard to refine the processes involved with an initiative, but if change mechanism is not embedded into the holistic business management, or change is managed as the other layer of an isolated effort, it could be too costly, decrease the productivity and lose the focus to achieve the ultimate business goals. From an organizational structure perspective, an organization achieves the state of digital equilibrium via tuning processes and functionality underlying, so an organization can approach the flow zone when the positions in its hierarchy have clear, accountable tasks, when change becomes the new normal and innovation is the new DNA of the digital organization.
Superficiality: Information is like the water, permeated into every corner of the business; digital reality is deep, deep, with the “VUCA” characteristics- Velocity, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. It is a profound digital transformation. Hence, superficiality is “OPPOSITE” of digital. It is the very reason to make the business and the world disconnect. Doing digital is perhaps superficial, only stretch in a single direction to apply a few digital tools or build a fancy web presence. However, doing digital and being digital have to dig deeper and make radical changes to the underly business processes and functions. Superficiality means to focus on just symptoms, not root causes; only catch the conventional understanding of content, not the contextual insight beneath the surface, close-mindedness, or outdated best practices. To overcome the common challenges and advance the digital vision, digital leaders and professionals have to really dig beneath the superficial layer, see around the corner and transcend the interdisciplinary knowledge, to get to the heart of the matter; cure the root causes and capture the insight of the digital transformation. From workforce management perspective, when superficiality rule the workplace, biases or stereotyping pollute the business climate, the stereotypical thinking or pre-conceived ideas about how things should happen is propagating, and people get de-energized with the negative vibes and the business suffer from lower employee morale and engagement. To overcome superficiality, digital leaders today should be able to constantly and dynamically lead an organizational structure and IT-enabled business capabilities that will seamlessly enable the business and well ahead of the business requirement; the ability to interact with business in their processes and pain areas, the ability to bring out a customer-tailored and technology driven solution, driving adoption of applications, be the spinal cord for the organization, integrating various functions, simplify and unify processes across functional boundaries, and often across the entire enterprise; penetrating IT into every key business capability of the business, to make a profound digital transformation.
Digital makes a profound impact from specific function to business as a whole, the purpose of such radical digitalization is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of business performance and organizational maturity. Hence, digital leaders and professionals should not only understand what it means to go digital; but also clarify what are the OPPOSITE directions from being digital, in order to avoid the barriers on the way. Digital organizations today aim to move into a more advanced stage of digital deployment by tailoring their own unique strength and business maturity, and hopefully outstrip competitors and eventually become the high mature digital masters.
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A Renewal Board: How to Synchronize the Board Evolution with the Digital Transformation

The contemporary corporate board as the top leadership team plays a significant role in advising and monitoring business management. The BoDs should also walk the talk to digitize the boardroom with strategic imperative because often the digital tone is set at the top and echo spirally to all levels of the organization. So, how to synchronize the board evolution with the digital transformation and re-energize BoDs to get digital ready?

Synchronize the board composition with the strategic perspective of digital transformation: In order to lead today’s hyperconnected digital organization with the hyper-diverse workforce, the board composition should be synchronized with the digital perspective of the business. The Board is responsible for ensuring an appropriate mix of cognitive intelligence, professional capabilities, skills, knowledge, and experience are present or available for it to fulfill its function. The best-fit BoDs for the board depends on the Board’s current makeup, culture, and which “gap” needs to be filled. Anyone who is selected to sit on a corporate board should be fully qualified to mind the gap or multiple gaps. And the Board composition needs to embrace cognitive difference, functional difference, and other experience or capability difference.  Some of these credentials are proven experience in executive leadership, entrepreneurship, strategy development, technological vision, innovation, digital advising, risk and crisis management, global empathy, international experiences, and some degree of financial literacy.
Refresh the board viewpoint via setting tones to catalyze changes and setting policies to ensure smooth digital transformation: Due to the “VUCA” characteristics of business dynamic, overloading information, and globalization as the new normal of business expansion, the Board provides an “outside-in” view of businesses and multi-dimensional lenses to oversee and advise business strategy and execution to steer the business to the right direction. It is crucial to brainstorm on how to build a highly effective board with a heterogeneous viewpoint, and right mixing of Individualism and collectivism nature, to set the tone of directorship with innovation and influence. The traditional boards advise and take the compliance driven lens to ensure nothing is broken, but the great boards inspire and present creative tension to stimulate innovation, with courage to break outdated rules and build the right set of digital principles and policies to catalyze changes. Traditional boards have the peer relationship, but great boards advocate digital professionalism a and provide constructive feedback to the management and each other, set the tone for building the culture of learning and innovation. All of these changes bring the significant opportunities and responsibilities for the new breed of digital BoDs, who might suggest the updated digital playbooks with the more advanced digital philosophy to guide through the digital transformation from the boardroom to the front line. The BoDs as the business critic can provide excellent feedback which gives the top management accurate information to improve; great questions to self-aware; and keen insight to gain the in-depth understanding of the digital ecosystem.
Rejuvenate boards with IT-savvy BoDs to embrace digital as the inevitable trend and part of the business venture: Many organizations are still confused digital with general technology adoption. It's a significant shift from going digital to being digital. Many corporate directors and senior executives would like boards to have a more frequent and constructive role in digital strategy. Being digital in one's business implies first going digital internally, culturally, and holistically. A digital-savvy board oversees strategy, and weave IT as an integral part of strategic plans. Digital savvy BoDs understand what's required and how as a high-level basis of going digital mean to the business. Therefore, more and more digital savvy boards invite IT leaders to the table to share the technological vision and close the strategy blind spots which are often created by the lack of future-driven mindset, that means the management probably wouldn't know where is the weakest link in the business. Ultimately it is best for the boardroom to give a 360 viewpoint and execute the strategy and avoid group thinking, rejuvenate board to embrace digital as the inevitable trend and business venture.
Evaluation, strategic oversight and policy setting for the long term should top the list in the digital board’s agenda. One of the biggest challenges in this complex, multi-polar world is the fact that we need different perspectives, the multitude of insight, dynamic knowledge, and alternative ways to solve an emergent or an old thorny problem. A renewal board with digital savvy can set an example of leadership which permeates through the entire organization and synchronize the board evolution with the digital transformation.
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IT Impact on the Breadth and Depth of Digital Transformation

