Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1292

The New Book “Thinkingaire” Introduction: Chapter 8 Progressive Minds

The human society is a dynamic continuum with collective human progress. Real societal progress is made through the work of progressive minds, which can sustain a balance of diversified viewpoints, creativity, discipline; opportunities and risk; individualism and teamwork, democracy and unification; science and art, intuition and analytics. More often, progress is not a universal truth, but a relative truth. What happens is that we think that progress is being made, but then we don’t see progress, because your type of progress may not be a progress at all to someone else. From the business perspective, the progress made through a silo mind can only benefit the individual function. However, progress at an organizational level ensures that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of its pieces. At the individual level, progress is impossible without change, those who can not change their minds cannot change anything.
An improving mind: Improvement comes by discovering and exploring self, or change in the self. After awareness and reflection, regulation to change the force of habit is required. Clarity, consciousness, and mindfulness are the requirement for the inner change to occur. An improving mind is all about the desire to learn. If it’s done right, learning should provide a lot of fun and enjoyment, as well as a sense of achievement and a growing bonus of self-worth. Progress represents change. Without change, one cannot even stagnate. She or he will be on a backward journey. Progress itself is change, whether it comes from individual or group effort, or is induced by environmental and cultural, tangible or intangible forces.
A reflective mind: Life is a journey, we all grow, learn, reflect and we all intend to reach the ultimate level of maturity. A self-reflective mind with the habit of introspection brings the ability to look within and see the true self in the mirror of the heart. Awareness is the light that makes this process easy and smooth. Self-reflection is much needed to know yourself, your thoughts, and opinions more clearly and understand what’s happening around you. Continuous “checking in” on oneself keeps you fresh, every person is unique, trust your intuition more and take the time to celebrate the achievements, but also learn from failures and setbacks. Allow yourself permission to be wrong, forgive yourself more for your decisions, take the consequences. Sometimes you are in the dark, sometimes you are in the light, sometimes you are in an unconscious state, and other times you may be in a superconscious state, it takes the time to come to understand self and what all that encompasses.
A motivational mind: Motivation is the “cognitive momentum” that comes from consistently applying the habits congruent with the achievement of our goals. Motivation is affected by many things, including one’s thinking about the goals, worth, and possibilities. Motivation is the force to guide our behaviors. Motivation makes a difference to everything we do. It infuses a positive kind of energy, which opens up our mind, all motivation is a form of consciousness. It gives you the energy to do everything that you must do. Motivation is perhaps a combination of several emotions. Motivation is the cognitive momentum that comes from consistently applying the habits congruent with the achievement of the goal. Ultimately the answer lies in focus. A motivational leader is able to foster an atmosphere of enthusiasm, conveying enthusiasm to others is the key element that allows a leader to be effective, motivational and achieve great success in his or her endeavors.
The world is hyperconnected and interdependent, even more often now, progress has to be achieved through collective wisdom and diversity of insight. Only through continuous improvement, human progress can be sustained and the world can move forward with solid speed.
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The Logical Scenario for Driving IT Digital Transformation

Technology is pervasive nowadays, business transformations or any business initiatives today nearly always involves some form of technology implementation and information management; IT touches both hard business processes and soft human behavior. IT itself is also on the journey of digital transformation, why does IT needs to do this, what’s the logical scenario to take, and what outcome IT can achieve?

Strength assessment: IT needs to take a look at itself, make an objective assessment of its strength, and seek opportunities to improve itself. The ultimate goal is to push the IT organization to be clear about its position via the company's core business strategy. Once that's clear, the CIO must re-enforce that position by demonstrating every day how IT contributes to it. If IT strategy is not an integral component of the business strategy or the quality of the operation is not aligned with the company's strategy, it needs to be fixed, and the CIO needs to be talking about what it takes to move in the right direction. IT needs to make an assessment via the business lens, to ensure that the “IT Gap,” where people in IT had all the IT answers is truly closed, and IT needs to simply deal with business issues, and that you need to be part of the business.
Change Curve: Where is the organization on the technology or process adoption curve? The speed of digital transformation is dependent on how fast IT can ride ahead of the change curves: Is the organization a pioneer, mature adapter, or laggard? A strategic change for one type is perhaps old news for another. There are many pitfalls on the way, such as the poorly defined scope and objectives, lack of availability of key personnel, lack of knowledge about organizational design principles, lack of resources (money, people, time, etc.), or lack of sufficient knowledge or skills to manage change and transformation. Transformational change needs resolute leadership too, the premise behind this is more than simply obtaining senior buy-in. This is needed to support a cultural change through the change life cycle which enables everyone, wherever they are in that cycle, to accept the direction and focus on benefits realization. IT needs to have all the necessary structure/ methodology/tool in shaping the new box of thinking and managing the emergent digital complexity in order to ride ahead of change curves, and manage digital transformation effectively.
Alliance: Making changes or any type of digital transformation is a collaborative effort, IT leaders need to identify: Who are your sponsors, supporters and who will be your detractors?Who will work with you to overcome the problem, and who will try to kick you when you're down? And how do you overcome the objections or roadblocks that will inevitably raise?  Terms such as collaboration, integration, engagement, harmony, link, fuse, affiliation, coalition, fit, match, meld, convergence are frequently used synonymously with the term business and IT alliance. It means having IT and business collaborate as equal partners so that projects, strategies, organizations, people, etc, work in harmony. The strong level of collaboration entails effective communication, partnership, and collective people capabilities to have a smooth transformation and improve IT maturity, and  organizations with higher and stronger maturity outperform organizations with lower maturity.
Risks: Often either at the individual level or an organizational level, people resist to changes, because it means you have to step out of your comfort zones and take risks, thus, the right risk appetite and attitude, as well as risk management and risk intelligence, are critical in any change and transformation effort. It’s important to integrate risk management into change/operational management. Integrating the discipline factor of integrating risk management into the everyday business model helps to move the organization a couple of steps forward in business excellence. But, as always, the challenge of managing human change and adoption is tough, and those firms that can accomplish this feat will have the ability to tackle other challenges.
Measures: Measuring change is an important step in change and business transformation management. It is the responsibility of the IT leaders to find a way to effectively measure and communicate the value the transformative IT can bring, not just IT internally but benefit to the entire organization. If the other executives are not interested in your figures, that is a sign that you perhaps do not measure the right things from the business perspective, or the numbers are not presented in the right way. Set the strategic goals and measure the result accordingly.
This is a golden opportunity for CIOs to lead the way by enabling, governing and optimizing the consumer-driven technology and information management, which are going viral in the enterprise. Sure, in today's world, technology is driving business transformation, unlike previous eras during which business transformation was driven by business ideas. Take a logical scenario and manage such a digital transformation in a structural way.
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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 9/30/ 2016

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.5 million page views with 3100+ 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”  9/30/2016The New Book “Thinkingare” Chapter 3 Introduction: Hybrid Minds: Slideshare: WWe live in the digital world with all sorts of hybrid solutions. Organizations today are not limited to the physical buildings, but well mixed with virtual collaborations. Social business is perceived as the future of organization within the hybrid, networked, and extended modern working environment to empower workforce sharing thoughts and ideas, to engage customers and partners voicing their concerns and feedback, and to encourage broader conversations and interactions with the business ecosystem. Hybrid Thinking is a set of interdisciplinary and integrative thinking processes we will need to solve many of today’s complex problems which require strategic consideration, systems intelligence, innovative approaches, cross-cultural and cross-generational perspectives?
Running a Simplified IT is not so Simple: Logically, simplifying the complicated thing is an optimal and smart choice either for running the business or solving a problem. However, it is much easier to say, and hard to do. “Keep it Simple” is one of the most important management principles and philosophy to run a digital IT, but due to the complex nature of technology and overwhelming information, running a simplified IT is not so simple, and simplification is the optimal level of sophistication.
Talent Management Strategic Practices : “Can you Cast the Brick to Attract Jades” People are always the most invaluable asset in any organization. Talent management and human capital investment are strategic imperative for companies’ long term growth. Digital leaders should always ask themselves whether the workplace is healthy enough to attract the best and brightest. If any talent gaps existing, what’re the root causes behind it? Having the right person with the right capability in the right position at the right time is always one of the biggest challenges facing any business. Should you apply one of the famous 36 stratagems to develop strategic talent management practices via asking “ Can you cast the brick to attract Jades”? (Having something useful to attach something precious and extremely valuable) . The Monthly Insight: Change Management to Catalyze Strategy Execution    Sep. 2016? Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice within an organization, but too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crisis, and demands. This is the bureaucracy’s way of meeting the challenges. A digital transformation is achieved via dynamic Strategy-Execution-Change life cycle management. Although Change Management is not all linear steps, but an iterative, ongoing and upgoing change continuum?   Running IT in a Proactive Mode to Earn its Spurs: In today's digital business environment, information is the lifeblood, and technology touches every phase of the business, IT impact is significant - IT is impacting every business unit and is becoming the driver of business change. However, many IT organizations still run in a reactive mode or act as controller only, slow to change. What are the IT leadership disciplines and best practices to rejuvenating IT in a proactive change mode and earn its spurs? Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
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The New Book “Thinkingaire” Introduction: Chapter 7 Paradoxical Minds

Paradoxical is an adjective that describes something with two meaning s that don’t make sense together. Its greek roots translate to “contrary opinion,” and when two different opinions collide in one statement or action, that’s paradoxical. (vocabulary.com) The global business dynamic is becoming more complex, uncertain, ambiguous, and paradoxical in many perspectives. Studies show that effective leaders display a marked level of ease and comfort when dealing with a paradox. Leading complex organizations is a challenge that transcends rational management and that requires paradoxical capabilities, behavioral complexity, and competencies that distinguish great leader from others.
The digital professional with paradoxical Intelligence (PI) is more balanced with emotional excellence: Emotional Brilliance comes because of balance, not extremes of any kind. Yin and Yang are two sides to the same coin. We need to accept and appreciate both. At a silo, perhaps you only see or understand one side, believe it is right, and then assume the other side must be wrong. But if you stand at the right angle to see the both sides, you know even they are different, but both hold part of truth in it. Nowadays, we are shifting into a hyper-connected, and hyper-competitive digital paradigm. Unprecedentedly, the physical boundary can no longer limit our thoughts, our communication and life experience. And more often than not, you have to see the full spectrum of colors and embrace seemly paradoxical point of views in order to understand things holistically.
The digital professionals with paradoxical intelligence are more inquisitive and innovative: INterdisciplinarity and paradox are the rare and precious dots to spark the next level of innovation, because often creative outcomes may come from recombining ideas in different ways to create the fresh ideas or the new ways to solve old problems. From innovation management perspective, the high “PI” mindset is better at balancing between orders (standardization) and chaos (innovation). The paradox of leadership is about the balancing of asking and answering, leading at the front and leading from the behind, or know when it’s the time to lead, and when it’s time to follow.
The doubtful mind seems paradoxical, the wise says, “if you doubt at first, doubt again”: This means that any doubtful situation or thought should not be left unattended, especially when the impact of that situation is possibly large. You cannot leave anything that may put your activities or plans in jeopardy unaddressed. If doubt is a brief precursor that stimulates questioning and learning, then it is a healthy, positive state of mind. When doubt becomes internalized as self-doubt and begins to erode one’s self-confidence, then it is a negative state of mind. Doubt that leads us to strive for knowledge and action for betterment is the only way to grow. The aspects we have to look for are: Doubts about a possible impediment, devising way to overcome the impediment, being prepared for some en-route “surprises,” either pleasant or otherwise, courage, and the confidence to face unpleasant surprises. Like many other paradoxical characters we are born with, it has to be used in moderation and subjected to examination.
Paradoxical Intelligence is a multidimensional intelligence, without broad knowledge, profound insight, and ultimate wisdom, you cannot understand both sides of coin cohesively. Digital leaders with high PI can orchestrate and harmonize via their unique vision and distinctive abilities to lead differently. And digital professionals with high PI demonstrate learning agility and inclusiveness to solve problems in a more create way.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Three “Soft” IT Management Disciplines to Drive Digital Transformation

Often, IT is perceived by the business as a big cold, isolated function with monolithic hard boxes and tangled wires, IT staff is stereotyped as geeks who speak the different language, or lack of communication. With emergent digital technologies and increasing speed of changes, forward-looking IT is also reaching the inflection point for digital transformation, and shift from “T-driven” monolithic type to “I” oriented mosaic style. What are “soft” IT management disciplines to drive digital transformation.
“Software is eating the world”: Digital IT is running as a software startup, to make continuous delivery and help the business improve the top line business growth. Even software management itself continually evolving via following the agile philosophy and a set of principles. Machines, tools, and environments that IT professionals use will become more powerful, easy-to-use and knowledge-base. Being customer centric is key, to scale up, and to make this culture change stick, and following the three “I”s: Interaction, Iteration, and Improvement. Applications will become more interrelated as we move to a world of systems-of-systems where constraints govern how and what we develop. Software Engineering is no longer just an isolated discipline only a few geeks work on it, but a common practice everyone has the chance to play around it, it has permeated into every business in every location, and it underpins the business capability and brand of every digital organization today.
Change Management (as a soft touch) goes hand-in-hand with strategy management: IT has to addressing enterprise behaviors and moving to an outcome focused, outside-in organization; leaders act as coaches and applying new technology and innovative ideas to the way of working as soon as they stay ahead of their competitors, and have fun doing it. There is no hard formula to manage changes, because change itself changes. Change Management is considered as a “soft” discipline. Therefore, don't just rush up to follow the best practice for Change Management in your industry, but invest enough time to discover the root cause of issues. A change agent IT should get deeper understanding the issues facing both internal customers and end customers as well. Change is not for its own sake, it is IT responsibility to identify opportunity for business transformation wherever analysis and assessment indicate the potential benefits of transformation efforts, to oversee the key business process and influence organizational culture, to enable and catalyze business transformation. Digital CIOs should be capable of evolving leadership skills to not only match pace with the changes in technology and the pace at which the organization can effectively manage these changes, but also proactively drive changes in business transformation.
Build people advantage in IT: As businesses become so dynamic, how to develop and manage their people is often the most challenging soft discipline. People need to be developed and grown so the positive energy can flow and collective human capabilities can really be transformed into business strength and competitive advantage. The knowledge life cycle is shortened significantly due to the rapid change in IT industry, more and more businesses are looking for growth mindset, not the fixed brain; hunting for modular problem-solving capabilities, not just linear skills. People Management becomes an well-mixed “hard + soft” discipline which integrates talent management, performance management and culture management in order to build a culture of learning and innovation, and build people advantage.

Digital transformation is “pushed” by both visible forces and invisible forces, hard forces and soft forces from multiple directions. The effective IT management can reinvent IT as an energetic business partner to delight customers and lead digital transformation seamlessly.



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The CIO’s Digital Agenda: The Pitfalls in Digital IT Management Sep. 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. To ride above the learning curve, how to identify and avoid those pitfalls in order to accelerate digital transformation?          The Pitfalls in Digital IT ManagementThree Pitfalls in Running a Differentiated Digital IT? In the static industrial environment, many IT organizations only focus on the commodity level of services to “keep the lights on.” However, today’s digital business environment is unprecedentedly dynamic, complex and uncertain, the differentiation provided by innovative technology allows companies to reach the "long-tail" customer that previously was impossible or uneconomic. And technologies can push you out of business if you are not agile enough to change your business model or adapt to change timely. Either being different or being irrelevant, what are the pitfalls in running a differentiated digital IT?
Five Pitfalls to Fail IT: IT plays a more significant role in leading changes and driving innovation in the organization than ever because  information is pervasive, permeating into everywhere in a contemporary business, and the speed of change is increasing nowadays. IT is also a critical element in improving business agility to adapt to changes. However, it doesn’t mean it's an easy job to run a high-performing IT organization. What are the pitfalls to fail IT, and how to overcome them in running a high mature digital IT?How to Avoid Pitfalls in Innovation Management: Innovation is both art and science. Innovation is a systematic way of applying creativity in the real life and business. In general, business innovation is a management discipline, and innovation management has overall very low success rate. The reasons why failure occurs vary widely, it is no wonder why many leaders are reluctant to act on bold ideas with good business potential due to the high likelihood of failure. So more specifically, what are the pitfalls in innovation management and how to manage innovation more effectively? Three Big Pitfalls in Digital Transformation? Digital makes a profound impact from specific function to business as a whole, the purpose of such radical digitalization is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of customer delight and achieve high performing business result. High mature digital organizations have high-level digital capabilities not only to build digital innovations but also to drive enterprise-wide transformation. However, there are still many roadblocks on the way, and numerous pitfalls to fail the initiatives. Here are three huge barriers in digital transformation, and stop businesses from speeding up and improving agility and maturity?
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?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.5+million page views with about #3100+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The New Book “Thinkingaire” Introduction Chapter 6 Highly Emotional Intelligent Minds

Emotional Intelligence in its simplest form is being aware of our emotions and managing them to get best out of the situation. EQ becomes more critical for leading in today’s digital dynamic with its characteristics of complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity. To dig deeper, is Emotional Intelligence fundamentally inherent, hardwired, Can it be trained to some extent, or is it circumstantial?
The importance of Emotional Intelligence gains prominence as seniority increases: IQ is about the ability to use all the reasoning and cognitive skills that are important for digital professionals to solve complex problems today. When you move up and take more responsibility and accountability, EQ is important, because it drives the organizational level of success. Higher EQ help you have an open mind, minimize biases, be cautiously optimistic, un-passionately examine and make a fair judgment, be an effective listener and be more creative. All these qualities become critical when you are leading and have to realign constantly and motivate people to follow your direction when you deal with cross functional peers where you do not have the authority and you have to be persuasive with other senior managers who have strong opinions about their own ways of doing things. The importance of EQ gains prominence as seniority increases, working with more people, getting more complicated tasks done and getting more relevance as you grow.
A self-disciplined mind: People with high EQ often has better self-discipline as well, because self-discipline is nothing but self-consciousness. They have better clarity of thoughts, and therefore do not get carried by the herd mentality. Without discipline, you do not manage to transform negative habits, and you do not create a new state of awareness where the self is nourished through the experience of positivity. Self-disciplined people are influential because they can harmonize their mind more often, to put it simply, walk the talk. People are drawn toward highly disciplined people because people like the stability of knowing that a person they are following is consistent and reliable. Hence, self-discipline reflects one’s EQ and it’s a crucial leadership quality.
A “Grit” Mind: Grit is the raw endurance, perseverance, and passion that keep you going despite obstacles. Grit and Emotional Intelligence are similar characteristics. A grit mind involves persistence, it involves a large tolerance for gratification, being able to hand adverse and negative feedback, push through, and stay focus. A grit mind strengthens all of your strengths, it aligns with one’s purpose beyond oneself. Grit comes with practice. The gritter you are, the grittier you can become. Grit can be the linchpin to connect four “D”s =  first, you have the DESIRE to achieve something, and then with grit as a choice, you have the DETERMINATION to to to the end, To do this, you also need “DEDICATION,” and this means, to give your time systematically. And to do that takes one more fundamental thing: DISCIPLINE.
People with high EQ mind is more mature, maturity often refers to having a sound understanding of basics and making a fair judgment. Maturity is clarity of thoughts along with self-control, which helps in choosing the most appropriate reaction to any given situation. Maturity in a person can be defined as the ability to react, behave and respond appropriately to the situation encountered, or how he or she applies the thought process in managing the situation with respect to time-frame and thereby coming to the best possible solutions towards it. When a person knows the rules of life and has trained his or her mind to great levels of capability or skill, the person becomes fully developed with high EQ and thus has achieved maturity in the role.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Management of IT is not just the “IT’s Business”

IT management is the management discipline and set of practices that all of the information technology resources of the organization are managed in accordance with its priorities and needs. In fact, the management of IT is not just the IT department's business, it takes Board and top leadership team’s commitment and the support from all level of the organization, in order to keep the information flow seamlessly across the functional border, and break down the silo walls through the latest digital technologies and collaboration tools.
Effective IT management means understanding every island of operation and every workflow process: IT is not just an isolated support function or act as a controller only. With emergent digital technologies, the traditional functional boundaries are disappearing or at best becoming very murky. IT leaders are caught between "how do we adopt and leverage" and "how do we control." The worst thing to do is just put the policy in place to mandate it comes through IT since business will perceive IT as not a real business partner. Hence, IT management effectiveness is not based on the inside-out IT operational lens, but through the comprehensive understanding that a CIO would be able to identify true cost savings, workflow optimizations, and additional revenue opportunities for the entire company and improve its competency. The management of IT goes beyond IT because often information has to flow across functionally in order to capture the business insight in a comprehensive way. And where to get the data from? It takes organizational-scope support to manage business information life cycle. In some cases, IT organizations lag behind the LOB counterparts and no standard system of record. In fact, IT seldom has standard processes across all of the different teams. To improve IT management effectiveness, IT needs to address the underlying disparate tools approach to understand holistic information in order to improve management capabilities. For all of these aspects, the management of IT is not just within IT.
IT failure is caused by the management of IT rather than just IT management: IT is the means to the end, not the end. That said, IT is not for its own sake, IT is about using technology to lower costs, improve operations, and increase revenue. It is not a function that can be handled only inside the IT department or by IT managers. The responsibility for evaluating the performance of IT investment lies squarely with the C-Level/board leadership team. Without full support from both top-down and bottom-up across the organizational scope, IT do not have all the information needed, they do not have all mechanism & authority to collect that information and they do not have all the skills necessary to evaluate the information. Without effective guidance/support from the board, the managers in the IT department are perhaps working in the dark -Mushroom management. An effective IT management can be achieved not only via the strong IT leadership but also needs to have the collaboration and fully support from the top leadership team.
High influential IT leaders have to understand the “ three side of coin”: IT, business, as well the interaction between IT and business: Most of the executive peers do not have a deep understanding of technology/process while effective CIOs have to know both the business and the technology side of things. You cannot know only one piece of the equation. IT provides a nervous system to the business. If information based business insight built is poor or not managed in a proper way, it may lead to wrong decisions and hence impact on the business survival. Hence, business needs IT to provide better information to achieve improved profitability. IT management effectiveness can be achieved when IT delivers precise, authentic and on-time information to the business for making right decisions at right time to make efficient use of all other resources. Improve enterprise revenue through better customer loyalty. IT management maturity totally depends on a deep understanding of the business and implementing it using IT tools and techniques. From IT leadership perspective, IT leaders need to practice expert power (business and technical knowledge) for advising the business and build the trust, business, and technical knowledge would help a CIO understand business priorities, opportunities, and the strategic need for IT. IT leaders should also develop the prestige power (connections) to bridge gaps and enforce business-IT relationship via effectively communicating the strategic importance of IT to the executive team.
IT is the business. The management of IT is the integral management discipline to ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces; it takes the collaborative effort across the entire business scope to streamline processes and keep information flow seamlessly. IT can take more resource to do innovation, not just an over-controlling support function to keep the light on; it is transforming from a cost center to a value creator.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Monthly Digital Management Insight: How to Avoid Blind Spots Sep. 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 avoid those blind spots in order to accelerate digital transformation.


         How to Close Blind SpotsHow Does a Senior Leader Deal With Blind spots? There’s knowing unknown, there’s unknowing unknown, so it's not a new topic about “Blind Spots,” everyone perhaps has some, but as a senior business leader (or any kind of leader), the blind spots will cloud your vision, trigger your negative emotion, cause your decision ineffectiveness, and screw your leadership competency. So what're the causes of the blind spot, and how to deal with them logically?
Make Digital Leap via Closing Three Blind Spots Digital means changes, it brings unprecedented opportunities and numerous risks. Being static is no longer a choice for today’s digital professionals or businesses. If you do not move fast enough to adapt to changes, you already lag behind. Furthermore, digital dynamic also creates many blind spots and generate quite a few gaps because of its “VUCA” characteristics - Velocity, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, also because different individuals and organizations evolve digital in the different speed. So how to drive the business in the fast lane and take digital leap via closing those fatal blind spots??Three Questions to Assess a Person’s “Blind Spot”: The business and the world are moving into deep, deep digital dynamic with velocity, complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and rapid changes. It is increasingly difficult to either steer the individual toward a progressive career path or navigate the business to the right direction with the right strategy. It also becomes more challenging to make effective decisions or sound judgment on the daily basis for both digital leaders and professionals. So how to assess a person’s “blind spot” in order to predict his/her ability to think thoroughly and decide wisely?
How Do You Deal With Blind Spots? Senior business leaders have a significant responsibility to steer their organization in the right direction, however, what’re their management blind spots result in decreasing business productivity and lowering organizational maturity and how to deal with these blind spots more effectively?
Seven Biggest IT Blind Spots : Many IT organizations still survive in dark back office, no wonder, there are both strategic and operational blind spots result in decreasing business productivity and lowering organizational maturity. What are those fatal blind spots and how to avoid them? ?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.5+million page views with about #3100+ 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

The New Book “Thinkingaire” Introduction: Chapter 5 Intellectual Minds

I ntelligence is a cognitive process involving rational and abstract thinking. It’s goal-directed and purposeful, which means that all intelligent activities are planned to reach a self-determined goal. Intelligence is also the word we use to describe the potential ability. There are as many different ways to characterize intelligence as there are different types and forms of information impinging on our sense.

An understanding mind: There is a difference between knowledge and understanding. Knowledge by definition is “information, understanding, or skill that you get from experience or education. Intelligence is not just knowledge, it is a contextual understanding. You can’t truly have understanding without having knowledge and wisdom to guide you. In turn, we would realize the importance of questioning, examining, and challenging everything we think we know. Knowledge is having information, understanding is about knowing how different pieces of information relate to each other. Knowledge is transferable, but understanding is not transferable. It is impossible for another to experience something exactly the way you experience it. Attention and awareness are part of the process of transforming knowledge into understanding and understanding into wisdom.
A cognitive mind: In science, cognition is the set of mental abilities and processes related to knowledge, attention, memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem-solving and decision making, comprehension and production of language., etc. To put simply, it’s mental process of acquiring knowledge through thought, experience, and senses. Cognition can happen in many different ways and combinations. The most important capability of cognitive mind is the willingness and ability to seek out knowledge and address our ignorance and assumptions we make to minimize it. When we explore the mental process of acquiring new knowledge through thoughts, experiences, and senses, we realize that cognition involves exploring varieties of meanings or thoughts, removing old and establishing new relations. In neuronal terms, this involves disabling some of the old “wirings,” and making new connections. All of that requires a deliberate mental effort. A cognitive mind enables us o understand the different information we need to reach different conclusions and then consider the different tools or techniques available to gather, sort, organization and analyze information.
An insightful mind: Insight is the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively. A person considered to be a visionary is someone who has insight into what others can’t see. Insight is thinking into the box after thinking out of the box, that means it integrates both creative thinking and analytical thinking, intuition and logic; the power of acute observation and deduction, questioning, connection, penetration, discernment, and perception. Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect in a specific context, Insight is being able to identify the root cause of a problem or the core issues of the situation, which lead to understanding and resolution. To put briefly, insight is the ability to perceive clearly or in a deep way, and it’s a perception via multidimensional cognizance.
When things (including mind) are perceived intellectually, then they are looked at from the conscious mind and ordinary awareness, which means a quantifiable, logical, external perspective involving a lot of mental “doing” - envisioning, thinking, comparing, concluding, reasoning and planning, etc. Learning agility is the deepest quality of having an intellectual mind. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu