Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1269

How to Unlock the People’s Creativity Potential

In recent years, creativity has become a very highly valued skill. Creativity is innate with many special ingredients. If the conditions are right and there is love, inspiration, encouragement and permission, creativity can be abundant. Creative people combine existing possibilities to reach more often unexpected solutions. Creativity is a long-term endeavor. It must be unlocked to maximize its potential.


Creativity is an individual activity. It is, by nature, unique to each person: The angle from which you view it determines how you identify and categorize the similarities and differences among the many faces of creativity. There is no template that you can apply and suddenly you become creative. It must be done slowly, patiently, and individually. So, every person has the ability to be creative, just tearing down the mental barriers they have and tapping in their inherent abilities.
Creativity is the high level of thinking with multiple thought processes: What matters now is creativity. Creativity isn't far off, it's usually right under your noses, you need to master the variety of thinking capabilities, and clarify thought process so that creativity can give their best, and a creative professional would be able to fully in accordance with their own aptitudes and aspirations. Some say creativity is not different 'types' - it is a spectrum. Creativity is like a color spectrum. There are commonalities that are relevant to all colors which reflect the spectrum of light. Such metaphor connects the dot back to the nature of creativity.
Creativity is an essential building block for innovation in business: Creativity is a function of imagination, knowledge, psychology, activities, and evaluation. However, besides those ingredients, the most important element is the attitude put to increase the chance of generating creative ideas. One of the aspects of creativity is the environment where individuals or groups need to generate creative results regularly and frequently, with the pressure of time. So how to involve all people in creative thinking and actions? And how can you help improve the harvest of the creative seed? - Encourage curiosity and a growth mindset- Create a risk-tolerance environment for learning from failure- Provide intellectual challenge to stimulate thinking and help people grow, and develop creativity. -Foster integrity, trust, and transparency, encourages dissent and candor to nurture the culture of creativity-Make people feel more comfortable with  the digital new normal - chaos, uncertainty, and ambiguity-Create an environment that allows time for play and experimentation- Establish clear, shared goals

The people who helped to shape our world are some of the broadest and innovative thinkers. Creativity seems to be the free flow of life force energy. It is a wellspring we can learn to tap. Creative people are inspired to think and work nearly every day on creating, they are not waiting for such “Aha” moment, but proactively stimulate the new energy of creative thinking.  Practice, practice, and practice more, creativity could become a healthy habit. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

CIOs as “Chief Inquisitive Officer: A set of Q&As (I) to Lead Digital Transformation

Modern CIOs face many challenges, it is not sufficient to only keep the lights 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 and the emergent digital trend; digital CIOs also have multiple personas, “Chief Innovation Officer,” “Chief Insight Officer,” “Chief Improvement Officer,” “Chief Information Officer,” and here, we discuss CIOs as “Chief Inquisitive Officer,” with a set of Q&As to lead digital transformation.
Q1: Why is IT still being treated as a supporting function or the weakest link? And how to promote IT as a competitive advantage?The majority of IT organizations still get stuck in the lower level of maturity, often “invisible” to the business as a back office, running a set of commoditized IT services to keep the lights on, without providing enough differentiated advantage to the customers. IT is still perceived as slow, expensive, and not integrated with the business. Oftentimes CIOs are also regarded as the "computer guys," the glorified fixers/tinkerers/technologists, without a seat at the big table. To reinvent the tarnished image, IT is supposed to be the “super glue” to weave all hard and soft business factors to the unique set of business capabilities. And the CIOs must have the business acumen and educate the business to understand IT value. CIOs can better show the value if they understand how the business uses the IT, as a commodity service or as a niche competency -anything that adds to the bottom line (increases revenue or decreases costs), increases market share, decreases risk, improves cycle time, or helps achieve some other business outcome is of value to the business.
Q2: Are IT goals (both at strategic and operational level) well-defined, clear and achievable? CIOs have to have a clear and big picture of the company’s core business and strategy goals, and IT strategy is an integral component of the business strategy. The well-communicated, clear defined goals and strategy mapping can help IT gain business respect. if not, the IT organization may not be ready to work in new ways, or to be able to change in a short time. The role of modern CIO is to identify and blend the ways that information and technology can assist and shape the business by linking all digital aspects together to enforce the value creation; these are then mixed with other ingredients to create products/services and process/capabilities which generate differentiated value for their business’s long-term growth.  IT executives and departments also need to work out how they affect these business output measures, and what they can do to improve them. Once they do that and make a unique, valuable, independent contribution to the business outcomes that they can demonstrate in these terms, they will gain credibility and value beyond what any "provider" can deliver
Q3: Do IT leaders work with their team to investigate different paths for the potential future? Business savvy in your technical team is a must have if you are going to be competitive. IT needs to move from “making alignment with the business” to “making alignment with the customers (including end customers). It is necessary and even imperative to rethink the very idea of “supporting’ the enterprise in a proactive way, or more precisely catalyzing the business growth, with the digital IT mantra “Less is More,” and spend more time and resource on value-added activities, and minimize the activities for maintenance only, this is what liberates innovation. Hence, IT leaders need to shift the old thinking (leads to a burden of support for operations) to the digital thinking whereas the true potential is in liberating new products, services, and business models. And from talent management perspective, there are two paths to get there: Push the IT people out in the business, or bring the business folks into IT, usually, it's easier to find technical domain expertise once the business challenge has been defined than it is to get technical people focused on business problems. Therefore, IT also needs to fill the talent gap from the long-term strategic perspective, not just from the short term project demand. Digital IT today needs to define and lead the entire business into the future, rather than being pushed by the business toward the unknown, IT should ride above the learning curve faster than the rest of the business in order to lead to the future.
Q4 How do you prioritize the need or desire to innovate? IT must always be tuned up to enable business objectives and catalyze business growth for the long term perspective. CIOs also need to become Chief Innovation Officers to run IT as innovation engine; otherwise, you will become Chiefly Irrelevant Officers. In co-playing digital music, IT needs to go beyond just playing the background music to support the melody, it’s being the sheet music: Take that away and you run the risk of the orchestra stopping altogether or, at least, playing the wrong tune! An innovative IT can only happen if IT is regarded as a strategic business partner and given the role in catalyzing innovation and driving the business transformation. IT should always keep fit, trim the cost and remove the waste, set the right priority for “Doing more with innovation.” CIOs are expected to constantly propose new ideas and challenging the status quo, and manage the balanced innovation portfolio to increase business competency. The CIO must be attuned to the business' IT needs and works with all stakeholders to ensure they have the right tools to execute and business won't miss the opportunity to grow.
Q5: What are CIOs’ best and next practices to build business capabilities and implement capability-based strategy smoothly? Because business capabilities are fundamental pillars to achieve the corporate strategy, IT needs to become the digital capability builder of the organization, IT role is to enable the business to exceed customer expectations, increase profitability and maintain a competitive advantage. Defining your enterprise business capability is part art and part science, and mapping IT service/systems or the set of business capabilities to the business processes are also not easy tasks, or it even runs counter to the short-term fiscal goals of many organization. But it is worth the effort if IT needs to become the business enabler and growth engine. The forward-looking and fast growing businesses set the top priority to build new capabilities in which IT is a key enabler. They will challenge the cost control efforts, with the drive to bring new capabilities to the business at a fast pace.
The digital CIOs reimagine IT as the business growth engine and lead changes via inquiries. A confident CIO needs to keep asking, "why? why? Why?" They have to focus on guiding the company through the digital transformation, and create unique business value because IT is the significant element of any differentiated business capability and the defining factor for competitive advantage.


Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Monthly Innovation Brief: Building a Creative Workplace Dec. 2016

Innovation takes cycle of observing-questioning-connecting-networking-experimenting. From management perspective, innovation is how to transform novel ideas to achieve its business value, due to the hyper-complexity of modern business, innovation is essentially about reducing the unnecessary business complexity to tackle the complexities of business dynamic. Here is a series of blogs to brainstorm the principles and practices of innovation management.
Building a Creative Workplace Three Principles in Building a Creative Digital Workplace: Digital is the age of people, and digital work environment needs to embrace the abundance of information and the culture of innovation, put people at the center of business, and to both engage employees and delight customers. How can digital leaders set principles to encourage creativity, build creative digital workplaces and open the new chapter of digital innovations?.
Three Elements to Harness Collective Creativity Creativity is exactly what distinguishes a deal made from the commodity. Observed in hundreds of intelligent breakthrough decisions, where leaders and organizations benefit from boldly informed moves, while other 'non-decisions' fail to deliver breakthrough results. The solution lies in channelization of employees' ideas on any particular aspect and makes them 'brainstorm' so that there are individual and collective outcomes that can lead to new technologies, solutions, or paths?
How to Build Innovation Strength in your Organization: Digital innovation has a broader spectrum with hybrid nature, it is the incremental improvement- radical innovation continuum. It has broader scope beyond just a new product or service, radical innovation brings something that was not existing before. Incremental Innovation is more about taking something someone created and adding to it, changing it, adapting it; or to leverage the latest technology for business improvement. A fine tuned innovation is not a serendipity, how to build innovation strength in your organization?
How to Build and Measure Workplace Creativity? In recent years, creativity has become a very highly valued skill. Creative people combine existing possibilities to reach more often unexpected solutions. Creativity is an essential building block for innovation in business. Everyone possesses a certain level of creativity; some just have more than others. How does creativity manifest itself in the workplace? What's the best work environment for creativity? What products (tangible or otherwise) are creative? Where that creativity arises from. And what acts, behaviors etc. may be examples of the organizational creative process? What risks are associated with creativity not being manifested in the workplace? How might you see a creativity employee??
How to Build a Creative Workforce and Workplace?: People are the most invaluable asset in business, at the age of digital, it is, even more, true than ever. Talent employees are treated as human capital needs to be well invested to unleash the boundless potential, not just human resources counted as a cost. HR shall also transform itself from an administration function and gate keeper to change agent, capital investor and innovator in order to build a creative digital working environment and catalyze the organizational level of digital transformation. However, how do you, as leaders, involve all people in creative thinking and actions? And how can you help improve the harvest of the creative seed.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3\5 million page views with about 2500+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.





Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The "Digitizing Boardroom" Book Tuning: BoDs with Digital Acumen

Digital Acumen = Business Acumen + Digital IQ.
As a Board of Directors is responsible for having the oversight and direction of a business, a Board in a high-level leadership position should be managing for the long term and play a crucial role in business advising and monitoring, as well as setting key digital tones in driving changes. From leadership perspective, besides years of experience and vertical expertise, BoDs also need to have digital acumen in order to lead digital transformation effectively.


Digital Acumen = Business Acumen + Digital IQ: With strong digital acumen, BoDs can sense emergent opportunities, and predict potential risks, exemplify learning agility, and also encourage those they guide to seek ongoing experience and knowledge. A Board should be managing for the long term. It's critical in finding time and a viable board process for discussing long-term strategy and profitably growing the company. Digital acumen does not mean you only master at either business knowledge or expertise, but both and even multiple domains; not just see things from a single dimension but through different angles.  From concerns about risk management to the use of emerging technologies to leapfrog competitors, the digital BoDs’ challenge is how you move the ‘needle’ forward, and really mind the digital gap to accelerate your organization’s digital transformation.
Digital mindsets: Digital acumen starts with building the digital mindset and improving digital IQ. With increasing speed of changes, it is in the BoD’s mindset to either adapt or embrace the changes and lead digital transformation. Transformation often evolves with radical changes from the collective mindset to underlying functions. It has been said that to embrace change requires a change of mindset at every level and an understanding that things cannot stay the same. BoDs and top leadership teams make a significant influence on shaping the digital mindset of the organization, so they must set the principles, guideline and rules to advise and lead. The best fit digital board depends on the Board’s current makeup, culture, and which “gap” needs to be filled. The Board is responsible for ensuring an appropriate mix of skills, knowledge and experience are present or available for it to fulfill its function.
Being innovative is the state of mind needed from the boardroom to the front desk: Organizations today don't have a choice on innovation, because this is the only way to keep them stay longer in the business game. They should choose to direct it rather than just let it happen. And it can happen in so many ways that you can hardly miss. Does Board overall spend enough time on planning for the future -that means dealing with innovation choices? BoDs should play a crucial role in both management innovation and innovation management, and set the tone to build a culture of innovation. Innovation as the creation and development of new ideas causes meaningful change for customers and the company. This isn't always a new product or service but can also be an improvement in processes, employee satisfaction or the environmental impact. It's critical in finding time and a viable board process for discussing innovation and profitably growing the company.
With rapid changes and the exponential growth of information, Modern BoDs today need to present high digital acumen and become the mastermind behind digital transformation. So they can advise insightfully and lead confidently.

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Quote Collection 3

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Quote Collection 2

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Quote Collection 1


"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Conclusion Running a Digital Ready Board

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 8 A Culture Savvy Board Introduction "Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 7 A "Talent Master" Board Introduction "Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 6 A "Governance Champion" Board Introduction "Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 5 An IT-Friendly Board Introduction   "Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 4 An Innovative Board Introduction "Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 3 A Performance-driven Board Introduction "Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 2 A Strategic Board Introduction

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 1 23 Themes of Digital Boardrooms Introduction"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Preview"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Introduction, Slideshare Presentation




Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

BoDs with Digital Acumen

Digital Acumen = Business Acumen + Digital IQ.
As a Board of Directors is responsible for having the oversight and direction of a business, a Board should be managing for the long term. The board in a high-level leadership position also plays a crucial role in business advising and monitoring, as well as setting key digital tones in driving changes. Besides years of experience and vertical expertise, BoDs also need to have digital acumen in order to lead digital transformation effectively.


Digital Acumen = Business Acumen + Digital IQ: With strong digital acumen, BoDs can sense emergent opportunities, and predict potential risks, exemplify learning agility, and also encourage those they guide to seek ongoing experience and knowledge. A Board should be managing for the long term. It's critical in finding time and a viable board process for discussing long-term strategy and profitably growing the company. Digital acumen does not mean you only master at either business knowledge or expertise, but both and even multiple domains; not just see things from a single dimension but through different angles.  From concerns about risk management to the use of emerging technologies to leapfrog competitors, the digital BoDs’ challenge is how you move the ‘needle’ forward, and really mind the digital gap to accelerate your organization’s digital transformation.
Digital mindsets: Digital acumen startswith building digital mindsets and improving digital IQ. With increasing speed of changes, it is in the BoD’s mindset to either adapt or embrace the changes and lead digital transformation. Transformation often evolves with radical changes from the collective mindset to underlying functions. It has been said that to embrace change requires a change of mindset at every level and an understanding that things cannot stay the same. BoDs and top leadership teams make a significant influence on shaping the digital mindset of the organization, so they must set the principles, guideline and rules to advise and lead. The best fit digital board depends on the Board’s current makeup, culture, and which “gap” needs to be filled. The Board is responsible for ensuring an appropriate mix of skills, knowledge and experience are present or available for it to fulfill its function.
Being innovative is the state of mind needed from the boardroom to the front desk: Organizations today don't have a choice on innovation, because this is the only way to keep them stay longer in the business game. They can choose to direct it rather than just let it happen. And it can happen in so many ways that you can hardly miss. Does Board overall spend enough time on planning for the future -that means dealing with innovation choices. BoDs should play a crucial role in both management innovation and innovation management, and set the tone to build a culture of innovation. Innovation as the creation and development of new ideas causes meaningful change for customers and the company. This isn't always a new product or service but can also be an improvement in processes, employee satisfaction or the environmental impact. It's critical in finding time and a viable board process for discussing innovation and profitably growing the company.
With rapid changes and the exponential growth of information, Modern BoDs today need to present high digital acumen and become the mastermind behind digital transformation. So they can advise insightfully and lead confidently.






Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Running a People-Centric IT Organization

Traditional IT organizations are often inside-out operation driven, mechanical and monolithic; with increasing speed of change and lightweight digital technologies and services, digital IT needs to be run as a people centric organization to enchant customers, empower employees, evolve business partners, invite all sorts of business partners for feedback, and ensure the right people getting the right information at the right time to make the right decisions.
IT and customer alignment: Traditional IT organizations focuses on IT and business alignment, digital IT goes a step further and move up to IT and business integration as well as IT and customer alignment. Since the biggest challenge to business success is IT and IT's biggest challenge is understanding the business and customers’ expectations. Engaging and empowering your end user is vital. Technology is being leveraged every day to digitize the touch point and enhance the customer experience with or without the use cases from an IT department. Particularly as business has become more tech-savvy, and as such, aware of their power to demand what they want, when and how they want it. In reality, if the IT department does not have the time, resources or authority to develop and deploy these initiatives, they will not be brought to the big table as a business partner or customer champion. Customer experience "responsibility shouldn’t be just left to the business. IT will need to develop business skills to properly vet out services for a particular use case, otherwise, the other business functions can develop specific IT skills to do it themselves. Perhaps it is time to "align IT to the customer" rather than "align IT with the business" to put one ahead of the change curve and look to leverage the amazing digital customers drive.
Filling IT talent gap: IT talent gap is a reality. IT is transforming and moving to reach higher maturity at the digital age, IT talent needs to have both technical and business skills, it should take a preponderant importance on the coming years to make sustainable IT- business relationship and build a people centric organization. There are many challenges such as, out-of-date talent recruiting practices or management; or the imperative to update talent competency model. There's misunderstanding or miscommunication (lost in translation) in between IT talent request and searching mechanism, also, there's disconnect of IT short term staff needs and long term talent perspectives. From IT talent management perspective, how to build a culture of creativity, encourage IT professionals to step out of comfort zone, continue to learn, continue to innovate, and update performance management practices by assessing both quantity and quality result objectively.  IT knowledge life cycle has been shortened due to the changing nature of technology. Thus, when assessing talent, more dynamic and balanced approaches are needed to assess learning agility - a person's ability to learn quickly, and adapt prior knowledge to new experiences. Whether IT can attract the brightest talent or not also depends on how effective the CIO is branding his/her organization as a contributor to the corporation and society as a whole.
Building a strong IT, business and vendor partnership: Due the the complexity nature of technology and overwhelming information, IT has to build up the strong partnership to not just provide the standardized services, but do more for innovation. The next generation of IT vendor relationship is about how to well manage the mixed bag of diversified vendors, multi-faceted partnerships, co-ownership of ventures and companies, contracting, etc. The biggest leap is expecting partnership to modernize the business model or finding ways to make technical operations more efficient,  they also expect vendors to deliver flexible, innovative and high-quality customer-tailored solutions. Perhaps vendors are normally not incentivized to even find operational improvements, so proper structure can be taken in place, including modules that related to each other between the organization, groups, project teams and knowledge worker, vendors can also be instructed to take extra miles, present their innovation capabilities properly. Their expertises are not only technical specialty, more importantly, they can also deliver the outside box thinking and expansive talent pool, culture wisdom and process innovation. The disruption of IT will continue. The business functions will have more resources, time, and energy to solve business problems. Thus, IT needs to build a solid partnership with business and vendors, run in a very entrepreneur fashion to solve business problems effectively.
Digital is the age of people and options, it provides the opportunity to think the new way to do things, so it forces IT leaders to get really creative in how they architect and implement change, to ensuring IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next while, at the same time, be people-centric, to engage employees and delight customers.

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Three Cognitive Fitness to Advance Digital Transformation

Being digital fit starts with mind fit. Being a digital professional means information savvy, innovativeness, and consistency. It’s more about the consistent image you deliver about being who you are or the mentality you have in or out of working hours. It is the convergence of your professional development and digital footprint. It becomes a life attitude. Here are three cognitive fitness to advance digital transformation.
Progression: Progress represents change. Without change, one cannot even stagnate. The modern society is a dynamic continuum with collective human progress. Real societal progress is made through the work of progressive and foreseeable minds. The advanced mind is the very brainpower and driving force behind any kind of progress. From one generation to the other, from the primitive agricultural society to siloed industrial age and to today’s hyper-connected digital era, the human society is pushed forward via the contemporary minds which convey the vision and advocate progress. And such a progressive journey should never end. People consciously or subconsciously protect their status quo. A progressive mind is all about the desire to learn. If it’s done right, learning should provide a lot of fun and enjoyment, as well as a sense of achievement and a growing bonus of self-worth. The progressive minds in a collective setting can sustain a balance of diversified viewpoints, creativity, discipline; opportunities and risk; individualism and teamwork, democracy and unification; science and art, intuition and of course, forward thinking.
Innovativeness:  Fit in an organizational context simply means 'like us' or 'different from us.' Digital fit is less about thinking alike, more about thinking differently, to ignite creativity. You need to think about fit differently than you do now. you need to discuss the types of talent needed to stretch your thinking and who have the cognitive difference, capabilities, and experience in multiple dimensions. In this way, you get the new perspective from outside your own disciplines, as if you let the ‘out of the box’ thought coming into your own thinking box, to frame a bigger box of thinking and increase the possibility to connect the wide dots for connectivity. To be truly creative, you will challenge the status quo, conventional wisdom, and beliefs, as you push the parameters of the norms of life. It’s important to set up a team with cognitive differences, and its team members can proactively stimulate the new energy of fresh thinking. The team’s creativity is amplified via talented people with the cognitive difference who can understand things from different angles and bring new perspectives to the table. It is not just about synchronizing of their individual inputs to make something that no one individual would achieve. It is even more than that, it has its own dynamic that is in a state of constant flux.
Accountability: Accountability is to be wise and brave enough to remove barriers to getting things done or change in time before the problem becomes overwhelming. It is a type of cognitive fitness to show the owner’s mentality and the professional attitude to make thinking and doing cohesively. True accountability focuses on learning to do things differently, rather than punishment. The true measure of accountability is about resilience, it is determined not by whether an individual or a team makes a mistake or not, but on how quickly they can recover so that customers, teammates, and others aren't negatively affected by the breakdown.  Shared accountability or collective accountability involves shared ownership and responsibility because most breakdowns stem from silo behavior where people aren't coordinating, communicating, making decisions or solving problems in a way that considers consequences to others.
Digital fitness comes via cognitive fitness either at the individual or the organizational level. Organizations need the diversity of character, thought, personality, talent, and experience to be innovative. You need to cultivate a willingness to learn to be comfortable with and value difference and hire people who seem “misfit,” but fit differently and progressively to advance digital transformation. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Three Characteristics of High Mature IT

We live in a hyper-connected digital world and every day the abundant information and more and more technologies affect the way we live, learn, think, and interact. Great opportunity, danger, digital convenience, and disruption are around every corner. Hence, IT organizations play a more crucial role in accelerating changes and catalyze innovation. Therefore, ensuring a high-performing, high-reliable and high-proactive IT is the key success factor in organizational digital transformation. Here are three characteristics of high mature IT organization.
High-Trust: High Mature IT has high trustful business-IT relationship.Modern organization has its own sophistication: the silo functions, the sea of data, and the pool of talents. IT is in the unique position to oversee the underlying functions of the entire business. Thus, IT plays an important role in interpreting business issues into a technology solution, also, leverage necessary resources to solve them. The more important thing is to work on the activities and considerations that need to be addressed to enhance the IT-business relationship. CIO is an inherently cross-functional role, to help bridge the business and technology, the information and wisdom, the business and eco-system. Ineffective communication happens when a CIO has one way of thinking and other business executives think in a different way. Most CIOs come up through the ranks on the technical side and think differently than the other executives – In many ways, they speak a different language with the different way of thinking. CIOs have to become business savvy. The question is not only how to deliver the message but also what message to deliver. If a CIO sees issues or opportunity he/she shall deliver a message to the colleagues on C-level and convince them to support his/her idea.  In the case of competition for resources, that competition should be for the company benefit, not the each executive’s benefit. They have to make sure that all IT investments are aligned with the organization's strategy and the approved priorities. The true IT-business partner relationship can move both business and IT forward, and delivery high-performance result.
High-responsiveness: Based on the fact that most of IT organizations still run in a reactive and order-taking mode, get stuck at the lower level of maturity. High-Mature IT is highly responsive to changes and proactively manage innovation. Traditional IT organizations are perceived as the controller, slow to change. Digital IT need to become the change organization of the company. The IT department provides guidance, support, assistance and direction in the application and adoption of information technology solutions in support of business objectives with speed!  IT is then contributing to productivity increase; it would even go one step further, that the best CIO understands what current or emergent digital technology trend can add business value and transfer this to the business advantage. To improve business agility and maturity, IT management must get a feeler of the business view. It’s a journey, business needs to understand the change and complexity nature of IT, while IT can lead the charge by simply not taking their customer for granted and focusing on customers as if they were in a competitive market.
High-innovativeness: High-mature IT has high capabilities to be innovative. IT leadership needs to shift their management orientation and begin thinking like entrepreneurs, IT entrepreneurialism becomes a new fixture for management in their efforts to substantiate their competitive position, effect market landscape, and drive new revenue growth. Profits and then ROIs should be the driving force behind any IT project. CIOs need to cover both the business dimension as well as the technology dimension with their team. The best IT managers and leaders always have a strong understanding of what the business does, how it does it, and how it could be better with 360 degrees of view. IT is not limiting the business’s creativity, but encouraging out of the box thinking as well as systematic solutions. That said, a higher mature IT should run in a software startup mode, to bring the digital momentum for running IT as the business, also strike the right balance of  “innovation and standardization,” “creativity and process,” as well as “run, grow, and transformation.” CIOs need to do a better job of articulating the existing and potential value of IT to the business, quantitatively, via a language and measurement senior executives understand. IT must be measured through business viewpoint. That should help in trying new technologies and managing a healthy innovation portfolio for the long term perspective. At higher maturity of IT, IT is innovation engine of business Digital IT can enable and drive the enterprise, as it should act as an equal partner. A CIO needs to have a powerful toolbox encompassing strong business acumen, soft skills such as communication and listening, technical experience, creativity and solid managerial leadership in order to run a high performance and high mature digital IT.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Monthly Insight of the Board Room: How to Innovative Boardroom Dec., 2016

Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses toward the right direction and achieve expected business results. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must have the agility to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals.
        How to Innovative BoardroomDigitizing Boardroom” Book An Innovative Board, Presentation, Video: Corporate boards play a crucial role in providing strategy oversights and make sound judgments on and assurance of corporate actions within a framework of practical knowledge. Innovation is one of the most important ingredients of the business strategy, which role should BoDs play in both management innovation and innovation management? Or the first step first, how to innovate the boardroom.
Three “IN”gredients of Digital Boards: Due to the complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and volatility of digital age, digitizing the boardroom is inevitable. The directorship in any organization must have the ability to guide, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goal, set the leadership tone to influence business “mindset” and lead changes as well as digital transformation. Here are three digital ingredients to improve boards’ effectiveness and maturity. ?
Digital Tuning: How to Innovate Boardroom: The primary role of the Director is to provide strategy oversight, setting governance principles, and making the judgment on and assurance of corporate action within a framework of practical knowledge. If they do their jobs right, the executives and management team can do their jobs in a well-orchestrated fashion as well. Innovation is one of the crucial components of the corporate strategy, which role the BoD should play in both management innovation and innovation management? Or the first step first, how to innovate Boardroom??
A Heterogeneous Board: There is no question that businesses need digital leadership in today's boardrooms, with “VUCA” characteristics of business dynamic, overloading information, and globalization as the new normal of business expansion, all of these bring the significant opportunities and responsibilities for the new breed of digital BoDs, and 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.
An Innovative Board? There are different types of boards around, some Boards are "working Boards" and have to provide hands-on advice, information, and oversight; other Boards have a more strategic purpose in advising the corporate oversight. Many Boards are often stuck with a view of the rear mirror mindset, looking at the past quarter results, supervising the audit, and reviewing a budget of the coming months. Does Board overall spend enough time on planning for the future -that means dealing with innovation choices.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.5 million page views with 3300+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes 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.

"Digitizing Boardroom" Book  Quote Collection 3"Digitizing Boardroom" Book  Quote Collection 2"Digitizing Boardroom" Book  Quote Collection 1"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 8 A Culture Savvy Board Introduction"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 7 A "Talent Master" Board Introduction"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 6 A "Governance Champion" Board Introduction"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 5 An IT-Friendly Board Introduction "Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 4 An Innovative Board Introduction"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 3 A Performance-driven Board Introduction"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 2 A Strategic Board Introduction"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Chapter 1 23 Themes of Digital Boardrooms Introduction"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Preview"Digitizing Boardroom" Book Introduction, Slideshare Presentation

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Popular Quotes Collection III of “Digital Master” Book Series

“Digital Master” is the series of guidebooks (11+ books) with five pillars to perceive the multifaceted impact digital is making to the business and our society, help forward-thinking organizations navigate through the digital journey in a systematic way, and avoid “rogue digital.” Here is the set of popular quotes for conveying the digital vision and sharing the unique insight about the digital transformation.
Digital Master Quotes “A hybrid nature of organization strikes the right balance between “virtual world” and the human connections.” ― Pearl Zhu, Digital Master: Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity
“Innovation has to become the philosophy, and part of DNA in an organization.” ― Pearl Zhu, Digital Master: Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity
“Digital capability has a recombinant nature.” ― Pearl Zhu, Digital Master: Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity
“Digital synchronization occurs when all parts of the choir sing their respective parts in harmony.” ― Pearl Zhu, Digital Master: Debunk the Myths of Enterprise Digital Maturity
Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future
“Setting the right priorities or having superior time management skill means knowing the difference between “must have,” and “nice to have.” ― Pearl Zhu, Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future
“Self-discipline is nothing but self-consciousness.” ― Pearl Zhu, Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future
“Psychology is a condensed version of mindset; whereas philosophy is an abstract of the human society.” ― Pearl Zhu, Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future
“Learning is the way to keep your mind flowing, and hence your life flowing.” ― Pearl Zhu, Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future
“A mind is not profound by itself, just like a tree without a root.” ― Pearl Zhu, Thinkingaire: 100 Game Changing Digital Mindsets to Compete for the Future


CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of It b
“IT can coordinate all necessary business elements, either hard or soft, to orchestrate a digital symphony” ― Pearl Zhu, CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of It
“CIOs need to be IT evangelists and learn to sell, speak business.” ― Pearl Zhu, CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of It
“One of the most influential aspects of people's psychology is how they perceive the world around them and how they relate to it..” ― Pearl Zhu, CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of It
“A problem-solving mind focuses on keeping the end in mind, to solve PROBLEMS in optimal ways.” ― Pearl Zhu, CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of It
“A multi-dimensional IT creates multi-level values to the business as a whole.” ― Pearl Zhu, CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of It

Leadership Master: Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity
“Creative expansion cannot happen without vision.” ― Pearl Zhu, Leadership Master: Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity
“To predict is to control, to co-create is to influence what you would like to bring into being..” ― Pearl Zhu, Leadership Master: Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity
“A set of excellent questions themselves is perhaps like a poem, both philosophical and intellectual..” ― Pearl Zhu, Leadership Master: Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity
“The point is, framing the right problem is equally or even more important than solving it.” ― Pearl Zhu, Leadership Master: Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity
“here are many multinational companies around, but very few global companies; there are many international managers, but very few true global leaders today..” ― Pearl Zhu, Leadership Master: Five Digital Trends to Leap Leadership Maturity

Digitizing Boardroom: The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital Ready Boards by Pearl Zhu
“Breaking rules is indeed an important part of creativity. Innovation needs a level of guidance.” ― Pearl Zhu, Digitizing Boardroom: The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital Ready Boards
“The purpose of Innovation Management is to prepare everything to maximize the transformation of an idea to innovation, through well-prepared processes and structures.” ― Pearl Zhu, Digitizing Boardroom: The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital Ready Boards
“Breaking rules is indeed an important part of creativity. Innovation needs a level of guidance.” ― Pearl Zhu, Digitizing Boardroom: The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital Ready Boards
“The purpose of the governing body, or board of directors, is to direct and guide the organization in the right direction.” ― Pearl Zhu, Digitizing Boardroom: The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital Ready Boards
“Digital transformation represents a break with the past, having a high level of impact and complexity.” ― Pearl Zhu, Digitizing Boardroom: The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital Ready Boards

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu