Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1319

The Monthly Digital Leadership Brief July, 2016

Digital LEADERSHIP is the hidden GEM of the “Future of CIO” blog. From one generation to the next, the substance of leadership does not change, it’s about future, change and influence. However, digital the leadership trends will continue to emerge. Here is a set of featured blogs to brainstorm the future of digital leadership.
Three Insight of Thought Leadership  Leadership comes in all ages, forms, and styles. To put simply, leadership is to bridge, not to divide; leadership is to adapt, not too rigid; Leadership is to innovate, not a status quo; leadership is to move forward, not backward. This is particularly true for digital leadership because leaders today have to navigate through uncharted digital territories and lead toward a hyperconnected digital reality. Leadership effectiveness is less about controlling via command and status quo, more about influence via mind connecting and heart touching. What is further insight about Thought Leadership?
In search of Creative Leadership Paradigm It is another Independence Day around the corner, it’s the day to re-imagine the digital paradigm shift, the time to practice independent thinking and contemplate the spirit of America - Freedom, Equality, and Pursuit of Happiness, and the moment to refine digital leadership - Are we on the journey in search of creative leadership to spark the next chapter of innovation blossom, to discover the better way to solve the old problems, as well as overcome emergent challenges?
Contemplating Leadership Profundity at the “Independence Day”? At the siloed industrial era, leadership effectiveness is perhaps dependent on the hierarchical level of authority and brute force style of command and control. It's about how loud you can speak or how hard you can push. However, with the digital nature of interdependence and interconnectivity, great leadership is not just situational, it is affected by context, culture, including capability and resources, and the means to the end, rather than just defined by the end result. And digital flow changes the landscape of communication, collaboration and connection, instead of being loud, digital leadership must go deeper, to touch the hearts and connect the minds, to practice the power of pull, and to lead via deep influence.
Vision as a Guide Light  Vision is not the “Nice to have,” but “Must have” quality for top leaders today in order to direct the organization toward the uncharted water in today’s “VUCA” digital dynamic. Vision provides insight into where an organization needs to go and is future oriented. A vision is how you see the future unfolding, how you dream about what the future will look like from your standpoint, and how to direct people and business toward the destination you envisioned?
Three Powers in the Niche-Based Leadership Leadership is all about future and change. Digital breaks down the overly rigid organizational hierarchy and blurs the geographic territories. Therefore, command and control leadership style is no longer effective to drive sustainable changes and leapfrog transformation. Digital also breaks down the silo and blurs the functional border, business border, and industry border. Leadership now becomes more open and trans-disciplinary, influential and innovative. The digital leadership effectiveness is not based on how loud you can speak, but how profound you can influence. Digital makes everything so transparent, and dynamic, it raises the leadership bar as well because leadership is no longer just about a few spotlight moments, but a continuous delivery. Every digital leader must ask: What’s your leadership niche in order to lead effortlessly?
The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about #2300 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Sharpen Three Business Elements to Get the Organization “Digital Ready”

