Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1322

Innovation Brief: The Characteristics of Digital Innovation

Innovation takes cycle of observing-questioning-connecting-networking-experimenting. From 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 is a series of blogs to brainstorm the digital trends of innovation.The Characteristics of Digital InnovationHow to Manage the New Chapter of Digital Innovation   The world is becoming more hyper-connected with the latest digital technology advancement, are we ready to open the new chapter of digital innovation? Can we develop an approach which also places social, political and ethnic differences within a common framework to generate meaningful progress toward the next level of innovation? Is it possible to integrate the innovative concepts into a comprehensive approach that can generate intelligent solutions to the seemingly insurmountable large-scale problems? For example, how do you balance the partitioning of land and sea between man and nature? How can you use energy from sunlight to recycle all mass at the molecular scale locally? And if you were the Chief Innovation Officer in the organization or on the Earth, what’s your innovation agenda?
Running IT as an Innovation Hub IT is omnipresent and permeated into every corner of the organization. Forward-looking organizations are also reinventing IT reputation from a cost center to a value creator, from a static support function to a dynamic change agent; and from inside-out operation driven to outside-in customer-centric. To put simply, how can IT build differentiated capabilities to become an information power center and an innovation engine?
Three Aspects of Digital Innovation  Innovation agility is a critical business capability to manage innovation life cycle with speed, Idea validation is a crucial step in managing innovation with effectiveness and agility. The idea evaluation is a critical part of successful new product/business development. The basic goal of Idea Evaluation should be to quickly and thoughtfully weed out potential projects that are not a good fit for your particular business, so you can focus on the good ideas and commercialize its potential business values.  It is also an important aspect of innovation agility.
How to Digitalize Human Capital Management As always, talent is the most significant asset in any organization today. However, many businesses still treat their people as cost or resource only, lack of integrative approach to manage performance & potential; knowledge & culture in a holistic way. With the latest digital technologies and social platform, how to manage your human capital with effectiveness and agility?
How to Foster innovation and Manage Digital Disruption? In order to survive and thrive, innovation is “must have,” not “nice to have” approach in running a business today. But for most organizations, innovation is just a big puzzle with many tangled concerns: Can innovation be planned? What are some of the ideas that were applied to innovative initiatives that you have underway or experienced, either as the driver or participant, that helped facilitate or impeded their success? What are some viable approaches to being innovative while addressing the constant budget squeeze? Is innovation management a paradox? Do you have such an abundant innovation pipeline? If yes, what are the important considerations for leaders or managers to focus on? If not, how can organizations recognize innovation? In either case, how can leaders or managers in organizations leveraging innovation on their digital transformation journey?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about 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. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; 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 your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.



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Digital IT Tuning: From an Isolated Function to an Integrated Business Partner

Information Technology is the backbone of the digital business. In order to lead digital transformation, IT needs to transform itself from a cost center to a value creator, and from a discconnected function to an integral business partner. What are the causes of IT ineffectiveness, and how to shift from an isolated IT to a participated IT and improve IT organizational maturity?
Too often individuals including leaders are so busy looking at the trees that they fail to see the forest: Often IT is at the taking order mode, but does not spend sufficient time on  long term strategic perspectives. Some IT shows that communication is poor to non-existent. Reactive, no vision, mission, goals, or objectives other than what the business has handed them. IT does not understand the business' lifecycle and plans accordingly. In practice, IT needs to play a different role to the situation at hand, to figure out when IT should lead, when IT should follow. The CIO must have a seat at the executive table that he/she has to be the senior executive pushing the bar higher via innovation. Further, the CIO cannot just take a seat at the executive table, he/she must be an active participant at that table.  IT involves co-creating business strategy. This will allow IT to shine in both roles –as enabler and driver.
IT needs to not just look at symptoms, but also dig through root causes: The reason most of IT organizations get stuck in the lower level of maturity, is because they are busy on fixing the symptoms, or taking care of immediate problems, with ignorance of digging into the root cause of problems. What should be focused on is the integration of IT into the business decisions and processes. IT proactively works as an integral part of the business to capitalize on opportunity via in-depth understanding of business and leading the transformation, so IT can deliver the best solution to the business problems which meet business’s requirement for the long run or tailor customer’s needs.
Establishing that active participation is the key: As any business looks for ways to innovate or grow, all aspects of the executive team must participate in designing the objectives and strategy. None can sit back and merely respond passively. IT should facilitate the business partners to the right solutions and help to implement them. There is time for IT to follow, and there is time for IT to lead. Neither of these is wrong or right and choosing which is best should be dependent solely on the situation at hand. These roles will switch in all departments between leadership and support depending who takes the charge of a given project, and where the company's priorities set.Too often, IT is closed in their communications and is seen as an isolated function. Open and honest lines of communications can help any situation. The conversation has to flow from "How much does IT cost?" towards "How can we use IT to improve innovation, competitive advantage, agility, etc.?" Failure to deliver value in the eyes of the internal and external customers is a failure of IT leadership and a failure of whomever the CIO reports to.
it takes visionary leadership, solid governance process, talent people and latest technology to climb up maturity and build up a high-performance IT to achieve premium business value.

