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The Digital CIO’s New Year Reflection and Resolution

Due to the changing nature of technology and exponential growth of information, IT organization is always on the hot seat, with the pressure to adapt - Doing more with innovation. IT enables the business and supports the applications its customers use to not just transact, but transform business. Besides, as a Chief Information Officer, the CIO today is Chief Influence Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, and Chief Insight Officer has to continue to lead IT transformation in a proactive, inquisitive, and progressive way. So what’s the digital CIO’s New Year reflection and resolution?
Q1 Does IT provide guidances for the organization’s future? And how to build a set of digital principles to run a high mature IT organization?  IT is in a unique position to oversee the underneath functions and processes of the entire organization; IT is like the “super-glue” to integrate all hard and soft business elements into necessary and differentiated business capability and competency. Nowadays, all forward-looking organizations declare they are in the information management business, because information is the lifeblood, and technology is often the disruptive force of digital innovation and transformation. Hence, IT also needs to leverage technological vision and provides guidance for the organization’s future growth. The guiding PRINCIPLEs should cover the customer, people, and quality from a holistic business perspective. The guiding principle is like the light tower, navigates the business toward the right direction and speed up the organization to the well-planned journey of digital transformation.  Though it’s not easy for a set of principles defined that can be applied holistically. Their content sometimes contains natural conflict, without a method of prioritizing and implementing them consistently, they become a source of contention. Hence, business/IT leaders have to articulate which principle is applicable in which situation. A well-defined set of IT management principles would guide decision making, bridge IT-business gaps, do more with innovation, measure right things before measuring it right. Keep in mind, principles are guidelines, not rigid rules, there needs to be a pragmatic way of applying whatever principles to the problem in a consistent manner, with the goal to achieve strategic goals and guide daily business activities effectively.
Q2 Is IT provocative: Does IT stretch, challenge, or interrupt the status quo? The CIO role has never been about just managing the status quo.  Digital is the age of innovation. The main barriers to innovation are silos, rigidity, inflexibility, static mindset, or bureaucracy, etc. The available technology just makes innovation easier to do now than in the past, more powerful, less costly, more easily accessible, thanks to the "lightweight' digital technologies and mosaic style of the on-demand service model. IT needs to set the priority right via proactively solving business problems, not just overcoming technical challenges.IT has to proactively work as an integral part of the business to capitalize on opportunity via leading the digital transformation. IT organizations today have to become highly responsive, dynamic, and hyperconnected.  IT needs to be a proactive business problem solver to gain a sense of achievement.  It is important to build a scalable idea management which means for sharing and managing ideas throughout the enterprise, even across silos and geographies.
Q3 Is IT desired? Does the organization need this? Does IT help the business?  IT should facilitate the business partners to the right solutions and help to implement them? If the CIO isn't tied in closely to different business functions, and run in the silo, IT is still in lower maturity.  IT shouldn’t always look at itself from inside out via IT lens, but via outside-in customer viewpoint, to ensure the daily task helps the business build the competency for delighting both internal and external customers and improving the business agility and maturity. Often, IT suffers from overload, lack of resource, and talent shortage, and managing IT delivery including supporting process development projects in other parts of the company and sometimes no time left selling the idea about investing in their own processes. As daily practices, IT needs to be proactively planning, not justing taking the order, but working closely with internal customers to improve overall business operation from holistic business perspective. Fundamentally redesign IT role and culture as a co-creator of top line value, growth, and profitability.
Q4 Is IT in a high-involvement process? Does IT expand the zone of possible change and development? Digital CIOs can have a sense of achievement by running IT as a business; by people and for the people, to be future driven and digital ready; making IT integrated into the company while avoiding making it a separate "stand alone" department. When there is no willingness to serve users and on the other way round, no appetite from users to involve IT, the gaps get bigger and dangerous behaviors may get introduced. The CIO is required to think about the business first, technology second. CIO needs to be the visionary derives the most value out of the technology investments by translating the promise of technology to strategic and competitive advantage for the company.  Technology is one of the tools the CIO uses to help move the business in the direction of meeting its strategic objectives. This strategic focus is all the more important in the current environment where technological advances happen at a rapid face. The type of speed issues, such as IT slow to change comes from gaps created between IT and the rest of the company. So digital IT has to not only improve its own speed, but also the overall organizational agility and maturity.
Q5 Does IT have a positive and bold message and brand? The business goal for IT branding is to have all (if possible) business audiences at every level of enterprise weighed-in with delight. Identify the key messages you want to convey to each of these different stakeholder groups. This is your brand. So it is urgent to know exactly what image you intend to convey, create a comprehensive list of the IT organization’s strengths, weaknesses, goals, and objectives. For successful IT branding, basically you are asking yourself: What are you trying to accomplish? Are you on the right path? What do you aspire to achieve? Is “what you look” consistent upon “who you are”? There are best practices and next practices to create and reinforce IT brand, to promote innovation and create new knowledge and build the great IT reputation with freshness and innovativeness.
The New Year comes with the new inspiration. CIOs as “Chief Inspiration Officer” need to convey the vision clearly and get ready for changes. To put simply, an IT organization with high-maturity not only adapts to the changes but drives digital transformation in their company, IT is an enabler and catalyzer for the business to reach the era of radical digital and the next level of maturity.

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“Digital Master” Book Monthly Tuning: From “Doing Digital” to “Being Digital” Jan., 2017

Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. At the heart of digital, it is people and how to build a customer-centric organization. But how to assess the digital fitness of your organization for such a paradigm shift.    From “Doing Digital” to “Being Digital” Five Stages from “Doing Digital” to “Being Digital” Organizational digitalization is not just about using the latest technology gadgets or applying the fancy tools. At the high maturity level, organizations have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving the full-fledged digital transformation. There are a couple of evolutional ecosystem stages businesses have to experience in order to ride above the learning curve and move up the business maturity from “Doing Digital,” to “Being Digital.”
Taking a Step-Wise Approach for Leading Digital Transformation: At the high maturity level, organizations have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving innovations and the full-fledged digital transformation. Either be a disrupter or being disrupted, digital makes significant impacts on every aspect of the business from people, processes, to technology and capability both horizontally and vertically. And organizations have to take a step-wise approach, continue assessing, fine-tuning and adapting, ride above the learning curve and take the journey of digital transformation steadfastly.A Bimodal Digital Organization - How to Strike the Right Balance between Agility and Stability Organizations large or small are on the journey to digital transformation, the paradox is that you need to keep the light on to maintain the stability, but also be adaptive to the changes caused by digital disruption with increasing speed. Hence, many businesses just have to run the bi-modal mode: the industrial speed to do what they always do, and the digital speed by leveraging innovation to experiment the new way to do things. But philosophically and methodologically, what’s the right balance between being quick to adopt new methods and risking them for failing, and sticking with tried and tested ones and risking them becoming obsolete? Or more broadly speaking, how to strike the right balance between agility and stability?
CIOs as digital leaders: Five dimensions of Digital Transformation? Modern IT organizations play a critical role in driving the digital transformation of the entire company. The CIO has to look forward and actively position the business in the right place to take full advantage of opportunities and emergent digital technology trends. DRIVING is not a passive activity. The role of modern CIO is to identify and blend the processes and practices that information and technology can assist and shape the business by linking all digital aspects together to enforce the value creation and drive digital transformation from multidimensional perspectives?
Five Aspects in Making a Bold Digital Transformation: Organizations large or small across the industrial sectors are on the journey of digital transformation. Digital transformation as the leapfrogging change,  represents the next stage of business maturity and will improve how the enterprise works and interacts with its ecosystem, with the customer at the center of its focus. But what are further aspects and specific steps in making the bold digital transformation?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.6+million page views with about #3300+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
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The New Book “100 Creativity Ingredients” Quote Collection III

All humans are born with raw creativity ability. Creativity has many dimensions, with multi-faceted truth and myth, manifold knowledge and multidimensional insight. Here is the set of quotes in the book of “100 Creativity Ingredients.”
45 A learning mind has more dots to connect for sparking innovation. 46 Innovators are pioneers, great problem-solvers; and creators of a better context. 47 Creativity is a function of imagination, interdisciplinary knowledge, collaboration, and evaluation. 48 Fundamentally, innovation is to solve old or emergent problems creatively. 49 Creativity is the “DNA” of entrepreneurs. 50 Creativity is a higher level of thinking because it often imposes a higher cognitive load as you think “harder” via different thought processes. 51 Creative people are optimistic realists to discover versatility. 52 Back to the root of the word “profundity,” it means insightful and understanding.53 Creativity in and of itself is a type of energy vibration. 54 To put simply, ambidexterity is the capability to balance. 55 The veins, vessels, and synapses of the brain are like a computer with memory, able to download and process information accordingly. 56 Adaptability enforces creativity, and creativity is adaptability. 57 Neuroplasticity is the key to unlocking ultimate creativity. 58 Creativity needs encouragement as the spirit of food, and conflict to spark it. 59 The true conflict in innovation is self-imposed by trying to make our visions reality.60 Learn to visualize for inspiring creativity, and make imagination rolling into reality. 61 Creativity is fresh and new every time. 62 Creativity needs encouragement as the spirit of food, and conflict to spark it up. 63 Digital attitude is about adaptability - being experimental and changeable. 64 The collective sensation is one’s perspective, experience, memory, imagination, and perception. 65 Pattern understanding is the type of problem-solving thinking. 66 A multi-linguistic mindset is multi-faceted to think from a different angle. 67 While the individual contributions provide the “building block” of creativity; it is the collective consensus on what to do with them that is exciting. 68 Digital professional with accelerated mind continue to learn and develop creativity and recombinant professional capability.
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Kicking Start the New Year with Digital Fitness

The digital fit starts with mind fit - breaking the negative thinking pattern, and keeping the positive energy flow.
It is another new year ahead of us, and it is the time to recharge the energy, open the new chapter of learning, growing and innovating; do the reflection, make the resolution and kick start the New Year with digital fitness.
The digital fit starts with mind fit - breaking the negative thinking pattern, and keeping the positive energy flow: The digital fitness is based on both how you think and what you are doing. Generally speaking, a “digital fit” person with growth mind is self-motivated, self-directed, self-inspired, purposeful, and creative., etc. With growth mind, you are curious, creative, and courageous to try new things, discover your strength and unleash your potential; with growth mind, you are positive and keep focusing on building capabilities; with growth mind, you become more authentic, audacious and adaptive. Digital professionals with growth mind can step out of their own comfort zone easily, walk the talk and lead change confidently. Digital professionals today need to build an enriched digital portfolio via reinventing themselves, continuous building new skills and capabilities, seeking unconventional wisdom, developing the next “digital fitness” practices, etc. These are great new year resolution.
The digit fit is about “fitting for changes”: In the business context, the right people are the ones who possess the forward-thinking mind with knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors necessary to move your business in the direction it needs to go; to help realize the vision and values of the organization, they are fit for changes, and keep innovating and transforming the business for the long-term prosperity. The goal of a great organization is to set the principles to define “digital fitness,” and put the right people in the right position with the right capabilities to solve the right problems. To put briefly, “people engagement” blended with the business "context-fit" makes the people "fit.” Organizational fit from conventional lenses makes relationships easy and perpetuates the status quo, and it could create change inertia and lose competency for the long run. The digital fitting business should encourage people to think differently, empower change agents and inspire growth mindset; they can well align the individual’s careers goals with the overall business goals, and accelerate the pace of the digital transformation.
The digit fit is about making the leap of creativity: As businesses today get more cut-throat in the hyper-connected working environment, this puts stress on the workforce that is not conducive to more creative and experimental thinking. Creativity starts with a learning attitude and feel comfortable to step out of the comfort zone; shape a bigger box of thinking by making connections between different boxes; truly manage your emotion in a positive and constructive way; look at what other people have in their boxes; it’s not about copying others’ ideas, but having the learning agility to build your own set of capabilities, including creativity based on your own strength, and solve problems creatively. From the business management perspective, you need to build a creative working environment which can provide intellectual challenges and help people grow and make the progress; apply and recognize their ideas with appreciation; at the digital fit working place, people enjoying learning and experimenting, expanding knowledge and sharing insight. Such organizations can make a big leap of the collective creativity, unleash the full digital potential, and move their businesses to the high-level of maturity.
The whole New Year stands in front of us, embrace the unknown and manage time wisely. Make it the impressive chapter of the digital journey. Keep fit, start at the mindset level, make the new year resolution rolling into the reality.
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The Monthly Spotlight on Digital CIOs: CIOs as the Mastermind of Digital Transformation Jan. 2017

Modern CIOs have many personas, they are the mastermind of the digital transformation.

Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges. It is not sufficient to only keep the light on. Regardless of which industry or the nature of organization you are in, being a digital leader will need to master the art of creating unique, differentiating value from piles of commoditized technologies, but more specifically, what are the digital-savvy CIOs doing to run IT as a growth engine and innovation Hub? Here is the monthly spotlight of the CIO.           CIOs as the Mastermind of Digital Transformation

The Nature and Nurture of Digital CIOs  Due to changing nature of technology and multifaceted impact of modern IT organization, the CIO is perhaps one of the most sophisticated leadership roles in the digital transformation. The role of the Chief Information Officer is a very tricky one and hard to fill. The problem is heavily masked because the position is often filled with the wrong person. Contemporary CIOs are expected to play multiple personas; besides being the tactical IT manager, leadership is considered the top attribute for CIOs. So are digital CIOs nature or nurtured? What are the most important attributes of IT Three Principles to Highlight Digital IT leadership? Due to the “VUCA” characteristics of digital new normal, IT is in the middle of a sea change, Modern technology proves human’s progress. At a contemporary business, technology is an enabler for business transformation, process optimization and talent empowerment. It is important to realize that there are basic principles and rules that make it work. CIOs must set guidelines to run digital organizations. Here are three principles to highlight digital IT leadership. Mastering the Complexity of the Digital CIO Role  Due to the abundance of information and omnipresence of technologies, IT plays a pivotal role in the business’s digital transformation journey. Therefore, digital CIOs have to wear multiple hats and play different roles in the information-abundant organizations today. Nowadays, the CIO is not just managing IT to keep the lights on, but managing information to ensure the right people getting the right information at the right time to make the right decisions; and take visionary leadership in orchestrating digital transformation journey smoothly. Transformation means to change the “nature” of something, albeit that the increasing pace of technological advances has clearly impacted the nature and scope of opportunities, digital transformation represents a break with the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. So how can IT leaders master the complexity of the digital CIO role in order to lead effortlessly?
How to Master Multidimensional Digital Thinking Effortlessly: Due to the changing nature of IT with overwhelming information and fast growing digital technologies, IT becomes overcomplex with high velocity. The CIO is not a static management role, but a dynamic leadership role. Digital CIOs must wear multiple hats to play situational leadership, and the CIO’s responsibilities can be quite varied even with the same title or position. In order to lead effectively with broader vision and comprehensive strategy at the age of digital with "VUCA" characteristics, CIOs need to be the “Thinkingaire” who can master multidimensional digital thinking, and lead digital transformation effortlessly.
Raising the Profile of Digital CIOs Contemporary digital CIOs wear multiple hats, play different roles with multiple personas. There is a distinct difference between a great CIO and an average CIO in terms of identifying and implementing competitive advantages and being a great leader. What are modern CIOs’ digital profile, and how can they improve leadership effectiveness and shift their role from transactional managers to transformational leaders?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.6 million page views with about #3300th 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 New Book “100 Creativity Ingredients” Quote Collection II

All humans are born with raw creativity ability. Creativity has many dimensions, with multi-faceted truth and myth, manifold knowledge and multidimensional insight. Here is the set of quotes in the book of “100 Creativity Ingredients.”
25 There is an emotion life cycle in creativity and innovation life cycle!
26 Being optimistic is the view looking for the best, it comes with the “never give up” attitude.
27 Emotional Intelligence is the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others.
28 Innovations succeed when failure is seen as a learning step to great success.
29 Dissatisfaction with status quo is the psychology behind creative disruptions.  
30 Being “misfit” with advanced thinking and forward-thinking influence is a digital fit.
31 The paradox is a situation, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.
32 Being confident means you know who you are, your strength and your limitation.
33 A curious mind enjoys inquiring, experimenting and discovering.
34 None of us will ever know enough, and that is why humility is a critical component of innovativeness.
35 Be courageous to listen to what you don’t want to hear and have the guts to be innovative.
36 There are no two snowflakes are the same, we are all unique individuals.
37 Empathy is the ability to understand others from their perspectives.
38 Progress is in simplification, which often follows complexity.
39 Flexibility is a mental process which results in an action that tests a possible solution.
40 Creativity is a passion for some who are inquisitive and want to explore new possibilities.

41 The art of questioning is to ignite innovative thinking.
42 The restlessness to create is a sign of addiction.
43 Being innovativeness is a state of mind.
44 Emotional Excellence means to have an ability to respond to emotions, and manage them well.
45 Maturity refers to having a sound understanding of basics and making a fair judgment.   Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The New Year Prediction of the “Future of CIO” Blog: The HOLISM of the Digital Transformation

Digital "HOLISM" is the keyword prediction for the New Year from the "Future of CIO" blog.
The New Year bell has rung, and the full new year is ahead of us. The visionaries and futurists are dropping their crystal ball to predict the future trends, and the thought leaders & digital masters are also reading the collective mindsets to capture the foresight of the Digital Era. What is the New Year keyword prediction from the “Future of CIO” blog? The HOLISM of the digital transformation. The holism is the concise word to describe the characteristics of the digitalization - hyperconnectivity and interdependence; it means the parts of a whole are in intimate interconnection, because they cannot exist independently of the whole, and it means the digital business has to break down the silos, and ensure the business as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
A HOLISTIC digital transformation: Digital is not just about the fancy gadget or the latest technology only. Digital transformation is the scalable expansion toward multiple directions. Digital is the gigantic puzzle with many misplaced pieces, you have to put them all in the right places to discover the true meaning and unleash its full potential. Hence, understanding the digital holism should be the digital resolution for today’s business leaders and professionals. A business ecosystem is just like the nature ecosystem, first, it needs to be understood, then, needs to be well planned, and also needs to be thoughtfully renewed as well. Business is not just working within the industry, but also permeating cross-ecosystem.  Constantly improve the business and seeing change as an opportunity while keeping a holistic overview of the business are the core messages of the new year. Digital management systems and processes are gradually moving away from a static, unidirectional, and time-bound avatar to a more dynamic, continuous, and interactive state, such a dynamic ecosystem explicitly seeks to create the holistic and creative environment where people can grow, and businesses focus on dynamic resources, long-term perspective, scalable performance and harmonized relationship. Talent-empowered digital masters also embed the multiplier mindsets and best practices into their strategies, processes, operations and governance, and move from a key competitive mindset to an important and distinctive source of competitive advantage innovation capability. To effectively respond to these new digital dynamics, companies must begin thinking about ways to broaden their ecosystems and revenue streams while becoming more responsive and innovative. The information-abundant, hyper-competitive economic environment makes the world more complex than ever, business can no longer perform better without partnering enough, the industrial competitors also need to collaborate with each other more frequently to solve many common challenges together,
The HOLISTIC thinking and problem-solving: Digital transformation is to optimize the whole, not the separate silos. Silo vision and thinking tends to hinder any efforts to systematically reduce operational complexity. Without a cross-functional, end-to-end perspective across the entire enterprise, managers tend to focus on their own functions or departments. This silo thinking is a source of process complexity to slow information flow and stifle innovation. In the industrial era, silo thinking or fixed mindset is OK to survive as the business and world are slow to change; however, at age of digitalization, with the accelerating speed of changes, the holistic and growth mind is needed to make a continuous improvement and transformation.  It needs to be the new year resolution for the digital leaders and professionals to cultivate the healthy thinking habits, shape the new thinking boxes, and practice holistic problem solving. During the digital transformation journey, shall you continuous check: Are you shaping the good digital strategy about the future and positioning appropriately for your place within it? Do you understand the gigantic digital puzzle holistically? Do you have enough resource to implement the digital strategy? Are the assumptions and risks understood and manageable? Are you doing the right things? Are you doing them the right way or pondering the better way to solve the old problems? Are you doing them well? Are you achieving the desired outcomes to balance the quick win and the long term result? Are you transforming to be ready for the future? Visionary and motivational leaders are on demand. Visionaries with holistic thinking are both nature and nurtured. They step into the future much earlier than others due to the nature arrangement, and their future-oriented mindset further enforces their vision as if the future is closer and their holistic thinking will help the organization to lead the digital journey with a structural and step-wise approach.
The HOLISTIC information and technology solution with “SMAC” maturity: Digital transformation is not just about IT, but IT is the thresholding business competency to enable changes and make a leap of the digital transformation. It’s about taking the journey of the road less traveled. it’s not the IT for technology’s sake, it’s the technology for people, it is the convergence of enterprise IT with consumer IT to create the synergy by taking advantage of collective thinking and doing. Cloud computing is changing how businesses think about IT delivery and standardization. Analytics is not just one or two departments’ business but about how to run a high-intelligent business, how people manage most things in the future. Mobile is changing the customer relationship; the business is always-on, hyperconnected, and needs to be always available, always relevant, and always helpful. And social computing and collaboration tools truly help to break down the silos and enforce the cross-functional communication and collaboration. The digital convergence of devices and services are creating new business models and revenue source as most companies across industries are being forced to become the information manage business. It represents a merging of corporate and consumer capabilities within the organization. It blurs the line between professional life and personal life. At the individual level, it’s about presenting “Who you are?” HOLISTICALLY; at the organizational level, it is about building a people (customer, employee, shareholder, partnership, etc.) centric business with HOLISTIC thinking.  
For individuals, “keeping digital fit” is a great new year resolution, it is not only the physical fit but also the mind fit. Mindset is everything. Mindset is the most valuable thing to shape every progress, but also the root cause of all mankind problems. For organizations, only less than 5% of organizations reach the highest level of digital maturity. For the majority of organizations, it is the right timing from doing digital to going digital and being digital. The key differentiation is HOLISM. Digital makes a profound impact from the specific function to the business as a whole and the entire digital ecosystem. Often time the businesses can only be re-invented right after their struggling industry being rebooted, the whole business ecosystem needs to communicate, negotiate and cooperate with each other to re-invent. That is the journey of the digital transformation.
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To Celebrate New Year- The Most Popular Blog List in the “Future of CIO”

The New Year bell is almost ringing; it is the time for both reflection and resolution; and it’s the continuous journey to blog the way on discovering who you are. New Year day is the time to put the hope up. Here is the set of the most popular blogs of the “Future of CIO” to celebrate New Year! “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”  -Desmond Tutu


The Creative Leap: Innovation is about having new knowledge and new processes. Innovation is about too much knowledge in terms of too many good creative ideas, and too little available resources. Innovation is about prioritization, a system that can “smell” the right idea at the right time and place. Innovation means something new and valuable. Innovation is relative and has context. And innovation is a critical component of business strategy, Often technology is a disruptive force to changes, and information provides the dots to spark innovation. So how to leverage IT to enable creative leaps and manage business innovation more effectively?
The Decision Wisdom: The majority of leaders and professional spend a significant amount of time on making large or small decisions in the work and life. It takes wisdom, not just the intelligence to make effective decisions. There is fuzziness in the decisions because there is fuzziness in conflicting criteria. At the Digital Era, making data-based decisions means to leverage analytical thinking, advanced analytic tools, the human’s intuition, and add the “wisdom’ in the decision process to improve the overall effectiveness of decision making.
Strategic Management vs. Operational Management: Strategic management as long-term planning requires a vision. In other words, a company needs to define where it wants to be in a decade or two (what's the vision) and how they want to get there (Strategy) and then Operational Management will translate the long-term plans into smaller scale plans to operationalize the move toward the vision.
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s “Blind Spot”: The business and the world are moving into deep, deep digital dynamic with velocity, complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and rapid changes. It is increasingly difficult to either steer the individual toward a progressive career path or navigate the business to the right direction with the right strategy. It also becomes more challenging to make effective decisions or sound judgment on the daily basis for both digital leaders and professionals. So how to assess a person’s “blind spot” in order to predict his/her ability to think thoroughly and decide wisely?
Change as an Ongoing Capabilities: Change is inevitable, 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. The perspective is often rational, an automatic cultural response; defending already existing structures, all that we take for granted, without questioning the underlying premises. So in order to make change both proactive and sustainable, how to build change as ongoing business capabilities, not just a one-time business initiative?
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” -Albert EinsteinFollow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The New Book “100 Creativity Ingredients” Quote Collection I

All humans are born with raw creativity ability. Creativity has many dimensions, with multi-faceted truth and myth, manifold knowledge and multidimensional insight. Here is the set of quotes in the book of “100 Creativity Ingredients.”
1 Creativity is not a “thing,” it’s a process that happens as a proactive mental activity to a problem.
2 Thinking out of the box means you are in a continuous learning mode.
3 Original Thinking is unique with an inclination to search excellence.
4 All snowflakes have different patterns - cool; metaphorically speaking, all snowflakes received are valid and held sacred.
5 Vision is not fiction; fiction could be a pure imagination; vision is to zoom into the future as if it were closer.
6 Creativity requires openness and growth mind to new experiences and explore new possibilities.
7 Divergent thinking is that one starts thinking from one point and expands from there to generate more ideas.
8 Critical Thinking as a thinking capability is a balanced mix of genetics and learning.
9 Lack of independent thinking is lacking in confidence.
10 One of the great advantages of design thinking is to have an outside-in view.
11 Innovators with global thinking find more viewing spots that the rest; therefore, they can solve problems in unconventional ways.
12 Often imagination and knowledge need to go hand-in-hand.
13 Insight is the deep intuitive understanding of things, and it often breaks through the conventional wisdom
14 Nonlinear Thinking is an out-of-the-box thinking process for solving problems in a creative way.
15 A free mind can make free choices.
16 A connecting mind can spark creativity more effortlessly.
17 The whole brain thinking is to leverage both parts of the brain to spur creativity and solve problems.
18 Creativity is utilizing both sides of the brain simultaneously - creative + activity.
19 The integrative thinker develops a stance that embraces, not fears the essential qualities of enigmatic choices.
20 In business, complexity both drives innovation and hinders it.
21 Creativity is the complex, multifaceted thought processes and high-level thinking.
22 Intuition is often conceived as a kind of inner perception, sometimes regarded as lucidity or understanding.
23 Subconsciousness is quick and efficient and sometimes can spur creativity.

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The Monthly Change Management Insight: Running IT as Digital Change Agent Dec. 2016

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 up going change continuum. How to leverage IT, ride ahead of the change curve and lead change effortlessly?

Running IT as Digital Change Agent  Running IT as Digital Change Agent? Digital transformation is a journey. Literally, the transformation is to radically change the nature of something. Digital transformation is a radical change of the business via its underlying business processes, invisible business culture or emergent new business model, etc. In a business scope, there are some of the “significant bits and bytes of information” needed to make cognitive connections when evaluating a new market, new technology or any business growth opportunity. Hence, IT plays a critical role in exploring such an “art of impossible,” and should be run as a digital Change Agent.  

How to Leverage IT to Enforce the Business Changeability? Digital is all about CHANGE. One of the differentiated business capabilities is AGILITY. Being agile means anticipating likely change and addressing it deftly, keeping business on course and customers satisfied. Digital technology is the business enabler and the powerful force beneath the change. How to leverage IT to enforce the business changeability?

How to Leverage IT in Double Jumps of Business Transformation? In the world where change is significantly speeding up and business leaders couldn’t predict the future with a high degree of accuracy, the strategy can no longer stay static, the forward-looking organizations are working diligently building their organizational capabilities via weaving all important business factors in adapting the “VUCA” business normality. So how can organizations leverage IT to make double jumps - the digital jump to make the business radical digital and the agile jump to achieve the high-level business agility? From IT management perspective, are CIOs seizing the opportunity to enable the organization to transform into the digital way and carry out its business?

How to Run IT as a Changing Organization? For forward-looking and highly mature organizations, the IT department has become synonymous with the change department, in order to make effective changes, you have to know the underneath structure and processes of your business because they underpin digital capabilities of the organization. How do you make changes to anything without knowing all the parts and how they are related? A mature organization is one that can quickly and safely assess all of the consequences of a possible change and devise effective plans to achieve and sustain those changes - and to do this continuously.

Running IT as a Digital Transformer? We live in a fast-paced digital world, and every day more and more technologies affect the way we live, think, and love. Great opportunities, pitfalls, and disruptions are around every corner. Digital transformation is inevitable, transformation means to change the "nature" of something, albeit that the increasing pace of technological advances has clearly impacted the nature and scope of opportunities or disruptions. Hence, IT has become mission critical, it is imperative for IT and business leaders to work effectively and efficiently together to ensure that they are leveraging IT across their organizations to attain enterprise-wide transformation; not just using IT as a digital extension, but running IT as a digital transformer. ?
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