Organizations large and small are on the journey for digital transformation. “Being digital ready” goes beyond just applying the latest digital technology, or renovate IT organization only. It is a multifaceted effort and touches every aspect of the business. Here are three critical business factors to get the organization “Digital Ready.”
Digital capability building: The business capability is the ability to achieve the desired effect under specified performance standards and conditions through combinations of talents and resources, processes, and technologies to perform a set of activities. Compared to the business capability of the traditional organization, digital capability is more dynamic, agile, and innovation. Because digital technology is more powerful, but lightweight, as a “superglue” to weave all necessarily important business elements into the building blocks of business capability and highlight the characteristics of “Changeable Organization.” Building a set of high-effective and lego like recombinant digital capabilities is the preparatory steps in Digital Strategy Management. Besides operational capability to keep the lights on, in any case to monitor or seek disruptive opportunities requires businesses’ transformational capability with agility to adapt to changes, and the innovation ability to build differentiated competency of the business.
Digital structure tuning: In a world that has been transformed by technology, many old and powerful hierarchies became ‘commoditized,” the digital blurs the functional, business, and even industrial territories. Compared to traditional organizational structure with rigid hierarchy, digital organizations need to fine tune a successful structure to improve customer-centricity. Traditional hierarchical lines will phase out and a collective of business partners will emerge working collaboratively to set and achieve organizational goals as well as strategy. Currently, the emphasis of an organizational business partner will spread to all employees of an organization and its ecosystem. The challenge for any business is to find a successful structure that helps empower people, enforce iterative communication, and cross-functional collaboration and deliver better business results. Limited hierarchy works best in a creative environment where the free flow of ideas and their prompt implementation is a key element of success.
Digital workforce performance system design: Digital is the age of people, both for delighting customers and engaging employees. Digital workforce management needs to focus on “future” - how to help employees to make continuous improvement, not just get stuck on the past behaviors. You cannot command innovation and adaptation, but you can enable, encourage, inspire and even lead for improving workforce performance. Hence, workforce performance improvement must take the long view and may require a core DNA transplant - the culture transformation. Designing a performance management system that makes sense for your company depends on many factors, including the nature of your business, your company culture, and your mission.  There is no single initiative or program or the "theme for the year" that will suffice to raise the performance of a company or business function. The key  is not to choose one path over the other, but to tailor the talent management and performance management solutions depending on the situation and advantages, you want to gain. Also, you can't command someone to be creative or adaptive. People must have other intangible performance drivers that get them motivated with ambition and creativity. In some cases, a more traditional method might make sense, but with increasing speed of change, the performance of Performance Management needs to be continuously assessed and adjusted as well.
There is no magic formula to get your business digital ready. It takes practices, practices, and practice to sharpen all crucial business factors. Practice to enforce digital ways. Not only are “digital pivotals” who are pioneering what this all looks like and how to really ground it and manifest it in the business dynamic, but mainstream companies are gradually opening up to the next practice to enforce digital ways and build up business competency.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Three Principles to Encourage Professional Digital Competition

One shall not just keep the eyes on the competitors, but focus positive energy on building one’s own competence.
Competition is part of nature and human society. In nature, competition is for evolution, in business, competition is for surviving and thriving. Competition is part of the natural dynamics of life. It is part of the genetic bias of every living thing in nature as a survival-seeking mindset. There are ample examples of competitive behaviors in the animal world. In the primitive tropical forest, the competition is bloody and cruel for surviving only. In the industrial age, the competition is about commanding & controlling to get the certain order from chaos and keep the status quo; and now we are stepping into a far more advanced digital era, the goal of healthy competition is to encourage innovation and accelerate the speed of progression. How to set principles to  encourage professional competitions and inspire innovation?
Winning with purpose: There are many reasons to compete, and there are many ways to compete. The real issue is that the motivation or purpose behind the competition. Human beings are intelligent and progressive, if we really are as intelligent as we claim to be, we should have principles and disciplines, not just the outdated rules set in the previous era, or the static minds stuck in the old tradition. It’s important to equip with a positive mind, to discern the positive motivation or negative energy behind competition. The purpose of competition is to inspire creative thinking, and as leaders, you need to be more confident and conscious rather than threatened by growth minds or strong characters. Healthy and professional competitions are about winning, but also beyond winning only. Once the leadership starts to understand this basic fact, its mindset changes from that of the limitation to the possibility, and it becomes ready to create or nurture an inclusive environment in which people will genuinely feel good, willingly get involved with commitment, and will demonstrate unimaginable contribution, and the working environment becomes more healthier and creative. The net result is that many of the complex issues (glass ceiling, favoritism, and other unprofessional behaviors, etc.) will look relatively small to tackle. If we have two or more ideas, we have competition because of those ideas. Without competition, there would be no innovation. Without innovation, there would be no progress.
Compete professional based on capability: Healthy competition wins via ultimate capabilities and unique competency, while unprofessional competition is often based on negative emotions and actions, lack of authenticity. It is the energy behind the competition that matters. Often time, either for the individuals or businesses, if you only keep your eyes on competitors and how to beat them down, without focus and build your own unique set of competencies based on your own innate ability, you perhaps get trapped towards unprofessional competitions.  If businesses or the society has a system where the way to reach the top is to trample on others. It can create unhealthy rivalries that result in workers resenting one another, and workplace being extremely unprofessional. If you only focus on beating down others, without investing yourself, spending time and energy to sharpen your own competency or concentrating on building your own set of capabilities, you also contribute to an unhealthy culture, and show the unprofessionalism and lack of wisdom.
Assess the assessors: As old saying goes, the beauty is in the eyes of beholders. How healthy and professional of the competition is dependent on how qualified and wise the judge is. All power is in the assessors, not in the tests. The quality of assessors is important to the quality of the assessment of competition. How are these people capable to judge others and their capacity as long as they do not know the measurement starting points (= themselves).  The assessor is just as important, and even more critical than the rules, because people make rules, and rules can always be updated, if the mind behind the rules is advanced and innovative. Therefore, the quality of competition is not only dependent on the quality of participants, but also the assessors who can drive the competitions toward different directions.Over time things change, we humans are developing, growing and competition and choice are part of that process.
Competition, in and of itself, is not inherently bad. The goals of competition can be bad and the competitive arena can produce a myriad of unwise mentality and negative externalities. Healthy competition inspires innovation and progression, unprofessional competition protect status quo. We all have talents each on our own, without negative competition, we would be able to use our talents and capability for the betterment and unleash potential, with healthy competition, we can work harder and smarter to accelerate progression, and bring wisdom to the world.  

