Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1311
August 2, 2016
The Spotlight on Digital CIOs: The Multifaceted Personas of Digital CIOs Aug 2016
Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges.
Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges. It is not sufficient to only keep the light on. Regardless of which industry or the nature of organization you are in, being a digital leader will need to master the art of creating unique, differentiating value from piles of commoditized technologies, but more specifically, what are the digital-savvy CIOs doing to run IT as a value creator and innovation engine? Here is the monthly spotlight of the CIO. The Multifaceted Personas of Digital CIOs Aug 2016CIO as a Digital Pro: Due to the abundance of information and omnipresence of technology, IT plays a pivotal role in businesses’ digital transformation journey. Transformation means to change the "nature" of something, albeit that the increasing pace of technological advances has clearly impacted the nature and scope of opportunity. Digital transformation represents a break with the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. Transformation efforts need to be undertaken as the means of getting to a defined different capability to accomplish a defined goal. CIO as an IT and digital leader, how to be a digital pro and lead IT effectively and effortlessly?
CIO as Change Agent: Five Perils of Changes Management Change is the only constant, and the speed of change is increasing rapidly. Organizations large or small spend the significant time and resource to deal with the big changes such as radical digital transformation or small changes such as adopting a new version of software. And statistically, more than 70% of Change Management effort fail to achieve the expected result, what are the perils of Change Management, and how to manage change more effectively?
CIOs as Talent Masters : People are always the most invaluable asset to any organization, and having the right person in the right position at the right time is always one of the biggest challenges facing any business anywhere. This is particularly true for IT, due to the changing nature and complexity of technology and the abundance of information. Is IT skills gap fact or fiction? What differentiates high performance or high potential talented IT professionals from others? And how to manage IT talent, culture, and performance in a more cohesive way?
Business-Savvy CIO: Nowadays, IT has permeated into every core process of businesses and is the key component of differentiated business capability. CIO as IT leader, how can you become more business savvy and strategic cognizant?
How do you Define the Strategic Role of CIOs at Board Level: Due to the changing nature of technology, CIO role continues to be shaken up, refined, reinvented and reenergized and many IT organizations are at a cross road to either being transformed to be a more value-added digital engine for their business growth or being irrelevant as a cost center only. How do you define the strategic role of CIOs at Board Level and what are important skills they need to cultivate?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about #2900th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges. It is not sufficient to only keep the light on. Regardless of which industry or the nature of organization you are in, being a digital leader will need to master the art of creating unique, differentiating value from piles of commoditized technologies, but more specifically, what are the digital-savvy CIOs doing to run IT as a value creator and innovation engine? Here is the monthly spotlight of the CIO. The Multifaceted Personas of Digital CIOs Aug 2016CIO as a Digital Pro: Due to the abundance of information and omnipresence of technology, IT plays a pivotal role in businesses’ digital transformation journey. Transformation means to change the "nature" of something, albeit that the increasing pace of technological advances has clearly impacted the nature and scope of opportunity. Digital transformation represents a break with the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. Transformation efforts need to be undertaken as the means of getting to a defined different capability to accomplish a defined goal. CIO as an IT and digital leader, how to be a digital pro and lead IT effectively and effortlessly?
CIO as Change Agent: Five Perils of Changes Management Change is the only constant, and the speed of change is increasing rapidly. Organizations large or small spend the significant time and resource to deal with the big changes such as radical digital transformation or small changes such as adopting a new version of software. And statistically, more than 70% of Change Management effort fail to achieve the expected result, what are the perils of Change Management, and how to manage change more effectively?
CIOs as Talent Masters : People are always the most invaluable asset to any organization, and having the right person in the right position at the right time is always one of the biggest challenges facing any business anywhere. This is particularly true for IT, due to the changing nature and complexity of technology and the abundance of information. Is IT skills gap fact or fiction? What differentiates high performance or high potential talented IT professionals from others? And how to manage IT talent, culture, and performance in a more cohesive way?
Business-Savvy CIO: Nowadays, IT has permeated into every core process of businesses and is the key component of differentiated business capability. CIO as IT leader, how can you become more business savvy and strategic cognizant?
How do you Define the Strategic Role of CIOs at Board Level: Due to the changing nature of technology, CIO role continues to be shaken up, refined, reinvented and reenergized and many IT organizations are at a cross road to either being transformed to be a more value-added digital engine for their business growth or being irrelevant as a cost center only. How do you define the strategic role of CIOs at Board Level and what are important skills they need to cultivate?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about #2900th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The Spotlight on Digital CIOs Aug 2016
Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges.
Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges. It is not sufficient to only keep the light on. Regardless of which industry or the nature of organization you are in, being a digital leader will need to master the art of creating unique, differentiating value from piles of commoditized technologies, but more specifically, what are the digital-savvy CIOs doing to run IT as a value creator and innovation engine? Here is the monthly spotlight of the CIO. The Spotlight of Digital CIOs Aug 2016CIO as a Digital Pro: Due to the abundance of information and omnipresence of technology, IT plays a pivotal role in businesses’ digital transformation journey. Transformation means to change the "nature" of something, albeit that the increasing pace of technological advances has clearly impacted the nature and scope of opportunity. Digital transformation represents a break with the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. Transformation efforts need to be undertaken as the means of getting to a defined different capability to accomplish a defined goal. CIO as an IT and digital leader, how to be a digital pro and lead effectively and effortlessly?
CIO as Change Agent: Five Perils of Changes Management Change is the only constant, and the speed of change is increasing rapidly. Organizations large or small spend the significant time and resource to deal with the big changes such as radical digital transformation or small changes such as adopting a new version of software. And statistically, more than 70% of Change Management effort fail to achieve the expected result, what are the perils of Change Management, and how to manage change more effectively?
CIOs as Talent Masters : People are always the most invaluable asset to any organization, and having the right person in the right position at the right time is always one of the biggest challenges facing any business anywhere. This is particularly true for IT, due to the changing nature & complexity of technology and the abundance of information. Is IT skills gap fact or fiction? What differentiates high performance or high potential talented IT professionals from others? And how to manage IT talent, culture, and performance in a more cohesive way?
Business-Savvy CIO: Nowadays, IT has permeated into every core process of businesses and is the key component of differentiated business capability. CIO as IT leader, how can you become more business savvy and strategic cognizant?
How do you Define the Strategic Role of CIOs at Board Level: Due to the changing nature of technology, CIO role continues to be shaken up, refined, reinvented and reenergized and many IT organizations are at a cross road to either being transformed to be a more value-added digital engine for their business growth or being irrelevant as a cost center only. How do you define the strategic role of CIOs at Board Level and what are important skills they need to cultivate?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about #2900th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges. It is not sufficient to only keep the light on. Regardless of which industry or the nature of organization you are in, being a digital leader will need to master the art of creating unique, differentiating value from piles of commoditized technologies, but more specifically, what are the digital-savvy CIOs doing to run IT as a value creator and innovation engine? Here is the monthly spotlight of the CIO. The Spotlight of Digital CIOs Aug 2016CIO as a Digital Pro: Due to the abundance of information and omnipresence of technology, IT plays a pivotal role in businesses’ digital transformation journey. Transformation means to change the "nature" of something, albeit that the increasing pace of technological advances has clearly impacted the nature and scope of opportunity. Digital transformation represents a break with the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. Transformation efforts need to be undertaken as the means of getting to a defined different capability to accomplish a defined goal. CIO as an IT and digital leader, how to be a digital pro and lead effectively and effortlessly?
CIO as Change Agent: Five Perils of Changes Management Change is the only constant, and the speed of change is increasing rapidly. Organizations large or small spend the significant time and resource to deal with the big changes such as radical digital transformation or small changes such as adopting a new version of software. And statistically, more than 70% of Change Management effort fail to achieve the expected result, what are the perils of Change Management, and how to manage change more effectively?
CIOs as Talent Masters : People are always the most invaluable asset to any organization, and having the right person in the right position at the right time is always one of the biggest challenges facing any business anywhere. This is particularly true for IT, due to the changing nature & complexity of technology and the abundance of information. Is IT skills gap fact or fiction? What differentiates high performance or high potential talented IT professionals from others? And how to manage IT talent, culture, and performance in a more cohesive way?
Business-Savvy CIO: Nowadays, IT has permeated into every core process of businesses and is the key component of differentiated business capability. CIO as IT leader, how can you become more business savvy and strategic cognizant?
How do you Define the Strategic Role of CIOs at Board Level: Due to the changing nature of technology, CIO role continues to be shaken up, refined, reinvented and reenergized and many IT organizations are at a cross road to either being transformed to be a more value-added digital engine for their business growth or being irrelevant as a cost center only. How do you define the strategic role of CIOs at Board Level and what are important skills they need to cultivate?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about #2900th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Change Management at the Cross Road: Make a Big Jump or Take a Small Step
Due to the “VUCA” new normal, either at the individual or organizational level, “Changeability” becomes an important measure to assess a person or a business’s potential, agility, and maturity. Unfortunately, change is not as easy as it sounds, more than two-thirds of change initiatives of business fail to reach the expectation. Change Management in many organizations seems to be at the cross-road- Being audacious to accelerate digital transformation, or take small steps for incremental changes? What are the bottlenecks for changes, and what are the pitfalls to make a leap? Build a change roadmap and identify the change capability gaps: The logic scenario to manage change life cycle and build change management capability is to develop the initial value proposition and determine demand and estimated pipeline. Every transformation needs a roadmap or a change management agenda to build up the competency center, sharpen the strategy, communicate the buy-in, empower the team, and manage the quick win, to realize the long-term result through the iterative approach. Also assess current state capability in change management (people, process, technology) Develop the target state change management capability – and identify the gaps.
Establish change management capability leadership practice: From envisioning to communicating changes, change communication should be two-way trust: both from top-down such as executive’s elevator change pitch, more importantly through front-line employee’s commitment. Empower change agents, evangelists via the right change incentives, but also need to build the organization-wide change network to seek constructive opinion, consistent engagement, and continuous improvement. Lots of people think of change as being only suitable during the roll out whereas. Change experts know it concerns the entire project from gap analysis through monitoring the change. It is not surprising that there are conflicting definitions as the change management is different in every organization. The way change is done is also rapidly changing. Hence, it’s important to keep tuning change processes, build recombinant chang capability, develop the next change practices and scale up seamlessly.
Source change leaders/agent with the right mindsets, appropriate skills to deliver desired capability (internal / market / partners): Technology, process, and people are all important to changes. Still, people are change masters. The leaders need to be the Change Agent to walk the talk, to set the right tone for others to follow. How bold change initiatives are often dependent on how inspirational, aggressive and motivational change leaders are. Successful transformations require leaders to over-communicate the transformation vision. Unclear communication for vision, goals, the need for change, benefits of change and each one's role in the change is a huge mistake. Empower your change agents, build a culture of innovation and change. Look for talent with extensive change experience and has a grasp on managing the human side of change such as perception, psychology, or communications, and manage change in a systematic way detailed methodology, tools against value proposition identified earlier. Change is unavoidable. There is often no shortcut for change. Logically, It should start small and be made incrementally. But creativity can beat down the conventional wisdom, do not lose the vision for the bigger leap, long jump, and radical digital transformation. Do not get stuck at the crossroad, keep building your “changeability,” and be ready for changes in a bold way with the step-wise approach. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The "CIO Master" Book Tuning XXXXXXVIII: The Two Sides of IT: Which Side is More Important?
IT leaders need to get both sides of IT right and communicate the value and potential of their organization.
The forward-looking IT organizations are on the journey of digital transformation. The challenge is having a harmonized vision about overall IT capabilities and maturities, and which role IT should, or can play in the digital organization. There are front end and back end of the IT department. The front end of IT is value-added, to drive the business’s digital transformation, and the back end of the IT is fundamental, operational driven and keep the lights on. From IT management and digital transformation perspective, how to run two sides of IT smoothly, via setting the right principles and developing the next practices?
The front end of IT is outside-in, customer centric and innovative: The front end of IT is the portion that helps with the business growth, provide customer-centric solutions, it’s about how IT can bring back the "scientific" discipline and continuous effort that people used to trust. The customer often taps their own IT organizations for their thoughts, for their innovation, when they match up, customers go for it. IT strategy as an integral component of the business strategy is crucial to diagnose root causes of problems, set guidelines, build a framework of innovation and generation of products and services of the organization to attract and keep customers. IT enables business innovation to create a value proposition that would move your prospects to become your clients; more importantly, to improve customer retention. CIOs have to be an integral strategic partner of driving business value. They can do so by embedding technology with strategy management. In order to integrate technology with strategy, Information executives have to be fully aligned with the business executives in articulating business strategy. To run the front end of IT well, CIOs need to establish and communicate the forward-looking vision - strategies setting the stage for business success and IT funding to achieve; match the demands of the business and customer; make processes, procedures, people, and structure to execute the strategy and apply the technology to ensure achievement and execution.
The back end of IT is fundamental to improve business efficiency: The front end of IT is value added, but do not ignore the back end of IT because it directly impacts the business's surviving and stability, it's fundamental.The back end is the part that acts like accounting and HR, a business model support function. The trick is how to invest resources, time, and money wisely to run both sides seamlessly. Most of the businesses executives have no idea how complicated corporate technology is. They don’t have to understand how complex IT system is. Though the back side seems to make IT invisible and humble, it also reflects the density, intensity, and intelligence of technology. The optimal way for IT/Technology to help win new business is to make most of IT/technology "invisible" to the customer. In other words, hide the complexity of IT/technology infrastructure and operations. What is left visible to the customer should be simple, intuitive, secure, reliable and predictable. Hence, the back end of IT is not less important but crucial for improving IT maturity via focusing on consolidation, standardization, integration, and optimization, etc.
IT leaders need to get both sides of IT right and communicate the value and potential of their organization. There should also be a strong interaction between Operations leaders and IT leaders and their teams with feedback mechanisms and willingness to find solutions that can support both the business need and build any ROI required to justify the business case. IT should be integral to and knowledgeable of the business, aligned to enterprise objectives, as an enabler, facilitator, and game changer.
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
The forward-looking IT organizations are on the journey of digital transformation. The challenge is having a harmonized vision about overall IT capabilities and maturities, and which role IT should, or can play in the digital organization. There are front end and back end of the IT department. The front end of IT is value-added, to drive the business’s digital transformation, and the back end of the IT is fundamental, operational driven and keep the lights on. From IT management and digital transformation perspective, how to run two sides of IT smoothly, via setting the right principles and developing the next practices?
The front end of IT is outside-in, customer centric and innovative: The front end of IT is the portion that helps with the business growth, provide customer-centric solutions, it’s about how IT can bring back the "scientific" discipline and continuous effort that people used to trust. The customer often taps their own IT organizations for their thoughts, for their innovation, when they match up, customers go for it. IT strategy as an integral component of the business strategy is crucial to diagnose root causes of problems, set guidelines, build a framework of innovation and generation of products and services of the organization to attract and keep customers. IT enables business innovation to create a value proposition that would move your prospects to become your clients; more importantly, to improve customer retention. CIOs have to be an integral strategic partner of driving business value. They can do so by embedding technology with strategy management. In order to integrate technology with strategy, Information executives have to be fully aligned with the business executives in articulating business strategy. To run the front end of IT well, CIOs need to establish and communicate the forward-looking vision - strategies setting the stage for business success and IT funding to achieve; match the demands of the business and customer; make processes, procedures, people, and structure to execute the strategy and apply the technology to ensure achievement and execution.
The back end of IT is fundamental to improve business efficiency: The front end of IT is value added, but do not ignore the back end of IT because it directly impacts the business's surviving and stability, it's fundamental.The back end is the part that acts like accounting and HR, a business model support function. The trick is how to invest resources, time, and money wisely to run both sides seamlessly. Most of the businesses executives have no idea how complicated corporate technology is. They don’t have to understand how complex IT system is. Though the back side seems to make IT invisible and humble, it also reflects the density, intensity, and intelligence of technology. The optimal way for IT/Technology to help win new business is to make most of IT/technology "invisible" to the customer. In other words, hide the complexity of IT/technology infrastructure and operations. What is left visible to the customer should be simple, intuitive, secure, reliable and predictable. Hence, the back end of IT is not less important but crucial for improving IT maturity via focusing on consolidation, standardization, integration, and optimization, etc.
IT leaders need to get both sides of IT right and communicate the value and potential of their organization. There should also be a strong interaction between Operations leaders and IT leaders and their teams with feedback mechanisms and willingness to find solutions that can support both the business need and build any ROI required to justify the business case. IT should be integral to and knowledgeable of the business, aligned to enterprise objectives, as an enabler, facilitator, and game changer.
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
The Two Sides of IT: Which Side is More Important?
IT leaders need to get both sides of IT right and communicate the value and potential of their organization.
The forward-looking IT organizations are on the journey of digital transformation. The challenge is having a harmonized vision about overall IT capabilities and maturities, and which role IT should, or can play in the digital organization. There are front end and back end of the IT department. The front end of IT is value-added, to drive the business’s digital transformation, and the back end of the IT is fundamental, operational driven and keep the lights on. From IT management and digital transformation perspective, how to run two sides of IT smoothly, via setting the right principles and developing the next practices?
The front end of IT is outside-in, customer centric and innovative: The front end of IT is the portion that helps with the business growth, provide customer-centric solutions, it’s about how IT can bring back the "scientific" discipline and continuous effort that people used to trust. The customer often taps their own IT organizations for their thoughts, for their innovation, when they match up, customers go for it. IT strategy as an integral component of the business strategy is crucial to diagnose root causes of problems, set guidelines, build a framework of innovation and generation of products and services of the organization to attract and keep customers. IT enables business innovation to create a value proposition that would move your prospects to become your clients; more importantly, to improve customer retention. CIOs have to be an integral strategic partner of driving business value. They can do so by embedding technology with strategy management. In order to integrate technology with strategy, Information executives have to be fully aligned with the business executives in articulating business strategy. To run the front end of IT well, CIOs need to establish and communicate the forward-looking vision - strategies setting the stage for business success and IT funding to achieve; match the demands of the business and customer; make processes, procedures, people, and structure to execute the strategy and apply the technology to ensure achievement and execution.
The back end of IT is fundamental to improve business efficiency: The front end of IT is value added, but do not ignore the back end of IT because it directly impacts the business's surviving and stability, it's fundamental.The back end is the part that acts like accounting and HR, a business model support function. The trick is how to invest resources, time, and money wisely to run both sides seamlessly. Most of the businesses executives have no idea how complicated corporate technology is. They don’t have to understand how complex IT system is. Though the back side seems to make IT invisible and humble, it also reflects the density, intensity, and intelligence of technology. The optimal way for IT/Technology to help win new business is to make most of IT/technology "invisible" to the customer. In other words, hide the complexity of IT/technology infrastructure and operations. What is left visible to the customer should be simple, intuitive, secure, reliable and predictable. Hence, the back end of IT is not less important but crucial for improving IT maturity via focusing on consolidation, standardization, integration, and optimization, etc.
IT leaders need to get both sides of IT right and communicate the value and potential of their organization. There should also be a strong interaction between Operations leaders and IT leaders and their teams with feedback mechanisms and willingness to find solutions that can support both the business need and build any ROI required to justify the business case. IT should be integral to and knowledgeable of the business, aligned to enterprise objectives, as an enabler, facilitator, and game changer.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The forward-looking IT organizations are on the journey of digital transformation. The challenge is having a harmonized vision about overall IT capabilities and maturities, and which role IT should, or can play in the digital organization. There are front end and back end of the IT department. The front end of IT is value-added, to drive the business’s digital transformation, and the back end of the IT is fundamental, operational driven and keep the lights on. From IT management and digital transformation perspective, how to run two sides of IT smoothly, via setting the right principles and developing the next practices?
The front end of IT is outside-in, customer centric and innovative: The front end of IT is the portion that helps with the business growth, provide customer-centric solutions, it’s about how IT can bring back the "scientific" discipline and continuous effort that people used to trust. The customer often taps their own IT organizations for their thoughts, for their innovation, when they match up, customers go for it. IT strategy as an integral component of the business strategy is crucial to diagnose root causes of problems, set guidelines, build a framework of innovation and generation of products and services of the organization to attract and keep customers. IT enables business innovation to create a value proposition that would move your prospects to become your clients; more importantly, to improve customer retention. CIOs have to be an integral strategic partner of driving business value. They can do so by embedding technology with strategy management. In order to integrate technology with strategy, Information executives have to be fully aligned with the business executives in articulating business strategy. To run the front end of IT well, CIOs need to establish and communicate the forward-looking vision - strategies setting the stage for business success and IT funding to achieve; match the demands of the business and customer; make processes, procedures, people, and structure to execute the strategy and apply the technology to ensure achievement and execution.
The back end of IT is fundamental to improve business efficiency: The front end of IT is value added, but do not ignore the back end of IT because it directly impacts the business's surviving and stability, it's fundamental.The back end is the part that acts like accounting and HR, a business model support function. The trick is how to invest resources, time, and money wisely to run both sides seamlessly. Most of the businesses executives have no idea how complicated corporate technology is. They don’t have to understand how complex IT system is. Though the back side seems to make IT invisible and humble, it also reflects the density, intensity, and intelligence of technology. The optimal way for IT/Technology to help win new business is to make most of IT/technology "invisible" to the customer. In other words, hide the complexity of IT/technology infrastructure and operations. What is left visible to the customer should be simple, intuitive, secure, reliable and predictable. Hence, the back end of IT is not less important but crucial for improving IT maturity via focusing on consolidation, standardization, integration, and optimization, etc.
IT leaders need to get both sides of IT right and communicate the value and potential of their organization. There should also be a strong interaction between Operations leaders and IT leaders and their teams with feedback mechanisms and willingness to find solutions that can support both the business need and build any ROI required to justify the business case. IT should be integral to and knowledgeable of the business, aligned to enterprise objectives, as an enabler, facilitator, and game changer.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The Two Sides of IT
The forward-looking IT organizations are on the journey of digital transformation. The challenge is having a harmonized vision about overall IT capabilities and maturities, which role IT should, or can play in the digital organization. There are front end and back end of the IT department. The front end of IT is value-added, to drive the business’s digital transformation, and the back end of the IT is fundamental, operational driven and keep the lights. Both in principle and practice, how to run two sides of IT smoothly?
The front end of IT is outside-in, customer centric and innovative: The front end of IT is the portion that helps with the business, provide customer-centric solutions and how it’s about how IT can bring back the "scientific" discipline and continuous effort that people used to trust. The customer often taps their own IT organizations for their thoughts, for their innovation, when they match up, customers go for it. IT strategy as an integral component of the business strategy is crucial to diagnose root causes of problems, set guidelines, build a framework of innovation and generation of products and services of the organization to attract and keep customers. IT enables business innovation to create a value proposition that would move your prospects to become your clients; more importantly, to improve customer retention. CIOs have to be an integral part of driving business value. They can do so by embedding technology with strategy management. In order to integrate technology with strategy, Information executives have to be fully aligned with the business executives in articulating business strategy. CIOs have to overcome the challenges to maintaining and empower such role as the business’s strategic partner, and technologies, the source of funding, competition, will better sustain the current competitive advantages or being sources for new ones. To run the front end of IT well, CIOs need to set and communicate the forward-looking vision - strategies setting the stage for business success and IT funding to achieve; match the demands of the business and customer; make processes, procedures, people, and structure to execute the services and apply the technology to ensure achievement and execution.
The back end of IT is fundamental to improve business efficiency: The front end of IT is value added, but do not ignore the back end of IT because it directly impacts the business's surviving and stability. The back end is the part that acts like Accounting and HR, a business model support function. The trick is how to invest resources, time, and money wisely to run both sides seamlessly.Most of the businesses executives have no idea how complicated corporate technology is. They don’t have to understand how complex IT system is. Though the back side seems to make IT invisible and humble, it also reflects the density and intensity of technology. The optimal way for IT/Technology to help win new business is to make most of IT/technology "invisible" to the customer. In other words, hide the complexity of IT/technology infrastructure and operations. What is left visible to the customer should be simple, intuitive, secure, reliable and predictable. Hence, the back end of IT is not less important but focus on consolidation, standardization, integration, optimization, etc.
IT leaders need to get both sides of IT right and communicate the value and potential of their organization. There should also be strong interaction between Operations leaders and IT leaders and their teams with feedback mechanisms and willingness to find solutions that can support both the business need and build any ROI required to justify the business case. IT should be integral to and knowledgeable of the business, aligned to enterprise objectives, as an enabler, facilitator, and game changer.
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August 1, 2016
The CIO’s Digital Agenda: Running IT as Digital Linchpin to Build Business Competency Aug. 2016
The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. However, many IT organizations today still get stuck in the lower level of maturity, they are perceived as the weakest link by their business partners due to the slow pace for changes, reactive mode to fix the things, and lack of innovative initiatives to make a difference. In practice, how to run IT as a digital linchpin to knit all business success factors, and connect all functional silos to ensure a seamless digital transformation?
Running IT as Digital Linchpin to Build Business Competency How to Strengthen IT from the weakest link to the business competency: At the dawn of the Digital Era, the business leaders across industries claim they are in the Information Management businesses, and IT has to become a game changer. Because the “fixing symptom” mentality is complacent, short-sighted and too “ordinary.” So how to strengthen IT from the weakest link to business competencyRunning IT as an Innovation Hub: IT is omnipresent and permeated into every corner of the organization. Forward-looking organizations are also reinventing IT reputation from a cost center to a value creator, from a static support function to a dynamic change agent; and from inside-out operation driven to outside-in customer-centric. To put simply, how can IT build differentiated capabilities to become an information power center and an innovation engine?Running IT with Digital Fluency Organizations large and small are on the journey to shift from static, inflexible industrial business settings to living digital business dynamic which is organic, alive, holistic, vibrant, energetic, responsive, fluid, and innovative. Digitalization means hyper-connectivity, over-complexity, and interdependence; it blurs the functional border, organizational border, industry vertical border, geographic border, and knowledge domain border. IT plays a significant role in such a transformation because technology is often the disruptive force and information is the lifeblood to keep the business flow. But the first things first, how to run IT with digital fluency?How to Run IT as a Changing Organization? For forward-looking and highly mature organizations, the IT department has become synonymous with the change department: In order to make effective changes, you have to know the underneath structure and processes of your business, because they underpin digital capabilities of the organization. How do you make changes to anything without knowing all the parts and how they are related? A mature organization is one that can quickly and safely assess all of the consequences of a possible change and devise effective plans to achieve and sustain those changes - and to do this continuously.
Running IT as a Business Optimizer: IT is the spinal cord for the organization, integrating various functional capabilities to bring out technology-enabled business solutions, motivating the IT team to constantly deliver multidimensional IT values. Today's organizations have to continue to keep digital fit to adapt to changes with increasing speed. So how to run IT as a business optimizer for improving business efficiency, enhancing innovation, harness agility, build resilience, and ultimately achieve high-performing business expectation?? The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about #2900th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes 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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How to Take a Structural Approach to Handle Unstructural Digital Disruptions
Digital disruption is frequent and unstructured, businesses just have to get use to them and learn how to deal with them proactively. Obviously there is no one size fits all solution, and "boil the ocean" approaches seldom deliver expected results. So how to take a structural approach to deal with digital disruptions, and what’s the logical scenario to manage digital transformation seamlessly?Manage digital strategy execution continuum: Digital strategy executions are not linear steps, but an iterative continuum due to the emergent trends and adaptation to the potential disruptions. A strategy is a shareware, not a shelfware, managers must be in the room building the strategy through collaboration and consensus building, they should facilitate ideation session that uncovers the big and innovative ideas that disrupt complacent and conventional thinking. The challenge is to prioritize what you know about and keep an eye open for signs of things you don't know about. Every company needs a structural strategic planning process and a healthy management cycle to benchmark that plans to monthly operations, even weekly when done well. It’s important to build an effective business system that creates a high-performance culture with proper disciplines.
Change Management as an ongoing capability: How successful the organization can handle digital disruption depends on how fast and capable they can adapt to changes. One issue is that organizations and people in them expect the change and the transformation to someday "be over"- it never is. If it was, the organization would simply stand still, never innovate and never make progress. The organizational journey is where the juice is in the organization, not just the destination. Destinations are for those checking in at arrivals and checking out at departures without enjoying the challenge and delight of the bit in between. Thus, organizations need to take a structural approach to building change management as an ongoing capability, improving agility and individuals’ changeability. If digitization does not succeed in changing the mindset, beliefs, and behaviors of management, the change efforts will be deemed to fail.
Take a structural approach to integrate talent management/performance management/culture management/knowledge management as a holistic people management solution: With increasing speed of changes and continuous disruptions, organizations must focus on building people-centric business via leveraging the emergent digital pipelines for recruiting, and applying enterprise social platform to enforcing cross-functional communication and collaboration. There seems to be so much uncertainty in digital working environment today, there are different recruitment methods, greater transparency, more engagement and retention initiatives, training and development at every level, the integration of cross-training and knowledge sharing opportunities, having a plan for succession, and keeping up with technological advances, those that are value-added to business success, are major factors of the new business norm. So a structural people management approach needs to play an important role to 1) Involve, 2) Engage, 3) Emerge and Evolve 4) Evaluate and 5) Embrace the change. Digital disruptions are inevitable, and digital transformation is unstoppable. Organizations shouldn’t just response to them in reactive way. The forward-thinking organizations have to take a structural approach in building organizational level changeability and implement strategy iteratively, and most importantly, they have to build a “Change culture,” and get their people ready for change, encourage innovation and improve overall business agility and maturity.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The Digital IT Manifesto
IT Transformation is an integral part of the business transformation. In short, it means (whatever the driver) understanding the "As is" position of the business and the role IT plays in it, and identifying the desirable "To be" state. The next step is to build and execute a strategy. IT Transformation is the journey to pursue business agility, enable operational excellence, new service/product innovation, customer experience optimization and employees satisfaction.
“Built to Change” over “Built to Last”: IT Transformation seeks to change. The word "transformation" in itself means change and change for the better - new ways and methods of doing things, new structures, new relationships etc.
“Doing more with innovation” beyond “Doing more with less”: IT digital transformation focuses on goals of innovation. A transformation might need work cross boxes instead within the box. IT transformation means doing more with innovation, transparency and discipline.
“Being effective -Doing the right things,” before ”being efficient - doing things right”: IT Transformation means doing the “Right” things. A Transformation needs strategic guideline & policy. It takes greater transparency, trust, and collaboration leveraging repeatable process, expectation management and support from C-Level peers and buy-in from staff is also equally important.
“Being a business’s strategic partner,” not just “the support center or service provider”: IT transformation means rationalizing current IT department, and planning to partner with the business to provide business solutions in new ways. IT as a ‘Solutionary’ to understand how the organization works and then give solutions that will increase the functionality to lower cost: IT provides progressive technology-driven business solution, from business enabler to digital transformer, helps to shape up the high-performance organization at today's hyper-competitive environment.
“Focusing on building core business capabilities,” not just “fixing the symptoms to keep the bottom line”: IT Transformation leverages business “core capabilities.” Transformation is a strategic organizational alignment leveraging "core capabilities," to achieve business goals with clear ownership and accountability at all levels.
Transformation is simply a popular battle cry of change agents (leadership, business case, habit etc.) to fix a supposed or real problem with the current state of an IT area or department. Transformations are generally associated with high-cost projects around risk, availability, business enablement, or sourcing. The key driver is often dissatisfaction with current IT performance or cost. IT needs to build up the new set of core capabilities in transforming itself and business as a whole. IT helps to integrate/optimize/orchestrate business processes to facilitate the business outcome, and build a effective digital ecosystem.
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July 31, 2016
The Five Digital Ready Mindsets 7/2016
Change is about moving forward and improving. If you change people’s behaviors, more often you try to fix the symptoms; the critical step in change both at the individual level and organizational level is to change one’s mindset, in order to cure the root causes. Perhaps our mind should never get set, but keep flowing, to compete with the speed of digital.
The Five Digital Ready Mindsets 7/2016Whole Brain Thinking: According to the theory of left-brain or right-brain dominance, each side of the brain controls different types of thinking. Additionally, people are said to prefer one type of thinking over the other. It has been shown that in many ways the two parts of the brain work separately yet without apparent conflict. Do they process information differently? Are you left-brainer or right-brainer? Shall we encourage whole brain thinking?Agile is the State of Mind Almost every organization is using agile today, but the misunderstood idea is that people can 'DO' Agile only. There's not so much to 'do,’ "mechanical agile" will stop at some point because Agile is a state of mind. Ultimately, you need to 'be' Agile.
A Balanced Mind with Emotional Brilliance: We have come to this lovely beautiful planet, Being a human being is great. We can imagine, we can create and we can appreciate many things. We have so many faculties. It is a rainbow, full of colors and fragrances. However, the world is far away from perfect, and most of the problems are caused by miscommunication, poor decision making, or dig deeper, the unbalanced mindsets lack of Emotional Intelligence. So what’s Emotional Intelligence, and how to cultivate a balanced mind with emotional brilliance?
A Digital Mind with System Intelligence: System Intelligence (SI) and System Thinking (ST) might well be considered emergent properties of the complex adaptive system we call the human mind. System Intelligence sounds like a blend of Systems Thinking, evolutionary psychology and complexity science. SI and ST might well be considered emergent properties of the complex adaptive system we call the human mind.
A Maturity Mind: What is maturity basically? Is it a perception depending on our understanding? Or is there any scientific attribute which decides maturity level? Is it possible to develop maturity? Will it come automatically through the experience and people or is it gained over a period of time? Is it always true when you get older, you get more mature? How to decide a person's maturity level? It is subjective or is there any objective standard?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
