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"CIO Master" Book Tuning XXXXXXIIII: Three Practices to Scale Up Digital Transformation

The business practice is always a combination of people and how they are used to doing things.

Organizations large and small are on the journey of digital transformation. Besides building a set of principles to follow, it’s also important to develop a series of best/next practice to scale up and amplify digital effects The business practice is always a combination of people and how they are used to doing things based on the set of principles and standards to adapting changes in the business or technology shift. Here are three practices to scale up digital transformation efforts.

Innovation best practices: More and more firms are learning and implementing best practices in innovation for improving the success rate of innovation. The paradox is that by nature, innovation is about transforming the novel ideas to achieve its business value. It’s about figuring out the new way to do things. Hence, the innovation best practices are not for making static or rigid processes, but more about setting the principles and standards to achieve innovation management excellence via agility and flexibility. Not every innovative company uses every best practice. Not every authority agrees on every best practice. These practices might be different across organizations, across departments, and affiliates within an organization and can change over time. So any best practice is not a “one size fits all” formula, but needs to be a tailored solution for a certain organization and for the specific situation and challenges that are faced and that actually requires different priorities as compared to others. Still, there is a recognizable core of approaches and activities that produce profitable innovation, and there are companies that use them. The real challenge is to understand where and how you can and should improve to get the biggest effect and scale up across the digital ecosystem. Some "next practices" continue to emerge -In fact, they should change and evolve over time. Every organization needs to develop the tailored innovation practices via leveraging effective tools or methodologies and use them wisely with the expertise to really add value or drive innovation. Innovation is the management discipline to reduce business complexity or increase revenue, the best practices would help businesses to manage innovation more systematically.

Agility Scale-Up Practices: Originally, Agile is a set of principles and methodology for software development. But it is emerged as a management philosophy and mindset to build up a high-performing digital organization. To make Agile successful, the entire "organization" has to be agile. For agile to deliver considerable "maximum" benefits, it needs to work across the whole ecosystem. This includes service company, customers, operations, procurement, HR, finance etc. In a services situation, Agile success can improve the entire business competencies because it helps the business adapt to changes quicker and better. Corporations have to evolve because organizations that can't improve agility, flexibility, and speed, will eventually lag behind. The "organization" is the amalgam of both the company and its customers. If either side of that equation isn't agile, and then agility is not possible. Though to scale up agile, it doesn’t mean that an agile delivery model needs to be selected for the creation of every product, service, or project, as there may be cases where actually a non-agile delivery model is a viable option. Agile scaling up should be a well-planned journey and one of the crucial steps in digital transformation. Implementing a big change or managing a business transformation requires a buy-in and push from upper management. Once there is a support from them, then it becomes easy to get that change implemented and scale business agility seamlessly.

Cloudification Scale Up Practice: Many organizations are also on the journey of cloudification which is one of the emergent digital technologies as a digital enabler. It takes strategic planning to push the cloud envelope, and there are several ways an appropriately designed cloud environment can bring speed, efficiency and agility to organizations. Deciding where to put what application is fundamentally a strategy discussion. It is related to the nature of the application and the data. And where do ROI and TCO calculations fit in?  Scale capacity quickly up or down, and cost-effectively with the Cloud. Performing the appropriate transformation (re-host, re-architect, replace, encapsulate) is vendor specific as you have to take into account the technology provided. Explore the always on, always connected digital working environment, expand your workforce to any location; show a desire for a "new" delivery model by the business and a dissatisfaction with the status quo. Hybrid cloud is often a reality.

Every company should strive to explore "best practices" throughout their organization to accelerate digital transformation via scaling up innovation, agility, and cloudification. However, the practices that are "best" today are almost always not "best" in the future since practices as well as technologies and markets are constantly morphing under pressure from the waves of creative destruction, hence, it's equally important to develop the next practices and keep business in innovation mode in managing change and digital transformation effortlessly.

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
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"CIO Master" Book Tuning: Three Practices to Scale Up Digital Transformation

The business practice is always a combination of people and how they are used to doing things.

Organizations large and small are on the journey of digital transformation. Besides building a set of principles to follow, it’s also important to develop a series of best/next practice to scale up and amplify digital effects The business practice is always a combination of people and how they are used to doing things based on the set of principles and standards to adapting changes in the business or technology shift. Here are three practices to scale up digital transformation efforts.

Innovation best practices: More and more firms are learning and implementing best practices in innovation for improving the success rate of innovation. The paradox is that by nature, innovation is about transforming the novel ideas to achieve its business value. It’s about figuring out the new way to do things. Hence, the innovation best practices are not for making static or rigid processes, but more about setting the principles and standards to achieve innovation management excellence via agility and flexibility. Not every innovative company uses every best practice. Not every authority agrees on every best practice. These practices might be different across organizations, across departments, and affiliates within an organization and can change over time. So any best practice is not a “one size fits all” formula, but needs to be a tailored solution for a certain organization and for the specific situation and challenges that are faced and that actually requires different priorities as compared to others. Still, there is a recognizable core of approaches and activities that produce profitable innovation, and there are companies that use them. The real challenge is to understand where and how you can and should improve to get the biggest effect and scale up across the digital ecosystem. Some "next practices" continue to emerge -In fact, they should change and evolve over time. Every organization needs to develop the tailored innovation practices via leveraging effective tools or methodologies and use them wisely with the expertise to really add value or drive innovation. Innovation is the management discipline to reduce business complexity or increase revenue, the best practices would help businesses to manage innovation more systematically.

Agility Scale-Up Practices: Originally, Agile is a set of principles and methodology for software development. But it is emerged as a management philosophy and mindset to build up a high-performing digital organization. To make Agile successful, the entire "organization" has to be agile. For agile to deliver considerable "maximum" benefits, it needs to work across the whole ecosystem. This includes service company, customers, operations, procurement, HR, finance etc. In a services situation, Agile success can improve the entire business competencies because it helps the business adapt to changes quicker and better. Corporations have to evolve because organizations that can't improve agility, flexibility, and speed, will eventually lag behind. The "organization" is the amalgam of both the company and its customers. If either side of that equation isn't agile, and then agility is not possible. Though to scale up agile, it doesn’t mean that an agile delivery model needs to be selected for the creation of every product, service, or project, as there may be cases where actually a non-agile delivery model is a viable option. Agile scaling up should be a well-planned journey and one of the crucial steps in digital transformation. Implementing a big change or managing a business transformation requires a buy-in and push from upper management. Once there is a support from them, then it becomes easy to get that change implemented and scale business agility seamlessly.

Cloudification Scale Up Practice: Many organizations are also on the journey of cloudification which is one of the emergent digital technologies as a digital enabler. It takes strategic planning to push the cloud envelope, and there are several ways an appropriately designed cloud environment can bring speed, efficiency and agility to organizations. Deciding where to put what application is fundamentally a strategy discussion. It is related to the nature of the application and the data. And where do ROI and TCO calculations fit in?  Scale capacity quickly up or down, and cost-effectively with the Cloud. Performing the appropriate transformation (re-host, re-architect, replace, encapsulate) is vendor specific as you have to take into account the technology provided. Explore the always on, always connected digital working environment, expand your workforce to any location; show a desire for a "new" delivery model by the business and a dissatisfaction with the status quo. Hybrid cloud is often a reality.

Every company should strive to explore "best practices" throughout their organization to accelerate digital transformation via scaling up innovation, agility, and cloudification. However, the practices that are "best" today are almost always not "best" in the future since practices as well as technologies and markets are constantly morphing under pressure from the waves of creative destruction, hence, it's equally important to develop the next practices and keep business in innovation mode in managing change and digital transformation effortlessly.

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Three Practices to Scale Up Digital Transformation

Organizations large and small are on the journey of digital transformation. Besides building a set of principles to follow, it’s also important to develop a series of best/next practice to scale up and amplify digital effects. And practice is always a combination of people and how they are used to doing things based on the set of principles and standards to adapting changes and the business or technology shift. Here are three practices to scale up digital transformation efforts.
Innovation best practices: More and more firms are learning and implementing best practices in innovation for improving the success rate of innovation. The paradox is that by nature, innovation is about transforming the novel ideas to achieve its business value, It’s about figuring out the new way to do things. Hence, the innovation best practices are not for making static or rigid processes, but more about setting the principles and standard to achieve innovation management excellence with agility and flexibility. So any best practice is not a “one size fits all” solution, but often good  for a certain organization and for the specific situation and challenges that are faced and that actually requires different priorities as compared to others. Still, there is a recognizable core of approaches and activities that produce profitable innovation, and there are companies that use them. The real challenge is to understand where and how you can and should improve to get the biggest effect.  Not every innovative company uses every best practice. Not every authority agrees on every best practice. These practices might be different across organizations, across departments, and affiliates within an organization and can change over time. Some "next practices" continue to emerge -In fact, they should change and evolve over time. Every organization needs to develop the tailored innovation practices via leveraging effective tools or methodologies and use them wisely with the expertise to really add value or drive innovation. Innovation is the management discipline to reduce business complexity or increase revenue, the best practices would help businesses to manage innovation more systematically,
Agility Scale-Up Practices: Originally, Agile is a set of principles and methodology for software development. But it is emerged as a management philosophy and mindset to build up a digital organization. To make Agile successful, the entire "organization" has to be agile. For agile to deliver considerable "maximum" benefits, it needs to work across the whole ecosystem. This includes service company, customer, operations, procurement, hr, finance etc. In a services situation, Agile success can improve the entire business competencies because it helps the business adapt to changes quicker and better. Corporations have to evolve, corporations that can't improve agility, flexibility, and speed, will eventually lag behind. The "organization" is the amalgam of both the company and its customer. If either side of that equation isn't agile, and then agility is not possible. Though to scale up agile, it doesn’t mean that an agile delivery model needs to be selected for the creation of every product, service, or project, as there may be cases where actually a non-agile delivery model is a viable option. Implementing a big change requires a buy-in and push from upper management. Once there is a support from them, then it becomes easy to get that change implemented and scale business agility seamlessly.
Cloudification Scale Up Practice: Many organizations are also on the journey of cloudification. It takes strategic planning to push the cloud envelope, and there are several ways an appropriately designed cloud environment can bring speed, efficiency and agility to organizations: Deciding where to put what application is fundamentally a strategy discussion. It is related to the nature of the application and the data. And where do ROI and TCO calculations fit in? Scale capacity quickly up or down, and cost-effectively with the Cloud. Performing the appropriate transformation (re-host, re-architect, replace, encapsulate) is vendor specific as you have to take into account the technology provided. Explore the always on, always connected digital working environment, expand your workforce to any location; show a desire for a "new" delivery model by the business, a dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Every organization should strive to explore "best practices" throughout their organization to accelerate digital transformation via scaling up innovation, agility, and cloudification. However, the practices that are "best" today are almost always not "best" in the future since practices as well as technologies and markets are constantly morphing under pressure from the waves of creative destruction that keep business in innovation mode and managing change effortlessly.

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

“CIO Master” Book Tuning XXXXXXIII: Managing Innovation in a Structural Way

The best point of view is to see innovation as a system, capable of taking a stepwise path in scaling up and delivering organization-wide capability.

Digital is the age of innovation. And innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. For many organizations getting stuck at the lower level of maturity, innovation is still a serendipity, with a very low success rate, often the ROI is not proportional to the investment they pour in, and lack of a balanced portfolio to both managing incremental innovations and embracing disruptive innovations. Is there a magic formula to build a highly innovative company and how to manage innovation as a core business capability in a structural way?





Innovation needs to be an integrated component of the corporate strategy: Innovation must be included in a strategy; otherwise, the company will fail in the long term. Because a solid innovation strategy would help the business to embed innovation in an organization as a strategic movement, make a significant boost in building a culture of innovation, also help to build differentiated competency because “VUCA” new normal of the digital era would make many slow-to-change companies under the threat of becoming extinct. Statistically, the company lifespan is significantly shortened in the last couple of decades due to the fierce competitions and an increasing speed of changes. The high-performing digital organizations today already embrace innovation at the heart of everything they do and would run it throughout the overall business strategy.

A company needs to be multidimensional in innovation management: Though not all changes are innovation, but innovation is change, thus, you need all pillars of successful change management. Innovation and execution should also run in a synchronous way, to thrive in a highly competitively world where product and service life cycles are getting rapidly shortened. Ideas help in innovation, innovation helps in creating product and market, planning gives a roadmap for execution, also giving clear warnings where can the problem come, and then the strategy practitioners execute and go to market, the market gives feedback, the feedback helps in generating ideas. It is a healthy business life cycle. The “push and pull” approaches are both needed in Innovation Management. Innovation comes with the increased knowledge and understanding of facts. You never know how innovative you might be in some areas. Looking uphill can help to identify the real problems that matter, and on a scale that can make a difference. Looking deeply into the future can have a profound effect on where we go, and how we get there. Bottom-up practice is helpful to collect feedback and sow the seed of innovative culture because today most of the innovative ideas come from the front line, not at the top. Innovation management means to transform novel ideas to achieve business values via creating a need for or finding a need for a 'pull.' To build that bridge requires enthusiasm, belief, determination and commitment as well as a good business case. Innovation should be a structural management discipline, however, there is no magic formula or prescribed solution. Although you need to have processes in place, more a responsive way of working in general and be agile to adapt to changes. Looking at innovation management from the perspective of developing business-wide innovation capabilities. This requires an effective 'innovation ecosystem' that is capable of supporting both widespread incremental innovation in products/services and ways of working as well as the rarer breakthrough innovation in products/services, working methodology, business model, and market positioning.

Setting guidelines for developing a customized suite of innovation metrics: There is no best innovation practice solution which fits all cases. Select the few (3-5) KPIs, to keep the measures simple and understandable. There are good reasons to focus on top line growth vs bottom line efficiency. Normally organizations look for KPIs measuring business results generated by innovation efforts. You choose the KPIs by deciding which are seen as critical to making progress on in order to deliver more innovations. The fewer the better, but they have to be credible and relevant also in the eyes of the stakeholders. The innovation metrics in the context of business impact include such as, % of revenue from new products introduced. You could also change the variables and create something like % of the profit from new ideas implemented. But it takes quite some time for a new innovation drive to produce those measures. One of the solutions is to define process KPIs, which demonstrate the growing capability of the organization to deliver more innovation with business impact in the future.

Innovation has three phases: discovery of a problem or new idea, designing a prototype solution and the ultimate delivery of a commercially astute outcome. At the enterprise scope, innovation management should focus on building a healthy innovation portfolio to establish business competency. And the best point of view is to see innovation as a system, capable of taking a stepwise approach to scaling up and delivering organization-wide capability in reaping the business benefit for the long term.
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

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“CIO Master” Book Tuning: Managing Innovation in a Structural Way

Digital is the age of innovation. And innovation is what leads to differentiation. There are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to build innovation. For many organizations getting stuck at the lower level of maturity, innovation is still a serendipity, with very low success rate, and often the ROI is not proportional to the investment they pour in, and lack of a balanced portfolio to both managing incremental innovations and embracing disruptive innovations. Is there a magic formula to build an innovative company and how to manage innovation in a structural way?


Innovation needs to be an integrated component of the corporate strategy: Innovation must be included in a strategy; otherwise, the company will fail in the long term. Because a solid innovation strategy would help the business to embed innovation in an organization as a strategic movement, make a significant boost in building a culture of innovation, also help to build differentiated competency because “VUCA” new normal of the digital era would make many slow-to-change companies under the threat of becoming extinct, statistically the company lifespan is significantly shortened in the last couple of decades due to the fierce competitions and increasing speed of changes. The high-performing digital organizations today already embraces innovation at the heart of everything they do and would run throughout the overall business strategy.
A company needs to be multidimensional in innovation management: Though not all changes are innovation, but innovation is change, thus, you need all pillars of successful change management. Innovation and execution should also run in a synchronous way, to  thrive in a highly competitively world where product and service life cycles are getting rapidly shortened. Ideas help in innovation, innovation helps in creating product and market, planning gives a roadmap for execution giving clear warnings where can the problem come, and then the strategy practitioners execute and go to market, the market gives feedback, the feedback helps in generating ideas. It is a healthy business life cycle. The “push and pull” approaches are both needed in Innovation Management. Innovation comes with the increased knowledge and understanding of facts. You never know how innovative you might be in some areas. Looking uphill can help to identify the real problems that matter, and on a scale that can make a difference. Looking deeply into the future can have a profound effect on where we go, and how we get there. Bottom up is helpful to collect feedback and sow the seed of innovative culture because today most of the innovative ideas come from the front line, not at the top. Innovation management means to transform novel ideas to achieve business values via creating a need for or finding a need for a 'pull.' To build that bridge requires enthusiasm, belief, determination and commitment as well as a good business case. Innovation should be a structural management discipline, however, there is no magic formula or prescribed solution. Although you need to have processes in place, more a responsive way of working in general and be agile to adapt to changes. Looking at innovation management from the perspective of developing business-wide innovation capabilities. This requires an effective 'innovation ecosystem' that is capable of supporting both widespread incremental innovation in products/services and ways of working as well as the rarer breakthrough innovation in products/services, working methodology, business model, and market positioning.
Setting guidelines for developing a customized suite of innovation metrics: There is no best practice solution which fits all cases.Select the few (3-5) KPIs, to keep the measures simple and understandable. There are good reasons to focus on top line vs bottom line. Normally organizations look for KPIs measuring business results generated by innovation efforts. You choose the KPIs by deciding which are seen as critical to making progress on in order to deliver more innovations. The fewer the better, but they have to be credible and relevant also in the eyes of the stakeholders. The innovation metrics in the context of business impact include such as, % of revenue from new products introduced. You could also change the variables and create something like % of the profit from new ideas implemented. But it takes quite some time for a new innovation drive to produce those measures. One of the solutions is to define process KPIs, which demonstrate the growing capability of the organization to deliver more innovation with business impact in the future.
Innovation has three phases: discovery of a problem or new idea, designing a prototype solution and the ultimate delivery of a commercially astute outcome. At the enterprise scope, innovation management should focus on building a healthy innovation portfolio to establish business competency. And the best point of view is to see innovation as a system, capable of taking a stepwise approach to scaling up and delivering organization-wide capability in reaping the business benefit for the long term.

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CIOs as Talent Master: How to Measure Human Capital Effectively

People are always the most invaluable asset to the organization but often turn to be the weakest link in strategy execution. Unlike the other tangible value of business assets which are more easily measured in a quantitative way. The true value of people, especially today’s high professional knowledge workforce  include many tangible and intangible factors because people are not just the cost or the resource to be managed, but the capital to be invested in and their potential if unleashed can bring the quantum leap in the business growth. So what are the premium approach and methodology to measure human asset? What KPIs would you recommend to determine the value an employee adds to their department and how would you implement it?The true value of an employee would rather be measured by his or her quality, creativity, capability, and productivity: To measure the true value just by counting all the cost, the company has paid to the employee would be ineffective.There is a big difference between cost and quality. The true value of an employee is demonstrated when the employee acts as an ambassador, innovator or customer champion of the organization; brings the advanced mindset, knowledge, skills, abilities and creativity that translates into expected performance outcomes; has the capacity to be resilient towards change and acts as a change agent; possesses a capacity to attract and retain quality talent. There is an impact to the bottom line due to inspiration and culture addition. When there is a negative culture in a company, efficiency, and productivity decrease, employee engagement decreases causing mediocre work, and creativity and productivity are compromised. The intangibles affect the bottom line beyond productivity to objectives. Building a clear link between people value and business value: There are two aspects of strengthening the links between individual performance and business performance: first what the individual adds to the department, and second what the department adds to the business. Taking the second one, you will be aware of the various measures of reliability, availability, utilization and the Turnaround KPIs. At an individual level, it might come down to the annual assessment of how he or she did against the objectives that were set.  Measuring or improving effectiveness and delivering value from resources is more about having the visibility and insight into the non-productive time (NPT) and focusing on reducing that. Resources waiting on materials, permits, tools, availability are not effective and to improve management behaviors need to be proactive rather than reactive. Sticking to the plan/schedule has been shown to deliver double the work. An employee's "book value" can be viewed as a function of what investments have been made in them and how they bring high-than expectation value. A valuable employee is a self-leader who makes a positive impact in business culture; stays current in their profession; freely innovates, creates new efficient ways of working; mentors and coaches others. And the company gives him or her some responsibilities and how well an employee could perform to deliver these responsibilities, even beyond expectation, would be the true value of the employee. Often times, employees are the innovators in an organization. They bring about cost saving improvements that might be overlooked. Talent Management needs to logistically place a book value to these scenarios in order to explain the importance of an intangible to business executives. All organizations face a challenge to evaluate the value of employees in an objective and effective way. Each evaluation will obviously vary in outcomes and results as each workplace and position within varies. When you look at the true value of an employee, you are looking at the return on the investment that you have made, not only the short-term quantitative result, but also overall business competency. It also looks at the overall success of the company for the long run.




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Digital CIO’s Agenda IT Performance Tuning Up July 2016

Due to the changing nature of technology, IT leadership role also continues to involve & shift the focus, to leverage innovation from strategy management to performance management. Most of IT organizations measure IT via system performance, IT project on budget and on time, or IT department cost commitment, but the most debatable IT measurement discussion is how to measure the VALUE IT delivers to the business, or put simply, customer satisfaction, do IT measure the right things to present to the right audience?
IT Performance Tuning Up July 2016Three Steps for IT Performance Improvement When you think of “IT performance,” what comes to mind? Operational excellence such as IT effectiveness or efficiency, or strategic value such as competitive advantage, leadership competency, culture agility or customer satisfaction? What is your understanding about IT performance measurement? Is it an economic measure, or competitive measure or other perceptive values? How are you monitoring quantifying IT department value in your organization? And what are the logical steps for IT performance improvement?
Three Aspects of IT Performance Measurement? IT organizations today intend to reinvent the tarnished image since traditional IT is still being labeled as a cost center and support desk only. Because its business value hasn’t been conveyed in a structured or quantified way yet. And it only focuses on measuring internal value (cost efficiency, internal customer satisfaction), or the things only internal IT is interested in. The measures often do not reflect the full set of value IT can bring to accelerate business growth or delight end customers. If we can only manage what we measure, the issue here is how to measure IT performance effectively?
“CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 8 Three “P”s in Running Digital IT? Information is like lifeblood, and technology is like a backbone for any digital organization nowadays. However, most IT organizations have a reputation as a cost center and a controller. To reimagine IT potential, reinvent IT management and maximize IT value, it’s important to set guiding principles for practicing the multitude of IT management, manage a healthy IT project/program portfolio, also make a continuous journey of improving IT performance via developing a set of best/next practices for harnessing IT efficiency, effectiveness, and maturity.
CIO as Chief Improvement Officer: How to Connect the Dots between PI vs. KPI? Performance Indicators (PI) measure progress across a broad range of intended outcomes (goals, objectives, even outputs) and are used at all levels of the organization. Key Performance Indicators can be a subset of PIs, or they can roll several PIs into one (an index). KPIs are used to measure overall progress of the organization toward its mission and primary goals -- they are high-level indicators that everyone in the organization can relate to. KPIs are often used to create corporate dashboards; they can be used in PR documents and other reporting tools to present an organization's outcomes to the public.
What’s the First Step in Building a Great Performance Dashboard? A performance dashboard is a useful tool to improve management effectiveness and efficiency. But what’s the simple first step enables you to implement useful Performance Dashboards, that ‘ideally’ from day one delivers high-quality performance management information?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with 2900+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
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Three Forces to Drive Digital Transformation

Digital transformation or Digital shift means change. Digital transformation represents the next stage of business maturity which will improve how the enterprise works and interacts with its ecosystem, with the customer at the center of its focus, and innovation as its major theme. More specifically, what are are those visible and invisible forces to drive changes, and how to make such a large scale transformation go more smoothly?

Imposing forces: Digital transformation is inevitable, and often the emergent digital technologies are imposing forces of digital disruption and change drivers. With the advance of the SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud) technologies, organizations can build the recombinant capability to shape products, services, and customer engagement. Processes underpin capability, the organizations also need to reframe of in-place processes that filter and fund investments to enable creativity flow, structure innovation, and identifying technology as well as business risks., etc. Further, This digital convergence of devices and services are creating new business models and revenue source as most companies across industries are being forced to become technology companies and run information businesses. In addition, with these powerful digital technologies, Digital Transformation can give your business the ability to apply real-time insights across the organization in ways never possible before.
Invisible force: Change is inevitable, but the success rate of change is very low, The root cause of such failure is often invisible, and culture is one of such invisible, but powerful forces behind change inertia failures. People have no problem with change! They have problems with uncertainty, risk, and fear. Therefore, culture as a collective mindset and attitude is the pathway to changes. In a fast growing company people tend to have similar ideal values that then get manifested in its corporate culture. Culture has multiple perspectives that directly impact strategy execution as well. Typically, strategy execution fails due to surprises and unknown/ unforeseen factors as well. When the company grows, the corporate culture tends to stay the same over time, that is the culture inertia. So basically, the execution and conviction of strategy strongly rely on culture. Hence, in order to make change happen and leapfrog digital transformation, culture is the path to change. Metaphorically, change is like the iceberg, In order to move up to the next level of organizational maturity, the culture needs to be changed as well to adapt to the emerging digital trend and pulling strategy execution towards the right decision. If you only take the visible aspects of culture -the tip of the iceberg alone as an element of the strategy execution, you may miss the point and well head to the troubles. Because the invisible part is the the decisive factor for the success or failure of strategy management.
Workforce: Digital means people centricity. People are the very reason for change, also the intellectual force to drive and manage changes, and often the weakest the link to change as well. People normally 'close' the boundaries of the system, so that less energy is transferred and, therefore, the fewer changes happen in the system. The pervasive digitization requires digital professionals to rethink how things are done in organizations. The 'reach and range' flexibility that now exists removes barriers that have existed in the past. If businesses can recognize the barriers. It can empower employees to apply technologies to perform their work in a way that benefits the enterprise. Knowledge now is only a click away. Digital is the age of knowledge abundance. People and organizations could now learn faster in a time when leading strategists were arguing that the only sustainable advantage was to learn faster than your competition. Dynamic and changing digital organizations cannot operate with stable, unchanging people. The creative and empowered digital workforce makes change people centric and sustainable.
Digital transformation is “pushed” by both visible forces and invisible forces, hard forces and soft forces from multiple directions. It also needs to be managed via a systematic approach through which all important business elements integrated and knitted into an ongoing business capability. It’s like spinning a huge wheel with the right speed, you have to do it skillfully.
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The Monthly “Dot Connections” to Accelerate Digital Transformation July 2016

The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Digital is the age of creativity and innovation, creativity is the most wanted trait for digital leaders and professionals today, and innovation is the light every organization is pursuing. Creativity is all about connecting the dots. Which dots shall you connect to accelerate digital transformation?

 The “Dot Connections” to Accelerate Digital TransformationChange vs. Transformation: Change is defined in the Oxford dictionary as "substitution of one for another," and transformation is defined as "to CHANGE the character or form." Transformation....., the word itself is the first indicator, transform....The definition of transformation in the dictionary is, "to change (something) completely," so it’s much more than renewal, its rebirth. The dictionary adds..." and usually in a good way," which suggests it’s co-productive, rather than counter-productive, and implicit too, is enjoyable, Hence it includes the affective realm of experience. It makes sense to use the complexity of the shift required to differentiate between change and transformation. The biggest challenge with any large scale transformation program is – do the senior leaders truly understand the time and impact on the organization and do they have the intestinal fortitude to hold up to corrections in the face of quarterly earnings report pressure? In that light, isn't the point of the discussion here to clarify something about management? What is difficult about the concept of managing one or more changes as a means of accomplishing a managed transformation? Vision vs. Strategy? Vision is where or who you want to be and strategy is how you can achieve or reach your goal. An unclear vision leads to defective strategy. Visions inspire; strategies compel; vision comes first, but sometimes vision appears and gets clear by working on the strategy. A vision describes the desired future position of the company. A strategy is an action or ways chosen to bring about the desired future, such as achievement of a goal.Goals vs. Objectives  Business strategy, goals, and objectives are all relevant and important concepts in business management, usually the goals and objectives are set to achieve business strategy step by step in a measurable way. According to businessdictionary. com, “business goal is an observable and measurable end result having one or more objectives to be achieved within a more or less fixed timeframe. Synonym.: object, aim, intention, end, purpose. The objective is a specific result that a person or system aims to achieve within a time frame and with available resources. Synonym includes goal, aim, intention, purpose, design.”Talent Development vs. Talent Creating? Connotatively and denotatively, talent is innate, a “raw” ability. It's a natural affinity for something. It can't be completely trained. Talent is not equal to experience, just like wisdom is not always proportional to one's age. What you can and should do is to provide the opportunities (talent development) for people to hone their talents and let them shine. Where "Creating Talent" is akin to taking raw material and building what you need out of it, the well-crafted talent is a good combination of willpower + brainpower + knowledge power. Strategic KPIs vs. Operational KPIs: KPIs are indicators to identify if the adopted strategy, operation, and process, etc is working toward the objective. As such, you don't "adopt" a KPI to "achieve an outcome," you adopt a strategy or operational workflow to achieve the outcome, and you define KPIs to monitor the progress and performance. That’s the name KPI –Key Performance Indicators stand for. The provocative question is: is it possible to link operational KPI's to strategic ones to reflect and track the overall progress in achieving the strategic goals?
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"Leadership Master" Book Tuning: Three-Step to Dive into Leadership Profundity

The quality of your thinking decides your professionalism and leadership profundity.

At the siloed industrial era, leadership efficiency is often dependent on the hierarchical level of authority and brute force style of command and control. It’s often about how loud you can speak or how hard you can push. However, digital means information flow, people-centricity, innovation and transparency. Hence, digital leadership must go deeper, to dive into the depth of leadership profundity and practice the power of pull, to lead more effortlessly.

In-depth knowledge: Knowledge is power! Knowledge is information in use; and it’s information that supports the decision-making process. Knowledge is an expression of understanding relating information and experience accumulated over time, about known facts and past events. However, knowledge is not static, the knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened at the digital era, lots of commodity knowledge are just clicks away, and therefore, knowledge is also the capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc. It means knowledge has to be updated periodically due to the increasing speed of change and the hyper-connected digital new normal. Learning knowledge is just the first step, to dive deeper, or move up, one should connect dots at interdisciplinary domains, and co-create new knowledge to solve the emergent problems. Therefore, knowledgeable leaders or professionals shouldn’t have a “graduated attitude,” to stop learning, or only be interested in providing answers to fulfill egos. In fact, they need to keep updating their mind which perhaps still filled with the outdated knowledge they learned decades ago via formal education years or based on conventional wisdom filled in their childhood. And they should learn how to ask open questions and gain collective wisdom, and see the big picture into which the knowledge fits.

Cognitive understanding: Knowledge by itself is nothing if you do not understand how to apply it and make it useful. Cognitive understanding means people acquire knowledge through thinking and sensing. When we explore the mental process of acquiring new knowledge through thought, experience, and senses, the cognition involves exploring varieties of meanings/thoughts and abandoning old and establishing new relations. Too often people take the easy path, think and work at a superficial level rather than spend the time to understand what is going on underneath. Insight is an understanding of cause and effect based on identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario. Cognition as a perception, sensation, and insight, enables you to identify the root cause of a problem or the core issues of a situation which leads to cognitive understanding and resolution.

Multidimensional thinking: The difference between knowledge and wisdom is thinking, and especially lateral, nonlinear or multi-dimensional thinking, a holistic view. Our minds are conditioned based on our own belief systems, education and past happenings. We act based on these unconscious thoughts. Choosing thoughts consciously would be arduous. But it’s the very thoughts decide who you are, the quality of your thinking decides your professionalism and leadership profundity. For example, Critical Thinking is important on how you process information, which is a complex mental activity that encompasses all aspects of one's cognitive styles, and the skills associated with critical thinking include exploring a problem from multiple perspectives, at the deeper level, it has creativity embedded in it. Analyzing the possibilities and projected outcomes provides an opportunity to apply Critical Thinking to the situation. Hence, Multidimensional Thinking is a skill that has to be developed through a process, and continuous practices.

Knowledge is power. Digital leaders and professionals can practice expert power based on their in-depth knowledge, cognitive understanding, and multidimensional thinking skills to enforce the power, but not abuse the power, and amplify their leadership influence via profundity.

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