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

"Digital Agility" Book Tuning: Three Big Hurdles in Agile Movement

Agile is a philosophy and a set of principles to run today’s digital organization today. However, it is a rocky road. What are the big hurdles for people or companies when they decide to be agile, not just doing Agile? What’s the hardest decisions you have to make on the journey? What are the serious pains? What could be the pitfalls to fail you, and how can ou learn from your mistakes in making a continuous improvement?

Overly rigid processes: There is no such thing as "enterprise agile." What there is at the enterprise level is a rigid process that maintains the status quo and gives lip service to agile concepts by adopting a few of the more trivial practices. This is in no way agile. The very notion that there would be "schools" of agile is itself a misunderstanding of the underlying notions. Agile happily supports many different practices frameworks at many different scales. If you think that there are several flavors of "agile," then you've already lost. The belief that following rituals leads to guaranteed success - there is a certain cargo cult mentality that confuses blind obedience to the  rules with actually approaching a problem in an agile manner. The problem is people do not really understand what agile is. Most of the times they use the word “agile” when in fact, they are talking about agile software development. They assume they have one framework and rigid processes to rule them all and lead to atrophy, and what was once a good method becomes an anchor. So doing agile gets stuck and even stifle innovations.
Lack of risk management mechanism: A big threat to the agile movement is simply that 'going agile' fails to provide the promised benefits. Even if you try to do everything right, there’s still a risk of failure. And some of the teams who think they are “Agile” will not know how to do everything right, so for them, the risk is greater, and it’s proportional to their level of ignorances. So you need to embed the risk mitigation and intelligence mechanism in agile practices. Choose the level of risk that you want to work with, gain in-depth understanding about the benefit return/risk ratio, and the practices of agile management disciplines. Agile approaches can’t guarantee your project will succeed either. However, it can help you to fail fast and fail forward, minimize the cost, effort and waste involved. And most importantly, learning lessons from the failure and make continuous improvement.
Lack of high-mature leadership" OR return of "Command and Control”: One of the big hurdles in Agile movement is that top management has not become well educated on the intricate value of Agile principles and practices. They might thought that the agile way of working can deliver what an organization needs, even when it doesn't know what it wants. Lack of commitment by all (management, dev team, customers), blame game - Blame it to "certifications," "leadership," "business/IT," "culture," and anything else that can be blamed to save one's own weakness, etc. are all the roadblocks on the way. Top executives are the one with real change power and control. So it’s their job to build the most effective organization possible for the business long term growth. They should be the most knowledgeable agile practitioners and change agent to improve organizational agility.
Everything is in a constant state of flux. Even there are big hurdles in Agile movement, Agile can be threatened, a shared vision is something that is needed to help organizations strive for a better working engagement. Being agile is about continuous improvement, and this implies continuous changes, discovering new ways of working, collaborating, delivering value by overcoming frictions and challenges.

