Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1334
May 25, 2016
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Contemporary Digital Fit?
Digital contemporary fitness requires envisioning new perspectives, shaping the new box of thinking, building new competency.
Contemporary means “living or occurring at the same time” in the dictionary. To add the digital theme of the word, digital contemporary goes beyond describing the art or artist, digital contemporary professionals are perceived as modern, open-minded, informative, creative, and changeable to adapt to the digital new normal. They “think digitally,” contrary to analog thinking; they live digitally, not just because they use the latest fancy gadgets or wear the fashionable dresses, more because they are equipped with digital mindset, have the ability to adapt to changes or weather changes, and they have unique and impressive digital footprint to build their contemporary digital persona and capability portfolio cohesively and continually. Therefore, digital contemporary is less on style, more based on strength. You have to dig beyond the surface. Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s contemporary digital fit?
Do you have the contemporary digital mindset? There is no doubt we live in the digital era with advanced technology and rapid speed of changes. However, most of the mindsets today which shaped a couple of decades ago in the pre-digital era haven’t got updated enough yet. Digital means hyper-connectivity, the industrial mindset favor silos; Digital means flow, the industrial mindset prefers static thinking; Digital means people-centricity, the industrial mindset is more process-driven; Digital is the age of empathy, the industrial mind confuses sympathy with empathy; digital mind co-creates new knowledge based on the click-away abundant information and informal learning; the industrial mind just learns the existing knowledge often via formal education, which is often already outdated when applying later; digital fitness is based on recombinant capabilities and continuous delivery, and the industrial talent management focuses on static certificates or quantitative measurement only; digital is the era of innovation, but the industrial mind sticks to rigidity. In brief, the digital mindset has unconventional wisdom via critical thinking, creative thinking, and independent thinking. The conventional mind is bound by its beliefs and general practices, it perhaps works in considerably static industrial age. But in a digital society with more open culture, conventional wisdom has a negative connotation about sticking to the outdated concepts, traditions, cultures, or the old ways to do things. The contemporary digital professionals are authentic, creative, and confident.The tendency to constantly question the status quo, the think differently, act differently, deliver differently, and add value differently.
Do you have a contemporary working style? The work in the digital era is no longer just the place we go, but the tasks we accomplish. And learning also needs to be a daily routine in the lifetime journey. The advancement of digital brings the new level of professional freedom, of being “who you are,” and who you want to be. There are fine-tuned digital principles to follow, but less rigid procedures or hidden rules to obey. In fact, by learning to live less by rules, we would see a fundamental digital paradigm shift as we know it. For example, from business management perspective, if each function in the company didn't have its own set of rules and behaviors by which it abides by, but with the common corporate principles everyone voluntarily follows, the working place without too much rigid processes or hidden rules will encourage more free thinking, true talent discovery, creativity, inclusiveness of thought and character. Because now businesses are always-on, hyperconnected, and interdependent, when silo or bureaucracy manipulates the corporate world, the talent potential couldn’t be unleashed, and the differentiated business capabilities couldn’t be built up, and business culture wouldn't be innovative.
Do you have a contemporary digital profile and portfolio? Your digital footprint becomes more crucial to reflect “who you are,” than your physical self, because it flows and dynamic, connects minds and hearts all over the globe. Digital footprint is more than the feet crunching in the sand, it may also like the wind blowing in the trees, the waves curling on the beach, the firework blossoms in the sky. Your digital profile needs to have a cohesive consistency with your “true-self,” though it doesn’t mean it should be as tedious as some daily routine, it should reflect your dynamic thought processes, your innate strength, and your professional brand. The contemporary digital professionals with innovative, proactive and progressive digital profile can reinvent themselves more seamlessly and amplify digital influence via practicing high professional knowledge power.
Digital contemporary fitness requires envisioning new perspectives, shaping the new box of thinking, building new competency, altering or changing the frame of reference to create previously unconsidered solutions. With rapid changes and frequent disruptions, we have to be able to reinvent ourselves and continue to build new capabilities, seek unconventional wisdom, develop "digital fitness" practices, with a broader vision to achieve more.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Contemporary means “living or occurring at the same time” in the dictionary. To add the digital theme of the word, digital contemporary goes beyond describing the art or artist, digital contemporary professionals are perceived as modern, open-minded, informative, creative, and changeable to adapt to the digital new normal. They “think digitally,” contrary to analog thinking; they live digitally, not just because they use the latest fancy gadgets or wear the fashionable dresses, more because they are equipped with digital mindset, have the ability to adapt to changes or weather changes, and they have unique and impressive digital footprint to build their contemporary digital persona and capability portfolio cohesively and continually. Therefore, digital contemporary is less on style, more based on strength. You have to dig beyond the surface. Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s contemporary digital fit?
Do you have the contemporary digital mindset? There is no doubt we live in the digital era with advanced technology and rapid speed of changes. However, most of the mindsets today which shaped a couple of decades ago in the pre-digital era haven’t got updated enough yet. Digital means hyper-connectivity, the industrial mindset favor silos; Digital means flow, the industrial mindset prefers static thinking; Digital means people-centricity, the industrial mindset is more process-driven; Digital is the age of empathy, the industrial mind confuses sympathy with empathy; digital mind co-creates new knowledge based on the click-away abundant information and informal learning; the industrial mind just learns the existing knowledge often via formal education, which is often already outdated when applying later; digital fitness is based on recombinant capabilities and continuous delivery, and the industrial talent management focuses on static certificates or quantitative measurement only; digital is the era of innovation, but the industrial mind sticks to rigidity. In brief, the digital mindset has unconventional wisdom via critical thinking, creative thinking, and independent thinking. The conventional mind is bound by its beliefs and general practices, it perhaps works in considerably static industrial age. But in a digital society with more open culture, conventional wisdom has a negative connotation about sticking to the outdated concepts, traditions, cultures, or the old ways to do things. The contemporary digital professionals are authentic, creative, and confident.The tendency to constantly question the status quo, the think differently, act differently, deliver differently, and add value differently.
Do you have a contemporary working style? The work in the digital era is no longer just the place we go, but the tasks we accomplish. And learning also needs to be a daily routine in the lifetime journey. The advancement of digital brings the new level of professional freedom, of being “who you are,” and who you want to be. There are fine-tuned digital principles to follow, but less rigid procedures or hidden rules to obey. In fact, by learning to live less by rules, we would see a fundamental digital paradigm shift as we know it. For example, from business management perspective, if each function in the company didn't have its own set of rules and behaviors by which it abides by, but with the common corporate principles everyone voluntarily follows, the working place without too much rigid processes or hidden rules will encourage more free thinking, true talent discovery, creativity, inclusiveness of thought and character. Because now businesses are always-on, hyperconnected, and interdependent, when silo or bureaucracy manipulates the corporate world, the talent potential couldn’t be unleashed, and the differentiated business capabilities couldn’t be built up, and business culture wouldn't be innovative.
Do you have a contemporary digital profile and portfolio? Your digital footprint becomes more crucial to reflect “who you are,” than your physical self, because it flows and dynamic, connects minds and hearts all over the globe. Digital footprint is more than the feet crunching in the sand, it may also like the wind blowing in the trees, the waves curling on the beach, the firework blossoms in the sky. Your digital profile needs to have a cohesive consistency with your “true-self,” though it doesn’t mean it should be as tedious as some daily routine, it should reflect your dynamic thought processes, your innate strength, and your professional brand. The contemporary digital professionals with innovative, proactive and progressive digital profile can reinvent themselves more seamlessly and amplify digital influence via practicing high professional knowledge power.
Digital contemporary fitness requires envisioning new perspectives, shaping the new box of thinking, building new competency, altering or changing the frame of reference to create previously unconsidered solutions. With rapid changes and frequent disruptions, we have to be able to reinvent ourselves and continue to build new capabilities, seek unconventional wisdom, develop "digital fitness" practices, with a broader vision to achieve more.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
How to Innovate Talent Management
It’s important to find an adequate way of assessing the “creative workplace,” appropriately.
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?
Leveraging the latest digital thinking, technology, and methodology to invest talent smartly: The traditional hiring or training programs are costly, and often outdated due to silos thinking and overly rigid processes in HR which stifle innovation. There is too much focus on searching for static knowledge and maintain the cost, not done enough to capture insight and build talent competency. It is understood that talent management and performance management have been made complicated using means of traditional approaches and outdated processes. With the abundance of information and shortened knowledge cycle, it is more strategic imperative to develop digital talent pipelines and hunt for the right mindsets and dynamic capability for making smart investments. It is also important to not just train your people with "one-size fits all" program, but to understand your people of being "who they are," develop them, grow them, and well-align their career goals with strategic business goals to achieve business prosperity. Employees will do better work for an employer that invested on them. If an employee feels that enterprise invests on the people, both for their personal development and the enterprise interests, they would fully be grateful and more engaged in contributing fresh ideas and putting extra effort for solving problems creatively.
Encouraging cross-functional communication and collaboration: Creativity is about connecting the dots, not just within a functional box, but often more effectively across the functional boxes, even across the business and industry. People, have to work more closely with other functions in order to provide tailored talent solutions across business ecosystem. Digital is the age of empathy with the power of information, good information is always a good place to start improvement and innovation. To innovate talent management, IT and HR should work hand-in-hand to manage information, analyze talent trend and capture business insight. Then coupled with the personal touch, engagement, resolution, and development can follow. Doing innovation, especially radical innovation takes guts and vision. Innovation is about emerging practices. However, most of the organizations seek the safety net far too quickly in the planning, rather than allowing the innovative spirit a freer reign. The needs to be able to justify seems to have taken precedent over the challenge associated with pioneering innovation. Or many organizations are holding back or being uncomfortable with applying technology to enhancing cross-functional collaboration, and ultimately encouraging innovation, due to bureaucratic culture and tunnel vision. Looked at positively, this reflects the increasing strategic importance of talent management innovation and how some HR processes need to be transformed into digitized business processes which underpin innovation capability of the organization.
Top leaders and talent managers need to become the culture shaker: Outdated systems and processes drag down talented people every time. To shape the culture of innovation, performance management needs to be well integrated with talent management and culture management via building an effective framework of processes and guidelines dealing with dynamic, fluid, unpredictable pool of corporate mentality and behaviors. The culture has to invite and encourage innovation. Create a measure that assesses the different dimensions of organizational creativity adequately while keeping it general enough to assess this in a wide range of organizations and job roles. Otherwise, after a while, even the most outspoken, creative, innovative people stop offering improvements, ideas, etc. because they get the "that will never work" mentality, or other bureaucratic roadblocks. People have to be given the opportunity to be creative, they have to become empowered. Reward creativity, not mediocrity; reward "thinking productivity" to improve business agility and maturity, not just “working productivity” for achieving efficiency. Business leaders and talent managers obviously aware that a quantitative measure would not be a perfect solution, but the importance of creativity for organizations is well-known, it’s important to find an adequate way of assessing the “creative workplace,” appropriately. This, in turn, is a motivating factor for their staff engagement, output capacity improvement, and it needs to be a reality in any forward-thinking and innovation-seeking organizations around the world.
To be successful, business leaders should know that they need to learn quickly as to how they can assign the right person for the right position at the right time, and fully unleash their potentials; the “hard” business processes should enable the soft success factors such as building the culture of innovation. Talent management innovation can only be achieved via innovative leadership, integrated processes, and creative & self-driven employees. The top leaders should be change champions and talent managers are change agents. The organizational talent management, performance management, knowledge management and culture management need to be integrated in order to well align organizational vision with staff engagement. And then, innovation becomes a daily routine to run a high-performing digital organization.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
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?
Leveraging the latest digital thinking, technology, and methodology to invest talent smartly: The traditional hiring or training programs are costly, and often outdated due to silos thinking and overly rigid processes in HR which stifle innovation. There is too much focus on searching for static knowledge and maintain the cost, not done enough to capture insight and build talent competency. It is understood that talent management and performance management have been made complicated using means of traditional approaches and outdated processes. With the abundance of information and shortened knowledge cycle, it is more strategic imperative to develop digital talent pipelines and hunt for the right mindsets and dynamic capability for making smart investments. It is also important to not just train your people with "one-size fits all" program, but to understand your people of being "who they are," develop them, grow them, and well-align their career goals with strategic business goals to achieve business prosperity. Employees will do better work for an employer that invested on them. If an employee feels that enterprise invests on the people, both for their personal development and the enterprise interests, they would fully be grateful and more engaged in contributing fresh ideas and putting extra effort for solving problems creatively.
Encouraging cross-functional communication and collaboration: Creativity is about connecting the dots, not just within a functional box, but often more effectively across the functional boxes, even across the business and industry. People, have to work more closely with other functions in order to provide tailored talent solutions across business ecosystem. Digital is the age of empathy with the power of information, good information is always a good place to start improvement and innovation. To innovate talent management, IT and HR should work hand-in-hand to manage information, analyze talent trend and capture business insight. Then coupled with the personal touch, engagement, resolution, and development can follow. Doing innovation, especially radical innovation takes guts and vision. Innovation is about emerging practices. However, most of the organizations seek the safety net far too quickly in the planning, rather than allowing the innovative spirit a freer reign. The needs to be able to justify seems to have taken precedent over the challenge associated with pioneering innovation. Or many organizations are holding back or being uncomfortable with applying technology to enhancing cross-functional collaboration, and ultimately encouraging innovation, due to bureaucratic culture and tunnel vision. Looked at positively, this reflects the increasing strategic importance of talent management innovation and how some HR processes need to be transformed into digitized business processes which underpin innovation capability of the organization.
Top leaders and talent managers need to become the culture shaker: Outdated systems and processes drag down talented people every time. To shape the culture of innovation, performance management needs to be well integrated with talent management and culture management via building an effective framework of processes and guidelines dealing with dynamic, fluid, unpredictable pool of corporate mentality and behaviors. The culture has to invite and encourage innovation. Create a measure that assesses the different dimensions of organizational creativity adequately while keeping it general enough to assess this in a wide range of organizations and job roles. Otherwise, after a while, even the most outspoken, creative, innovative people stop offering improvements, ideas, etc. because they get the "that will never work" mentality, or other bureaucratic roadblocks. People have to be given the opportunity to be creative, they have to become empowered. Reward creativity, not mediocrity; reward "thinking productivity" to improve business agility and maturity, not just “working productivity” for achieving efficiency. Business leaders and talent managers obviously aware that a quantitative measure would not be a perfect solution, but the importance of creativity for organizations is well-known, it’s important to find an adequate way of assessing the “creative workplace,” appropriately. This, in turn, is a motivating factor for their staff engagement, output capacity improvement, and it needs to be a reality in any forward-thinking and innovation-seeking organizations around the world.
To be successful, business leaders should know that they need to learn quickly as to how they can assign the right person for the right position at the right time, and fully unleash their potentials; the “hard” business processes should enable the soft success factors such as building the culture of innovation. Talent management innovation can only be achieved via innovative leadership, integrated processes, and creative & self-driven employees. The top leaders should be change champions and talent managers are change agents. The organizational talent management, performance management, knowledge management and culture management need to be integrated in order to well align organizational vision with staff engagement. And then, innovation becomes a daily routine to run a high-performing digital organization.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
May 24, 2016
Change Mentality Brief
Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice within an organization, but too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crisis, and demands. This is the bureaucracy’s way of meeting the challenges. How to understand the mentalities behind the change as the first step, in order to fine tune the process of Change Management, and overcome the obstacles to managing a digital transformation smoothly?
Change MentalitiesA ‘Changeable’ Mindset ? Change is accelerated at the digital era, to embrace change requires a change of mindset at every level and an understanding that things cannot stay the same. This is the groundwork that has to be done at all levels prior to initiating major change. But why is changing the mindset so difficult, and how to overcome it?
The Psychologies behind the Changes Change is the only constant, the speed of change is accelerated. Organizations have to manage change effectively in order to implement their strategy cohesively. However, more than two-thirds of change management fail to reach the expectation. Why do people resist changes? Relevantly to the strategic context and its necessities, what limit is this "collective worker" able to reach? To what conditions? What would be a good way to empower change capabilities. What’re the psychology behind the change, and how do you manage change not as a one-time project, but an ongoing capability?
Which is Better Mentality: Adapt to Change or Mitigate the Change? The speed of change is expedited, which one is the better strategy: adapting to a changing climate, or taking steps to mitigate the changes that are already underway?
What’s your Psychological Response to Changes? Change is inevitable in any organization today, it’s not for its own sake, but for continuous improvement or even breakthrough to adapt to the business dynamic. However, the change inertia is also a reality. From Change Management and talent management perspective: How the age and different emotions response to changes? Is change friction really getting bigger when one gets older? Or does lack of vision make people act old? Age or mindset, what’s the real obstacle to adapt to changes. e some ideas to assist in breaking down silos in an organization where they are present?
Can you “Move out of your Comfort Zone”? Change is the new normal. Change is situational. It happens when something starts or stops, or when something that used to happen in one way starts happening in another. But acceptance of change is transitional, and “moving out of your comfort zone" can be used at all levels and as a starting point for change. It might sound like a cliche, the trick is understanding that moving out of a comfort zone leads to the creation of a new comfort zone which in turn will require you to move out "of" it again. This continuous moving "out" of your comfort zone is complemented by the cycle of self-development. There is a classic fable about a lion and a gazelle to analogize such a "surviving and thriving cycles": The lion wakes up and starts running otherwise it will not catch lunch. The gazelle does the same but, in this case, to avoid becoming lunch. Either way, you have to move to survive. This principle can be applied in a physical sense as well. The human body is designed for motion and physical effort.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 the 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.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Silo Effects to Stifle IT Innovation
Silo thinking creates blind spots and enlarges IT-business gaps.
Forward-looking organizations are reimagining the digital potential of IT and reinventing IT reputation from a cost center to an innovation engine. However, the majority of IT organizations still get stuck at the lower level of maturity, running as a siloed function. Despite the mountain of evidence pointing the detrimental effects of these silos, they still seem to be quite common in the organization. What are the root causes to silos? Are silos a mere product of organizational design? Or is their nature tied to human nature? What are silo effects which stifle innovation, and downgrade IT effectiveness and performance? What would be some ideas to assist in breaking down silos in an organization where they are present?
Fail to engage users in IT Innovation and transformation: Fundamentally, IT innovation is business innovation, and IT transformation is a significant step in the business’s digital transformation. Though silo is perhaps inevitable in any structured business, It is the responsibility of the leaders to initiate his or her team to break the silos, enhance cross-functional communication and collaboration for both idea brainstorming and innovation management. Because silos are reservoirs for homogeneous thinking, limiting the organization's creativity and digital potential. Engaging and empowering your end user is vital in innovation management. Particularly as business has become more tech-savvy, and as such, aware of their power to demand what they want, when and how they want it. Collaborate with customers and partners, as they are what makes or breaks a successful IT. IT needs to invent itself with a startup culture, to innovate and re-imagine customer-centricity by going through the change and IT transformation. It is the foresight the business leader who takes control of business strategy and leverages IT tools and technologies to meet targets incorporated in an integral digital strategy with customer-centricity.
Silo thinking creates blind spot: Most business managers and teams operate with an incomplete and relatively small view of the business ecosystem, if creativity is all about connecting the dots, perhaps they don’t have the wide range of dots to connect, thus, too often, they get stuck to “we always do things like this,” and when they keep moving forward, they create the blind spots, or jump to the wrong conclusions. 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. If most managers still apply old silo management mindsets to new ways of organizing and this legacy of the old economy limits many digital organizations. The managers today, especially senior leaders should have the ability to see the big picture, to complement team’s viewpoint. Because people who can see the bigger picture, abstract the insight from the overloading information, and are not living the day-to-day activities, are needed to clear blind spots, integrate a multitude of viewpoints, and inspire the culture of innovation. Also, it's important to encourage teams to "think in bigger boxes" (think outside of your job description and consider company and industry and even societal impacts.) Engage all employees in improving their processes, and create the expectation that positive behaviors and mutual respect are valued above everything else. Assume that every problem has multiple solutions and takes the time to look at every situation from multiple points of view (customer POV, supplier POV, management POV, etc). Innovation can be managed more effectively via filling those blind spots.
Enlarged IT -business gap with “lost in translation” symptom: The disconnect between the business and IT is still one of the root causes to fail IT and business as a whole. And silo thinking is the root cause to enlarge the gap. If the light keeps on, business doesn't bother to learn IT, or IT still treats projects as just technical challenges instead of business initiatives. There are negative conflicts when the organization has little collaborative competency. The mistake that most organizations make in business communication is to fail to translate the high-level language of strategy into the professional language of the various staff specialism. Engineers have engineering language, marketers have marketing language, etc. The businesses need more specialized generalists who are fluent in different business dialects and connect the cross-functional dots smoothly in order to harness communication and stimulate innovation. Clear communication is essential. Spend the time to improve the language gap between IT and non-IT. Fostering collaboration is the key to creating a seamless organization when in pursuit of a strategy. To bridge the gap between IT and business, alignment is not sufficient, integration is the next level, because when they integrate, there is more potential to innovate and create value, more so when the collaborative competency of the organization is strong.
Silos don't seem to fit within emerging hyperconnected, collaborative organizational forms, and if they are being reinforced, their existence is perhaps a legacy of old management thinking applied to the digital way of doing and achieving high performing result. The result could be a higher risk of conflict and inertia, not something organization's want in a global marketplace that demands innovation, speed, responsiveness and flexibility to succeed.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Forward-looking organizations are reimagining the digital potential of IT and reinventing IT reputation from a cost center to an innovation engine. However, the majority of IT organizations still get stuck at the lower level of maturity, running as a siloed function. Despite the mountain of evidence pointing the detrimental effects of these silos, they still seem to be quite common in the organization. What are the root causes to silos? Are silos a mere product of organizational design? Or is their nature tied to human nature? What are silo effects which stifle innovation, and downgrade IT effectiveness and performance? What would be some ideas to assist in breaking down silos in an organization where they are present?
Fail to engage users in IT Innovation and transformation: Fundamentally, IT innovation is business innovation, and IT transformation is a significant step in the business’s digital transformation. Though silo is perhaps inevitable in any structured business, It is the responsibility of the leaders to initiate his or her team to break the silos, enhance cross-functional communication and collaboration for both idea brainstorming and innovation management. Because silos are reservoirs for homogeneous thinking, limiting the organization's creativity and digital potential. Engaging and empowering your end user is vital in innovation management. Particularly as business has become more tech-savvy, and as such, aware of their power to demand what they want, when and how they want it. Collaborate with customers and partners, as they are what makes or breaks a successful IT. IT needs to invent itself with a startup culture, to innovate and re-imagine customer-centricity by going through the change and IT transformation. It is the foresight the business leader who takes control of business strategy and leverages IT tools and technologies to meet targets incorporated in an integral digital strategy with customer-centricity.
Silo thinking creates blind spot: Most business managers and teams operate with an incomplete and relatively small view of the business ecosystem, if creativity is all about connecting the dots, perhaps they don’t have the wide range of dots to connect, thus, too often, they get stuck to “we always do things like this,” and when they keep moving forward, they create the blind spots, or jump to the wrong conclusions. 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. If most managers still apply old silo management mindsets to new ways of organizing and this legacy of the old economy limits many digital organizations. The managers today, especially senior leaders should have the ability to see the big picture, to complement team’s viewpoint. Because people who can see the bigger picture, abstract the insight from the overloading information, and are not living the day-to-day activities, are needed to clear blind spots, integrate a multitude of viewpoints, and inspire the culture of innovation. Also, it's important to encourage teams to "think in bigger boxes" (think outside of your job description and consider company and industry and even societal impacts.) Engage all employees in improving their processes, and create the expectation that positive behaviors and mutual respect are valued above everything else. Assume that every problem has multiple solutions and takes the time to look at every situation from multiple points of view (customer POV, supplier POV, management POV, etc). Innovation can be managed more effectively via filling those blind spots.
Enlarged IT -business gap with “lost in translation” symptom: The disconnect between the business and IT is still one of the root causes to fail IT and business as a whole. And silo thinking is the root cause to enlarge the gap. If the light keeps on, business doesn't bother to learn IT, or IT still treats projects as just technical challenges instead of business initiatives. There are negative conflicts when the organization has little collaborative competency. The mistake that most organizations make in business communication is to fail to translate the high-level language of strategy into the professional language of the various staff specialism. Engineers have engineering language, marketers have marketing language, etc. The businesses need more specialized generalists who are fluent in different business dialects and connect the cross-functional dots smoothly in order to harness communication and stimulate innovation. Clear communication is essential. Spend the time to improve the language gap between IT and non-IT. Fostering collaboration is the key to creating a seamless organization when in pursuit of a strategy. To bridge the gap between IT and business, alignment is not sufficient, integration is the next level, because when they integrate, there is more potential to innovate and create value, more so when the collaborative competency of the organization is strong.
Silos don't seem to fit within emerging hyperconnected, collaborative organizational forms, and if they are being reinforced, their existence is perhaps a legacy of old management thinking applied to the digital way of doing and achieving high performing result. The result could be a higher risk of conflict and inertia, not something organization's want in a global marketplace that demands innovation, speed, responsiveness and flexibility to succeed.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
May 23, 2016
Talent Management Monthly Brief: See Through Talent from Different Angles XI May. 2016
People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses. “Hiring the right person to 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? Traditional Performance Management focusing on measuring what an employee does (mainly being told to do) in quantitative way is not sufficient to identify high performance or high potential, should we see through talent from different angles?
See Through Talent from Different Angles XIThree Questions Assess a Person’s Digital Altitude: The world is moving into the deep, deep digital new normal with wide, wide digital connectivity and tall, tall digital pillars. A digital paradigm is an emerging digital ecosystem of principles, policies, and practices to navigate uncharted water and enter to blurred boundaries; also offer the guidance for problem-solving or creating something new under the digital rules. It is the transformation that is reshaping our thinking and recasting the way we view ourselves, the systems of which we are the part of the environments in which we live, and the way we view the world. Therefore, digital altitude - simply the height or depth of your digital thinking and views become more critical for today’s digital leaders and professionals to inspire changes and motivate actions toward the right direction. Altitude is less about your position, more about your vision. Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s digital attitude?
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Imagination Speaking of imagination, it could remind us of the childhood. As children, we are conditioned to imagine, explore and create with cues from our environment and ability to discover and question it. When growing up, do we automatically lose the “imagination power”? Is that because the adults get stuck in conventional wisdom or restricted by the outdated rules? Children are not afraid of blurting out their thoughts. But adults are normally scared. Adults know the world and set the limit to stay in their comfort zone, or disable their "imagine-ability"subconsciously. Imagination sparks creativity, and creativity is #1 wanted skill for digital professionals these days, which questions should you ask to assess a person’s imagination?Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Fairness Fairness means to be unprejudiced, equitable, impartial, objective, dispassionately examining, and open-minded. Fairness is both a digital leadership and professional quality and a culture characteristic to improve professionalism and digital maturity. People are much purposeful, creative and productive under a positive and fair working environment. Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s fairness?
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Inclusiveness: We live in such a hyperconnected, globalized world and market, it has amply been demonstrated, that being inclusive and embracing the diversity of thoughts makes total business sense, for many, many reasons, such as innovation, collective intelligence, effective communication and seamless collaboration. What are the good questions to assess a person’s inclusiveness?Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Paradoxical Intelligence: The paradox is “a situation, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities.” The paradox is the result of two opposing truths existing side by side, which can be both right. The paradox is also like the two sides of the coin, they are not just opposite, but also complementary, to make it a whole. At today’s digital world with complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity, digital leaders or professionals with high paradoxical intelligence can see things from different angles and understand the situation profoundly in order to make effective decisions or craft better strategies. Which questions shall you ask to assess a person’s Paradoxical Intelligence (PI)?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3+million page views with about #2800+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
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Change Assessment and Measurement
Measures or KPI is a strong tool, that can be both rewarding but also cause damage to an organization.
The speed of change is accelerating, organizations are shifting from the industrial speed to the digital speed; from inside out - operation-driven to outside in - customer centric. Change is no longer just a one-time business initiative, but an ongoing business capability. And Change Management becomes one of the crucial management capabilities to accelerate strategy execution and improve business performance. But how to assess and measure change more effectively?
Assessment is a good starting point to change: When starting the change process, perhaps measures are a good place to start change. Change Management is necessary and challenging when you diagnose the following symptoms, and perhaps assessment is a good starting point to change.
-Change becomes necessary when an organization fails to meet its performance goals,
-"Tell me how you will measure me and I'll tell you how I will behave." People's behavior usually responds to how they are measured. Does this mean that you are applying the wrong measures at a personal and group level? Therefore, in order to detect that is not congruent with group goals.
-The problem is actually more complex. Information systems have been built in the firm around those measures. Its systems are more rigid and slower to adapt.
-Workflows and business processes based on old measures and well aligned with them are even more resistant to change. This picture puts the practice of change management in a gloomy context.
Measures or KPI is a strong tool, that can be both rewarding but also cause damage to an organization: It's not the use of KPIs per se, but the applications of those that lead to behavior that conflicts with group goals. Ultimately the success of the change program is measured by results that are important values to the organization, and the cultural adoption of these goals is part of that measure. If these values have not been clearly identified at the outset, you cannot get the true alignment of your organization and all working toward the same goals and outcomes, and you lack clarity and purpose of direction. The appropriate KPIs correctly applied can lead to significant benefits. The problem with many KPIs is that they are created and applied at a subordinate level without taking into consideration the possible implications on the organization as a whole. This way too often leads to suboptimal decisions which are detrimental to overall performance. Hence, when the need for change becomes apparent, the management should turn the spotlight on measures and incentives as drivers of behavior, creators of sub-optimal decisions and the eventual poor outcomes. A change manager needs to assess and evaluate every specific scenario to create the change program success.
Performance Management and Change Management go Hand-in-Hand: Change is not for its own sake, but to improve both individual performance and business performance. The majority of Change Management fail because of poor performance management. The lack of accountability keeps companies from reaching their potential. It saps confidence and encourages a passive, excuse-based culture. There’s a need for organizations to change their culture where people are accountable for performance. Change management and performance management should go hand-in-hand in order to improve change effectiveness. Seek employee accountability for results, not activity. Establish a "sense of urgency" required to drive change in the organization, make leaders and managers responsible and accountable for wrong decision making and missed goals, stop the blame culture and finger pointing towards others or external factors for poor performance.
If the change is to benefit the organization and the individual who is implementing the change, then it can be measured when the objectives of the change are realized and the organization is moving forward. But keep in mind, not only measure things right, more importantly, to measure the right things for encouraging positive thinking and behaviors, break down silo thinking, leveraging trade-offs, to ensure business as a whole achieving the optimal business result.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The speed of change is accelerating, organizations are shifting from the industrial speed to the digital speed; from inside out - operation-driven to outside in - customer centric. Change is no longer just a one-time business initiative, but an ongoing business capability. And Change Management becomes one of the crucial management capabilities to accelerate strategy execution and improve business performance. But how to assess and measure change more effectively?
Assessment is a good starting point to change: When starting the change process, perhaps measures are a good place to start change. Change Management is necessary and challenging when you diagnose the following symptoms, and perhaps assessment is a good starting point to change.
-Change becomes necessary when an organization fails to meet its performance goals,
-"Tell me how you will measure me and I'll tell you how I will behave." People's behavior usually responds to how they are measured. Does this mean that you are applying the wrong measures at a personal and group level? Therefore, in order to detect that is not congruent with group goals.
-The problem is actually more complex. Information systems have been built in the firm around those measures. Its systems are more rigid and slower to adapt.
-Workflows and business processes based on old measures and well aligned with them are even more resistant to change. This picture puts the practice of change management in a gloomy context.
Measures or KPI is a strong tool, that can be both rewarding but also cause damage to an organization: It's not the use of KPIs per se, but the applications of those that lead to behavior that conflicts with group goals. Ultimately the success of the change program is measured by results that are important values to the organization, and the cultural adoption of these goals is part of that measure. If these values have not been clearly identified at the outset, you cannot get the true alignment of your organization and all working toward the same goals and outcomes, and you lack clarity and purpose of direction. The appropriate KPIs correctly applied can lead to significant benefits. The problem with many KPIs is that they are created and applied at a subordinate level without taking into consideration the possible implications on the organization as a whole. This way too often leads to suboptimal decisions which are detrimental to overall performance. Hence, when the need for change becomes apparent, the management should turn the spotlight on measures and incentives as drivers of behavior, creators of sub-optimal decisions and the eventual poor outcomes. A change manager needs to assess and evaluate every specific scenario to create the change program success.
Performance Management and Change Management go Hand-in-Hand: Change is not for its own sake, but to improve both individual performance and business performance. The majority of Change Management fail because of poor performance management. The lack of accountability keeps companies from reaching their potential. It saps confidence and encourages a passive, excuse-based culture. There’s a need for organizations to change their culture where people are accountable for performance. Change management and performance management should go hand-in-hand in order to improve change effectiveness. Seek employee accountability for results, not activity. Establish a "sense of urgency" required to drive change in the organization, make leaders and managers responsible and accountable for wrong decision making and missed goals, stop the blame culture and finger pointing towards others or external factors for poor performance.
If the change is to benefit the organization and the individual who is implementing the change, then it can be measured when the objectives of the change are realized and the organization is moving forward. But keep in mind, not only measure things right, more importantly, to measure the right things for encouraging positive thinking and behaviors, break down silo thinking, leveraging trade-offs, to ensure business as a whole achieving the optimal business result.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
CIO Master Book Tuning XXXVIII: Three Aspects to Enhance IT Value Proposition
CIOs need to maximize IT value via pursuing strategic, innovative, and tactical alignment and integration with the business.
Forward-look IT organizations work hard to reinvent IT reputation as a value creator and innovation engine. IT is an enabler of current and future capabilities of both the organization and its ecosystem. IT needs to deliver value to the organization in order to help the business build competency and implement business strategy. Thus, CIOs need to maximize IT value via pursuing strategic, innovative, and tactical alignment and integration with the business. Maximizing IT value really means a lot: from enabling business strategy via capability to adapting to the changes via agility and flexibility; from revenue growth to business resilience, from “doing more with innovation” to “doing more with less” (efficiency). Here are three aspects to enhance IT value proposition.
Revenue Impact: IT value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like collaborative value or collective advantage and multi-layer ROIs. These engagements are leading IT to be much more proactive in proposing - as opposed to responding to ideas for new ways to improve customer experience or actually create new customer value and revenue. IT value is demonstrated through the rate of productivity increases, the rate of new product development, the rate of market share gains, the rate of customer approval and satisfaction gains, or the rate of sales gains, etc. IT is the steward of the business’s information system, it is, therefore, in the unique position to oversight the business landscape horizontally. Hence, IT should proactively generate ideas and then work with business partners to take those ideas forward. Also, you have to have some measure to show what value was created. IT value is multi-faceted and it’s interesting to see how IT value is in the eye of the beholder. In order to show value, first, all parties need to agree on the common value proposition, then, you need to be able to measure it, if you can not, then you can not show how much value was created or lost. IT executives and departments need to work out how they affect these business output measures, and what they can do to improve them using the means at their disposal. Once they do that and make a unique, valuable, independent contribution to the business outcomes that they can demonstrate in these terms, they will gain credibility and value beyond what any "provider" can deliver.
Cost Optimization: IT can help business to improve net profit, by reducing the cost of doing business via keeping cost down while at the same time maximizing its output so when the business revenue increase, IT cost remain the same which will improve net. IT can also leverage the latest technology to optimize business processes to improve productivity as well as achieve cost efficiency. Thus, leading organizations understand how to leverage IT to improve the top line and at the same time decrease expenses to improve the bottom line. IT also needs to continue fine tune its own infrastructure, applications, and services via consolidation, modernization, integration, optimization, innovation., etc. IT needs to keep improving and optimizing its spending and making a wise investment in running a balanced portfolio of “Running, Growing, and Transforming" the business accordingly.
Business Agility: IT’s value proposition is also built on improving organization level strategic responsibility, changeability, flexibility and business resilience, and overall business maturity. IT leaders should keep asking: Is IT responsive and fast enough to discover the root cause of problems, also quickly find the answers and solution in case of emerging circumstances? Does IT have a platform which is scalable, secure, resilient and well interconnected? Can IT make significant influences on business strategy and innovation? Is IT often driving change, or seems lagging behind or dragging down the business’s change speed? How to run IT on the fast lane, which means to speed up the organizational vehicle as well? Is the gap between business and IT actually enlarged or shrunk? Do you have a rolling plan in addition to the mid-term or long-term strategic planning document, in order to achieve agility? And how to measure business and IT agility and present multidimensional values to the stakeholders for gaining understanding and support?
IT has to define a set of metrics used to inform the business of IT value and performance. IT value to the business can be categorized in a number of ways, such as Improving Revenue (enable the business to gain market share), Improving Speed/Agility (Speed to Market, ability to change etc), Customer Acquisition/Retention (optimize end customer experience...), Lowering Risk (reduces business system downtime, create business continuity), Lowering Cost (reduces the cost of the current business process, improve margins, freeing up capital for new ventures, etc). Each IT organization has a unique set of capabilities that enable it to realize its value propositions and achieve successful outcomes, whether financial, brand, or double bottom line. And high-performing IT should have an optimized prioritization/planning process and ongoing IT efforts to continuously improve IT value proposition and maturity.
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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Forward-look IT organizations work hard to reinvent IT reputation as a value creator and innovation engine. IT is an enabler of current and future capabilities of both the organization and its ecosystem. IT needs to deliver value to the organization in order to help the business build competency and implement business strategy. Thus, CIOs need to maximize IT value via pursuing strategic, innovative, and tactical alignment and integration with the business. Maximizing IT value really means a lot: from enabling business strategy via capability to adapting to the changes via agility and flexibility; from revenue growth to business resilience, from “doing more with innovation” to “doing more with less” (efficiency). Here are three aspects to enhance IT value proposition.Revenue Impact: IT value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like collaborative value or collective advantage and multi-layer ROIs. These engagements are leading IT to be much more proactive in proposing - as opposed to responding to ideas for new ways to improve customer experience or actually create new customer value and revenue. IT value is demonstrated through the rate of productivity increases, the rate of new product development, the rate of market share gains, the rate of customer approval and satisfaction gains, or the rate of sales gains, etc. IT is the steward of the business’s information system, it is, therefore, in the unique position to oversight the business landscape horizontally. Hence, IT should proactively generate ideas and then work with business partners to take those ideas forward. Also, you have to have some measure to show what value was created. IT value is multi-faceted and it’s interesting to see how IT value is in the eye of the beholder. In order to show value, first, all parties need to agree on the common value proposition, then, you need to be able to measure it, if you can not, then you can not show how much value was created or lost. IT executives and departments need to work out how they affect these business output measures, and what they can do to improve them using the means at their disposal. Once they do that and make a unique, valuable, independent contribution to the business outcomes that they can demonstrate in these terms, they will gain credibility and value beyond what any "provider" can deliver.
Cost Optimization: IT can help business to improve net profit, by reducing the cost of doing business via keeping cost down while at the same time maximizing its output so when the business revenue increase, IT cost remain the same which will improve net. IT can also leverage the latest technology to optimize business processes to improve productivity as well as achieve cost efficiency. Thus, leading organizations understand how to leverage IT to improve the top line and at the same time decrease expenses to improve the bottom line. IT also needs to continue fine tune its own infrastructure, applications, and services via consolidation, modernization, integration, optimization, innovation., etc. IT needs to keep improving and optimizing its spending and making a wise investment in running a balanced portfolio of “Running, Growing, and Transforming" the business accordingly.
Business Agility: IT’s value proposition is also built on improving organization level strategic responsibility, changeability, flexibility and business resilience, and overall business maturity. IT leaders should keep asking: Is IT responsive and fast enough to discover the root cause of problems, also quickly find the answers and solution in case of emerging circumstances? Does IT have a platform which is scalable, secure, resilient and well interconnected? Can IT make significant influences on business strategy and innovation? Is IT often driving change, or seems lagging behind or dragging down the business’s change speed? How to run IT on the fast lane, which means to speed up the organizational vehicle as well? Is the gap between business and IT actually enlarged or shrunk? Do you have a rolling plan in addition to the mid-term or long-term strategic planning document, in order to achieve agility? And how to measure business and IT agility and present multidimensional values to the stakeholders for gaining understanding and support?
IT has to define a set of metrics used to inform the business of IT value and performance. IT value to the business can be categorized in a number of ways, such as Improving Revenue (enable the business to gain market share), Improving Speed/Agility (Speed to Market, ability to change etc), Customer Acquisition/Retention (optimize end customer experience...), Lowering Risk (reduces business system downtime, create business continuity), Lowering Cost (reduces the cost of the current business process, improve margins, freeing up capital for new ventures, etc). Each IT organization has a unique set of capabilities that enable it to realize its value propositions and achieve successful outcomes, whether financial, brand, or double bottom line. And high-performing IT should have an optimized prioritization/planning process and ongoing IT efforts to continuously improve IT value proposition and maturity.
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 Aspects to Enhance IT Value Proposition
CIOs need to maximize IT value via pursuing strategic, innovative, and tactical alignment and integration with the business.
Forward-look IT organizations work hard to reinvent IT reputation as a value creator and innovation engine. IT is an enabler of current and future capabilities of both the organization and its ecosystem. IT needs to deliver value to the organization in order to help the business build competency and implement business strategy. Thus, CIOs need to maximize IT value via pursuing strategic, innovative, and tactical alignment and integration with the business. Maximizing IT value really means a lot: from enabling business strategy via capability to adapting to the changes via agility and flexibility; from revenue growth to business resilience, from “doing more with innovation” to “doing more with less” (efficiency). Here are three aspects to enhance IT value proposition.
Revenue Impact: IT value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like collaborative value or collective advantage and multi-layer ROIs. These engagements are leading IT to be much more proactive in proposing - as opposed to responding to ideas for new ways to improve customer experience or actually create new customer value and revenue. IT value is demonstrated through the rate of productivity increases, the rate of new product development, the rate of market share gains, the rate of customer approval and satisfaction gains, or the rate of sales gains, etc. IT is the steward of the business’s information system, it is, therefore, in the unique position to oversight the business landscape horizontally. Hence, IT should proactively generate ideas and then work with business partners to take those ideas forward. Also, you have to have some measure to show what value was created. IT value is multi-faceted and it’s interesting to see how IT value is in the eye of the beholder. In order to show value, first, all parties need to agree on the common value proposition, then, you need to be able to measure it, if you can not, then you can not show how much value was created or lost. IT executives and departments need to work out how they affect these business output measures, and what they can do to improve them using the means at their disposal. Once they do that and make a unique, valuable, independent contribution to the business outcomes that they can demonstrate in these terms, they will gain credibility and value beyond what any "provider" can deliver.
Cost Optimization: IT can help business to improve net profit, by reducing the cost of doing business via keeping cost down while at the same time maximizing its output so when the business revenue increase, IT cost remain the same which will improve net. IT can also leverage the latest technology to optimize business processes to improve productivity as well as achieve cost efficiency. Thus, leading organizations understand how to leverage IT to improve the top line and at the same time decrease expenses to improve the bottom line. IT also needs to continue fine tune its own infrastructure, applications, and services via consolidation, modernization, integration, optimization, innovation., etc. IT needs to keep improving and optimizing its spending and making a wise investment in running a balanced portfolio of “Running, Growing, and Transforming" the business accordingly.
Business Agility: IT’s value proposition is also built on improving organization level strategic responsibility, changeability, flexibility and business resilience, and overall business maturity. IT leaders should keep asking: Is IT responsive and fast enough to discover the root cause of problems, also quickly find the answers and solution in case of emerging circumstances? Does IT have a platform which is scalable, secure, resilient and well interconnected? Can IT make significant influences on business strategy and innovation? Is IT often driving change, or seems lagging behind or dragging down the business’s change speed? How to run IT on the fast lane, which means to speed up the organizational vehicle as well? Is the gap between business and IT actually enlarged or shrunk? Do you have a rolling plan in addition to the mid-term or long-term strategic planning document, in order to achieve agility? And how to measure business and IT agility and present multidimensional values to the stakeholders for gaining understanding and support?
IT has to define a set of metrics used to inform the business of IT value and performance. IT value to the business can be categorized in a number of ways, such as Improving Revenue (enable the business to gain market share), Improving Speed/Agility (Speed to Market, ability to change etc), Customer Acquisition/Retention (optimize end customer experience...), Lowering Risk (reduces business system downtime, create business continuity), Lowering Cost (reduces the cost of the current business process, improve margins, freeing up capital for new ventures, etc). Each IT organization has a unique set of capabilities that enable it to realize its value propositions and achieve successful outcomes, whether financial, brand, or double bottom line. And high-performing IT should have an optimized prioritization/planning process and ongoing IT efforts to continuously improve IT value proposition and maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Forward-look IT organizations work hard to reinvent IT reputation as a value creator and innovation engine. IT is an enabler of current and future capabilities of both the organization and its ecosystem. IT needs to deliver value to the organization in order to help the business build competency and implement business strategy. Thus, CIOs need to maximize IT value via pursuing strategic, innovative, and tactical alignment and integration with the business. Maximizing IT value really means a lot: from enabling business strategy via capability to adapting to the changes via agility and flexibility; from revenue growth to business resilience, from “doing more with innovation” to “doing more with less” (efficiency). Here are three aspects to enhance IT value proposition.Revenue Impact: IT value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like collaborative value or collective advantage and multi-layer ROIs. These engagements are leading IT to be much more proactive in proposing - as opposed to responding to ideas for new ways to improve customer experience or actually create new customer value and revenue. IT value is demonstrated through the rate of productivity increases, the rate of new product development, the rate of market share gains, the rate of customer approval and satisfaction gains, or the rate of sales gains, etc. IT is the steward of the business’s information system, it is, therefore, in the unique position to oversight the business landscape horizontally. Hence, IT should proactively generate ideas and then work with business partners to take those ideas forward. Also, you have to have some measure to show what value was created. IT value is multi-faceted and it’s interesting to see how IT value is in the eye of the beholder. In order to show value, first, all parties need to agree on the common value proposition, then, you need to be able to measure it, if you can not, then you can not show how much value was created or lost. IT executives and departments need to work out how they affect these business output measures, and what they can do to improve them using the means at their disposal. Once they do that and make a unique, valuable, independent contribution to the business outcomes that they can demonstrate in these terms, they will gain credibility and value beyond what any "provider" can deliver.
Cost Optimization: IT can help business to improve net profit, by reducing the cost of doing business via keeping cost down while at the same time maximizing its output so when the business revenue increase, IT cost remain the same which will improve net. IT can also leverage the latest technology to optimize business processes to improve productivity as well as achieve cost efficiency. Thus, leading organizations understand how to leverage IT to improve the top line and at the same time decrease expenses to improve the bottom line. IT also needs to continue fine tune its own infrastructure, applications, and services via consolidation, modernization, integration, optimization, innovation., etc. IT needs to keep improving and optimizing its spending and making a wise investment in running a balanced portfolio of “Running, Growing, and Transforming" the business accordingly.
Business Agility: IT’s value proposition is also built on improving organization level strategic responsibility, changeability, flexibility and business resilience, and overall business maturity. IT leaders should keep asking: Is IT responsive and fast enough to discover the root cause of problems, also quickly find the answers and solution in case of emerging circumstances? Does IT have a platform which is scalable, secure, resilient and well interconnected? Can IT make significant influences on business strategy and innovation? Is IT often driving change, or seems lagging behind or dragging down the business’s change speed? How to run IT on the fast lane, which means to speed up the organizational vehicle as well? Is the gap between business and IT actually enlarged or shrunk? Do you have a rolling plan in addition to the mid-term or long-term strategic planning document, in order to achieve agility? And how to measure business and IT agility and present multidimensional values to the stakeholders for gaining understanding and support?
IT has to define a set of metrics used to inform the business of IT value and performance. IT value to the business can be categorized in a number of ways, such as Improving Revenue (enable the business to gain market share), Improving Speed/Agility (Speed to Market, ability to change etc), Customer Acquisition/Retention (optimize end customer experience...), Lowering Risk (reduces business system downtime, create business continuity), Lowering Cost (reduces the cost of the current business process, improve margins, freeing up capital for new ventures, etc). Each IT organization has a unique set of capabilities that enable it to realize its value propositions and achieve successful outcomes, whether financial, brand, or double bottom line. And high-performing IT should have an optimized prioritization/planning process and ongoing IT efforts to continuously improve IT value proposition and maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Aspects of IT Value Proposition
Forward-look IT organizations work hard to reinvent IT reputation as a value creator and innovation engine. IT is an enabler of current and future capabilities of both the organization and its ecosystem. IT needs to deliver value to the organization in order to help the business build competency and implement business strategy. Thus, CIOs need to maximize IT value via pursuing strategic, innovative, and tactical alignment with the business. Maximizing IT value really means a lot: from enabling business strategy (capability) to adapting to the changes (agility); from revenue growth to business resilience, from “doing more with innovation” to “doing more with less” (efficiency). Revenue Impact: IT value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like collaborative value or collective advantage and multi-layer ROIs. These engagements are leading IT to be much more proactive in proposing - as opposed to responding to ideas for new ways to improve customer service or actually create new customer value and revenue. IT value is demonstrated through the rate of productivity increases, the rate of new product development, the rate of market share gains, the rate of customer approval and satisfaction gains, or the rate of sales gains, etc. IT is the steward of the business’s information system, it is, therefore, in the unique position to oversight the business landscape horizontally. Hence, IT should proactively generate ideas and then work with business partners to take those ideas forward. Also, you have to have some measure to show what value was created. IT value is multi-faceted and it’s interesting to see how IT value is in the eye of the beholder. In order to show value, first, all parties need to agree on the common value proposition, then, you need to be able to measure it, if you can not, then you can not show how much value was created or lost. IT executives and departments need to work out how they affect these business output measures, and what they can do to improve them using the means at their disposal. Once they do that and make a unique, valuable, independent contribution to the business outcomes that they can demonstrate in these terms, they will gain credibility and value beyond what any "provider" can deliver.
Cost Optimization: IT can help business to improve net profit, by reducing the cost of doing business via keeping cost down while at the same time maximizing its output so when the business revenue increase, IT cost remain the same which will improve net. IT can also leverage the latest technology to optimize business processes to improve productivity as well as implement cost efficiency. Thus, leading organizations understand how to leverage IT to improve the top line and at the same time decrease expenses to improve the bottom line. IT also needs to continue fine tuning its own infrastructure, applications, and services via consolidation, modernization, integration, optimization, innovation., etc. IT needs to keep improving and optimizing its spending and making a wise investment in running a balanced portfolio of “Running, Growing, and Transforming the business accordingly.
Business Agility: IT’s value proposition is also built on improving organization level strategic responsibility, changeability, flexibility and business resilience. IT leaders should keep asking: Is IT responsive and fast enough to discover the root cause of problems, also quickly find the answers and solution in case of emerging circumstances? Does IT have a platform which is scalable, secure, resilient and well interconnected? Can IT make significant influences on business strategy and innovation? Is IT often driving change, or seems lagging behind or dragging down the business’s change speed? How to run IT on the fast lane, which means to speed up the organizational vehicle as well. Is the gap between business and IT actually enlarged or shrunk? Do you have a rolling plan in addition to the mid-term or long-term strategic planning document, in order to achieve agility? And how to measure business and IT agility and present value to the stakeholders for gaining understanding and support.
IT can define a set of metrics is those used to inform the business of IT value and performance. IT value to the business can be categorized in a number of ways, such as Improving Revenue (enable the business to gain market share), Improving Speed/Agility (Speed to Market, ability to change etc), Customer Acquisition/Retention (optimize end customer experience...), Lowering Risk (reduces business system downtime, create business continuity), Lowering Cost (reduces the cost of the current business process, improve margins, freeing up capital for new ventures, etc). Each IT organization has a unique set of capabilities that enable it to achieve successful outcomes, whether financial, brand, or double bottom line. And high-performing IIT should have an optimized prioritization/planning process and ongoing IT efforts to continuously improve IT value proposition and maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
May 22, 2016
Is Digital Leadership Constructively Disruptive
Digital is the age of innovation with continuous disruption, either you like it or not.
Many think digital is the age of innovation. Digital is a disruption with rapidly increasing speed and hyperconnectivity to break down silos and rigid hierarchy. Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way business is conducted so that simply adopting a new digital technology may be insufficient. You have to transform the company's underlying processes, cultures, and organization as a whole with adjusted digital speed. Otherwise, companies may begin a decline from its previous high performance. Digital border is not made of sharp lines, but cursive dots need to be widely connected to spark the next level of innovation. And in order to lead more effectively, does a digital leader have to be constructively disruptive?
Digital leaders are outliers: The great digital leaders are outliers, visionary is often an outlier - the one who steps out of a conventional thinking box, or linear patterns. Therefore, they could see things further or deeper. An outlier leader is creatively disruptive, who dare to ask a deep “WHY” - to diagnose the root cause of problems but also ask the optimistic “Why NOT?" -The refusal to be bound by constraints and limitations and a pursuit of possibilities rather than impossibilities seems to be a hallmark of great leadership achievements. An outlier is not the lack of experience but has interdisciplinary knowledge. An outlier digital leader has a vision, insight, and inquisitiveness to ask “What If & How about.” Vision is something you see, others don't, and a visionary mind is able to and not afraid to leverage contrarian views to shape a holistic picture.
Digital leaders are creative with “out-of-box” thinking: Digital breaks down many little boxes, the silo thinking or rigid hierarchy. The box is anyone or a group of people's comfort zone, that things are ok and everyone agrees and have the same or similar thoughts, the conventional wisdom, the homogeneous team setting, and that “we always do things like this” habits. The “box" is a mental construct made up of personal (self-imposed) and environmental (culture, parental/peer influence, society) components that one operates within. In order to lead forward, the great digital leaders are creative “disruptors” who can think outside ‘the box,” and do something outside of the confines of the traditional construct. They do not work within the box, but across the boxes, broaden the perspectives, and connect wider dots to spur creativity. They not only think differently but also do things in an alternative and better way.
Digital leaders are rule-breakers: From agricultural society to the industrial age, and now we slowly but steadily move into the fast-paced Digital Era, every era has the set of rules to maintain the certain level of societal order. Rules are mostly invented by people who had “power” and want to push their own rules to maintain their status quo. There is good rules and bad rules, visible rules and hidden rules, local rules or global rules. Due to the creative and progressive human nature, from one generation to the next generation, the outdated rules continue to be break down, and the new “rules” get updated to reflect the new age, adapt to the new speed, and fit for the new perspectives. When the organization only rewards the rule followers, not innovators, the old rule breakers, more often, they only focus on short term result, not long term vision. The great digital leaders are rule-breakers, as well as principle-makers. The rules are like the traffic light signals: red light~ stop; green light ~ go. The principles behind the rules are more fundamental : cross the street safely. Applying this thinking is a pathway for opening minds to connected, creative considerations. Replace the operative word "rules" with principles or 'expectations' that allow thinking room, and speed up societal advancement.
Leadership is all about change. Great digital leadership is constructively disruptive, not for its own sake, but to spur creativity, practice real thinking, reveal authenticity, broaden vision, and amplifying influence. Leadership is a journey to continue to break down the old, advocate the new, and to push the human world forward.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Many think digital is the age of innovation. Digital is a disruption with rapidly increasing speed and hyperconnectivity to break down silos and rigid hierarchy. Digitalization implies the full-scale changes in the way business is conducted so that simply adopting a new digital technology may be insufficient. You have to transform the company's underlying processes, cultures, and organization as a whole with adjusted digital speed. Otherwise, companies may begin a decline from its previous high performance. Digital border is not made of sharp lines, but cursive dots need to be widely connected to spark the next level of innovation. And in order to lead more effectively, does a digital leader have to be constructively disruptive?
Digital leaders are outliers: The great digital leaders are outliers, visionary is often an outlier - the one who steps out of a conventional thinking box, or linear patterns. Therefore, they could see things further or deeper. An outlier leader is creatively disruptive, who dare to ask a deep “WHY” - to diagnose the root cause of problems but also ask the optimistic “Why NOT?" -The refusal to be bound by constraints and limitations and a pursuit of possibilities rather than impossibilities seems to be a hallmark of great leadership achievements. An outlier is not the lack of experience but has interdisciplinary knowledge. An outlier digital leader has a vision, insight, and inquisitiveness to ask “What If & How about.” Vision is something you see, others don't, and a visionary mind is able to and not afraid to leverage contrarian views to shape a holistic picture.
Digital leaders are creative with “out-of-box” thinking: Digital breaks down many little boxes, the silo thinking or rigid hierarchy. The box is anyone or a group of people's comfort zone, that things are ok and everyone agrees and have the same or similar thoughts, the conventional wisdom, the homogeneous team setting, and that “we always do things like this” habits. The “box" is a mental construct made up of personal (self-imposed) and environmental (culture, parental/peer influence, society) components that one operates within. In order to lead forward, the great digital leaders are creative “disruptors” who can think outside ‘the box,” and do something outside of the confines of the traditional construct. They do not work within the box, but across the boxes, broaden the perspectives, and connect wider dots to spur creativity. They not only think differently but also do things in an alternative and better way.
Digital leaders are rule-breakers: From agricultural society to the industrial age, and now we slowly but steadily move into the fast-paced Digital Era, every era has the set of rules to maintain the certain level of societal order. Rules are mostly invented by people who had “power” and want to push their own rules to maintain their status quo. There is good rules and bad rules, visible rules and hidden rules, local rules or global rules. Due to the creative and progressive human nature, from one generation to the next generation, the outdated rules continue to be break down, and the new “rules” get updated to reflect the new age, adapt to the new speed, and fit for the new perspectives. When the organization only rewards the rule followers, not innovators, the old rule breakers, more often, they only focus on short term result, not long term vision. The great digital leaders are rule-breakers, as well as principle-makers. The rules are like the traffic light signals: red light~ stop; green light ~ go. The principles behind the rules are more fundamental : cross the street safely. Applying this thinking is a pathway for opening minds to connected, creative considerations. Replace the operative word "rules" with principles or 'expectations' that allow thinking room, and speed up societal advancement.
Leadership is all about change. Great digital leadership is constructively disruptive, not for its own sake, but to spur creativity, practice real thinking, reveal authenticity, broaden vision, and amplifying influence. Leadership is a journey to continue to break down the old, advocate the new, and to push the human world forward.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