The very characteristics of digital are hyperconnectivity, interdependence, and hyper dynamism; and increasingly, enterprises find themselves enmeshed in "ecosystems." IT becomes change drivers and strategy enabler for business, and IT transformation is a significant part of the business transformation. The word "transformation" in itself means change and change for the better, new ways and methodologies of doing things; the high mature digital organization starts to appreciate such attributes as 'readiness,’ 'ownership,' ‘integration,’ 'full open communication,’ customized structuring as well as developing 'partnerships broadly.’ IT makes a significant impact on the breadth and depth of digital transformation.
The breadth of digital transformation: The digital enterprise is nothing more than a ‘switch’ in the network lattice of the digital ecosystem. The aspect which matters is ensuring that the enterprise is connected to all the appropriate eco-system, lattice or otherwise, touch points; moreover, these changes do not happen in isolation from each other in a predictable way; and thus, digital businesses should become highly responsive to changes and highly innovative to thrive in the over complex ecosystem. Information & Technology are the backbones of the digital ecosystem with hyper-connectivity, hyper-diversity, hyper-dynamism. In order to function, an enterprise has to be linked to the many and varied ‘touch points’ between itself and the marketplace environment of which it is a part. It is important to leverage technology to enable integral design and seamless customer experience, rather than use it as a constraint; it is also critical to keep information flow smoothly across the functional or even organizational boundaries in order to make sure the right people getting the right information to make right decisions for solving the right problems timely.
The depth of digital transformation: Digital transformation is an overarching approach that has to dig underneath of the surface of businesses and take a structural way to integrate both hard and soft business elements to the long-term organizational competency. The dynamic digital organizations need to get away from letting things fall through and start creating “integrated wholes” by leveraging IT for utilizing the underlying business processes and building the unique set of business capability and ultimately bridging the chasm between strategy and execution. Digital is never just about the pretty interface or a few fancy gadgets. The optimal internal structure of the digital enterprise from autocratic to democratic is the one which provides the greatest effectiveness and efficiency, and depends, in large measure, on the nature and purpose of the enterprise. From information management perspective, the cost benefits of managing data are in the design of the overall system (people, process, systems) and not the tools. That is why cross-functional collaboration matters, keep tuning organizational structure; explore technical abilities; increase business agility via emergent digital technologies, etc. Business change is hyper accelerating, especially as it relates to the people and value creation dimensions and it is more important than ever to engage profound digital leaders to help the enterprise chart the course and set a better sail.   
A transformation needs to work cross boxes instead within the box; to manage a successful transformation journey, business and IT should set up clear strategy and guidelines to broaden the horizon of changes and dive into the depth of underlying functionality as well. It is important that the opportunity is not squandered, the maximum benefit is derived from the business, and full digital potential of the business is unleashed.

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The Monthly “Dot Connections”: Connecting Dots to Pursue the Art of Performance Measurement

Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, and creativity is all about connecting the dots.

The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, creativity is the most wanted trait for digital leaders and professionals today, and innovation is the light every organization is pursuing. Creativity is all about connecting the dots. Which dots shall you connect between different management disciplines and practices in order to accelerate digital transformation?

 Connecting Dots to Pursuit the Art of Performance Measurement

Scoreboard vs. Dashboard: “The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a strategy performance management tool - a semi-standard structured report, supported by design methods and automation tools, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. In management information systems, a dashboard is "an easy to read, often single page, real-time user interface, showing a graphical presentation of the current status (snapshot) and historical trends of an organization’s key performance indicators to enable instantaneous and informed decisions to be made at a glance?Strategic KPIs vs. Operational KPIs? KPIs are indicators to identify if the adopted strategy, operation, and process, etc., is working toward the objective. As such, you don't "adopt" a KPI to "achieve an outcome," you adopt a strategy or operational workflow to achieve the outcome, and you define KPIs to monitor the progress and performance. That’s the name KPI –Key Performance Indicators stand for. The provocative question is: is it possible to link operational KPI's to strategic ones to reflect and track the overall progress in achieving the strategic goals? Leading Indicator vs. Lagging Indicator? As Drucker wisely pointed out: “You can only manage what you're measured.” Benchmarking and measuring are both science and art. There are many practical metrics and KPIs, but not every metric is created equal. The concept of leading and lagging indicators, as applied to the Balanced Scorecard, relies on an understanding of the cause-effect relationships between KPIs in the different perspectives. But what’re the differences between leading indicators vs. lagging indicators? CapEx vs. OpEx? More and more IT organizations are pushing up their Cloud envelope, though Cloud Computing still takes time to get matured and it doesn't necessarily equate to faster software development or better quality of software. Still, there are some significant advantages such as the ability to scale up or down as demand waxes and wanes, global availability and transforming from CapEx. To Opex., etc. How to Connect the Dots between PI vs. KPI? Performance Indicators (PI) measure progress across a broad range of intended outcomes (goals, objectives, even outputs) and are used at all levels of the organization. Key Performance Indicators can be a subset of PIs, or they can roll several PIs into one (an index). KPIs are used to measure overall progress of the organization toward its mission and primary goals, they are high-level indicators that everyone in the organization can relate to. KPIs are often used to create corporate dashboards; they can be used in PR documents and other reporting tools to present an organization's outcomes to the public.The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.7 million page views with about #3500th 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 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.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Monthly “Dot Connections”: Connecting Dots to Pursuit the Art of Performance Measurement

Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, and creativity is all about connecting the dots.
The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, creativity is the most wanted trait for digital leaders and professionals today, and innovation is the light every organization is pursuing. Creativity is all about connecting the dots. Which dots shall you connect between different management disciplines and practices in order to accelerate digital transformation?
Scoreboard vs. Dashboard: “The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a strategy performance management tool - a semi-standard structured report, supported by design methods and automation tools, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. In management information systems, a dashboard is "an easy to read, often single page, real-time user interface, showing a graphical presentation of the current status (snapshot) and historical trends of an organization’s key performance indicators to enable instantaneous and informed decisions to be made at a glance?Strategic KPIs vs. Operational KPIs? KPIs are indicators to identify if the adopted strategy, operation, and process, etc is working toward the objective. As such, you don't "adopt" a KPI to "achieve an outcome," you adopt a strategy or operational workflow to achieve the outcome, and you define KPIs to monitor the progress and performance. That’s the name KPI –Key Performance Indicators stand for. The provocative question is: is it possible to link operational KPI's to strategic ones to reflect and track the overall progress in achieving the strategic goals? Leading Indicator vs. Lagging Indicator? As Drucker well pointed out: “You can only manage what you're measured.” Benchmarking and measuring are both science and art. There are many practical metrics and KPIs, but not every metric is created equal. The concept of leading and lagging indicators, as applied to the Balanced Scorecard, relies on an understanding of the cause-effect relationships between KPIs in the different perspectives. But what’re the differences between leading indicators vs. lagging indicators? CapEx vs. OpEx? More and more IT organizations are pushing up their Cloud envelope, though Cloud Computing still takes time to get matured and it doesn't necessarily equate to faster software development or better quality of software, still, there are some significant advantages such as the ability to scale up or down as demand waxes and wanes, global availability and transforming from CapEx. To Opex., etc. How to Connect the Dots between PI vs. KPI? Performance Indicators (PI) measure progress across a broad range of intended outcomes (goals, objectives, even outputs) and are used at all levels of the organization. Key Performance Indicators can be a subset of PIs, or they can roll several PIs into one (an index). KPIs are used to measure overall progress of the organization toward its mission and primary goals -- they are high-level indicators that everyone in the organization can relate to. KPIs are often used to create corporate dashboards; they can be used in PR documents and other reporting tools to present an organization's outcomes to the public.The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.7 million page views with about #3500th 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 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.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu