Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1277

CIOs’ Digital Agenda: Five Big “HOW”s in IT Digital Transformation Nov. 2016

Due to the changing nature of technology, IT leadership role also continues to involve & shift the focus, to move up the maturity level. More and more CIOs are requested to take more responsibility and many CIOs present the breadth of leadership competency. Here are Five big “Who’s” in IT digital transformation.
           Five Big “HOW”s in IT Digital TransformationHow to Run an Innovative IT: Modern IT continues to move up its maturity from a reactive helpdesk, back-office function into a proactive business partner and innovation engine. What are the tips and stories to create a culture of innovation? What are the innovation implications when IT leverages the Cloud model? How shall IT assess their partners for delivering innovative business solutions, should the business pay IT for being innovative thereby enabling business proactively?
How to Run IT as a Better Business Partner?  Many IT organizations are at transformation journey, from an industrial model to digital leap; from a cost center to value-added; from 'T'-technology driven to 'I'-Information focus, from alignment to engagement. But more specifically, how shall IT leaders run IT as a better business partner?
How to Transform IT from Cost Center into Value Creator? In most cases, the IT department isn't producing anything that is saleable and, therefore, many in the organization will view IT as something that seems to ceaselessly suck up money with the little-perceived return. First and foremost a CIO needs to show that IT isn't just a cost center but is a deliverer of value, what’re the effective approaches in doing so?
How to Improve IT Management Capabilities?  IT Management is a strange animal, in that the capabilities are there, the data is there - but the motivations are often confused. IT tends to measure itself against trivial things IT considers important but are often less important and impactful in the business lens. When IT does not reach a higher level of customer satisfaction, is it due to lack of IT capabilities, lack of IT management capabilities; or low maturity management of IT overall?
How can IT Enable Business Growth? More and more IT organizations are transforming from back end internal support function into front office revenue generators, during the journey, CIO must know how to answer the question such as: How do we get revenues now? How will we do in the future? How should IT help the company win business? And how can IT contribute to customer acquisition and retention?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.5 million page views with 3200+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes 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

Proactive Decision-Making

Digital leaders and professionals spend a significant amount of time on decision-making, either strategic decisions, operational decisions or tactical decisions on the daily basis. Statistically, business decision effectiveness (especially large strategic decisions) is low, poor decision making is not just about the outcome, but about ineffective processes, lack of knowledge or resources, cognitive gaps, or procrastination, etc. So how to take a proactive approach for decision-making, and improve decision effectiveness and maturity?
Framing the right question is the first step in proactive decision-making: Framing the real issue needs to be solved is often the first step in making decisions. Sometimes decision-makers take passive thinking which is about  taking things as they come and not really asking questions or analyzing the information presented for its value. Critical thinking is a proactive thought process, which  is analyzing, looking beyond the surface, not just accepting things at face value but asking questions and being active in their thought processes. Critical thinking implies some systematic methodology and multidimensional thought processes, employing and applying the criteria deemed appropriate by the thinkers involved, to arrive at the tangible and reproducible truth, the commonly accepted objective, testable or measurable, time-bound reality. It helps to identify blind spots in decision making and gain an in-depth understanding of the real issue for decision making in a proactive way.
Leveraging information and technology in decision-making processes: Good decision-making often takes both intuition and analytics. At traditional companies, both strategic decisions and operations decisions are often based on static or even outdated information available and the “gut feeling” of decision makers. Now at the dawn of the digital era, the abundance of information flow and the more advanced digital technologies make it possible to gain real-time insight and business foresight if organizations are truly being digitized underneath, at the process level. It helps decision-makers at a different level of the organization to proactively leverage information and collect knowledge and collective insight for making effective decisions.  
Decision-making is also situation-driven: Decision making is situational, nothing is clear or concise. At the strategic level, therefore, the decision is not about good vs bad outcomes. It is important to identify the bottleneck in proactive decision-making scenario and choking point in decision-related communication or delegation. The companies that are working to bridge the decision gap will be the most successful business going forward. It’s about how to leverage both internal and external factors, information and intuition in making sound judgment, minimizing risks, maximizing opportunities and taking actions to move the business and the world forward. From doing the decision analysis to optimizing business processes, all need to be well aligned in order to make effective decisions timely, be optimistically cautious, the leader’s positive tones can amplify collective human capabilities in the organization and takes calculated risk in gaining the business competitive advantage.

Decision-making is difficult due to varying reasons such as uncertainty and ambiguity of business circumstances, failure of failures, unsure about priority, unconscious bias, lack of knowledge or profound thinking. The more important the decision, the more you need to have all the data, perform all the preparation, an increase of confidence of success but the search for perfection is the enemy of decision-making, take a proactive approach to continuous improvement for deciding wisely, timely and collectively.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The New Book “IT Innovation” Quote Collection II

The purpose of  new book “IT innovation - Reinvent IT for the Digital Age” is to help business and IT leaders and digital professionals ride above the learning curve, reinvent IT as an innovation hub and game changer; reimagine IT as an innovation outlier; renovate a hybrid IT and digital organization; fine-tune IT as the digital whole brain of the organization; accelerate IT on the fast lane, rebuild IT as the business capability multiplier; empower IT as a digital change agent; and leverage the “alphabetic elements” to run a highly innovative IT organization for the digital age. Here is a set of quotes in the book of "IT Innovation":
39 A fast and highly responsive IT means a lot of things for the digital transformation: Speed, innovation, agility, integration, modernization, intelligence, value creation, and maturity, etc.40 It’s not a matter of being reactive or responsive. It is not a matter of being fear or brave. It is a matter to add value to the business or not. 41 Running steadfast digital IT means that IT has to not only improve its own efficiency and speed, but also the overall organizational agility and maturity.42 The role of IT today for many organizations is a business solutionary for information, automation, and innovation.43 Setting priorities to leverage limited resources and talent for maximizing business value is an important step in climbing the organizational maturity.44 Enterprise leaders are increasingly looking to the IT function to introduce beneficial change into their business models and unleash its digital potential.45 Either big leap or double jumps, IT is an accelerator for speeding up the digital transformation of the business.46 The low maturity of IT with these bad syndromes is often caused by misunderstanding, short-sightedness, and “change inertia.”47 A frictionless IT organization catalyzes information flow, cultivates cross-functional communication, and accelerates business mobility. 48 A highly capable IT organization is a business capability multiplier.49 Defining your enterprise business capability is part art and part science.50 The business capability coherence is the decisive factor for the success of strategy implementation. 51 The enterprise consists of a set of capabilities. 52 Innovation becomes simply “creating value by solving problems in a new way.”53 Being innovative is more important than any specific innovation.54 It takes innovative leadership to re-imagine IT and it takes a structural approach to reinventing IT for the digital age.55 IT is not just the sum of services or processes, but an enabler of business capabilities.56 The value of information management is never for its own sake, but to provide insight and leap innovation.57 Running a “future-proof” IT organization is really about being strategic, capable, innovative, differentiated, accelerated, and learning agile.
58 The versatile IT can only be run by versatile IT leaders and talented IT professionals. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

"CIO Master" Book Tuning #135 An Evolving Digital IT Organization

An involving digital IT is a lever to move the business forward.

Due to the exponential growth of information and emergent lightweight digital technologies, IT continues to grow in importance to organizations, both operationally and as a competitive advantage. exemplary proficiency in planning, building and running IT is just for openers, the forward-looking companies already move beyond the IT/business alignment stage, leading the continuous transformation of the business in areas such as new business model development and the innovative use of information - these are the areas where enterprises make new markets or take leadership positions in existing ones. To put simply, an evolving digital IT organization rides above the learning curve to improve IT and overall business effectiveness, responsiveness, flexibility, agility, and maturity.
Identify key driving factors for business transformation: The evolving IT organization plays as a strategic advisor for the business. First, ask leaders and managers about the vision and business problems they are trying to solve, there needs to be a comprehensive audit of the business, to ferret out the problem areas - not just symptoms, but the real issues. Once this is done, you can figure out how to take the step-wise approach for problem-solving, whether it is adding new products or services, creating new groundbreaking business processes, building the culture of innovation, or even, adopting proven market-changing business models. CIOs need to be empowered with the opportunity to practice strategic muscle and get invited to participate at the strategic level of the conversation and contribute to business strategy and innovation because IT more often needs to lead the digital transformation of the company. The key driving factors of any business transformation include, but not limited to automation and standardization practices; organizational culture reinvention and, the transformation of data into relevant and timely information and invaluable business insight, etc. Therefore, IT leaders should be an active contributor to business strategy, innovation, lead or initiate business change and transformation.
Everyone should be pulling in the right direction: IT proactively works as an integral part of the business to capitalize on opportunity via leading the transformation, or IT delivers the best solution to the business problems which meet business’s requirement or tailor customer’s needs. And even more importantly, an evolving IT weaves all important business elements such as people, process, and technology to the cohesive business competency. IT should facilitate the business partners to the right solutions and help to implement them. It is essential for the entire company to be pulling in the right direction. First, CXOs (including the CIO) must agree on the business goals and then set up metrics and incentives based on meeting those goals for every individual in the company. If everyone understands the part they play in achieving the company goals, and they are provided the right kind of incentives, in most part, people will do the right things and metrics/checkpoints can ensure proper management and adjust to the right speed for smooth digital transformation.
An evolving digital IT organization can demonstrate business values via both business lens and customer lens: The best way to demonstrate the value of IT is to know who you are showing the value to. From the senior leadership perspective, where IT needs to provide a strategic advantage to the business line manager; where IT needs to make the function more productive. The business would like to know what's in it for them. Obviously, you are demonstrating the value of IT to business. Looking at it from the point of view of "What's in it for me?" via the business lens. IT needs to first understand what the business is, what their pain points are, identify areas for improvement and then those that can be improved with IT. The critical point is developing a partnership mentality. IT has to demonstrate value one at a time with each business manager to be fully appreciated. Focuses on the INFORMATION aspect of the role in the context of the business. The CIO has a role in selling the merits of IT to the business and quantifying projects in terms of ROI, the corporate board should support the CIO and seek to understand the importance of the solutions IT provides and future initiatives delivered with measured ROIs to the business.
An involving digital IT is a lever to move the business forward. Information & Technology and its associated methodologies and practices are parts of that leverage mechanism. Still, IT is the means to the end, not the end. IT role is critical to operational business success, but it is ever more important for business strategy and radical digital transformation.


CIO Master Order Link on Amazon CIO Master Ordre Link on Barner & Noble CIO Master Order Link On IBooks “CIO Master” Book Preview Quote Collection III “CIO Master” Book Preview Quote Collection II “CIO Master” Book Preview Quote Collection I, Slideshare Presentation “CIO Master” Book Preview Conclusion Running IT as Digital Transformer “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 9 IT Agility “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 8 Three "P"s in Running Digital IT “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 7 IT Innovation Management “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 6 Digital Strategy-Execution Continuum "CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 5 Thirteen Digital Flavored IT “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 4 CIO as Talent Master Introduction “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 3 “CIOs as Change Agent” Introduction “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 2 “CIOs as Digital Visionary” Introduction “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 1 “Twelve Digital CIO Personas” Introduction "CIO Master - Unleash the Digital Potential of IT" Introduction
"CIO Master - Unleash the Digital Potential of IT" Book Preview Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

An Evolving Digital IT Organization

Due to the exponential growth of information and emergent lightweight digital technologies, IT continues to grow in importance to organizations, both operationally and as a competitive advantage. exemplary proficiency in planning, building and running IT is just for openers, the forward-looking companies already move beyond the IT/business alignment stage, leading the continuous transformation of the business in areas such as new business model development and the innovative use of information - these are the areas where enterprises make new markets or take leadership positions in existing ones. To put simply, an evolving digital IT organization rides above the learning curve to improve IT and overall business effectiveness, responsiveness, flexibility, and maturity.
Identify key driving factors for business transformation: The evolving IT organization plays as a strategic advisor for the business. First, ask leaders and managers about the vision and business problems they are trying to solve, there needs to be a comprehensive audit of the business, to ferret out the problem areas - not just symptoms, but the real issues.  Once this is done, you can figure out how to take the step-wise approach for problem-solving, whether it is adding new products or services, creating new groundbreaking business processes, or building the culture of innovation, or even, adopting proven market-changing business models. CIOs need to be empowered with the opportunity to practice strategic muscle and get invited to participate at the strategic level of the conversation and contribute to business strategy and innovation because IT more often needs to lead the digital transformation of the company. The key driving factors of any business transformation include, but not limited to Automation and standardization practices; organizational culture reinvention and, the transformation of data into relevant and timely information and invaluable business insight, etc. Therefore, IT leaders should be an active contributor to business strategy, innovation, lead or initiate business change and transformation.
Everyone should be pulling in the right direction: IT proactively works as an integral part of the business to capitalize on opportunity via leading the transformation, or IT delivers the best solution to the business problems which meet business’s requirement or tailor customer’s needs. And even more importantly, an evolving IT weaves all important business elements such as people, process, and technology to the cohesive business competency. IT should facilitate the business partners to the right solutions and help to implement them. It is essential for the entire company to be pulling in the right direction. First, CXOs (including the CIO) must agree on the business goals and then set up metrics and incentives based on meeting those goals for every individual in the company. If everyone understands the part they play in achieving the company goals, and they are provided the right kind of incentives, in most part, people will do the right things and metrics/checkpoints can ensure proper management and adjust to the right speed for smooth digital transformation.
An evolving digital IT organization can demonstrate business values via both business lens and customer lens: The best way to demonstrate the value of IT is to know who you are showing the value to. From the senior leadership perspective, where IT needs to provide a strategic advantage to the business line manager; where IT needs to make the function more productive. The business would like to know what's in it for them. Obviously, you are demonstrating the value of IT to business. Looking at it from the point of view of "What's in it for me?" via their lens. IT needs to first understand what the business is, what their pain points are, identify areas for improvement and then those that can be improved with IT. The critical point is developing a partnership mentality. IT has to demonstrate value one at a time with each business manager to be fully appreciated. Focuses on the INFORMATION aspect of the role in the context of the business.  The CIO has a role in selling the merits of IT to the business and quantifying projects in terms of ROI, the corporate board should support the CIO and seek to understand the importance of the solutions IT provides and future initiatives delivered with measured ROIs to the business.

An involving digital IT is a lever. The purpose of IT is to move the business forward. Information & Technology and its associated methodologies and practices are parts of that leverage mechanism. Still, IT is the means to the end, not the end. IT role is critical to operational business success, but it is ever more important for business strategy and radical digital transformation. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

CIOs’ Digital Agenda: Five Big “Who”s in IT Digital Transformation Nov. 2016

Due to the changing nature of technology, IT leadership role also continues to involve & shift the focus, to move up the maturity level. More and more CIOs are requested to take more responsibility and many CIOs present the breadth of leadership competency. Here are FIve big “Who’s” in IT digital transformation.
            Five Big “Who”s in IT Digital TransformationWho are Highly Effective Digital CIOs: CIO Leadership From Average to Great: Modern CIOs play different roles and have 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 those major traits and how to leapfrog IT leadership from average to great?
What are CIOs’ Top Challenges Due to the changing nature of technologies, CIOs seem to be always in the “hot seat” in the face of increasing business demand, talent shortage, budget limitation or numerous critics from businesses. Now, information is permeating into every corner of business, what technology is expected to do has changed significantly over recent years, although every company has its own circumstances, overall speaking, what are the common challenges facing today’s IT organizations, how can CIOs leverage resources to stay focus, and continually improve IT agility and maturity, to become an integral part of business?
Who can make better, faster IT decisions? From the variety of industry surveys, more than three fourths of C-level business executives believe they can make technology decisions better and faster than IT staff. What is your response to this? How can CIOs and IT organizations change this perception?
Three Big WHOs in Change Management? People are the center of any Change Management, and people are also the weakest link in any change  effort as well. Therefore, change agents are critical, as they have been an invaluable source of knowledge, business visions, insight, and support etc. But more specifically, who are proactive change players, and why are they so critical in business transformation?
Who is Accountable for Strategic IT Decisions? Traditionally, IT has been treated as a cost center or a support function, not as a strategic business partner. As businesses move into the digital future, technology is the fastest growing arena, the potential innovation disruptor, and it would be an understatement that IT is complex. Though more and more CIOs are invited to the big table, the provocative debate would be: Is it true that certain IT decisions should never be made by IT people, if so who is accountable for strategic IT decisions? Or more broadly, what’s the best scenario to make IT decisions, and how to enforce IT governance as well.
Who's to Blame for Failed Projects, IT or the Business?There is a lot of empirical evidence saying that inadequate or flawed requirements contribute to the majority of project failures, as it’s an easy target but the failures could come much earlier than that, with more subtle root causes in many cases. The cause to failure may also depend on how exactly the project "failed" -- did it blow the budget out of the water (due to scope creep, perhaps)? Did it not get done in time to meet a critical date? Did it never get implemented or pushed into production? Did it fail to meet the user/customer's expectations?  Who’s to blame for failed project, IT or business? Indeed, a failed project, make business as a whole including IT, HR, Finance, Operations all look bad and lose valuable resource. So the real question should be: What can business and IT  work together in improving project success rate.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.5 million page views with 3200+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The book “IT Innovation - Reinvent IT for the Digital Age” Quote Collection

The industrial-based enterprise of the 20th century had run out of gas, and the digital enterprise of the 21st century has the new characteristics and DNA of innovation.IT continues to grow in importance to organizations, both operationally and as a competitive advantage.Innovation becomes simply “creating value by solving simple or complex problems.”IT can be an integral part of the business, by identifying the blind spots and close the gaps.To strengthen the IT-business link, it takes more resource to doing innovation, not just IT innovation, but business innovation.Silo thinking creates blind spots and enlarges IT-business gaps.The function of the bridge is to mind the gap; the wonder of the bridge is to create a scene.A transformation often needs to break down the outdated rules, and a transaction is following the rules.Digital organizations can become hyper-connected and “super-creative” via dealing with innovation dilemmas collectively.Develop talent for tomorrow, rather than just hire for yesterday.An outlier does not lack knowledge, but has the interdisciplinary understanding to see things differently.As a CIO, you need to understand what the organization’s expectation from IT through innovation lenses.Running IT with boldness doesn’t not mean IT goes rogue, it means IT becomes more intelligent, innovative, agile, fast, and mature.The digital philosophy is to live as “customers,” when practicing IT management.In essence, innovation is the use of something that is new and unique, and you are able to create its business value.Silos build the wall in people’s minds and tie the knots in their hearts.For IT, information management is fundamental, and innovation management is value-added.IT has to continue to evolve the digital dynamic and reinvent itself as an innovative game changer.IT is the key component in catalyzing digital innovation and building up differentiated business capabilities nowadays.The challenge is having a harmonized vision about management philosophy, capability, structure, and maturity in a digital organization.Organizational democracy will begin to become a fundamental management practice to update the hierarchical command-control systems.A hybrid of centralization and decentralization is counter-balance of delivering effective IT capabilities.The essence of “Being Hybrid” is about balance - to keep things going steadfastly.Digital IT has a “hybrid” nature. IT management philosophy is transforming from “built to last,” to “wired for change.”The pervasive digitalization or IT consumerism requires the balance of “old experience” and “new way to do things,” the “learning and doing.”Portfolio management is about doing right things to achieve business effectiveness.Hybrid Thinking is a set of digital minds integrating the multiple thought processes to think bigger, think deeper, think broader, and think critical, etc.A CIO as “Chief Intrapreneur Officer” has creative, logical, hybrid, and abstract thinking traits.Only functioning as a whole brain, IT can strike the right balance between stability and agility; creativity and standardization; innovation and risk intelligence. IT needs to be super-glue to bridge business silos and enable holistic decision-making.The business’s potential depends on how it unleashes its information potential.A digital IT organization with highly cognitive connectivity is like the nerve system of the business to collect, process and update information.IT with both high “digital IQ and EQ” can proactively build all different management capabilities and play a different role to the situation at hand.Information brings about business ideas; business ideas generate lots of information.A CIO can’t just sit back and apply yesterday’s techniques to today’s problems.Information Management is all about having the right people to have the right information to make right decisions at the right time.Organizations need to have Information Management strategy as an integral element in the business strategy.It is critical that IT is an active and even proactive participant and influencer in business decisions.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

"IT Innovation" Book Tuning: The Multi-Color of Digital IT

The multi-colored digital IT paints an excellent picture of the interaction and interdependence of digital ecosystem. IT is in the middle of a sea change, traditional IT organization is monolithic, monocolored, stereotypical, and slow to change. In order to improve the tarnished image of IT, digital CIOs must set principles and guidelines, but not overly restrictive rules to run digital IT with the enriched color of IT leadership, empowered IT talent teams and enhanced IT-business partnership to make a leap in digital transformation.
Multi-color personas of digital CIOs: Compared to other CxO positions, the CIO role is considerably new with around three decades of history, but more dynamic and paradoxical. Where do digital CIOs come from, should they be the business strategist or technical manager? The IT leadership role continues to be reimagined, refined, refreshed, and reenergized in an adaptation of increasing changes and digital disruptions. Modern CIOs have multiple personas and need to wear many hats to communicate effectively and lead more successfully. IT indeed needs to shift from “T” driven operation to “I” focused - Information, Intelligence, and Insight. And the CIO role needs to focus on both information content and context, how that information can be tapped from the underlying data and be utilized to turn it into valuable business insight and foresight. The magic “I” of CIO sparks many imaginations: Chief information officer, chief interaction officer , Chief Integration Officer, chief International officer, Chief Improvement Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Influence Office etc. As CIOs continue to be put on the front line to run IT as a digital transformer, they need to ensure their organizations are information savvy, high-intelligent, high-responsive, high-effective and high-performing.
The multi-dimensional versatility of digital IT: With emergent digital technologies, IT organization is shifting from a monolithic industrial mode to mosaic digital style. IT needs to be value-added, not just running commodity services. The aggressive role of IT today for many organizations is an automation solutionary, information steward, innovation hub, and a digital transformer. In fact, there are very few businesses today can state that IT does not play a significant role in the long-term strategic positioning of the company. IT is an enabler to accelerate changes, and IT needs to proactively solve the problems with setting priority right and recharge business via innovation. The common element of a proactive IT is business engagement - whatever and wherever the business needs are. Digital IT presents multi-dimensional versatility via wearing multi-color hats -Blue hat for Process Management; white hat for information collection and insight abstraction; red hat for feelings (“Sense” the need for Change Management), green hat for building a creative workplace; yellow hat for creating value for business growth, and black hat for caution and risk management.
Multi-generational, multi-cultural, and multi-divicing digital IT workforce: The color of digital IT is reflected via their people - the color of character and thoughts. IT-business gap surely exists, it's even enlarged due to the different part of the business adapt to changes with varying speed. IT skills gap is also not fiction, but a reality; and IT innovations gap is a strategic imperative to close at the digital era. Therefore, harnessing the different experiences, perspectives and ideas of people from across multiple generations and diverse background in either leadership or customer-centric IT team have enormous potential. An innovative IT organization has well-mixed innovator personals: movers and shakers, thought leaders, critical thinkers, experimenters, reframers, idea creators, and implementers, etc. The goal is to set the right tone for inspiring the new thinking and encourage the new way to do things and lead enterprise-wide innovation and brand management smoothly. For instance, there are opportunities for the involvement of all generations in shaping both the employer brand and customer propositions in order to reach a much wider audience.
The priority for CIOs is to genuinely position IT as an integral and inseparable part of the business and make the multitude of impacts in business transformation. The multi-colored digital IT paints an excellent picture of the interaction and interdependence of digital ecosystem, it has the ability to inspire and motivate; the ability to help people and the company as a whole overcome their challenges, achieve their goals and objectives; and more importantly; the ability to help the organization navigate through digital transformation seamlessly.


Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Multi-Color of Digital IT

IT is in the middle of a sea change, traditional IT organization is monolithic, monocolor, stereotypical, and slow to change. In order to improve the tarnished image of IT, digital CIOs must set principles and guidelines, but not overly restrictive rules to run digital IT with enriched color of IT leadership, empowered IT talent teams and enhanced IT-business partnership to make a leap in digital transformation.
Multi-color personas of digital CIOs: Compared to other CxO positions, the CIO role is considerably new with around three decades of history, but more dynamic and paradoxical. Where do digital CIOs come from, should they be business strategist or technical manager? The IT leadership role continues to be reimagined, refined, refreshed, and reenergized in adaptation of increasing changes and digital disruptions. Modern CIOs have multiple personas and need to wear many hats to communicate effectively and lead more successfully. IT indeed needs to shift from “T” driven operation to “I” focused - Information, Intelligence, and Insight. And the CIO role needs to focus on both information content and context, how that information can be tapped from the underlying data and be utilized to turn it into valuable business insight and foresight. The magic “I” of CIO sparks many imaginations: Chief information officer, chief interaction officer , Chief Integration Officer, chief International officer, Chief Improvement Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Influence Office etc. As CIOs continue to be put on the front line to run IT as a digital transformer, they need to ensure their organizations are information savvy, high-intelligent, high-responsive, high-effective and high-performing.
Multi-dimensional versatility of digital IT: With emergent digital technologies, IT organization is shifting from a monolithic industrial mode to mosaic digital style. IT needs to be value-added, not just running commodity services. The aggressive role of IT today for many organizations is an automation solutionary, information steward, innovation hub, and a digital transformer. In fact, there are very few businesses today can state that IT does not play a significant role in the long-term strategic positioning of the company. IT is an enabler to accelerate changes, and IT needs to proactively solve the problems with setting priority right, and recharge business via innovation. The common element of a proactive IT is business engagement - whatever & wherever the business needs are. Digital IT presents multi-dimensional versatility via wearing multi-color hats -Blue hat for Process Management; white hat for information collection and facts abstract; red hat for feelings (“Sense” the need for Change Management), green hat for building  a creative workplace; yellow hat for creating value for business growth, and black hat for caution and risk management.
Multi-generational, multi-cultural, and multi-divicing digital IT workforce: The color of digital IT is reflected via their people - the color of character and thoughts. IT-business gaps surely exist, even enlarged due to different part of the business adapt to changes with varying speed. IT skills gap is also not fiction, but a reality; IT innovations gap is a strategic imperative to close at the digital era. Therefore, harnessing the different experiences, perspectives and ideas of people from across multiple generations and diverse background in either leadership or customer-centric IT innovation team have enormous potential. An innovative IT organization has well mixed innovator personals: movers and shakers, thought leaders, critical thinkers, experimenters, reframers, idea creators, and implementers. The goal is to set the right tone for inspiring the new thinking and encourage the new way to do things and lead enterprise-wide innovation management smoothly. For instance, there are opportunities for the involvement of all generations in shaping both the employer brand and customer propositions in order to reach a much wider audience.
The priority for CIOs is to genuinely position IT as an integral and inseparable part of the business and make the multitude of impacts in business transformation. The multi-colored digital IT paints an excellent picture of the interaction and interdependence of digital ecosystem, it has the ability to inspire and motivate; the ability to help people and the company as a whole achieve their goals and objectives; the ability to help the business and people overcome their challenges and more importantly; the ability to help the organization navigate through digital transformation.


Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

CIOs’ Digital Agenda: Five Big “What”s in IT Digital Transformation Nov. 2016

Due to the changing nature of technology, IT leadership role also continues to involve & shift the focus, to move up the maturity level. More and more CIOs are requested to take more responsibility and many CIOs present the breadth of leadership competency. Here are Five big “What’s” in IT digital transformation.
           Five Big “What”s in IT Digital TransformationWhat are Tactics and Methodologies in Developing IT and Business Relationship?  Statistically, only less than 5% of IT can communicate with business partners seamlessly and build IT reputation as a game changer; while more than half of IT organizations still get stuck on the bottom level of maturity, functioning as an isolated support center or service provider due to ineffective communication. Both senior leadership team and CIOs are clear in what needs to achieve in terms of top line, bottom line and working in tandem with other departments to achieve the IT goal. So what are the tactics and methodologies in developing IT and business partner relationship via effective communication?
What are CIOs’ Top Challenges Due to the changing nature of technologies, CIOs seem to be always in the “hot seat” in the face of increasing business demand, talent shortage, budget limitation or numerous critics from businesses. Now, information is permeating into every corner of business, what technology is expected to do has changed significantly over recent years, although every company has its own circumstances, overall speaking, what are the common challenges facing today’s IT organizations, how can CIOs leverage resources to stay focus, and continually improve IT agility and maturity, to become an integral part of business?
What are CIO’s Top Priorities? Nowadays, information is the lifeblood of business, and technology is the big brain of the organization, there are so many things in CIO’s agenda, IT is always in overload mode, and CIOs seem to be at hot seat. Therefore, in order to run IT more effectively and efficiently, how shall CIOs prioritize the projects, and what shall be put on the top of CIO’s agenda?
What are the Pitfalls in Measuring Innovative IT Effectively? IT as an enterprise group is in a bigger identity crisis than ever, the industrial mode of IT running as a cost center no longer satisfies stakeholders and business partner anymore; the digital mode of IT means speed, agility, and innovation. IT needs to become business’s innovation engine, as the intersection of IT and people is where innovation happens! Companies need to invest in IT necessary to make the business advances through either incremental or radical innovation! However, what are the pitfalls in measuring such innovative IT effectively?
What is the Future of Software Engineering? The twentieth century had a new science - Computer Science. In searching for the scientific basis of Software Engineering, Computer Science has been seriously attempted. Computation was to become one of the most important disciplines of the sciences. This is because it is the science of how machines can be made to carry out intellectual processes and capabilities. We know that any intellectual process can be carried out mechanically and performed by a general-purpose digital computer. Business starts to think intellectually, with value delivered continuously.
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