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The Book “Leadership Master” Tuning I: 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 status quo, more about influence via mind connecting. What is further insight about Thought Leadership?


Leadership is a principle: The substances of leadership are about vision, positive influence, and progression. Leaders have to make a conscious choice to continuously learn, practice and improve upon the leadership quality and influence. Leadership is about developing people not managing them. Therefore, it is imperative that "leadership" be re-imagined, explored, understood and embraced for it to be of any value. It is imperative that the elements of leadership be valued. Far too often the term "leadership" is thrown around loosely and without any regard to true meaning.  Remember, leadership isn't a job title; leadership really is a character and personal development, you must continue to learn and improve upon the leadership capabilities.
Leadership is a mindset: Leadership is a contextual phenomenon, that portents the state of the potential. It is a mindset that requires commitment from the very top of an organization all the way to the bottom without exception. There are many ways to realize the possibilities and demeanor to employ in making cause for the will to take root in the belief that a leader fosters from their followers. There are those who seek the justification of leadership via virtuous qualities, but its reality is a cultural sanctioning of a mean to an end. Leadership is a consequence of ecology. Talent development of such leadership tends to occur on an ad hoc basis and is dependent upon the emergence and recognition of these native talents. Digital leadership is about the balance of "Yin and Yang," to avoid the pitfall of “extreme thinking” or group thinking. If an executive leader has the right amount of humility, he or she will embrace the diversity of thoughts and pursue the outliner’s viewpoint, and strike the right balance in order to make effective decisions.
Leadership is about change: Fundamentally leadership is about change and influencing people to change. Leadership is the capacity to influence others through inspiration, motivated by a passion, generated by a vision, birthed by a conviction of a sense of purpose of why you were created. Leadership is the ability to influence with or without authority. It is the power of example that frees people to do willingly and well that which needs to be done. Leadership is moving you and others, and it is about change and evolving to what is needed next. Leadership is all about change management and also the ability to take the initiative. Though change is not for its own sake, but for innovation or improvement.
So a Thought Leader can connect the mind via knowledge & insight, touch heart via understanding, make sound judgment in decision making, leverage Systems principles in problem-solving, and they can strike the right balance of confidence and humility, creativity and standardization, leadership and management, local and global, and they are the one who never stop learning. Leadership journey is a healthy cycle: Practice leads to mastery which leads to wisdom which leads to more practice and more mastery.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Why Has IT Been Perceived as the ‘Weakest Link’

IT plays a more important role in digital transformation, it is the superglue to connect both the hard elements of the business such as processes, platforms, technologies and soft elements of the organization such as culture and integrate them into a set of business capabilities. However, there is the perception gap between IT looks at itself and the business perceive IT. IT is often seen itself as a business enabler, but business often thinks that IT is slower to change, and even one of the “weakest link” for the business transformation. So why is IT not getting enough respect despite all good work and huge efforts were undertaken? Where does it link to improve IT brand? He said she said, what are the different perspectives from each party, and how to integrate them into a holistic IT view and reinvent the tarnished IT reputation?
From Business Perspective: The majority of IT organizations still run in a static industrial mode -”built to last. Most often, this comes down to the business feeling that IT can't keep up with their demand for new services, in other words, that IT isn't as agile as it needs to be. IT is constantly in "developing" and "demand to manage" mode while business has gone far beyond that! With the age of IT consumerization,  these are the days of business users becoming tech savvy. Without collaborative communication, business goes around IT for new technology. This is always a sign that something is not going right. The worst thing to do is just put the policy in place to mandate it comes through IT since business will perceive IT as not a real business partner.
From IT perspective: Many organizations are not foresightful to empower their IT leaders or lack of in-depth understanding of IT responsibility, technology complexity, and the paradox of IT management -to both set up the standard and enable innovation. So  non-IT personnel doesn't understand technology thoroughly, and often think that it is far more capable than it is, and when it can't meet their lofty desires, blame it for their inability to succeed. Or, if the business does not invite the IT leaders to provide input for strategy, IT turns to be  an afterthought, and it's too late for a strong technical solution to be implemented in time. When this happens it all falls down and it’s a bad IT system that caused it. If IT were the weakest link, and then miscommunication caused by people are the weakest of the weak link: Communication is not clear between the participants, and IT is developing a different solution than the other department had in mind. Again, it becomes all IT fault for delivering the wrong, even if it was what was requested.
From leadership perspective: The issue is not whether IT matters as it clearly does. The issue is whether most business leaders understand how IT matters. IT is a business. Leadership is crucial to strengthen the links and weave them to the digital transformation. Unfortunately, some organizations are still keeping their IT in their back rooms. Unless IT leadership and organizational leadership work together collaboratively, the perception of IT is going to get worse before it gets better. The "us vs. them" mentality needs to be fixed. Innovative IT can only happen if IT is regarded as a partner and given the role in catalyzing innovation and driving the business.
To strengthen the IT or any business link, organizations should shift from inside out-operation driven to outside-in customer centric. The digital revolution means that channels to customers, links with business capability, and even efficiency of the workforce critically depends on the information enabled by IT. Back to fundamental, it not IT the weakest link in the organization, its people, the reality is that business leaders need digital acumen as much as financial acumen, and IT leaders need to gain business insight as well. And to reinvent IT, it’s not about controlling, but take more resource to do innovation, not just IT innovation, but business innovation and strengthen the business as a whole to leap digital transformation.
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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO”: Being "Digital Ready" from Multidimensional Lenses 6/30/2016

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.

Being "Digital Ready" from Multidimensional Lenses  6/30/2016Closing Three Gaps to Run an Innovative IT: Digital CIOs have many personas indicated in the “I” of the CIO title, “Chief Innovation Officer” is one of the most pertinent roles they need to fulfill, Because more often than not, technology is the disruptive force of innovation, and information is the very clue to developing the next and best products or service, as well as delighting customers. A great CIO with their finger on the pulse of technological advancement or information insight can provide many ideas on how new technology and abundance of information can create fresh new opportunities. The point is: What are innovation gaps organizations need to bridge, how can a CIO build a solid innovation agenda, and play such a digital role more effectively?
Three Aspects in Running a Digital-Ready IT Either running IT or managing the organization as a whole, being digitally ready goes beyond just applying the latest technologies or playing the trendy gadgets. The management has to follow digital principles and take a structured approach to shifting from inside-out operation focus to outside-in customer-centric. Digital transformation starts with mind shift, business value has to be driven, indicated and understood at all levels of the organization. This is accomplished by establishing strong interdependent relationships, shared vision, and wisdom. Here are three aspects of running a digital-ready IT organization.

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?
How to Build an IT Roadmap for Digital Transformation？ Forward-looking IT organizations are on the journey to digital transformation. And strategic IT leaders also build a solid roadmap to show the time sequence of a strategy. A "roadmap" is simply a plan for moving or transitioning, from one state to another. More specifically, how can CIOs build a digital-ready IT roadmap?
“Leadership Master” Book Introduction Chapter 3: Visionary Leadership: The substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about making a positive influence, providing direction, both for oneself and others. At the Digital Era with “VUCA” characteristics -Velocity, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, visionary leadership is in strong demand to navigate through uncharted water and blurred digital borders to guide businesses towards the right direction. Fundamentally, leadership is more about future but starts at today. A visionary mind has the ability to think the past, perceive what is now and foresee the future.
Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 6/30/2016

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”  6/30/2016Closing Three Gaps to Run an Innovative IT: Digital CIOs have many personas indicated in the “I” of the CIO title, “Chief Innovation Officer” is one of the most pertinent roles they need to fulfill, Because more often than not, technology is the disruptive force of innovation, and information is the very clue to developing the next and best products or service, as well as delighting customers. A great CIO with their finger on the pulse of technological advancement or information insight can provide many ideas on how new technology and abundance of information can create fresh new opportunities. The point is: What are innovation gaps organizations need to bridge, how can a CIO build a solid innovation agenda, and play such a digital role more effectively?
Three Aspects in Running a Digital-Ready IT Either running IT or managing the organization as a whole, being digitally ready goes beyond just applying the latest technologies or playing the trendy gadgets. The management has to follow digital principles and take a structured approach to shifting from inside-out operation focus to outside-in customer-centric. Digital transformation starts with mindshift, business value has to be driven, indicated and understood at all levels of the organization. This is accomplished by establishing strong interdependent relationships, the shared vision, and wisdom. Here are three aspects of running a digital-ready IT organization.
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?
How to Build an IT Roadmap for Digital Transformation？ Forward-looking IT organizations are on the journey to digital transformation. And strategic IT leaders also build a solid roadmap to show the time sequence of a strategy. A "roadmap" is simply a plan for moving or transitioning, from one state to another. More specifically, how can CIOs build a digital-ready IT roadmap?
“Leadership Master” Book Introduction Chapter 3: Visionary Leadership: The substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about making a positive influence, providing direction, both for oneself and others. At the Digital Era with “VUCA” characteristics -Velocity, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, visionary leadership is in strong demand to navigate through uncharted water and blurred digital borders to guide businesses towards the right direction. Fundamentally, leadership is more about future but starts at today. A visionary mind has the ability to think the past, perceive what is now and foresee the future.
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

Three Barriers in Change Management

Change is inevitable, and the speed of change is increasing. How capable the business is handling change would directly impact on the business competency. However, there is a high failure rate of Change Management statistically. What are the big barriers and how to craft change as an ongoing capability?

Ineffective change leadership: Change needs to have reasons: Remember no one like change  especially when one can not identify the justification for the change, the “What’s It In Me” mentality. Lack of effective change leadership is no doubt one of the root causes to fail change efforts. Successful transformations require leaders to over-communicate the transformation vision. Unclear communication for vision, goals, the need for change, benefits of change and each one's role in the change is a huge mistake. The leaders need to be the Change Agent to walk the talk, to set the right tone for others to follow. Top leaders' sponsorship for change is absolutely helpful, and change also must be adopted and led by all of the first line managers if others are to follow you lead. Only through the effective leadership, the change management can be well designed and practiced systematically.
Silo Mentality: Silo mentality is a common challenge for lots of organizations to make change sustainable and ensure the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces. In essence, with silo mentality, organizations lose their collaborative advantage as they are being over managed and under led, remain disconnected, hoard knowledge and power within silos, have change inertia, and do not have the competence to collaborate in the long term. Even businesses step into the hyper-connected digital world, many business managers and professional still apply old silo management mindsets to new ways of organizing, and this legacy of the old economy limits many 'networked' organizations. In today's volatile economy, nothing impedes progress more than protective silos which are simply a form of bureaucratic amorphous mass designed to preserve the status quo. Hence, break down silo mentality is one of the important requirement for Change Management success.
Be cognizant of unknown: There are no prescribed change formula, or one size fits all change scenario. Businesses are different, people are different, the very goal behind each change initiative is also different. Therefore, you have to be humble to realize there are many things you know you don’t know and perhaps even more which you don't know what you don't know. Until that happens, you will continue on the lives in blindness. Change is the team effort, encourage all employees to provide feedback, ask questions, and participate change proactively, to expand their view of the business and gain a holistic understanding about changes. As a change leader or manager, be humble, desire insight and squash arrogance. Do not fuel to the fire with an over-reaction, but provide calm inquiry clearing the blind spots to help find out what is really happening, and drive changes effortlessly.
'Change' is continuously happening in the environment of a company. The desires of stakeholders, clients and employees are evolving naturally. The change or overall business transformation journey is thorny, there are many roadblocks on the way. Change Management, therefore, should be an adequate, logical, and systematic effort to any environmental shift.  And now, social and enterprise collaboration tools do provide effective and interesting digital platforms to make change more tangible and measurable. Do not make change just a one time initiative, but an ongoing capability.




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Three 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.” 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. But what are the pitfalls in running a differentiated digital IT?
Lack of transformative IT leadership: Contemporary IT leaders are not just tactical technology managers, they are business visionaries and strategists, innovators and change agents. To run a differentiated digital IT, CIOs need to be in a continuous learning mode, and discover the new way to solve the old problems or emergent challenges. The CIO must be concerned as to whether the operational ecosystem will function as expected. CIOs also need to become Chief Innovation Officers to run IT as innovation engine; otherwise, you will become Chiefly Irrelevant Officers. What's missing in many organizations is the CIO's ability to question the business' requirements and justifications used for IT based projects, or they lack of a clear vision and step-wise strategy to drive digital transformation. TO lead effectively, CIOs have to advocate for "departmental immersion" and other strategies to help IT become more integrated and aware of the organization as a whole. IT needs to be proactive, not reactive. Fortunately, there's a fundamental shift happening with the emergence of converging digital technologies that impact the business through cross-departmental collaboration. When CIOs realize they need more visibility, communication, and better tools to empower that to improve organizational maturity, The IT organization becomes a key differentiator to help the business build a set of unique capabilities to compete for the future.
Excessive IT complexity limits innovation and the enlarged gaps between IT and business: The pitfalls to run a differentiated IT is also due to silo thinking, analysis paralysis, legacy technologies, lack of business/IT understanding, not leveraging the collective brainpower of strategic vendor partnerships, lack of in-depth understanding the capabilities or resources, lack of business/IT understanding and lack of outside-in customer-centric approaches as well. To run a differentiated digital IT, forward-looking organizations have to empower IT to become the change department of the business, encourage IT and business to try out new ideas, learn from what is working and what doesn't, and improve the deliverables in a continuous delivery mode. The buttom-line driven IT thinking can not move fast enough in the age of the digitalization. Solely focus on quantifiable benefits or short-term result, aside from treating innovation initiatives like typical IT projects that are constrained by quick ROI, will also stifle radical innovation to drive business growth. A differentiated IT, on the other hand, has much more of an opportunity to enable incremental top-line and bottom-line value across the business, not just within IT, but cross-organizational scope.
Lack of open culture in most organizations: As IT is increasingly supportive of the competitive position and the business, in general, careful consideration must be made about which knowledge or skills have to be secured. Mis-judgement in this regard will hamper the long-term ability of the IT department to independently support strategic initiatives from the business. Many of the innovation management challenges are not exclusive to IT yet the symptoms are often more visible in IT due to the fact that IT work touches, serve, and supports virtually every aspect of the enterprise. These challenges are not easily solved and can not be addressed through the use of a tactical project management approach. Hence, it is also critical to build an open culture and a flexible structure to eliminate those innovation pitfalls. From innovation management perspective, the innovative leadership team should well mix the innovator personas: movers and shakers, thought leaders, critical thinkers, experimenters, reframers, set the right tone to inspire the new thinking and encourage the new way to do things and lead enterprise-wide innovation management.
The ultimate goal to run a differentiated digital IT is to help the organization build a set of unique capabilities, and  improve the whole business’s competency. The real differentiation is to create true value, look forward, not backward, avoid those pitfalls on the way, and present the high-performance results.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

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? How do you define “Digital Fit”?
   Running a Digital Ready Talent ManagementHow do you define “Digital Fit”? The term 'fit' can be interpreted with a degree of variability: “Digital fit” should be first defined as “mind fit.” The right mindset is utmost quality for being a right fit because the power of the mind is the force to change the business or even the world for better, and then following with attitude fit and behavior fit. Where you want to look for 'fit' is in relation to the cognitive intelligence to speed up digital transformation, values you want to build or maintain within your team, and the kinds of behaviors that you would expect to see as a result of, or in alignment with those values. “Fitting” doesn’t take cookie cutting approach, organizational fit means "incluversity." “Fit” doesn't mean that everyone needs to have the same thought process, the same personalities, the same preferences, or the same experiences. On the opposite, the beauty is in the color of characters and many shades of creativity.
How to Innovate Talent Management  With the increasing speed of changes and advanced digital technologies, organizations large or small is also facing the challenges to innovate talent management and take care of their most important assets - people more effectively. It starts with mind shift - from treating people as cost and resource to plug in, to thinking them as human capital to invest in. Researches show that the foundation of business success is innovation. Creativity is #1 skill needed in the digital Era, how can organizations build a creative working environment and unleash their talent potential as well as the full business potential?
The Business Fitness for Digital Paradigm Shift: Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, process to technology, both horizontally and vertically. Digital becomes the very fabric of high performing business, being outside-in and customer-centric is the new mantra for forward-looking and high mature digital organizations today. At the heart of digital, it is people and how to build a customer-centric organization. But how to assess the digital fitness of your organization for such a paradigm shift?
Three "C's in Building an innovative team: There are still full of serendipity in creativity: How many forms of creativity are there? How are they different? How are they similar? Isn't what makes them similar or different, also what makes them creativity? Creativity has many forms and manifestations. Take the standpoint that creativity has its starting point within an individual. Individual creativity is absolutely critical, but how to build a creative team to harness collective creativity?
Three Perspectives to Bridge the “Trust Gaps”: Digital workforce in organizations today are multigenerational, multicultural, multidevicing; on one hand, the business becomes hyperconnected and always on; on the other hand, every person is different, every generation is different, and every region in the multinational company is also different, from talent management perspective, besides “skills gap” the organization need to close; minding the trust gap is perhaps another challenging facing in businesses and our society.
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. 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

Take Digital Leap via Closing Three Blind Spots

Digital means changes. Being static is no longer a choice for today’s digital professionals or businesses. If you do not move fast enough to adapt to changes, you already lag behind. However, digital dynamic also creates more blind spots because of its “VUCA” characteristics - Velocity, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. So how to drive the business in the fast laie and take digital leap via closing those blind spots?

Strategy blind spot: With increasing speed of changes, many organizations are inundated with tactical tasks and operational tasks, they don’t spend enough time on scrutinizing the long term strategy and identify fatal blind spots in order to make a smooth business transformation.  Indeed, there are both blind spots in strategy formulation and execution. That also means they probably wouldn't know where is the weakest link in the business and how to invest in new capabilities for their business, even if the organization thought there was any value justification for making the investment. To clear the path, whether that be the elimination of obstacles, closing the blind spots, or to provide guidance - so that the business as a whole can unleash its full potential.
Talent blind spot: Many organizations are still running at the industrial speed with bureaucratic culture and hierarchical decision-making scenario, business is the sum of pieces than a holistic whole, functional silos compete for resources, rather than work collaboratively to optimize business. Such silo mentalities will create numerous blind spots in resources, process, capacity, and capability. The company's reputation and success today are founded on innovation and to a very large extent, the most invaluable asset of the business is the talented people. Therefore, it’s important to build high performance team with heterogeneous group setting, complementary skills and capabilities in order to fill blind spots, clear business vision, and spur creativity. The productivity is higher in an innovative organization, and an innovative organization has less blind spots because people do not fear to provide feedback and cognitive difference expands the lenses to see the business thoroughly, and the talent employees are limited only by their imagination.
Measurement blind spot: One possible cause of the blind spot is the fact that many traditional organizations can neither sufficiently measure the business value in a multidimensional way, as a consequence, articulate their value to the organization’s shareholders. That also means they probably wouldn't know where to invest in new capabilities. even if the organization thought there was any value justification for making the investment. The "measurement" of productivity -- not productivity itself has blind spots as well. Because of the business manager keep on asking employee productivity instead of focusing on getting things to work correctly. Sometimes, the selected metrics show productivity improvements, but no real business improvements. Measurement becomes the end, for its own sake, and create more blind spots, and distract businesses from implementing strategy effectively.The business speed can only be accelerated with a clear vision, strong focus and collective capabilities. By closing all those fatal blind spots, an organization can be well prepared to effectively and efficiently absorb and accept change in all its forms; an organization in which change does not disrupt and interfere with business as usual, an organization for which the ability to evolve, adapt and innovate is business as usual. The intention is to enable a leadership culture at all levels across the organizations.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu