Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1338
May 13, 2016
“CIO Master” Tuning XXXI: How can Digital CIOs Run a Delightful IT with Zeal
Modern technology proves human’s progress. At a contemporary business, technology is an enabler for business transformation, process optimization and talent empowerment. However, the majority of IT organizations are perceived as support centers with heavyweight hardware boxes and back office functions less delightful. And IT leaders are often the transactional managers who speak technology jargons to keep the lights on, with less passion, but more heavy duty. With emergent digital technologies, how can IT reinvent itself as a cool innovation center less wired, but more connected, less legacy infrastructure, but more powerful, how can digital IT leaders run a truly delightful IT with zeal and improve its agility and maturity?
Digital CIOs are expected to constantly propose new ideas and challenging the status quo:Though IT has become “softer” because it shifts from monolithic hardware oriented to mosaic information driven, the CIO as IT leader needs to demonstrate more hardcore competencies beyond just soft skills only. A confident CIO needs to keep asking, "why? why? why?", to manage incremental innovation in optimizing business processes, also, hunt for disruptive innovation with structure in renovating business model and upcoming business expansion. Boldness needs to become the part of the digital CIO’s personality profile. The role of the CIO is to drive the corporate vision and strategy through effectiveness and innovation in the knowledge and information channels. The CIO has to look forward and actively position the business in the right place to take full advantage of opportunities. In most organizations, the IT leader is positioned to understand the business across the enterprise ("Seeing the forest through the trees"). When he/she can accomplish that goal, that is when IT can drive value into the organization. CIOs who are only putting stress on "have the knowledge" not on "build the knowledge" might be in danger just to preserve the organization and thus create huge constraints for the possible innovation. The CIO has to look forward and actively position the business in the right place to take full advantage of opportunities. To digitize and speed up IT, the CIO should look to businesses outside their industry to spur the out-of- box thinking and dot-connecting innovation; to find examples and opportunities for how the other firms addressed similar challenges and implemented different types of products and services to delight customer or reach new markets.
IT needs to be creative as the “right side of the brain” of the organization: Digital is the age of options and innovation, it provides the opportunity to think the new way to do things. As the intersection of IT and people is where innovation happens, companies need to invest in IT necessary to make the business advances through either incremental or radical innovation! However, excessive IT complexity limits innovation and historical lack of success in IT project compounds the situation. To break the mold, IT needs to rethink itself as an innovative and business leading organization composed not only of technical ‘gurus’ but rather of business ‘gurus’ who also happen to be technically proficient. Cloud provides the leverage for IT to optimize strategy and execution; and brings significant opportunity for business to leap through digital transformation. To digitize IT and business, the strategic objective of design thinking is to understand what your customers need and to help the business orient itself towards those needs in pursuit of its objectives. To do this you also have to understand the company's long-term goals, brand, and the Industry realities (competition), as well as the market. Develop a high-level design strategy that satisfies the requirements of different groups, also, improve IT maturity from functioning to delight.
Managing a highly innovative IT with engaging employees and delightful IT teams: To run an innovative IT, the more difficult challenge is not just launching a successful team, but maintaining their motivation and focus. DRIVING is not a passive activity, but a proactive effort. Though it may not be so fair to only have the CIO shift the mindset, from the board room to front desk, digital thinking means new learning attitude, from the business side, it means to show the constructive dissatisfaction, understand the risks and potential bear traps. Innovation is not always equal to the latest gadget, it’s about people, culture, partnership, manners, etc. Isn't that what innovation is all about: do it better, differentiate yourself from your completion, run, grow and transform the business. So educate IT team on the business and encourage them to engage with business counterparts in a value-oriented manner. Modern digital CIOs have to play different roles and communicate with the different audience such as boards, business partners, customers, vendors, etc. CIOs who practice creative communication with openness can help others contextualize better as well as demonstrating the trust.
To break the mold, IT needs to rethink itself as an innovative and business leading organization. The CIO ‘s innovation journey can be traced at the rocky road with all sorts of ups & downs, bumps and curves, but with clear goals to delight customers and to engage employees via the effective process and right tools & platform, a radically different kind of management needs to be in place, a different way of thinking and coordinating work, a different set of values, a different way of communicating, and a differentiated set of capabilities to run a delightful digital IT with zeal.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
A Digital Savvy Board
The digital-savvy board has to gain digital awareness, shape digital mindset, and master of digital fluency.
Organizations today have to live up with the business dynamic which is uncertain, ambiguous, complex and flux. The board in a high-level leadership position plays a crucial role in business advising and monitoring, as well as setting key digital tones in organizational culture style and leadership quintessential. With more and more organizations are on the journey of digital transformation, what are important perspectives to build a digital savvy board?
Digital awareness: Due to the abundance of information and fast changing digital trends, BoDs have so much more on their plate now than before, and in most circumstances, it would be excellent for the job. It's also a role of the BoD to participate in the oversight of the company's digital strategies that reinforce its competencies in both digital and global vision of the business. Organizations have personalities in the same way that an individual does. More often, an organization's personality replicates the personality of its leaders, such as BoDs'. Digital strategy is a useful "qualifier" as a point of business competency and differentiation. It qualifies the areas of business you're going to review, the area of subject expertise and the types of solutions you're going to recommend. To become digital awareness, digital BoDs should envision the emergent trend and inspire leapfrogging digital transformation. A digital - savvy board oversights strategy, and weave IT as an integral part of strategic plans. Many corporate directors and senior executives would like boards to have a more frequent and constructive role in digital strategy. Organizations need to have a comprehensive digital strategy with the first step to understanding the real business problems and gain the full awareness of both potentials and perils. The toughest part of the strategy is the trade-offs. The more you can front load and truly define the current state, the easier the journey moves ahead. Many organizations are still confused digital with general technology adoption. It is not just about any fancy digital technologies or pretty web presences. It's a significant shift from going digital to being digital. Being digital in one's business implies first going digital internally, culturally, and holistically. Digital savvy BoDs understand what's required and how as a high-level basis of going digital mean to the business.
Digital mindsets: With increasing speed of changes, it is in the BoD’s mindset to either adapt or embrace the changes, It has been said that 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. Therefore, BoDs and top leadership teams make a significant influence on shaping the digital mindset of the organization. It requires that you move from mind SET to mind FLOW, from fixed mind to growth mind, from static mind to agility mind, so that it allows the mind to seek possibility or to make impossible possible. In order to change anyone’s mindset, the individual must have an open mind. Some say, "the most expensive thing anyone can own is a closed mind.” If the majority of organizations at the industrial age are manipulated by silo thinking and hierarchical style, and then digital organizations means holism and interconnectivity. BoDs with digital mindset can both drive changes and adapt to changes effortlessly.
Digital context: Digital ecosystem is complex and volatile, for complex problem solving, understanding context is often the first and the important step in understanding, create the relevant context to make a more lasting solution - without it, you are working without any boundaries, or basis for understanding what you are doing. Contextual intelligence is a higher-level of digital fluency. It’s important for BoDs, business leaders and managers to learning to think the systemic wholeness. This digital wholeness comprises various media that are each functionally contrary to the unitive, fluid and seamless nature of the whole. It’s about seeing interrelationships rather than isolated things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.” Context is of utmost importance. The art and the science are in the creation of the context, which some people will perceive immediately. Contextual Intelligence is a construct that involves the ability to recognize and diagnose the plethora of contextual factors inherent in an event or circumstance, then intentionally and intuitively adjust behaviors in order to exert influence in that context. BoDs with digital contextual intelligence can provide invaluable advice on digital transformation and makes an in-depth influence on business strategy management.
Evaluation, analysis, and strategic or long-term planning should top the list in the digital board’s agenda. A digital-savvy board has the advantage of pulling enough resources and pushing the business model of technology, trustworthiness, prepare, and launch change, innovation, and mastering at digital fluency to make profound leadership influence.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Organizations today have to live up with the business dynamic which is uncertain, ambiguous, complex and flux. The board in a high-level leadership position plays a crucial role in business advising and monitoring, as well as setting key digital tones in organizational culture style and leadership quintessential. With more and more organizations are on the journey of digital transformation, what are important perspectives to build a digital savvy board?
Digital awareness: Due to the abundance of information and fast changing digital trends, BoDs have so much more on their plate now than before, and in most circumstances, it would be excellent for the job. It's also a role of the BoD to participate in the oversight of the company's digital strategies that reinforce its competencies in both digital and global vision of the business. Organizations have personalities in the same way that an individual does. More often, an organization's personality replicates the personality of its leaders, such as BoDs'. Digital strategy is a useful "qualifier" as a point of business competency and differentiation. It qualifies the areas of business you're going to review, the area of subject expertise and the types of solutions you're going to recommend. To become digital awareness, digital BoDs should envision the emergent trend and inspire leapfrogging digital transformation. A digital - savvy board oversights strategy, and weave IT as an integral part of strategic plans. Many corporate directors and senior executives would like boards to have a more frequent and constructive role in digital strategy. Organizations need to have a comprehensive digital strategy with the first step to understanding the real business problems and gain the full awareness of both potentials and perils. The toughest part of the strategy is the trade-offs. The more you can front load and truly define the current state, the easier the journey moves ahead. Many organizations are still confused digital with general technology adoption. It is not just about any fancy digital technologies or pretty web presences. It's a significant shift from going digital to being digital. Being digital in one's business implies first going digital internally, culturally, and holistically. Digital savvy BoDs understand what's required and how as a high-level basis of going digital mean to the business.
Digital mindsets: With increasing speed of changes, it is in the BoD’s mindset to either adapt or embrace the changes, It has been said that 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. Therefore, BoDs and top leadership teams make a significant influence on shaping the digital mindset of the organization. It requires that you move from mind SET to mind FLOW, from fixed mind to growth mind, from static mind to agility mind, so that it allows the mind to seek possibility or to make impossible possible. In order to change anyone’s mindset, the individual must have an open mind. Some say, "the most expensive thing anyone can own is a closed mind.” If the majority of organizations at the industrial age are manipulated by silo thinking and hierarchical style, and then digital organizations means holism and interconnectivity. BoDs with digital mindset can both drive changes and adapt to changes effortlessly.
Digital context: Digital ecosystem is complex and volatile, for complex problem solving, understanding context is often the first and the important step in understanding, create the relevant context to make a more lasting solution - without it, you are working without any boundaries, or basis for understanding what you are doing. Contextual intelligence is a higher-level of digital fluency. It’s important for BoDs, business leaders and managers to learning to think the systemic wholeness. This digital wholeness comprises various media that are each functionally contrary to the unitive, fluid and seamless nature of the whole. It’s about seeing interrelationships rather than isolated things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.” Context is of utmost importance. The art and the science are in the creation of the context, which some people will perceive immediately. Contextual Intelligence is a construct that involves the ability to recognize and diagnose the plethora of contextual factors inherent in an event or circumstance, then intentionally and intuitively adjust behaviors in order to exert influence in that context. BoDs with digital contextual intelligence can provide invaluable advice on digital transformation and makes an in-depth influence on business strategy management.
Evaluation, analysis, and strategic or long-term planning should top the list in the digital board’s agenda. A digital-savvy board has the advantage of pulling enough resources and pushing the business model of technology, trustworthiness, prepare, and launch change, innovation, and mastering at digital fluency to make profound leadership influence.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
May 12, 2016
The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 5/13/2016
Blogging is not about writing, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom.
The “Future of CIO” blog has reached 1.3 million page views with 2700+ 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” 5/13/2016Information Management as a Thresholding Competency of Digital IT: Nowadays information is the lifeblood of the organization, all forward-looking organizations claim they are in the information management business. Managing information and the information position of an organization is what ought to be called Information Management. Information Management is to make sure that the right information is in the right place at the right time and shared to the right persons for making the right decisions. IT is often the information steward of the business, and information management is a thresholding competency for running a digital organization.
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Digital Attitude: The simplest definition of 'attitude' would be one's "settled mode of thinking." Attitude manifests itself through one's behavior. It can be changed for sure only if one is willing to accept and give 100 percent to changing oneself. Both aptitude and attitude are important for high achievement. Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s attitude?
Five Capability Blocks to Build Digital Competency People are always the most invaluable asset in any organizations. The forward-thinking digital organizations these days look for such hybrid talent, who has the digital fit mindset, the right balance of learning style, character and energy within the team; and who has well set of capabilities needed with digital speed. Due to the changing nature of technology and accelerating speed of business changes, among the most pervasive and persistent concerns from IT leaders are skills gaps, the complaints include that people do not have the right competencies, they can’t find the right skills to fill the positions, etc. Is IT skills gap fact or fiction? What are the most important capabilities for digital professionals to survive and thrive in today’s fast-changing business dynamic?
Three Traits in Innovative Leadership Creativity is the most wanted skill for digital professionals today, and innovative leadership is also in strong demand to bridge cognitive gaps, amplify collective creativity, inspire the culture of learning, and accelerate digital transformation. What are the top traits in innovative leadership, and how to cultivate more world-class innovative leaders?
Talent Management Monthly Brief: See Through Talent from Different Angles VIII 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 a quantitative way is not sufficient to identify high performance or high potential, should we see through talent from different angles?
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 “Future of CIO” blog has reached 1.3 million page views with 2700+ 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” 5/13/2016Information Management as a Thresholding Competency of Digital IT: Nowadays information is the lifeblood of the organization, all forward-looking organizations claim they are in the information management business. Managing information and the information position of an organization is what ought to be called Information Management. Information Management is to make sure that the right information is in the right place at the right time and shared to the right persons for making the right decisions. IT is often the information steward of the business, and information management is a thresholding competency for running a digital organization.
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Digital Attitude: The simplest definition of 'attitude' would be one's "settled mode of thinking." Attitude manifests itself through one's behavior. It can be changed for sure only if one is willing to accept and give 100 percent to changing oneself. Both aptitude and attitude are important for high achievement. Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s attitude?
Five Capability Blocks to Build Digital Competency People are always the most invaluable asset in any organizations. The forward-thinking digital organizations these days look for such hybrid talent, who has the digital fit mindset, the right balance of learning style, character and energy within the team; and who has well set of capabilities needed with digital speed. Due to the changing nature of technology and accelerating speed of business changes, among the most pervasive and persistent concerns from IT leaders are skills gaps, the complaints include that people do not have the right competencies, they can’t find the right skills to fill the positions, etc. Is IT skills gap fact or fiction? What are the most important capabilities for digital professionals to survive and thrive in today’s fast-changing business dynamic?
Three Traits in Innovative Leadership Creativity is the most wanted skill for digital professionals today, and innovative leadership is also in strong demand to bridge cognitive gaps, amplify collective creativity, inspire the culture of learning, and accelerate digital transformation. What are the top traits in innovative leadership, and how to cultivate more world-class innovative leaders?
Talent Management Monthly Brief: See Through Talent from Different Angles VIII 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 a quantitative way is not sufficient to identify high performance or high potential, should we see through talent from different angles?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 Questions Assess a Person’s Digital Altitude
Attitude leaps altitude, altitude inspires attitude.
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?
Does altitude inspire attitude or attitude decide altitude? Attitude leaps altitude, altitude inspires the attitude. The higher the altitude is, the better vision you could capture. The foreseeable vision is indeed crucial. Just like the nature ecosystem has provide the impetus to her evolutionary agenda of human mind and consciousness: for every need, provisions are there, for every problem, solutions are there, for every scientific development, resources are there, but to be discovered, you need to have great digital altitude and discovery eyes with clear vision, applying human intelligence and through the process of discovering, human mind and consciousness will expand and evolve. With great digital altitude, the digital leaders and professionals can observe, perceive, and pay attention to the myriad of internal, external, national or global forces that define and influence the way we do business these days. These digital forces must be dealt with, but before they can be dealt with, they must appear on digital leaders or professional’s' radar screen. Visionary is the one who can envision the future, the proper digital altitude will enhance your vision. The strategy should be driven by visionaries and being on the ground does not prevent a person from being a visionary; as being on top does not prevent a person from being short-sighted. Digital altitude is nothing to do with the status quo or title, successes come from both attitude and aptitude, and altitude comes with grit and determination.
Do outliers often have higher digital altitude? Outliers - the one who can step out of a conventional thinking box, or linear patterns often have higher altitude, because they do not get stuck in the box, but observe and understand things outside of the box and connect the dots across the boxes. Digital transformation represents a break with the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. Transformation efforts need to be undertaken as the means of getting to a set of differentiated capabilities to accomplish a defined goal. Otherwise, they cannot have the clear focus and business rationale that is essential to gaining any traction in changing an embedded culture. At the industrial era, the pace of change was more predictable and planning for execution was the focus. Expectations from individual or business consumers outstrip the readiness of most organizations. Now, everything requires shorter term planning without giving up the strategic endgame and proper digital altitude. The higher digital altitude helps to expand the digital horizon and speed up, the digital leaders and professionals should also look to businesses outside their industry to spur the out-of- box thinking and dot-connecting innovation; to find examples and opportunities for how these other firms addressed similar challenges and implemented different types of products and services to delight customer or reach new markets. Too often, business leaders focus only on those companies they see as their direct competitor. Indeed, digitalization disrupts not only the business boundary but also industry boundary, today’s organization is more as an organic living thing thriving at the expanded business ecosystem.
How is digital altitude related to talent competency? COMPETENCY is a synthetic word, including both thinking abilities and “hard” & “soft” skills. Amongst critical thinking, creative thinking, as well as many thinking capabilities, attitude, entrepreneurship, leadership, and passion, all are important elements of competency. More precisely, digital competency is about hybrid skills, ambivert personality or ambidextrous capabilities, and there are many perspectives on competency. It's important to define the set of competency to tailor your organizational needs. So it has become necessary to develop strategic core competencies for digital professionals. Altitude, attitude, and aptitude all contribute to building talent competency. Altitude inspires you to focus on big picture and long term perspective, attitude motivates you to continue learning and making an improvement, and aptitude helps you strengthen the strength. With the good combination of all of them, competency can be built and upgrade to the new digital height.
Digital altitude is about how far you can see, how broad you can explore, how deep you can perceive, how fast you can get out of the box when needed, how high you can climb, and how many dots you can connect to spark innovation. It is an increasingly important quality for digital professionals to envision the future full of uncertainty and velocity, begin with an “end in mind,” and to keep focus via a clear view and synthesizing skills and competency. successes come from both attitude and aptitude, and altitude comes with grit and determination.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
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?Does altitude inspire attitude or attitude decide altitude? Attitude leaps altitude, altitude inspires the attitude. The higher the altitude is, the better vision you could capture. The foreseeable vision is indeed crucial. Just like the nature ecosystem has provide the impetus to her evolutionary agenda of human mind and consciousness: for every need, provisions are there, for every problem, solutions are there, for every scientific development, resources are there, but to be discovered, you need to have great digital altitude and discovery eyes with clear vision, applying human intelligence and through the process of discovering, human mind and consciousness will expand and evolve. With great digital altitude, the digital leaders and professionals can observe, perceive, and pay attention to the myriad of internal, external, national or global forces that define and influence the way we do business these days. These digital forces must be dealt with, but before they can be dealt with, they must appear on digital leaders or professional’s' radar screen. Visionary is the one who can envision the future, the proper digital altitude will enhance your vision. The strategy should be driven by visionaries and being on the ground does not prevent a person from being a visionary; as being on top does not prevent a person from being short-sighted. Digital altitude is nothing to do with the status quo or title, successes come from both attitude and aptitude, and altitude comes with grit and determination.
Do outliers often have higher digital altitude? Outliers - the one who can step out of a conventional thinking box, or linear patterns often have higher altitude, because they do not get stuck in the box, but observe and understand things outside of the box and connect the dots across the boxes. Digital transformation represents a break with the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. Transformation efforts need to be undertaken as the means of getting to a set of differentiated capabilities to accomplish a defined goal. Otherwise, they cannot have the clear focus and business rationale that is essential to gaining any traction in changing an embedded culture. At the industrial era, the pace of change was more predictable and planning for execution was the focus. Expectations from individual or business consumers outstrip the readiness of most organizations. Now, everything requires shorter term planning without giving up the strategic endgame and proper digital altitude. The higher digital altitude helps to expand the digital horizon and speed up, the digital leaders and professionals should also look to businesses outside their industry to spur the out-of- box thinking and dot-connecting innovation; to find examples and opportunities for how these other firms addressed similar challenges and implemented different types of products and services to delight customer or reach new markets. Too often, business leaders focus only on those companies they see as their direct competitor. Indeed, digitalization disrupts not only the business boundary but also industry boundary, today’s organization is more as an organic living thing thriving at the expanded business ecosystem.
How is digital altitude related to talent competency? COMPETENCY is a synthetic word, including both thinking abilities and “hard” & “soft” skills. Amongst critical thinking, creative thinking, as well as many thinking capabilities, attitude, entrepreneurship, leadership, and passion, all are important elements of competency. More precisely, digital competency is about hybrid skills, ambivert personality or ambidextrous capabilities, and there are many perspectives on competency. It's important to define the set of competency to tailor your organizational needs. So it has become necessary to develop strategic core competencies for digital professionals. Altitude, attitude, and aptitude all contribute to building talent competency. Altitude inspires you to focus on big picture and long term perspective, attitude motivates you to continue learning and making an improvement, and aptitude helps you strengthen the strength. With the good combination of all of them, competency can be built and upgrade to the new digital height.
Digital altitude is about how far you can see, how broad you can explore, how deep you can perceive, how fast you can get out of the box when needed, how high you can climb, and how many dots you can connect to spark innovation. It is an increasingly important quality for digital professionals to envision the future full of uncertainty and velocity, begin with an “end in mind,” and to keep focus via a clear view and synthesizing skills and competency. successes come from both attitude and aptitude, and altitude comes with grit and determination.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
CIO Master Tuning XXX Chart a Course to Optimize IT
Even technology is often complex in nature, IT needs to be a business simplifier and optimizer to improve business agility.
Although information is overflowing and technology is omnipresent, the majority of IT organizations still suffer from the low maturity with the reputation as a maintenance desk and cost center. To compete at digital speed, IT has to transform from a builder to an integrator, from a plumber to an orchestrator, from an order taker to a business advisor. IT management needs to refresh mindset, reimagine IT competency and brand, and reinvent IT as a growth engine and innovation center. How to chart a course to optimize IT and unleash its full digital potential?
Optimizing IT management capacity: Effective IT management means understanding every island of operation and every workflow process. It is about using technology to lower costs, improve operations, and increase revenue. IT is in a unique position to oversee business processes which underpin business capabilities. To speed up business speed and compete in a global marketplace, business unit leaders need IT to ensure the availability and reliability of their business process automation tools/technology, so their staff can function as efficiently as promised, back when they justified the tool purchase. It all boils down to optimizing the management capacity investments with a keen eye to opportunity costs of all the projects involved. It is through this comprehensive understanding that a CIO would be able to identify true cost savings, workflow optimizations, and additional revenue opportunities.
Optimizing IT cost structure: IT is always striving to improve its value to the business. All IT spending must be rationalized against the business benefits. IT needs to continue fine tuning its own infrastructure, applications, and services via consolidation, modernization, integration, optimization, innovation., etc. The approach is to implement a program that like a gardener would prune the tree and nurture the valuable solutions and optimize cost. In fact, many organizations have little insight into their cost structures and who is consuming the assets. They have no idea where they are spending their money on and often assume it is mainly being spent on items which are actually much lower on the list. Some of the "long poles in the tent" tend to be labor; depreciation and new capital spending. Every IT finance group can capture costs, but the challenge is to have visibility and traceability between costs and the assets consuming those costs.Hence, the leadership team needs IT to be the business cost optimization expert for the company, to find creative sources of competitive advantages, to better compete in a global marketplace with optimized cost management.
Optimizing people/performance management: Either managing IT talent or customer/vendor relationship, people are usually the weakest link, but the most expensive investment in IT and business. While IT is pervasive these days, this will come about as more people begin to interact with and understand IT and what can be provided, from discerning customers, demanding top executives to enthusiastic vendors, identify, cultivate, and optimize people management capability via the following fundamental IT principles: first people – then process – then technology in that order. The knowledge or skills acquisition issue is a systemic problem. Optimization is not just about fixing things, but leveraging tradeoff to improve business efficiency, flexibility, agility, and risk intelligence. So first, understand the problem by going to the root causes and then beyond the symptoms. This is because true understanding is a life changing for any decision maker. As when you do understand; you’ll know what you need, and then what will be left is to mainly know how to get it, and then leadership can be applied concretely by showing the direction. If you only fix the symptom, not the root cause, then it perhaps causes more problems later. And that is why our world today; contains, in reality, more problems creators than true problems solvers because trying to solve a problem, by nature will create others. And if you don’t have an optimized solution to each newly created problem, you’ll have very little chances to succeed solving the main problem, because all is connected from system perspective. The reality is that whatever something is complex (especially in IT), the goal of optimization is to eliminate unnecessary complication, but also encourage desired complexity such as design, or overall business capability management.
Therefore, even technology is often complex in nature, IT needs to be a business simplifier and optimizer to improve business agility, not the other way around. IT leaders need to raise the profile of IT and its importance in modern business today. And IT delivery is about people, process, and technology in this order.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Although information is overflowing and technology is omnipresent, the majority of IT organizations still suffer from the low maturity with the reputation as a maintenance desk and cost center. To compete at digital speed, IT has to transform from a builder to an integrator, from a plumber to an orchestrator, from an order taker to a business advisor. IT management needs to refresh mindset, reimagine IT competency and brand, and reinvent IT as a growth engine and innovation center. How to chart a course to optimize IT and unleash its full digital potential?
Optimizing IT management capacity: Effective IT management means understanding every island of operation and every workflow process. It is about using technology to lower costs, improve operations, and increase revenue. IT is in a unique position to oversee business processes which underpin business capabilities. To speed up business speed and compete in a global marketplace, business unit leaders need IT to ensure the availability and reliability of their business process automation tools/technology, so their staff can function as efficiently as promised, back when they justified the tool purchase. It all boils down to optimizing the management capacity investments with a keen eye to opportunity costs of all the projects involved. It is through this comprehensive understanding that a CIO would be able to identify true cost savings, workflow optimizations, and additional revenue opportunities.
Optimizing IT cost structure: IT is always striving to improve its value to the business. All IT spending must be rationalized against the business benefits. IT needs to continue fine tuning its own infrastructure, applications, and services via consolidation, modernization, integration, optimization, innovation., etc. The approach is to implement a program that like a gardener would prune the tree and nurture the valuable solutions and optimize cost. In fact, many organizations have little insight into their cost structures and who is consuming the assets. They have no idea where they are spending their money on and often assume it is mainly being spent on items which are actually much lower on the list. Some of the "long poles in the tent" tend to be labor; depreciation and new capital spending. Every IT finance group can capture costs, but the challenge is to have visibility and traceability between costs and the assets consuming those costs.Hence, the leadership team needs IT to be the business cost optimization expert for the company, to find creative sources of competitive advantages, to better compete in a global marketplace with optimized cost management.
Optimizing people/performance management: Either managing IT talent or customer/vendor relationship, people are usually the weakest link, but the most expensive investment in IT and business. While IT is pervasive these days, this will come about as more people begin to interact with and understand IT and what can be provided, from discerning customers, demanding top executives to enthusiastic vendors, identify, cultivate, and optimize people management capability via the following fundamental IT principles: first people – then process – then technology in that order. The knowledge or skills acquisition issue is a systemic problem. Optimization is not just about fixing things, but leveraging tradeoff to improve business efficiency, flexibility, agility, and risk intelligence. So first, understand the problem by going to the root causes and then beyond the symptoms. This is because true understanding is a life changing for any decision maker. As when you do understand; you’ll know what you need, and then what will be left is to mainly know how to get it, and then leadership can be applied concretely by showing the direction. If you only fix the symptom, not the root cause, then it perhaps causes more problems later. And that is why our world today; contains, in reality, more problems creators than true problems solvers because trying to solve a problem, by nature will create others. And if you don’t have an optimized solution to each newly created problem, you’ll have very little chances to succeed solving the main problem, because all is connected from system perspective. The reality is that whatever something is complex (especially in IT), the goal of optimization is to eliminate unnecessary complication, but also encourage desired complexity such as design, or overall business capability management.
Therefore, even technology is often complex in nature, IT needs to be a business simplifier and optimizer to improve business agility, not the other way around. IT leaders need to raise the profile of IT and its importance in modern business today. And IT delivery is about people, process, and technology in this order.
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May 11, 2016
The Monthly Strategy Highlight: Digital Strategy Tuning Up May. 2016
The strategy is the light to guide you ahead, not the hand to walk you through.
The strategy is the focal point of the “Future of CIO,” and the pillar of organizational existence, its design, structure, functions, vision, and mission. A real strategy is neither a document nor a forecast but rather an overall approach based on a diagnosis of a challenge. It brings up new functions, roles, and responsibilities, collaboration, demand for intuition and emergence, complementarities, philosophy, neutron sciences, and trans-disciplinary businesses. But these are not new per se. The frameworks of thoughts, consciousness and maturity assessments apply to strategy, then, now and in the future. Here is the monthly strategy highlight of the “Future of CIO” blog in 2016.
Digital Strategy Tuning Up May., 2016Five Aspects of Digital Strategy Management: The strategy is what you intend to do or accomplishes in terms of managing both resources and constraints to having the critical success factors in place and achieve the set of strategic priorities. In the strategy making process, one must also assess the environment, competitions, and other threats and opportunities and devise contingencies accordingly. With the increasing speed of changes and disruptions, digital Strategy-Execution is an ongoing continuum with iterative steps. Here are five aspects of digital strategy management.
Three Characteristics of Digital Strategy Digital strategy planning is a living process, and a good strategy is not “superficial.” It needs to dig deeper and diagnose the root causes of emergent business issues because the digital organization is a part of the dynamic business ecosystem that connects digital dots or resources inside and outside of the organization to create values for customers. So the piecemeal strategy of bolting digital channels to the business is no longer sufficient, and digital strategy needs to be shifted from top-down one-way direction to organizational inclusion, from static and linear strategy-execution scenario to dynamic strategy execution continuum; from a single strategy documentation often put on the shelf to an ongoing strategy portfolio. More specifically, what are the characteristics of an executable digital strategy?
Five Points of Digital Strategy The strategy is the art of designing a way of navigating and effectively utilizing available resources to attain a clearly defined objective. However, in many business contexts, the word strategy is demotivating. Some organizations have strategy meetings days and weeks only to go around in circles. Now businesses step deeper and deeper into the digital era, in which everything is touched by digital technologies, but how do they put effort on reshaping the digital version of corporation strategy?
Five Highlights in Digital Strategy:"Digital strategy is the compass to navigate through the digital transformation journey in organizations today. So it's important to outline the strategic intent and frame the strategy to be understandable and implementable. Otherwise, people's different interpretations yield many unintended consequences. Then, it is vital to actively socialize the strategy to confirm its intent and understandability by those who will guide the implementation. Here are five aspects in crafting and implementing a digital strategy.
Digital Strategy Tuning: How to Make Good Business ‘Assumptions’? Running a business is a thorny journey, with a lot of uncertainty, complexity, and velocity on the way, what are basic business ‘assumptions’ mostly flawed or invalid when preparing business strategic planning? And how can organizational leaders make a continuous adjustment to ensure the business is “doing the right things” before doing things right, framing the right questions before answering them right?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with 2700+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes 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 strategy is the focal point of the “Future of CIO,” and the pillar of organizational existence, its design, structure, functions, vision, and mission. A real strategy is neither a document nor a forecast but rather an overall approach based on a diagnosis of a challenge. It brings up new functions, roles, and responsibilities, collaboration, demand for intuition and emergence, complementarities, philosophy, neutron sciences, and trans-disciplinary businesses. But these are not new per se. The frameworks of thoughts, consciousness and maturity assessments apply to strategy, then, now and in the future. Here is the monthly strategy highlight of the “Future of CIO” blog in 2016.
Digital Strategy Tuning Up May., 2016Five Aspects of Digital Strategy Management: The strategy is what you intend to do or accomplishes in terms of managing both resources and constraints to having the critical success factors in place and achieve the set of strategic priorities. In the strategy making process, one must also assess the environment, competitions, and other threats and opportunities and devise contingencies accordingly. With the increasing speed of changes and disruptions, digital Strategy-Execution is an ongoing continuum with iterative steps. Here are five aspects of digital strategy management.
Three Characteristics of Digital Strategy Digital strategy planning is a living process, and a good strategy is not “superficial.” It needs to dig deeper and diagnose the root causes of emergent business issues because the digital organization is a part of the dynamic business ecosystem that connects digital dots or resources inside and outside of the organization to create values for customers. So the piecemeal strategy of bolting digital channels to the business is no longer sufficient, and digital strategy needs to be shifted from top-down one-way direction to organizational inclusion, from static and linear strategy-execution scenario to dynamic strategy execution continuum; from a single strategy documentation often put on the shelf to an ongoing strategy portfolio. More specifically, what are the characteristics of an executable digital strategy?
Five Points of Digital Strategy The strategy is the art of designing a way of navigating and effectively utilizing available resources to attain a clearly defined objective. However, in many business contexts, the word strategy is demotivating. Some organizations have strategy meetings days and weeks only to go around in circles. Now businesses step deeper and deeper into the digital era, in which everything is touched by digital technologies, but how do they put effort on reshaping the digital version of corporation strategy?
Five Highlights in Digital Strategy:"Digital strategy is the compass to navigate through the digital transformation journey in organizations today. So it's important to outline the strategic intent and frame the strategy to be understandable and implementable. Otherwise, people's different interpretations yield many unintended consequences. Then, it is vital to actively socialize the strategy to confirm its intent and understandability by those who will guide the implementation. Here are five aspects in crafting and implementing a digital strategy.Digital Strategy Tuning: How to Make Good Business ‘Assumptions’? Running a business is a thorny journey, with a lot of uncertainty, complexity, and velocity on the way, what are basic business ‘assumptions’ mostly flawed or invalid when preparing business strategic planning? And how can organizational leaders make a continuous adjustment to ensure the business is “doing the right things” before doing things right, framing the right questions before answering them right?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with 2700+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes 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 Questions to Assess a Person’s Imagination
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, imagination is encircling the world. - Albert Einstein
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?
Do you only believe in what you “see,” or do you always have an abundant imagination to see invisible and discover more possibilities? Imagination is the seed to grow innovation. An open mind leads to imagination, and Imagination leads to discovery. Discovery is both an event and a process. Imagination blooms at the beginner’s mind; they enjoy experimenting and discovering; there’s no rule to limit their imagination. Knowledge is fundamental for making imagination to reality. But without the imagination to "believe in the possible," innovation may not happen. To put the other way, innovation starts with an idea. Imagination can be seen as helping one expand the initial idea and building a set of hypotheses about how the product of the idea will look like, and how the customers will react to the product. Sometimes it is not possible to "see" the facts because they exist in different planes. And until you deal with facts from different sources that relate essentially to the same matter, the patterns are not apparent. That said, imagination is the "magic" force to push up and boost creativity.
Is imagination the key that transforms knowledge from folly to wisdom? Our knowledge is always based on what's known. It's information that's been discovered. However, in order to take any entity to a new place, imagination has to be exercised to uncover and create something new. At the highest level of imagination engagement, we become driven to leverage our imagination into creative or innovative results. Knowledge is important, but having a lot of knowledge about something can be a box that closes one's mind to innovation in that area. Openness is the most difficult thing to refresh your mind. And once you accept openness, the second most difficult thing is practicing it. Knowledge can be useful in trying to understand if what's imagined can be achieved. But if there's a paradigm shift then the knowledge can be a hindrance, especially today, the knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened, and people have to learn, de-learn, and relearn all the time. An entrepreneur may not have all the domain knowledge that required transforming an idea into a product, but he or she needs to be able to coordinate the resources from the different knowledge domain required to transform the idea into a product and market.
Will imagination only make you a “day-dreamer,” or it indeed evokes your passion for pursuing the dream? As with so many human behaviors, there is a gradient at which there is a threshold or tipping point where thought materializes into action.When our imagination is engaged, our passion flows, and our impulse to act is low. The higher the level at which we are engaged and stimulated to imagine, the more likely we are to take action. Imagination inspires your learning attitude as well. Often imagination and knowledge need to go hand-in-hand.A great wealth of knowledge fuels imaginations. This, in turn, becomes things which can be useful. Our imagination lets us dream of where we could go, knowledge helps us to understand how and what forces we are dealing with in our journey. Imagine what can be accomplished by increasing knowledge and applying it to what one has imagined. So a responsible use of knowledge is not an impediment to the imagination. Knowledge should be helpful for imagination - it helps to widen the fields and the scope. It gives wings to the imagination. More importantly, be proactive to pursue your dream by creating the future and roll your imagination into reality.
Free mind fertilizes imagination, imagination seeds creativity, and creativity grows into new knowledge. True thinking is the child of our imagination. Imagination is the fountain of thinking and creative communication is the way to convey your thinking vividly. Do not limit your imagination, let your imagination roll up, and reimagine the abundance of possibilities.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
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?
Do you only believe in what you “see,” or do you always have an abundant imagination to see invisible and discover more possibilities? Imagination is the seed to grow innovation. An open mind leads to imagination, and Imagination leads to discovery. Discovery is both an event and a process. Imagination blooms at the beginner’s mind; they enjoy experimenting and discovering; there’s no rule to limit their imagination. Knowledge is fundamental for making imagination to reality. But without the imagination to "believe in the possible," innovation may not happen. To put the other way, innovation starts with an idea. Imagination can be seen as helping one expand the initial idea and building a set of hypotheses about how the product of the idea will look like, and how the customers will react to the product. Sometimes it is not possible to "see" the facts because they exist in different planes. And until you deal with facts from different sources that relate essentially to the same matter, the patterns are not apparent. That said, imagination is the "magic" force to push up and boost creativity.
Is imagination the key that transforms knowledge from folly to wisdom? Our knowledge is always based on what's known. It's information that's been discovered. However, in order to take any entity to a new place, imagination has to be exercised to uncover and create something new. At the highest level of imagination engagement, we become driven to leverage our imagination into creative or innovative results. Knowledge is important, but having a lot of knowledge about something can be a box that closes one's mind to innovation in that area. Openness is the most difficult thing to refresh your mind. And once you accept openness, the second most difficult thing is practicing it. Knowledge can be useful in trying to understand if what's imagined can be achieved. But if there's a paradigm shift then the knowledge can be a hindrance, especially today, the knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened, and people have to learn, de-learn, and relearn all the time. An entrepreneur may not have all the domain knowledge that required transforming an idea into a product, but he or she needs to be able to coordinate the resources from the different knowledge domain required to transform the idea into a product and market.
Will imagination only make you a “day-dreamer,” or it indeed evokes your passion for pursuing the dream? As with so many human behaviors, there is a gradient at which there is a threshold or tipping point where thought materializes into action.When our imagination is engaged, our passion flows, and our impulse to act is low. The higher the level at which we are engaged and stimulated to imagine, the more likely we are to take action. Imagination inspires your learning attitude as well. Often imagination and knowledge need to go hand-in-hand.A great wealth of knowledge fuels imaginations. This, in turn, becomes things which can be useful. Our imagination lets us dream of where we could go, knowledge helps us to understand how and what forces we are dealing with in our journey. Imagine what can be accomplished by increasing knowledge and applying it to what one has imagined. So a responsible use of knowledge is not an impediment to the imagination. Knowledge should be helpful for imagination - it helps to widen the fields and the scope. It gives wings to the imagination. More importantly, be proactive to pursue your dream by creating the future and roll your imagination into reality.Free mind fertilizes imagination, imagination seeds creativity, and creativity grows into new knowledge. True thinking is the child of our imagination. Imagination is the fountain of thinking and creative communication is the way to convey your thinking vividly. Do not limit your imagination, let your imagination roll up, and reimagine the abundance of possibilities.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
"CIO Master" Book Tuning XXVIIII: The Long Jump to Achieve Digital Agility
The agile agenda should be a business value agenda, sustainable and fully empowered.
Agility is the ability to "pivot" and change direction in response to market pressure, or to create the market opportunity. Need for agility arises due to increasing speed of changes in underlying assumptions. Every business executive, especially CIO should ask her/himself: Is business and IT responsive and proactive enough to find answers and solutions in case of emerging chances? Does IT have a platform which is scalable, secure, resilient and well interconnected? Digital transformation starts with mind shift, business value has to be driven, indicated and understood at all levels of the organization, It is a long jump to achieve agility, because it’s neither just about adopting a methodology or the best practices, but to be equipped with agile mindset, and follow a set of principles to create and adapt to changes.
The agile agenda should be a business value agenda, sustainable and fully empowered: If you have a very good idea of where you are going - what your systems will be like and how they will work, and then it is much easier to choose quickly between immediate opportunities: pick the ones that take you in the right direction. Because strategy as a vector has both direction and force, the goals should be clear and therefore the ability to follow a strategy more than possible. It's also worth pointing out that agility is closely related to simplicity. The simpler the business processes, the faster the business respond to changes. Refocus on business fundamental is crucial for improving digital agility. Ignoring business basics is a short route - sometimes longer - to "Agile failure."
Agile is about continuous improvement: Agile is about doing, we learn by doing, we change as the output of that doing. Always have the plan to be getting better either at enterprises, departments, teams, individuals, etc., level. If you don't know more and have the capability to execute better than you did six months ago, there is a good chance one or more of your competitors can. Stop overly worrying about the state of Agile and Agile maturity. It sometimes just tends to move the focus from improvement to metrics (usually false metrics). Go and chase down the profit with an infectious passion. You will find yourself pushing everyone to be agiler because it is the most efficient way to achieve those goals. The more passion you have in this pursuit the more people who will follow your lead.
The agile approach to adopt Agile is to do what's appropriate: It takes agreement upon "doing what is appropriate" and define a common goal. Then the problem becomes one of finding out what is appropriate. Do not blindly follow the best practices of "enterprise agile." Often what there is at the enterprise level is a rigid process that maintains the status quo and gives lip service to agile concepts by adopting a few of trivial practices. This is in no magic formula of being agile. The very notion that there would be "schools" of agile is itself a misunderstanding of the underlying notions. Agile happily supports many different practices frameworks at many different scales. The point is how to figure out what’s the appropriate approach to tailoring your needs and make a smooth transformation. For example, you will want to use some engineering “practices” to improve agility and increase quality, without which you cannot be agile enough. You are not agile until your practices match your principles, as they can not be separated completely.
The ultimate goal is building up an agile enterprise which can succeed in combining two distinct but interconnected elements, strategic responsiveness, and organizational flexibility. Being agile also means to become a truly holistic organization. Organizational agility is only achieved when the organization changes, stop talking about IT and business, but running a holistic organization with one set of strategic goals and objectives, and start to think how best to achieve those goals, and recognize that there is always room for improvement. It’s the long jump to achieve digital agility. Agility within and of itself is a strategy.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Agility is the ability to "pivot" and change direction in response to market pressure, or to create the market opportunity. Need for agility arises due to increasing speed of changes in underlying assumptions. Every business executive, especially CIO should ask her/himself: Is business and IT responsive and proactive enough to find answers and solutions in case of emerging chances? Does IT have a platform which is scalable, secure, resilient and well interconnected? Digital transformation starts with mind shift, business value has to be driven, indicated and understood at all levels of the organization, It is a long jump to achieve agility, because it’s neither just about adopting a methodology or the best practices, but to be equipped with agile mindset, and follow a set of principles to create and adapt to changes.
The agile agenda should be a business value agenda, sustainable and fully empowered: If you have a very good idea of where you are going - what your systems will be like and how they will work, and then it is much easier to choose quickly between immediate opportunities: pick the ones that take you in the right direction. Because strategy as a vector has both direction and force, the goals should be clear and therefore the ability to follow a strategy more than possible. It's also worth pointing out that agility is closely related to simplicity. The simpler the business processes, the faster the business respond to changes. Refocus on business fundamental is crucial for improving digital agility. Ignoring business basics is a short route - sometimes longer - to "Agile failure."
Agile is about continuous improvement: Agile is about doing, we learn by doing, we change as the output of that doing. Always have the plan to be getting better either at enterprises, departments, teams, individuals, etc., level. If you don't know more and have the capability to execute better than you did six months ago, there is a good chance one or more of your competitors can. Stop overly worrying about the state of Agile and Agile maturity. It sometimes just tends to move the focus from improvement to metrics (usually false metrics). Go and chase down the profit with an infectious passion. You will find yourself pushing everyone to be agiler because it is the most efficient way to achieve those goals. The more passion you have in this pursuit the more people who will follow your lead.
The agile approach to adopt Agile is to do what's appropriate: It takes agreement upon "doing what is appropriate" and define a common goal. Then the problem becomes one of finding out what is appropriate. Do not blindly follow the best practices of "enterprise agile." Often what there is at the enterprise level is a rigid process that maintains the status quo and gives lip service to agile concepts by adopting a few of trivial practices. This is in no magic formula of being agile. The very notion that there would be "schools" of agile is itself a misunderstanding of the underlying notions. Agile happily supports many different practices frameworks at many different scales. The point is how to figure out what’s the appropriate approach to tailoring your needs and make a smooth transformation. For example, you will want to use some engineering “practices” to improve agility and increase quality, without which you cannot be agile enough. You are not agile until your practices match your principles, as they can not be separated completely. The ultimate goal is building up an agile enterprise which can succeed in combining two distinct but interconnected elements, strategic responsiveness, and organizational flexibility. Being agile also means to become a truly holistic organization. Organizational agility is only achieved when the organization changes, stop talking about IT and business, but running a holistic organization with one set of strategic goals and objectives, and start to think how best to achieve those goals, and recognize that there is always room for improvement. It’s the long jump to achieve digital agility. Agility within and of itself is a strategy.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The Long Jump to Achieve Digital Agility
Agility is the ability to "pivot" and change direction in response to market pressure, or to create the market opportunity. Need for agility arises due to changes in underlying assumptions. Every business executive, especially CIO should ask her/himself: Is business and IT responsive and proactive enough to find answers and solutions in case of emerging chances? Does IT have a platform which is scalable, secure, resilient and well interconnected? Digital transformation starts with mind shift, business value has to be driven, indicated and understood at all levels of the organization, It is a long jump to achieve agility, because it’s neither just about adopting a methodology or the best practices, but to be equipped with agile mindset, and follow a set of principles to create and adapt to changes.
The agile agenda should be a business value agenda, sustainable and fully empowered: If you have a very good idea of where you are going - what your systems will be like and how they will work, and then it is much easier to choose quickly between immediate opportunities: pick the ones that take you in the right direction. Because strategy as a vector has both direction and force, the goals should be clear and therefore the ability to follow a strategy more than possible. It's also worth pointing out that agility is closely related to simplicity. The simpler the business processes, the faster the business respond to changes. Ignoring business basics is a short route - sometimes longer - to "Agile failure."
Agile is about continuous improvement: Agile is about doing, we learn by doing, we change as the output of that doing. Always have the plan to be getting better. Enterprises, departments, teams, individuals, etc. If you don't know more and have the capability to execute better than you did six months ago, there is a good chance one or more of your competitors can. Stop worrying about the state of Agile and Agile maturity. It just tends to move the focus from improvement to metrics (usually false metrics). Go and chase down the money with an infectious passion. You will find yourself pushing everyone to be agiler because it is the most efficient way to achieve those goals. The more passion you have in this pursuit the more people who will follow your lead.
The agile approach to adopt Agile is to do what's appropriate: It takes agreement upon "doing what is appropriate" is a good goal. Then the problem becomes one of finding out what is appropriate. Do not blindly follow the best practices of "enterprise agile." Often what there is at the enterprise level is a rigid process that maintains the status quo and gives lip service to agile concepts by adopting a few of the more trivial practices. This is in no way agile. The very notion that there would be "schools" of agile is itself a misunderstanding of the underlying notions. Agile happily supports many different practices frameworks at many different scales. The point is how to figure out what’s the appropriate approach to tailoring your needs and make a smooth transformation. For example, you will want to use some engineering “practices” to improve agility and increase quality, without which you cannot be agile enough. You are not agile until your practices match your principles, as they can not be separated completely. The ultimate goal is building up an agile enterprise which can succeed in combining two distinct but interconnected elements, strategic responsiveness, and organizational flexibility. Being agile also means to become a truly holistic organization, organizational agility is only achieved when the organization changes, stop talking about IT and business, but running a holistic organization with one set of strategic goals and objectives, and start to think how best to achieve those goals, and recognize that there is always room for improvement. It’s the long jump to achieve digital agility. Agility within and of itself is a strategy.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
May 10, 2016
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Fairness
Fairness is one of the most significant traits in wisdom, the fairer you are, the wiser you become.
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?
Do you have a judgmental mind? Today’s digital workforce is diverse both from heart and mind, not just the outlook on the surface. Have you ever judged the book by its cover? Have you ever mislabelled, or over-analyzed others? Have you always kept extreme thinking to judge “good or bad,” have you paid too much attention to trivial or insignificant details, with ignorance of important aspects or big picture? To be fair and less judgmental takes self-awareness and insightful observation, tolerance and inclusiveness. We need to know and admit to our prejudices, yes, we all have them. Then it takes a conscious effort to set them aside, hold them in abeyance, and engage with the individual. It makes sense not be prejudiced. Not to go from a group label to a preconceived opinion about individuals that impacts if and how we relate to them, whether we start out comfortable and trusting or uncomfortable and suspicious. Seeing differences as just different and not as a confirmation of some preconception. Be intellectually curious to understand how people think, not just how they look, be insightful to understand people from different angles and be inclusive to appreciate cognitive difference and different point of view to approach problems and spark creativity. It’s important to consciously limit the influence of our own biases. Perception is sometimes a false reality. To find the truth, one must remove the “old box” shaped via conventional wisdom or group thinking, but think more critically, independently and in an out-of-box way.
Can you often make objective observation and sound judgment? According to the dictionary: being objective means you are not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; but make judgment or decisions based on unbiased fact, dispassionate examination, and an objective opinion. Absolute objectivity is perhaps impossible to achieve.Being objective is of or relating to something that can be known, or to something that is an object or a part of an object; existing independent of thought or an observer as part of reality. We are social beings with individual histories built upon both our own experiences and the life stories of those around us. However, relative objectivity is a continual process in which we skirt the edge of what is possible. To be objective, one must step out of what one is trying to understand, to zoom out in order to capture the holistic picture, otherwise your false perception based on the construct of your ego or self-expression could block the way and cloud the view.
Are you surrounded by the group of people with a cognitive difference to provide good feedback in keeping you Impartial: Impartial means adjective neutral, objective, detached, just, fair, equal, open-minded, equitable, disinterested, unbiased, even-handed, nonpartisan, unprejudiced, without fear or favor. It is the opposite of biases and stereotyping. Unfortunately, biases and stereotyping are how humans cope with larger numbers of other humans than we could ever know. However, when you get down to the smaller group and individual level, these biases and stereotypes have to be thoroughly tested. Most often they are in the form of attributing behaviors to internal, something someone should be able to do something about, and external, something a person has no control over factors. People are often third eye blind regardless of how aware you believe you are, your biases will always direct that decision. So the peer feedback can help uncover one’s biases. You need to be surrounded with people with cognitive differences, they can provide honest, friendly and worthy feedback, particularly in a decision process. Having an honest sounding board that will tell you when your own issues are getting the way, is critical when you are dealing with the important issues.
“Being fair” is a mentality which takes multilevel thinking practices to gain wisdom. Because sometimes in order to be truly fair, you need to treat others same by treating them differently. Also, the action and behavior to reflect fairness need to be encouraged via open communication, let individuals embrace their bias by sharing it with others in a non-threatening context. This can help to build a fair working environment and build a culture of inclusiveness and innovation.
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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?Do you have a judgmental mind? Today’s digital workforce is diverse both from heart and mind, not just the outlook on the surface. Have you ever judged the book by its cover? Have you ever mislabelled, or over-analyzed others? Have you always kept extreme thinking to judge “good or bad,” have you paid too much attention to trivial or insignificant details, with ignorance of important aspects or big picture? To be fair and less judgmental takes self-awareness and insightful observation, tolerance and inclusiveness. We need to know and admit to our prejudices, yes, we all have them. Then it takes a conscious effort to set them aside, hold them in abeyance, and engage with the individual. It makes sense not be prejudiced. Not to go from a group label to a preconceived opinion about individuals that impacts if and how we relate to them, whether we start out comfortable and trusting or uncomfortable and suspicious. Seeing differences as just different and not as a confirmation of some preconception. Be intellectually curious to understand how people think, not just how they look, be insightful to understand people from different angles and be inclusive to appreciate cognitive difference and different point of view to approach problems and spark creativity. It’s important to consciously limit the influence of our own biases. Perception is sometimes a false reality. To find the truth, one must remove the “old box” shaped via conventional wisdom or group thinking, but think more critically, independently and in an out-of-box way.
Can you often make objective observation and sound judgment? According to the dictionary: being objective means you are not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; but make judgment or decisions based on unbiased fact, dispassionate examination, and an objective opinion. Absolute objectivity is perhaps impossible to achieve.Being objective is of or relating to something that can be known, or to something that is an object or a part of an object; existing independent of thought or an observer as part of reality. We are social beings with individual histories built upon both our own experiences and the life stories of those around us. However, relative objectivity is a continual process in which we skirt the edge of what is possible. To be objective, one must step out of what one is trying to understand, to zoom out in order to capture the holistic picture, otherwise your false perception based on the construct of your ego or self-expression could block the way and cloud the view.
Are you surrounded by the group of people with a cognitive difference to provide good feedback in keeping you Impartial: Impartial means adjective neutral, objective, detached, just, fair, equal, open-minded, equitable, disinterested, unbiased, even-handed, nonpartisan, unprejudiced, without fear or favor. It is the opposite of biases and stereotyping. Unfortunately, biases and stereotyping are how humans cope with larger numbers of other humans than we could ever know. However, when you get down to the smaller group and individual level, these biases and stereotypes have to be thoroughly tested. Most often they are in the form of attributing behaviors to internal, something someone should be able to do something about, and external, something a person has no control over factors. People are often third eye blind regardless of how aware you believe you are, your biases will always direct that decision. So the peer feedback can help uncover one’s biases. You need to be surrounded with people with cognitive differences, they can provide honest, friendly and worthy feedback, particularly in a decision process. Having an honest sounding board that will tell you when your own issues are getting the way, is critical when you are dealing with the important issues.
“Being fair” is a mentality which takes multilevel thinking practices to gain wisdom. Because sometimes in order to be truly fair, you need to treat others same by treating them differently. Also, the action and behavior to reflect fairness need to be encouraged via open communication, let individuals embrace their bias by sharing it with others in a non-threatening context. This can help to build a fair working environment and build a culture of inclusiveness and innovation.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