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Monthly Highlight: How to Improve the Strategy Execution Capability July 2016

Strategy is the light to guide you ahead, not the hand to walk you through.
The strategy is the focal point of the “Future of CIO,” and the pillar of organizational existence, its design, structure, functions, vision, and mission. A real strategy is neither a document nor a forecast but rather an overall approach based on a diagnosis of a challenge. It brings up new functions, roles, and responsibilities, collaboration, demand for intuition and emergence, complementarities, philosophy, neutron sciences, and trans-disciplinary businesses. But these are not new per se. The frameworks of thoughts, consciousness and maturity assessments apply to strategy, then, now and in the future. Here is the monthly strategy highlight of the “Future of CIO” blog in 2016.
How to Improve the Strategy Execution Capability July 2016Strategy-Execution as an Ongoing Continuum: The strategy is what you intend to do or accomplishes in terms of managing the constraints to having the critical success factors in place to achieve the set of strategic priorities, and implementation is about how effective the strategy beyond technology achieves its defined goals. With the increasing speed of changes and continuous digital disruptions which are often caused by technologies, how frequently an organization should change its implementation plan to meet the desired strategic outcomes. Does it become difficult to secure the buy-in of stakeholders, if the implementation plans are changed too frequently? Are strategy-execution linear steps or an ongoing continuum?
How to Improve the Effectiveness of Strategy Execution? The word "strategy" is pretty amorphous with so many individual interpretations and nuances of its meaning that conversations about it often go astray amidst a blizzard of the latest buzzwords. To make it worse, more than 70% of strategy fails in execution. It is about many different matters like resistance to change, silos or units with competing agendas, lack of clear and decisive leadership, leadership actions inconsistent with strategy, poor communication of strategy, lack of accountability on follow-through; inability to measure impact, too focused on short-term results, and maybe the most popular and big obstacle: making it meaningful to frontiers, translating strategy to execution, aligning jobs to strategy. So how to improve strategy execution effectiveness?
How to Map Strategy-Execution Process?  Sound strategy and solid execution are both important. The strategy is more important because it helps the organization navigate through the thorny business journey ahead; but the execution is more difficult because it consumes resources, takes disciplines and practices to get it right. Strategy and execution need to go hand in hand. Knowing where you're heading is critical to supporting all the micro decisions along the way. However, the key objectives and opportunity to "pivot" can become lost in task planning and execution. So how to mind the gaps between strategy and execution, and how to manage the underlying business processes, build dynamic business capabilities in order to execute strategy more seamlessly?
Five Key Factors in Strategy Execution? Strategy execution is difficult. A recent executive survey indicated that execution excellence was the number one challenge facing corporate leaders globally. Statistically, about two-thirds to three-quarters of large organizations struggle to implement their strategies. Why does strategy execution unravel, and what are the key factors to lead the effectiveness of strategy execution?
How do you Measure Success of Strategy Execution Program? The purpose of the strategy is obviously to enable the organization to reach its strategic objective or vision. So, to measure the strategic execution is about how well organizations actually reach that goal or vision. What are the multifaceted aspect or logical steps to measure the success of your strategy execution program?
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.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

"CIO Master" Book Tuning: Three Digital Balances IT Needs to Strike

IT leaders need to be cautiously optimistic and taking the calculated risk in running a digital IT to strike the right balance.

IT is a system which has an emergent property of individual human beings making sense of experiences in time and place, IT system makes interactions with the environment to collecting, storing, processing and delivering information, and ensure the right people getting the right information at the right time to make the right decision. IT organization plays a significant role in both keeping the business bottom line and contributing to the top line business growth; setting the standard for risk management, as well as leveraging the latest tools and platforms to enable innovation; IT is also crucial to fix the handy, urgent business problems, as well as digitizing the touch points of customer experience for the business’s long-term transformation. In practices, there are three digital balances IT needs to strike in order to improve its efficiency, effectiveness, agility, and maturity.

Transaction vs. Transformation: Digital means change with increasing speed. As we all know the only "Certainty" or a "Constant" is "CHANGE." Uncertainty is a given, just as it has always been and always will be. Back to fundamental, “keep the lights on,” is still one of the most important responsibilities for IT to be “transactional,” which refers to operational transactions, taking an input at one end and churning it out at the other with processes in between. But besides that, IT needs to spend more resources and time for doing innovation and become “Transformational,” which means redesigning existing transactions to something new, being innovative and creative and also introducing completely new transactions with higher efficiency, and hopefully with a strategy that enables the organization fast-growth.  IT can be transformational and needs to be more audacious when the opportunity arises and it is appropriate to seize it. It's easy enough to churn out the same old things even with minor modifications but to undertake real transformational change requires leadership, know-how, confidence, and strategy. And IT leaders must become a digital transformational leader, not just a transactional technology manager. Until then, the rest of the business will feel that if the transactional CIO is talking, it's because there are problems, not opportunities, and won't want to listen. And there is no way IT can reinvent its reputation and unleash its digital potential.

Order Taking vs Order Making: There is the time to sow, and there is time to reap; there is time to lead, and there is time to follow. This is particularly true for running IT today. IT will always have a role doing internal support meet internal customers' need. The trick is separating the internal actions so they run on "autopilot," and having the CIO focus on managing a portfolio of strategic projects that have a quantifiable business return. That means IT should make the continuous investment on automation, optimization, and innovation. In practice, IT needs to do best to satisfy internal customers business requests. However, IT should never just take the order blindly, but ask big WHY for business justification. When IT considers their customer as the entity who buys the company's goods and services, some great things start to happen; CIOs should ask themselves what strategic advantage they can provide to the business and working to have the rest of IT learn the business they're in. Changing IT away from the order taker role is more than about semantics.Address 'The Long Tail' - that is, get beyond just the top strategic initiatives and figure out how to also address the needs of niche groups. The next big strategic breakthrough may well come from one of these long tail projects. And IT leaders need to actively participate strategic conversations to co-create strategies.

Stability vs. Agility: Many forward-looking organizations are running a bimodal IT to both keep IT stable and improve its agility; running a reliable IT system, as well as improving its changeability. CIOs' proactive in trying new things shall not get confused with spontaneity or do things without a plan. From tuning the organizational structure to optimizing business processes, all need to be well aligned A CIO needs to be forward looking to see where relevant technology, and their industry, is heading. Technology can be efficiency driven, or it can be disruptive - changing the industry. It is the CIO's job to discern the difference and make a business case. There are risks and return on investment sharing models to experiment new technologies. But the organization leadership should have a culture to set a goal/metrics that foster emerging technological trends and apply them to their business.

IT leaders need to be cautiously optimistic and taking the calculated risk in running a digital IT to strike the right balance. The CIO is responsible for the new technology adoption, also maximizing the usage of existing technologies. The CIO's role is more than strategy implementer and into strategy maker or at least with the influential power to shape and keep in harmony with the business, market, products, and resources, improve efficiency on the transactional side of the business, but put more resources on the digital transformation.
CIO Master Order Link on Amazon CIO Master Ordre Link on Barner & Noble CIO Master Order Link On IBooks “CIO Master” Book Preview Quote Collection III “CIO Master” Book Preview Quote Collection II “CIO Master” Book Preview Quote Collection I, Slideshare Presentation “CIO Master” Book Preview Conclusion Running IT as Digital Transformer “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 9 IT Agility “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 8 Three "P"s in Running Digital IT “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 7 IT Innovation Management “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 6 Digital Strategy-Execution Continuum "CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 5 Thirteen Digital Flavored IT “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 4 CIO as Talent Master Introduction “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 3 “CIOs as Change Agent” Introduction “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 2 “CIOs as Digital Visionary” Introduction “CIO Master” Book Preview: Chapter 1 “Twelve Digital CIO Personas” Introduction "CIO Master - Unleash the Digital Potential of IT" Introduction
"CIO Master - Unleash the Digital Potential of IT" Book Preview
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Three Digital Balances IT Needs to Strike

IT is a system which has an emergent property of individual human beings making sense of experiences in time and place, IT system makes interactions with the environment to collecting, storing, processing and delivering information, and ensure the right people getting the right information at the right time to make the right decision. IT also plays a significant role in both keeping the business bottom line and contributing to the top line growth; setting the standard for risk management, as well as leveraging the latest tools and platforms to enable innovation; IT is also crucial to fix the handy, urgent business problems, as well as digitizing the touch points of customer experience for the business’s long term transformation. In practices, there are three digital balances IT needs to strike in order to improve its effectiveness, agility and maturity.
Transaction vs. Transformation: Digital means change with increasing speed. As we all know the only "Certainty" or a "Constant" is "CHANGE." Uncertainty is a given, just as it has always been and always will be. Back to fundamental, “keep the lights on,” is still one of the most important responsibilities for IT to be “transactional,” which refers to operational transactions, taking an input at one end and churning it out at the other with processes in between. But besides that, IT needs to spend more resources and time for doing innovation and become “Transformational,” which means redesigning existing transactions to something new, being innovative and creative and also introducing completely new transactions with high efficiency, and hopefully with a strategy that serves the organization well.   IT can be transformational and needs to be more audacious when the opportunity arises and it is appropriate to seize it. It's easy enough to churn out the same old things even with minor modifications but to undertake real transformational change requires leadership, know-how, confidence, and strategy. And IT leaders must become a digital transformational leader, not just a transactional technology manager. Until then, the rest of the business will feel that if the transactional CIO is talking, it's because there are problems, not opportunities, and won't want to listen. And there is no way IT can reinvent its reputation as a support desk only.
Order Taking vs Order Making: There is the time to sow, and time to reap; there is time to lead, and time to follow. This is particularly true for running IT today. IT will always have a role doing internal support. The trick is separating the internal actions so they run on "autopilot," and having the CIO focus on managing a portfolio of strategic projects that have a quantifiable business return. That means IT should make continuous investment on automation, optimization, and innovation. In practice, IT needs to do best to satisfy internal customers business requests. However, IT should never just take the order blindly, but ask big WHY for business justification. When IT considers their customer as the entity who buys the company's goods and services, some great things start to happen; CIOs should ask themselves what strategic advantage they can provide to the business and working to have the rest of IT learn the business they're in. Changing IT away from the order taker role is more than about semantics. Address 'The Long Tail' - that is, get beyond just the top strategic initiatives and figure out how to also address the needs of smaller groups. The next big strategic breakthrough may well come from one of these long tail projects. And IT leaders need to actively participate strategic conversations and co-create strategies.
Stability vs. Agility: Many forward-looking IT organizations are running a bimodal mode to both keep IT stable, and improve its agility; running a reliable IT system, as well as improving its changeability. CIOs' proactive in trying new things shall not get confused with spontaneity or do things without a plan. From returning the organizational structure to optimizing business processes, all need to be well aligned A CIO needs to be forward looking to see where relevant technology, and their industry, is heading. Technology can be efficiency driven, or it can be disruptive - changing the industry. It is the CIO's job to discern the difference and make a business case. There are risk and return on investment sharing models to experiment new technologies. But organization leadership should have a culture to set a goal/metrics that foster emerging technological trends and apply them to their business.
IT leaders need to be cautiously optimistic, and taking the calculated risk in running a digital IT to strike the right balance. The CIO is responsible for new technology adoption, the CIO's role is more than strategy implementer and into strategy maker or at least with the influential power to shape and keep in harmony with the business, market, products, and resources, also improve efficiency on the tractional side of the business, but put more resources on the digital transformation.


Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 7/8/2016

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. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight about digital leadership, IT Management and Talent Management.
The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO”  7/8/2016Three Pitfalls in Running a Differentiated Digital IT: In the static industrial environment, many IT organizations only focus on the commodity level of services to “keep the lights on.” However, today’s digital business environment is unprecedentedly dynamic, complex and uncertain, the differentiation provided by innovative technology allows companies to reach the "long-tail" customer that previously was impossible or uneconomic. And technologies can push you out of business if you are not agile enough to change your business model or adapt to change timely. Either being different or being irrelevant, what are the pitfalls in running a differentiated digital IT?
Running a Digital Ready Talent Management People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses. “Hiring the right person for the right position at the right time,” is the mantra of many forward-thinking organizations. The question is how would you define the right people? How do you define wrong, average, mediocre, good, great or extraordinary person? Or put simply, for what should they be right? Furthermore, how do you define “Digital Fit,” and develop the best and next practices of "Digital-Ready" Talent Management?
Three Barriers in Change Management: In the static industrial environment, many IT organizations only focus on the commodity level of services to “keep the lights on.” However, today’s digital business environment is unprecedentedly dynamic, complex and uncertain, the differentiation provided by innovative technology allows companies to reach the "long-tail" customer that previously was impossible or uneconomic. And technologies can push you out of business if you are not agile enough to change your business model or adapt to change timely. Either being different or being irrelevant, what are the pitfalls in running a differentiated digital IT?
Three Insight of Thought Leadership  Leadership comes in all ages, forms, and styles. To put simply, leadership is to bridge, not to divide; leadership is to adapt, not too rigid; Leadership is to innovate, not a status quo; leadership is to move forward, not backward. This is particularly true for digital leadership because leaders today have to navigate through uncharted digital territories and lead toward a hyperconnected digital reality. Leadership effectiveness is less about controlling via command and status quo, more about influence via mind connecting and heart touching. What is further insight about Thought Leadership?
The Trends of Digital Innovation: Innovation takes a cycle of observing- questioning-connecting-networking-experimenting. From the management perspective, innovation is how to transform novel ideas to achieve its business value. Due to the hyper-complexity of modern business, innovation is essentially about reducing the unnecessary business complexity to tackle the complexities of business dynamic. Here are a series of blogs to brainstorm the digital trends of innovation.
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

Building a Set of “Digital-Ready” Cultures

Being digital-ready is an overarching approach via building a set of “digital-flavored” cultures and taking a series of step-wise practices.

Organizations large or small are on the journey of digital transformation, strategy making is important, strategy implementation is challenging, and one of the most critical business success factors is organizational culture, which is invisible, but powerful to fail a good strategy. Culture is a collective mindset, attitude, and it is shaped based on policies, procedures, rewards and retributions that drive behavior and it is the employee behavior that expresses "culture." In order to drive a successful digital transformation, how to build a “Digital-Ready” culture, though?

Solution-driven culture: Digital breaks down silo thinking and inspires across-functional communication and collaboration in building a solution-driven culture. Because with status quo and inflated ego, often leaders feel that they can only be the solution when in fact they are actually the problem in some situations. If the leader lacks that self-awareness of the impact they are having, how can they realistically reflect on their own role in the mix of digital dynamic? Part of the challenge with situations like this comes down to the leader's maturity and professionalism. If they lack maturity, they might well recognize they are part of the problem but still fail to do anything about it. The good leaders focus on solutions, not on blame. They also encourage employees to do the same, focus on building capability and solving problems, reward authenticity and excellence, not mediocre or unprofessional behaviors. It is so easy to point the finger elsewhere and not look within. Just think of the time/energy/money wasted by this pattern of blaming others. Avoiding this pattern begins with a belief and understanding behaviors have ripple effects and that we all tend to be drawn into situations which force us to learn and grow, and cultivate a solution-driven culture to accelerate digital transformation.

The innovative culture: Digital is also the age of innovation. Innovation comes from the combination of need and culture of open to new things and better way to do things. It is important to build a working environment which stimulates creativity and streamline innovation management. Tie the innovations and the innovative culture to the organization's strategy. This ensures that innovations will be supported by management and by all stakeholders. What fuels creativity? It is a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Intrinsically, all humans have the level of curiosity, desire to learn and natural ability to maintain an open and inquisitive mind; extrinsically, we have the conditions of the environment in which we operate, with all the restrictions, the needs, the gaps and pressures that might push our creative minds to soar and also push the organization to put more emphasis on innovation management effectiveness. In reality, lacking a positive strategic intent towards innovation in large mature organizations can become a big issue; so it’s important to leverage management tools (policies, programs, and structures) for creating a culture of innovation.

The culture of inclusiveness: Digital is the age of people. Good management practice is the ability to harness the best potential of all human capitals in the organization. Inclusion would be a team where everyone feels comfortable sharing ideas and thoughts because everyone has a different perspective based on their cognitive difference, different life experiences, and cultural intelligence. Inclusiveness needs to be well embedded into the business culture in a truly global organization, the beliefs, and the work needs to be sustainable, so the key is to embed the concepts and practical application, etc. into everything within the organization ranging from all people practices to engaging with the customers community, partners, leadership, etc. The focus of inclusiveness needs to focus on cognitive differences, skills, abilities and the wealth of ideas since the value lies in the contributions of the individual to the organization. These differences make the team stronger and will create a better product, service, and business brand.

Being digital-ready goes beyond applying the latest technologies. It is an overarching approach via building a set of “digital-flavored” cultures and taking a series of systematic step-wise practices. Cultural change in an organization begins with the involvement of the top management and their commitment to change. These are particularly required during changing times to keep workforce open to innovation including a compelling future vision and the presence of transformational leadership; high organizational justice (trust); a participatory management style and organizational agility.

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Building a Set of “Digital-Ready” Culture

Organizations large or small are on the journey for digital transformation, strategy making is important, strategy implementation is challenging, and one of the most critical business success factors is organizational culture, which can fail a good strategy. Culture is shaped based on policies, procedures, rewards and retributions that drive behavior and it is the employee behavior that expresses "culture." In order to drive a successful digital transformation, how to build a “Digital-Ready” culture?
Solution-driven culture: Digital breaks down silo thinking and inspires across-functional communication and collaboration in building a solution-driven culture. With status quo and overloaded ego, often leaders feel that they can only be the solution when in fact they are actually the problem in some situations. If the leader lacks that self-awareness of the impact they are having, how can they realistically reflect on their own role in the mix? Part of the challenge with situations like this comes down to the leader's maturity and self-awareness.  If they lack maturity, they might well recognize they are part of the problem but still fail to do anything about it. The good leaders focus on solutions, not on blame. They also encourage employees to do the same, focus on building capability and solving problems, reward true excellence, not mediocre or unprofessional behaviors. It is so easy to point the finger elsewhere and not look within. Just think of the time/energy/money wasted by this pattern of blaming others. Avoiding this pattern begins with a belief and understanding behaviors have ripple effects and that we all tend to be drawn into situations which force us to learn and grow, and culture a solution-driven culture to accelerate digital transformation.
The innovative culture: Digital is also the age of innovation. Innovation comes from the combination of need and culture of open to new things and better way to do things. It is important to build a working environment which stimulates creativity and streamline innovation management. Tie the innovations and the innovative culture to the organization's strategy. This ensures that innovations will be supported by management and by all stakeholders. What fuels creativity? It is a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Intrinsically, all humans have the level of curiosity, desire to learn and natural ability to maintain an open and inquisitive mind; extrinsically, we have the conditions of the environment in which we operate, with all the restrictions, the needs, the gaps and pressures that might push our creative minds to soar and also push the organization to put more emphasis on innovation management effectiveness. In reality, lacking a positive strategic intent towards innovation in large mature organizations can become an big issue; so it’s important to leverage management tools (policies, programs, and structures) for creating a culture of innovation.
The culture of inclusiveness: Digital is the age of people. Good management practice is the ability to harness the best potential of all human capitals in the organization. Inclusion would be a team where everyone feels comfortable sharing ideas and thoughts because everyone has a different perspective based on their cognitive difference, different life experiences, and cultural values. Inclusiveness needs to be well embedded into the business culture in a truly global organization, the beliefs, and the work needs to be sustainable--so the key is to embed the concepts and practical application, etc. into everything within the organization ranging from all people practices to engaging with the customers community, partners, leadership, etc. The focus of inclusiveness needs to focus on cognitive differences, skills, abilities and the wealth of ideas since the value lies in the contributions of the individual to the organization. These differences make the team stronger and will create a better product, service, and business brand.
Being digital-ready goes beyond taking the latest technologies. It is an overarching approach via building a set of “digital flavored” cultures and taking a series of systematic practices. Cultural change in an organization begins with the involvement of the top management and their commitment to change. These are particularly required during changing times to keep workforce open to innovation include a compelling future vision and the presence of transformational leadership; high organizational justice (trust); a participatory management style and organizational agility.

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu