Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1285

Setting High Principles in Running High-Mature IT Organization

Principles are general rules and guidelines and statements of values. Things that define why one make a decision one way or another. To accelerate digital transformation and maximize IT value, it’s important to set guiding principles for practicing the multitude of IT management. The guiding PRINCIPLEs should cover the customer, people, and quality from a holistic business perspective:  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.
Make sure your customer delightful and the business as a whole is winning for the long run: The principles should guide the decisions that a person, either a top executive or a front desk employee, makes on a day to day basis consistently to achieve high-performance business result. IT leaders need to have the ability to think analytically and synthetically,  set IT principles right and manage business solution via high-performance IT team. It means that the CIO is able to constantly and dynamically lead an IT structure that will seamlessly enable the business growth, enhance the business strategy, and to get well ahead of the business requirement; cultivate the ability to align the business requirement with the IT capacity, have the ability to interact with businesses in their processes and pain areas, and bring out a customer-tailored and technology driven solution. Often, the “IT vs. Business” mentality is still alive in the management team within the organization. Thus, it’s important to set principles for harnessing customer-centricity, and make sure the business as a whole is winning for the long run, build the strong business orientation and ability to bring the benefits of IT to solve business issues; and the business leaders and managers have to overcome silo thinking and empower IT leaders to manage information across the functional borders and unleash the full potential of the digital business.
Focus on strategy execution and results when innovating ideas: Innovation is a critical component of the business strategy. “Doing more with innovation” needs to be one of an important IT management principles to improve the organizational competency and maturity. Being able to become innovative or close is being able to think, and create new things based on its own needs, true knowledge is the optimal solution. Innovations happen because of specific business needs. Unique challenges become more appear as we push the limits of the available technology, which pushes us to find a solution to the problem on hand. To catalyze innovation, IT needs to ensure business strategy allowing for digital speedInnovative IT can only happen if IT is regarded as a strategic business partner and given the role in catalyzing innovation and driving the business. IT needs also to ride above the learning curve, to fostering business innovation via leveraging disruptive technologies. From innovation management perspective, even innovation management processes are systematic, the processes shouldn’t be too rigid to stifle innovation, but setting the right priority and laser focus on the most critical things which can make a difference to delight customers and innovate businesses at the dawn of the Digital Era.
Hiring growth mindsets -Learn something of value every day: IT talent gap is the reality, not a fiction. What kind of people should be working in your IT group? Guiding principles let the organization know what to expect when dealing with IT, and serve as a yardstick by which to guide IT talent management, and measure performance effectively. Hiring mindset means to discover the very talent who can "figure it out," and who has the growth mindset to keeping improving and innovating, who can keep their energy flow toward the right direction and make positive influences. The right mind is the foundation to build competitive capabilities and drive the right attitude. That flies in the face of "hiring just for skills." The mantra of talent management should be to put the right people with the right mindset and capability to the right position to do the right things. Consider the position and environment you are hiring for. One’s thinking capability and styles could well decide which position they may fit in. For example, if the role requires judgment, temperament, understanding global social capital, managing diverse interests etc, filling it with a more systems thinking, complexity thinking and empathetic thinking type is the right approach. The experience can make you be fluent in mostly linear skills, but without thinking capacity, you can not further sharpen the synthetic capability to jump start to the new horizons.
The guiding principle is like the light tower, navigates IT toward the right direction and speed up the organization to the well-planned journey of digital transformation. Understanding the guidelines used by senior leadership to make decisions, consistently applied by an organization, allows all -from top-down within the organization to make decisions in the same fashion as these executives, and as a result, are broadly supported and are seldom misdirection. However, 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.




Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Monthly Decision Making Insight: Leverage IT in Decision Making Oct. 2016

Decision making is the arena across the art and science; gut feeling and data driven, confidence and humility.
Making a decision is one of the significant tasks for business leadership, however, the high ratio of strategic decisions have been made poorly and cause the catastrophic effect. How to leverage IT to make effective decisions both strategically and tactically?
Leveraging IT as a Business Decision Influencer? Fundamentally, the purpose of IT organization is to ensure the right information going to the right people at the right time and location in order to make the right decision. Indeed, IT is a key business decision influencer at an information-explosion era, but more specifically, how does IT make an impact on the business decision, and how can IT improve business’s decision-making capabilities and effectiveness?
What’s IT Role in Business Decision Management? At today’s digital dynamic, information is abundant and even explosive, the business has become over-complex also hyper-connected, what’s the correlation between data, information, and decision-making. And what’s IT Role in business decision management?
IT as a Proactive Business Decision Maker? More often than not, technology is the creative destructor for business regardless of which sectors you are in, and IT becomes the key ingredient in any competitive business capability, either it’s the utility necessity for company's survival or the unique competency for the organization’s thriving; and the success of IT project can leapfrog a business to the uprising business star; while the failed IT project will directly impact business’s bottom line, even surviving. Hence, IT leaders, essentially are business leaders as well, have to have a seat at the big table and make key business decisions more proactively
An Influential IT: IT as Business Decision Influencer? Fundamentally, the purpose of IT organization is to ensure the right information going to the right people at the right time and location in order to make the right decision. Indeed, IT is a key business decision influencer at information-explosion era, but more specifically, how does IT make an impact on the business decision, and how can IT improve business’s decision-making capabilities??
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?
The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.5 million page views with about #3200 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. 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

"CIO Master" Book Tuning #126: Three IT Advantages in Driving Digital Transformation

IT management has to become an integral part of business management, running IT as a business advantage and doing more with innovation.

In today's digital business environment, information is the lifeblood, and technology touches every phase and each corner of the business, IT running in an industrial mode as a business controller or support center no longer fits in the fast changing business circumstances or volatile digital dynamic, IT becomes so critically, many times, it is a determining success factor for your long-term business strategy to achieve fast growth and long-term sustainability. Due to the changing nature of technology, IT organization also has to continue to re-imagine, reinvent and reshuffle itself to adapt to the changes and build advantages in driving digital transformation. IT as the strategic advantage: IT professionals and IT teams need to have both an internal as well as external focus when it comes to staying up to date with advances in technology. The real question is whether IT is seen as a necessary expense, a provider of devices and software, or a true strategic business enabler, a group that creates platforms tools for individuals to do their jobs  more effectively and efficiently and create opportunities for the business’s long-term prosperity. That is exactly why IT is a team effort where members of the team work together to accomplish common goals. In order to reach the next level of organizational maturity, IT leaders and professionals should have an in-depth understanding of the business. If you cannot talk business to the business, or cannot communicate effectively about execution, you will leave others with no choice, IT staffs at all levels needs to understand how the business makes and loses money, and it needs to articulate solutions around this with business language, to truly reinvent IT as the strategic enhancer.

IT as a competitive advantage: It has become more obvious that data and information stored and processed in the IT boxes is the real source of business innovation. What a CIO should do is understand how he/she creates positive / negative value. Exemplify how IT directly impacts productivity and catalyze business innovations. CIOs should understand the business model first, otherwise, it is challenging to link the dot between business and IT. CIOs need to do a better job of articulating the existing and potential value of IT to the business, with the language and measurement senior executives understand. Once you show and demonstrate to the other CxOs that you understand the business they will respect you and give you authority, power, and influence in executive decision-making. The main aspect is HOW to create real value and how to present it quantitatively. The methods and mechanisms for doing so are found in the field of IT GRC and include disciplines like financial, demand and service portfolio management, all of which are aimed at better strategic alignment, through transparency into and continual improvement of the economic and strategic value of IT assets.

IT as the digital advantage: Digital is all about flow, data flow, information flow, idea flow, and mind flow. Technology has played a large role in “gluing” both hard and soft business elements to build a modern workforce and workplace, and orchestrate digital transformation. CIOs can work more closely with HR and talent managers to provide a digital platform, empower talent for cross-functional communication and collaboration. With increased diversification comes increased discord, it is important that the CIO spends the time to learn the business dynamics and “how people think and do things around here,” then he/she will be able to maximize the synergies and avoid duplication of efforts, optimize processes, and improve business capabilities and agility.

Organizations rely more and more on technology, The digital world is so data-driven and so information-intensive, technology needs will only expand. IT should be more robust and antifragile than ever. It is not a business drag, but a differentiated advantage. Running at digital speed, people tend to have high expectation of digital flow, very little patience with technology issues. Hence, IT departments have more obstacles to overcome and have better strategic goals to achieve. IT management has to become an integral part of business management, running IT as a business advantage and doing more with innovation.

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

Three IT Advantages in Driving Digital Transformation

In today's digital business environment, information is the lifeblood, and technology touches every phase and each corner of the business, IT running in an industrial mode as a business controller or support center no longer fits in the fast changing business circumstances or volatile digital dynamic, IT becomes so critically, many times, it is a determining success factor for your long term business strategy to achieve the fast growth and long-term sustainability. Due to the changing nature of technology, IT organization also has to continue to re-imagine, reinvent and reshuffle itself to adapt to the changes, and build advantages in driving digital transformation. IT as the strategic advantage: IT professionals and IT teams need to have both an internal as well as external focus when it comes to staying up to date with advances in technology. The real question is whether IT is seen as a necessary expense, a provider of devices and software, or a true strategic business enabler, a group that creates platforms tools for individuals to do their jobs  more effectively and efficiently, and create opportunities for the business’s long term prosperity. That is exactly why IT is a team effort where members of the team work together to accomplish common goals. In order to reach the next level of organizational maturity, IT leaders and professionals should have in-depth understanding about the business. If you cannot talk business to the business, or cannot communicate effectively about execution, you will leave others with no choice, IT staffs at all levels needs to understand how the business makes and loses money, and it needs to articulate solutions around this with business language, to truly reinvent IT as the strategic enabler.
IT as a competitive advantage: It has become more obvious that data and information stored and processed in the IT boxes is the real source of business innovation.What a CIO should do is understand how he/she creates positive / negative value. Exemplify how IT directly impacts productivity and catalyze business innovations. CIOs should understand the business model first, otherwise, it is challenging to link the dot between business and IT. CIOs need to do a better job of articulating the existing and potential value of IT to the business, with the language and measurement senior executives understand. Once you show and demonstrate to the other CxOs that you understand the business they will respect you and give you authority, power, and influence in executive decision-making. The main aspect is HOW to create real value and present it quantitatively. The methods and mechanisms for doing so are found in the field of IT GRC and include disciplines like financial, demand and service portfolio management, all of which are aimed at better strategic alignment, through transparency into and continual improvement of the economic and strategic value of IT assets.
IT as the digital advantage: Digital is all about flow, data flow, information flow, idea flow, and mind flow. Technology has played a large role in “gluing” both hard and soft business elements to build a modern workforce and workplace, and orchestrate digital transformation. CIOs can work more closely with HR and talent managers to provide a digital platform, empower talent for cross-functional communication and collaboration. With increased diversification comes increased discord, it is important that the CIO spends the time to learn the business dynamics and “how people think and do things around here,” then he/she will be able to maximize the synergies and avoid duplication of efforts, optimize processes, and improve business capabilities and agility.
Organizations rely more and more on technology, The digital world is so data-driven and so information-intensive, technology needs will only expand. IT should be more robust and antifragile than ever. It is not a business drag, but an advantage.  Running at digital speed, people tend to have high expectation of digital flow, very little patience with technology issues. Hence, IT departments have more obstacles to overcome and have more strategic goals to achieve.IT management has to become an integral part of business management, running IT as business advantage and doing more with innovation.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

“Digital Master” Book Monthly Tuning: “All about Digital Fit” Oct. 2016

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. All About "Digital Fit"How do you define “Digital Fit”? People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses. “Hiring the right person for the right position at the right time,” is the mantra of many forward-thinking organizations. The question is how would you define the right people? How do you define wrong, average, mediocre, good, great or extraordinary person? Or put simply, for what should they be right? How do you define “Digital Fit”?
The Business Fitness for Digital Paradigm Shift? 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?How Do you Define Organizational Digital Fitness  Organizations today are hyperconnected and over-complex, with well mixed physical workplace and virtual team setting; multicultural, multi-generational and multi-deviceing workforce, what’s your team building principles? How do you define organizational fit, in order to build innovative and high-performing teams and transform the whole organization into a Digital Master?
Is a “Misfit” Mind a Truly Digital fit? Digital fitness is about the business or talent’s capabilities to adapt to the digital dynamic –the accelerated changes or over complexity, what’re the digital fitting mindsets? Are they conventional or out-of-box? Are they homogeneous or heterogeneous? Are they compliant or critical? Are they stereotypical or creative? Does the one being called misfit actually a better fit for digital thinking? So is a misfit mind a truly digital fit?
The Enterprise’s Digital Fitness: Digital is the age of change, there’s abundance of information and emergent digital technologies such as SMAC (Social, Mobile, Business Analytics, and Cloud) around, but it doesn’t mean organizations will become a high mature digital business automatically; many organizations have got the symptom of “data obesity,” "information misleading" or “technology addiction.” What’re the root causes and how to achieve enterprise’s digital fitness?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.5+million page views with about #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, 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 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

Innovation Management Assessment and Measurement

For many businesses, creativity is the mystery and innovation is a serendipity. In fact, innovation is how to transform novel ideas and achieve its business value. Due to the hyper-complexity of modern businesses, innovation is also about reducing the unnecessary business complexity to tackle the complexities of business dynamic. It can be managed in a structural way. If you can only manage what you measure, how to measure innovation effectively?  
Setting guidelines for developing a customized suite of innovation metrics: Metrics provides feedback. Metrics is part of transparent visual management allowing pulling. However, poor-defined metrics can mislead, create the other layer of complications, cause confusion or suck the energy. Normally organizations look for KPIs measuring business results generated by innovation efforts. You choose the KPIs by deciding which are seen as critical to making progress in order to deliver more innovations. There is no best innovation practice solution which fits all cases. Select the few (3-5) KPIs, to keep the measures simple and understandable.  The innovation metrics in the context of business impact include such as, % of revenue from new products/services introduced. You could also change the variables and create something like % of the profit from new ideas implemented. But it takes quite some time for a new innovation drive to produce those measures. One of the solutions is to define process KPIs, which demonstrate the growing capability of the organization to deliver more innovation with business impact in the future.
Evaluate idea management and innovation platforms/tools: The appropriately configured innovation platform creates a scalable means for sharing and building ideas throughout the enterprise. As a result, innovation becomes a persistent, shared reality, even across silos and geographies. A well-considered tool/platform for innovation, in the given culture, operating environment, and governance, which can be part of innovation management planning and implementation, could strengthen the innovation effort and success rate to the organization. An effective idea management platform/tools can be assessed through:(1) Simplicity of use (friendly tool, accessibility from any devices...)(2) Flexibility to manage different discussions and votes(3) Link with usual company IT systems used by employees(4) Social and collaborative systems & tools to encourage discussions(5) Transparency in follow-up a system of innovation process from the idea up to implementation! Innovation Process Effectiveness can be assessed via a set of inquiries:(1) How will it increase speed in the innovation process(2) How will it decrease risk in the innovation process(3) How will it effectively leverage diversity to create meaningfully unique ideas(4) How will it effectively use the power of stimulus to create meaningfully unique ideas(5) How will it help to reduce fear in the organization?
The overall organizational maturity assessment: Innovation is a crucial digital capabilities which underpinned by vary business elements. Innovation Management System includes policies, structure, and program that innovation managers can use to drive innovation. Remove any of the three, you're liable to fail. A defined structure is essential to managing innovation in a corporation, but there's no single structure that will work in every organization. It depends on the level of organizational maturity. Trying to apply overly rigid structure applies limits to unleash full innovation potential. If the structure is meant in a methodological sense, then the structure is needed. Money facilitates innovation, but not guarantee the result. Statistically, innovation success ratio is not always proportional to the investment the business puts in. For example,  ideas are crucial to an innovation program, the money will increase the willingness of employees to contribute the ideas or improve innovation management system. It doesn't mean though that it will increase the volume of ideas that are available to be collected. You need to make sure, that your company has a steady flow of fresh ideas floating in your innovation pipeline, and you need a methodological platform that allows you to do that in an efficient way. From innovation process management perspective, the process to support the creation of sustainable, systematic innovation can be structured, but innovation per se is like composing a symphony, a lot of planning, but the music will come from the musicians, not the conductor.
The perception will come from the usage you're doing with metrics: Assuming an organization believes that metrics can lead to continuous improvement and improve innovation effectiveness, it won’t be just a matter of explicit communicating the intention behind metrics, but a matter of coaching and leadership to guide the team via understanding the purpose of doing that and engaging on that, with the goal to build innovation capacity, not about adding the new layer of complicated processes and causing more problems as side effect.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

"CIO Master" Book Tuning #125: Three Pitfalls in IT Digital Transformation

IT and the business need to develop a true partnership and work to pursue the desired outcomes.

The majority of organizations are designed to improve functional efficiency in the industrial era; there is nature friction between different functions of the organization, because often they compete for the limited resources, or speak different business dialect. Different IT organizations are also at the different stage of business maturity, IT can be used as a tool, help desk, enabler, catalyzer, or a digital game changer to meet the ultimate goal of an organization's short-term quick win and long-term strategic advantage. There is no one size fits all formula to run a highly effective IT organization. Regardless which flavor of IT you are running, here are three pitfalls in IT digital transformation you should avoid in order to improve organizational effectiveness, agility, and maturity.

“Lost in Translation” syndrome: The gap between IT and business is one of the biggest barriers in digital transformation. The disconnect between the business and IT is still one of the biggest root causes to enlarge the gap and fail IT and business as a whole as well. It is often caused by miscommunication and lack of cross-functional understanding, or commonly known as "Lost in Translation" syndrome. Sometimes "communicate" means different things to different people. More specifically, “lost in translation” syndrome is caused by mistakes that most organizations make in business communication that fails to translate the high-level language of strategy into the professional language of the various staff specialty for execution. And to communicate you need a common language, the connection between IT and business lies in using the common language to help businesses cross that bridge to IT. The communication gaps within IT, between functions and across business ecosystem will directly decrease IT management effectiveness and degrade the business capability to adapt to changes. Hence, it’s crucial for the business to understand  that IT as a function is also business related and revenue generating, in that the information systems used for business decisions are always being used to make important decisions for the overall company.

Silo Effect: A company is made up silos called functions, and the functions rely upon company/cross-functional strategy, process, and communication. Silos are nothing more than the barriers that surface between departments within an organization, causing people who are supposed to be on the same team to work against each other. it is one of the most frustrating aspects of life in any large mature organization. Isolation of teams limits creativity as well as duplication of efforts resulting in wasting valuable resources and creating frictions to changes. To dig deeper, silos are not just the structural issue in the organizational hierarchy,  they are the result of poor thinking, managers tend to respond to silos by reorganizing, but this is hardly ever the most important aspect or the place to start. What you need to do is switch thinking in the digital mode - be strategic, holistic, inclusive, systematic, and innovative.


IT vs. Business mentality: In many organizations, IT is perceived as an isolated function and a cost center, not a business unit. Because businesses don’t really understand what IT is doing, and IT leaders lack visions or communication skills to advocate IT as a strategic business partner. IT vs. business mentality is so common, that they often run in the dark and drive in a different way. The bottom line is, for any company to succeed, it is essential for the entire company to be pulling in the right direction, including IT. The truth is IT is integral to the business. IT and the business need to develop a true partnership and work to pursue the desired outcomes. The top leadership teams, including CIOs, should agree on the business goals and then set up metrics and incentives based on meeting those goals and mapping to individual employees’ performance as well. What C-level executives really want is a partner, someone who knows what they want before they know themselves, who innovates by understanding the business, as well as what they do; the partner that works both "on the business" and "in the business," not just "for the Business." And IT is the business.

It is no surprise that there are big roadblocks and hidden pitfalls on the way for digital transformation. IT and the business need to develop a true partnership and work to pursue the desired outcomes and achieve the long term results. The challenge is about applying digital management philosophy, building differentiated capabilities, tuning flexible structures, and developing the best and next practices in running a holistic and high-performing digital organization.

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

Three Pitfalls in IT Digital Transformation

Majority of organizations are designed to improve functional efficiency in the industrial era; there is nature friction between different functions of the organization, because often they compete for the limited resources, or spoke different business dialect. Different IT organizations are at the different stage of business maturity, IT can be used as a tool, help desk, enabler, catalyzer, or a digital game changer to meet the ultimate goal of an organization's short-term quick win and long-term strategic advantage. There is no one size fits all formula to run a highly effective IT organization. Regardless which flavor of IT you are running, here are three pitfalls in IT digital transformation you should avoid in order to improve organizational effectiveness, agility, and maturity.
“Lost in Translation” syndrome: The gap between IT and business is one of the biggest barriers in digital transformation. The disconnect between the business and IT is still one of the biggest root causes to enlarge the gap and fail IT and business as a whole as well. It is often caused by miscommunication and lack of cross-functional understanding, or commonly known as "Lost in Translation" syndrome. Sometimes "communicate" means different things to different people. More specifically, “lost in translation” syndrome is caused by mistakes that most organizations make in business communication that fails to translate the high-level language of strategy into the professional language of the various staff specialty for execution.  And to communicate you need a common language, the connection between IT and business lies in using the common language to help businesses cross that bridge to IT. The communication gaps within IT, between functions and across business ecosystem will directly decrease IT management effectiveness and degrade the business capability to adapt to changes. Hence, it’s crucial for the business to understand  that IT as a function is also business related and revenue generating, in that the information systems used for business decisions are always being used to make important decisions for the overall company.
Silo Effect: A company is made up silos called functions, and the functions rely upon company/cross-functional strategy, process, and communication. Silos are nothing more than the barriers that surface between departments within an organization, causing people who are supposed to be on the same team to work against each other. it is one of the most frustrating aspects of life in any large mature organization.  Isolation of teams limits creativity as well as duplication of efforts resulting in wasting valuable resources and creating frictions to changes. To dig deeper, silos are not just the structural issue in the organizational hierarchy,  they are the result of poor thinking, managers tend to respond to silos by reorganizing, but this is hardly ever the most important aspect or the place to start. What you need to do is switch thinking in the digital mode - be strategic, holistic, inclusive, systematic, and innovative.

IT vs. Business mentality: In many organizations, IT is perceived as an isolated function and a cost center, not a business unit. Because businesses don’t really understand what IT is doing, and IT leaders lack of vision or communication skills to advocate IT as a strategic business partners. IT vs. business mentality is so common, that they often run in the dark and drive in different way. The bottom line is, for any company to succeed, it is essential for the entire company to be pulling in the right direction, including IT. The truth is IT is integral to the business. IT and the business need to develop a true partnership, and work to pursue the desired outcomes. The top leadership teams, including CIO should agree on the business goals and then set up metrics and incentives based on meeting those goals and mapping to individual employees’ performance as well. What C-level executives really want is a partner, someone who knows what they want before they know themselves, who innovates by understanding the business, as well as what they do; the partner that works both "on the business" and "in the business," not just "for the Business." And IT is the business.
It is no surprise that there are big roadblocks and hidden pitfalls on the way for digital transformation.  IT and the business need to develop a true partnership and work to pursue the desired outcomes and achieve the long term results. The challenge is about applying digital management philosophy, building differentiated capabilities, tuning flexible structures, and developing the best and next practices in running a holistic and high-performing digital organization.

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 10/21/ 2016

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. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight about digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management.
The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO”  10/21/2016Digital CIOs’ Management Practices: Applying 80/20 Rule in IT Management:The 80-20 rule is a rule of thumb that states 80% of outcomes can be attributed to 20% of all causes for a given event. In business, the 80-20 principle is often used to point out that 80% of a company's revenue is generated by 20% of its total customers. Therefore, the rule is used to help managers identify and determine which operating factors are most important and should receive the most attention, based on an efficient use of resources. The 80-20 rule is also known as the Pareto Principle, at its core, the 80-20 rule is a statistical distribution of data that says 80% of a specific event can be explained by 20% of the total observations. From there, it was expanded to be applied to the study of management techniques and principles with different facets of business and the economy. It is now used to describe almost any type of output in the real world, from the science of management to the patterns of the physical world. IT management is both art and science. How can Digital CIOs apply 80/20 rule for developing IT management practices to improving IT budgeting efficiency, quality optimization, and project/portfolio success rate? ?
To Celebrate 3200 Blog Posting Slideshare: Leadership is about change, the substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about making positive influences, and providing direction, both for oneself and others. However, the journey of great leadership is never going to be smooth, with many obstacles on the way. There is no friction, no authentic leadership. It is the time to celebrate the #3200 blog posting, not about writing, but about brainstorming the digital way to lead effortlessly. Imagining the blog is the knowledge power made of 3000+ building blocks, mightier than the magic bullets, to remove the barriers and overcome obstacles not for winning, but for progression, to advocate innovative leadership and accelerate digital leadership shift.

IT Savvy Board’s Five Oversight The corporate board in a high-level leadership position plays a crucial role in strategy oversight, business advising, and monitoring, as well as setting key digital tones in organizational culture styles, talent management trend, and leadership quintessential. Nowadays, information is overwhelming and becomes one of the most invaluable assets of the business, technology is often the disruptive forces behind digital innovations. Forward-looking companies across the industries declare they are in the information management business. Therefore, Digital Board today need to become IT friendly and technology savvy, with a comprehensive IT oversight on how to run a high intelligent and high mature digital business?
The New Book “Change Insight”Sumup: There are many books written about changes, but very few dig into the mindset level. Change Management starts with a thought, with a flash of insight, insight is the act or result of understanding the inner nature of changes or of seeing things intuitively. It leads to a vision; then leads to a culture shift, strategic changes, or leadership transformation. Change Management is always challenging with a high percentage of failure rate. Indeed, change is difficult. Some say, change is not a problem, the primary reason for change failure is resistance to change while the secondary reason is the inability of leaders to deal with resistance. The purpose of the book “Change Insight” is to understand change holistically and manage change systematically.?

The CIO’s Digital Agenda: Close the Gaps in IT Digital Transformation  Oct. 2016? With the increasing speed of changes, many organizations are inundated with tactical tasks and daily operational duties, they don’t spend enough time on scrutinizing the long term strategy and identify disastrous blind spots in order to make a smooth business transformation. Indeed, there are both blind spots in strategy formulation and execution. So how to identify and close those blind spots in order to accelerate digital transformation?   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

BoDs as “Thinkingaires”: Harnessing Digital Thinking to Build a “Mindful Board”

Modern corporate boards play a significant role in strategy oversight and business advising. Business understanding is a prerequisite for being a board member in the first place, and to add to that you need different members to have important cognitive difference/experience/ competence in many other areas. Most directors are seasoned executives with a variety of experience. While mindset is critical to being an effective director is sometimes overlooked. BoDs with cognitive differences can make better decisions and heterogeneous boards are more open-minded, innovative and set the right tone for the culture of innovation.
Strategic Thinking: BoDs as top leaders in the business need to master at strategic thinking. The main role of a board is to oversee strategy with the executive management. Strategic thinking is fundamentally about “keeping the end” in mind, help the business to achieve its vision via overseeing strategy. The BoDs need to gain deeply understanding about the enterprise in order to be a credible actor in the strategy dialogue. A board should be engaged in by scrutinizing the strategy, with regard to the strategic thinking, keep asking what’s happening in your market and what’re your competitors doing., etc., along with senior management, can benefit from a 'Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats' analysis if one has not been performed recently. That could be a way of focusing the board and management back on some of the strategic issues needing to be addressed to strengthen and grow the organization.
Critical thinking: Critical thinking is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion. The real critical thinking challenges existing assumptions and conventional wisdom. Critical thinking is a basic form of organized thought specifically used to discover concrete solutions or implement concrete actions. The BoDs as critical thinkers can make constructive criticism about business strategies, identify blind spots and pinpoint potential pitfalls. It is the difference in thinking and perspectives that diversified BoDs bring to the table for enforcing critical thinking and improving decision-making effectiveness.
Independent Thinking": Independent thinking is just about making your own mind. We live in the world with the abundance of information, having the mix of signals and noises. Either at the board level or for any digital leaders or professionals, Independent thinking becomes more critical in making sound judgment. One of the most crucial roles of boards is to practice independent thinking in a certain collective way and provide valuable feedback and deep insight (not rubber stamp) to the management team of the organization and help them leap the organizational management effectiveness up to the next level.
Systems Thinking: Systems Thinking is about understanding the interconnectivity of the parts and the whole. The BoDs as a group of senior leaders need to be Systems Thinkers as well, think of themselves as seeing the "bigger" picture, or the global outlook, as well as how their thinking may be based on a set of preordained principles. BoDs who are good at Systems Thinking can help the management team to expand their thinking, bring the interdisciplinary fresh perspective to the table, understand business situations from different angles, and solve problems without causing the new issues. A systems view of the world encompasses impacts and consequences of our thinking and actions. Interconnections and interdependencies are distinguished, wise choices and decisions are made. Solutions are also made from a much broader and encompassing view that is not possible in linear thinking. So the wise BoDs with Systems Thinking can make the difference via coaching the management team to be mindful as well.
Innovative Thinking: The Boards of Directors are interactive change agents that represent the organization, stockholders, and senior management, they need to practice creative thinking, participate, or even lead in the area of innovation for outliers’ viewpoint. Boards are aware of how an innovative culture can be important to the overall health of an organization, they should be asking the "right" questions, offering insights and encouraging participation at the top.The effective board brings together such a tremendous thinking, skills and experience mix that there are bound to be board members whose ideas could feed into new value creation. And more significantly, an innovative board sets the culture tone to build a high-innovative and high-performing business.
The board needs diversity, more specifically the diversity of thoughts, or even more crucially, cognitive difference, to provide a perspective that goes beyond the gaps in board discussion. They need to incorporate their unique viewpoint on people, innovation, GRC etc into their solid knowledge of overall business and technology. And the “Mindful Board” clearly has a role to play in all the major essential elements of making an enterprise successful.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu