Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1341
May 3, 2016
"Digital Valley" Book Tuning: Three Causes of Innovation Blue
The success of innovation management is never an accident, it is a thought-out planning and seamless execution.
Innovation is the light every organization is chasing, however, the majority of organizations still use innovation as a buzzword or treat innovation as a serendipity. They might put a lot of effort or make a big investment on it, but statistically, innovation management has very low percentage of success rate. Many organizations even experience innovation blue and suffer from innovation pitfalls. So what are the root causes of innovation fatigue or creativity brain drain, and how to improve innovation management effectiveness?
It’s the talent gap: At creative organizations with highly innovative leadership, people are encouraged and given the time resources to work on new things that excite them, all are required to produce new ideas and brainstorm the better way to do things. However, in the traditional hierarchical organizations, creativity is discouraged and mediocre is rewarded. The talent gap for creativity is enlarged due to the outdated talent management practices and ineffective performance management measurement. To overcome innovation blue, the workplace needs to be designed to help employees at all levels within an organization (from leaders to front-line) understand and develop their creative capacity to solve problems and exploit opportunities in new and innovative ways. Keeping growth mind, learning from every experience, but also learn to unlearn your experiences, creativity starts with a knowledge base, and then openness to new experience or detecting thing you didn't know or applying knowledge from other domains to a new one, results in creativity in the new domain. The heterogeneous team with cognitive differences is more innovative than the homogeneous group setting. The collective creativity depends on varying factors because the team perhaps have different intents (destructive vs. constructive), different processes (enforcement vs collaboration), different participants (compliant vs. creative), different outcomes (disharmony vs harmony) and different philosophies (openness vs close-mindedness). Whether creativity can be collective is clear and flows from what seems like an expansive, generous, creative minds, how creative is the team depends on the creative capacity of its member. You can get a diverse group of people together in one room and still not have "creativity" if the participating individuals are not particularly creative. People need to be able to apply both converging and diverging thinking to ideas so that current constraints are removed. People need to be trained in creative methods and techniques, the business model is often challenged, everyone has a personal creativity objective at work and there is much humor to go around, fewer office politics, more professional learning, and sharing.
The other cause to innovation blue is culture inertia: Creativity is an innate ability which is often sparked through positive attitude and out-of-box thinking to challenge conventional wisdom. However, in most of the organizations, people can’t get out of “comfort zone,” and culture inertia is one of the biggest obstacles to innovation. Here are some common responses: "We've always done it this way," “Our competitors are doing it so it must be right,” "Stick to your own responsibility,” "You don't really understand that problem,” "Don't rock the boat;" etc. Indeed, attitude matters, and DARE a little to ask "Why" or "Why not," is the first step to spur creativity. Hence, it is imperative for improving the organization's culture to one that is more innovative, inspires creativity, celebrates or allows failure or prototyping. If you have or develop the right culture through change management, open, not close; agile, not rigid, risk intelligent, not risk avoiding, and then everything else can be connected. An adaptive culture makes innovation and improvement easier. It is easier to collect, facilitate and manage ideas more optimally. Finally, if you get the culture right, then people feel they have the freedom to try and even to fail.
Innovation blue is also caused by lack the balls to invest in innovation management: Innovation fails because many organizations lack real support by senior management and lack a systematic approach to managing both opportunity and risk in a structural way. Innovation fails because top Leadership doesn't understand how to "manage" innovation or treat the decision in the same way as a capital decision. It is a common knowledge, that innovation management requires the highest risk taking at a strategic value chain, including organization, investments, and assets. De-risk the introduction of innovations into the market, protecting existing operations and brands and establishing clear proof-of-concept before making investments to launch and scale. Businesses need to think hard about how their function or organization can be performed in other ways, especially in ways that they have background or expertise. It takes a combination of wacky and less risky ideas to balance out a robust portfolio worth investigating. Innovation fails because there are too many disconnects that occur between the birth of a vision/concept and the process of turning it into a reality. Lack of information actually gathered for the innovative ideas come up. It takes a TEAM of bright individuals and executive sponsorship to review/evaluate ideas, offers feedback, and supports ongoing development efforts. An overall framework for innovation with gate reviews will help to sustain progress and minimize the risk of idea flops. Clearly it's important to invest in the right mix of ideas (both bold & simple) with supporting business cases. Innovation is a management discipline to transform novel ideas and achieve the business value.
To overcome innovation blue, the organization needs to have open-minded leadership, the bright talented people who are encouraged to think differently, the high-creative teams with complementary minds and heterogeneous group setting to brainstorm new ideas, the effective framework, robust process and learning culture to management innovation in a systematic way. Sometimes in contexts like that you end up being creative by accident. But the success of innovation management is never an accident, it is a thought-out planning and seamless execution, it takes iterative steps and makes the continuous delivery.
Digital Valley Book Order Link on Amazon Digital Valley Book Order Link on Barners & Noble Digital Valley Book Order Link on IBook Digital Valley Book Slideshare Presentation & Video Digital Valley Introduction Digital Valley Book Preview Chapter 1 Creative Wisdom Digital Valley Book Preview Chapter 2 Strategic Wisdom Digital Valley Book Preview Chapter 3 System Wisdom Digital Valley Book Preview Chapter 4 Decision WisdomDigital Valley Book Preview Chapter 5 Culture Wisdom Digital Valley Book Quote Collection 1
Digital Valley Book Quote Collection II
Digital Valley Book Quote Collection III
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Innovation is the light every organization is chasing, however, the majority of organizations still use innovation as a buzzword or treat innovation as a serendipity. They might put a lot of effort or make a big investment on it, but statistically, innovation management has very low percentage of success rate. Many organizations even experience innovation blue and suffer from innovation pitfalls. So what are the root causes of innovation fatigue or creativity brain drain, and how to improve innovation management effectiveness?
It’s the talent gap: At creative organizations with highly innovative leadership, people are encouraged and given the time resources to work on new things that excite them, all are required to produce new ideas and brainstorm the better way to do things. However, in the traditional hierarchical organizations, creativity is discouraged and mediocre is rewarded. The talent gap for creativity is enlarged due to the outdated talent management practices and ineffective performance management measurement. To overcome innovation blue, the workplace needs to be designed to help employees at all levels within an organization (from leaders to front-line) understand and develop their creative capacity to solve problems and exploit opportunities in new and innovative ways. Keeping growth mind, learning from every experience, but also learn to unlearn your experiences, creativity starts with a knowledge base, and then openness to new experience or detecting thing you didn't know or applying knowledge from other domains to a new one, results in creativity in the new domain. The heterogeneous team with cognitive differences is more innovative than the homogeneous group setting. The collective creativity depends on varying factors because the team perhaps have different intents (destructive vs. constructive), different processes (enforcement vs collaboration), different participants (compliant vs. creative), different outcomes (disharmony vs harmony) and different philosophies (openness vs close-mindedness). Whether creativity can be collective is clear and flows from what seems like an expansive, generous, creative minds, how creative is the team depends on the creative capacity of its member. You can get a diverse group of people together in one room and still not have "creativity" if the participating individuals are not particularly creative. People need to be able to apply both converging and diverging thinking to ideas so that current constraints are removed. People need to be trained in creative methods and techniques, the business model is often challenged, everyone has a personal creativity objective at work and there is much humor to go around, fewer office politics, more professional learning, and sharing.
The other cause to innovation blue is culture inertia: Creativity is an innate ability which is often sparked through positive attitude and out-of-box thinking to challenge conventional wisdom. However, in most of the organizations, people can’t get out of “comfort zone,” and culture inertia is one of the biggest obstacles to innovation. Here are some common responses: "We've always done it this way," “Our competitors are doing it so it must be right,” "Stick to your own responsibility,” "You don't really understand that problem,” "Don't rock the boat;" etc. Indeed, attitude matters, and DARE a little to ask "Why" or "Why not," is the first step to spur creativity. Hence, it is imperative for improving the organization's culture to one that is more innovative, inspires creativity, celebrates or allows failure or prototyping. If you have or develop the right culture through change management, open, not close; agile, not rigid, risk intelligent, not risk avoiding, and then everything else can be connected. An adaptive culture makes innovation and improvement easier. It is easier to collect, facilitate and manage ideas more optimally. Finally, if you get the culture right, then people feel they have the freedom to try and even to fail.
Innovation blue is also caused by lack the balls to invest in innovation management: Innovation fails because many organizations lack real support by senior management and lack a systematic approach to managing both opportunity and risk in a structural way. Innovation fails because top Leadership doesn't understand how to "manage" innovation or treat the decision in the same way as a capital decision. It is a common knowledge, that innovation management requires the highest risk taking at a strategic value chain, including organization, investments, and assets. De-risk the introduction of innovations into the market, protecting existing operations and brands and establishing clear proof-of-concept before making investments to launch and scale. Businesses need to think hard about how their function or organization can be performed in other ways, especially in ways that they have background or expertise. It takes a combination of wacky and less risky ideas to balance out a robust portfolio worth investigating. Innovation fails because there are too many disconnects that occur between the birth of a vision/concept and the process of turning it into a reality. Lack of information actually gathered for the innovative ideas come up. It takes a TEAM of bright individuals and executive sponsorship to review/evaluate ideas, offers feedback, and supports ongoing development efforts. An overall framework for innovation with gate reviews will help to sustain progress and minimize the risk of idea flops. Clearly it's important to invest in the right mix of ideas (both bold & simple) with supporting business cases. Innovation is a management discipline to transform novel ideas and achieve the business value.
To overcome innovation blue, the organization needs to have open-minded leadership, the bright talented people who are encouraged to think differently, the high-creative teams with complementary minds and heterogeneous group setting to brainstorm new ideas, the effective framework, robust process and learning culture to management innovation in a systematic way. Sometimes in contexts like that you end up being creative by accident. But the success of innovation management is never an accident, it is a thought-out planning and seamless execution, it takes iterative steps and makes the continuous delivery.
Digital Valley Book Order Link on Amazon Digital Valley Book Order Link on Barners & Noble Digital Valley Book Order Link on IBook Digital Valley Book Slideshare Presentation & Video Digital Valley Introduction Digital Valley Book Preview Chapter 1 Creative Wisdom Digital Valley Book Preview Chapter 2 Strategic Wisdom Digital Valley Book Preview Chapter 3 System Wisdom Digital Valley Book Preview Chapter 4 Decision WisdomDigital Valley Book Preview Chapter 5 Culture Wisdom Digital Valley Book Quote Collection 1
Digital Valley Book Quote Collection II
Digital Valley Book Quote Collection III
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Causes of Innovation Blue
Innovation is the light every organization is chasing, however, the majority of organizations still use innovation as a buzzword or treat innovation as a serendipity. They might put a lot of effort or make a big investment on it, but statistically, innovation management has very low percentage of success rate. Any many organizations even experience innovation blue and suffer from innovation pitfalls. So what are the root causes of innovation fatigue or creativity brain drain, and how to improve innovation management effectiveness?
It’s the talent gap: At creative organizations with highly innovative leadership, people are encouraged and given the time resources to work on new things that excite them, all are required to produce new ideas and brainstorm the better way to do things. However, in the traditional hierarchical organizations, creativity is discouraged and mediocre is rewarded. The talent gap for creativity is enlarged due to the outdated talent management practices and performance management measurement. To overcome innovation blue, the workplace needs to be designed to help employees at all levels within an organization (from leaders to front-line) understand and develop their creative capacity to solve problems and exploit opportunities in new and innovative ways. Keeping growth mind, learning from every experience, but also learn to unlearn your experiences, creativity starts with a knowledge base, and then openness to new experience or detecting thing you didn't know or applying knowledge from other domains to a new one, results in creativity in the new domain. The heterogeneous team with the cognitive difference is more innovative than the homogeneous group setting. The collective creativity depends on varying factors because the team perhaps have different intents (destructive vs. constructive), different processes (enforcement vs collaboration), different participants (compliant vs. creative), different outcomes (disharmony vs harmony) and different philosophies (openness vs close-mindedness). Whether creativity can be collective is clear and flows from what seems like an expansive, generous, creative minds, how creative is the team depends on the creative capacity of its member. You can get a diverse group of people together in one room and still not have "creativity" if the participating individuals are not particularly creative. People need to be able to apply both converging and diverging thinking to ideas so that current constraints are removed. People are often trained in creative methods and techniques, the business model is often challenged, everyone has a personal creativity objective at work and there is much humor to go around, fewer office politics, more professional learning, and sharing.
The other cause to innovation blue is culture inertia: Creativity is an innate ability which is often sparked through positive attitude and out-of-box thinking to challenge conventional wisdom. However, in most of the organizations, people can’t get out of “comfort zone,” and culture inertia is one of the biggest obstacles to innovation. Here are some common responses: "We've always done it this way," “Our competitors are doing it so it must be right,” "Stick to your own responsibility,” "You don't really understand that problem,” "Don't rock the boat;" etc. Indeed, attitude matters, and DARE a little to ask "Why" or "Why not," is the first step to spur creativity. Hence, it is imperative for improving the organization's culture to one that is more innovative, inspires creativity, celebrates or allows failure or prototyping. If you have or develop the right culture through change management, open, not close; agile, not rigid, risk intelligent, not risk avoiding, and then everything else can be connected. An adaptive culture makes innovation and improvement easier. It is easier to collect, facilitate and manage ideas more optimally. Finally, if you get the culture right, then people feel they have the freedom to try and even to fail.
Innovation blue is also caused by lack the balls to invest in innovation management: Innovation fails because many organizations lack real support by senior management and lack a systematic approach to manage both opportunity and risk in a structural way. Innovation fails because top Leadership doesn't understand how to "manage" innovation or treat the decision in the same way as a capital decision. It is a common knowledge, that innovation management requires the highest risk taking at a strategic value chain, including organization, investments, and assets. De-risk the introduction of innovations into the market, protecting existing operations and brands and establishing clear proof-of-concept before making investments to launch and scale. Businesses need to think hard about how their function or organization can be performed in other ways, especially in ways that they have background or expertise. It takes a combination of wacky and less risky ideas to balance out a robust portfolio worth investigating. Innovation fails because there are too many disconnects that occur between the birth of a vision/concept and the process of turning it into a reality. Lack of information actually gathered for the innovative ideas that come up. It takes a TEAM of bright individuals and executive sponsorship to review/evaluate ideas, offer feedback, and support ongoing development efforts. An overall framework for innovation with gate reviews will help to sustain progress and minimize the risk of idea flops. Clearly it's important to invest in the right mix of ideas (both bold & simple) with supporting business cases. Innovation is a management discipline to transform novel ideas and achieve the business value.
To overcome innovation blue, the organization needs to have open-minded leadership, the bright talented people who are encouraged to think differently, the high-creative teams with complementary minds and heterogeneous group setting to brainstorm new ideas, the effective framework, robust process and learning culture to management innovation in a systematic way. Sometimes in contexts like that you end up being creative by accident. But the success of innovation management is never an accident, it is a thought-out planning and seamless execution, it takes iterative steps and makes the continuous delivery.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
“CIO Master” Book Turning XXIV: Running IT as a Growth Engine of Digital Business
It’s not enough for IT to only focus on the bottom line “keep the lights on,” it has to contribute more on business growth.
Digital organizations are hyperconnected and interdependent and they have to continue to adapt to the digital new normal with “VUCA” characteristics. Now, everything requires shorter term planning, without giving up the strategic endgame, IT is more often the big influencer of business strategy and the creative driver of business innovation, because Information is the lifeblood, and technology is often the “digital disruptor.” To further expedite digital transformation, how to run IT as a growth engine of the business?
IT leadership needs to shift their management orientation and begin thinking like entrepreneurs: Some IT leaders have no interest in this transition. IT entrepreneurialism becomes a new fixture for management in their efforts to substantiate their competitive position, effect market landscape, and drive new revenue growth. Practicing intrapreneurship in the large enterprise is the right way to reinvent IT as a growth engine of the business and a change agent to build the culture of innovation. Today IT is the wing of every successful business. The paradigm shifts from IT being a reactive, engine room culture to one that is agile and develops the capabilities to drive business growth and perpetual improvement. Profits and then ROI should be the driving force behind any IT project. The IT department provides guidance, support, assistance and direction in the application and adoption of information technology solutions in support of business objectives! IT is the only entity in the organization supposed to understand business entirely and oversight organizational processes horizontally, and pay attention to the change processes under the surface, in order to build change as a crucial business capability via platform approaches and systematic disciplines. A great IT organization can differentiate its organization from the competitors via achieving the desired capability outcome.
It’s not enough for IT to only focus on the bottom line “keep the lights on,” it has to contribute more on business growth: IT leaders need to encourage their teams to spend more time with leaders on the business side as well as directly with customers, because a high-effective digital IT is about top-line business growth by maximizing ROI to add up overall business value in the second dimension. When maintaining a clear and efficient bottom line, with enough forward thinking to 'plan in' growth, and this dimension allows the IT organization to manage information and apply technology to pour more on the top line. 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. Also, you have to have some measure to show what value was created. 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 needs to rebrand itself as a business innovation and digital transformation center: IT touches both hard business processes and soft human behaviors. Technology is pervasive, Business Transformation or business initiatives today nearly always involves some form of technology implementation and information management. The information provides the lifeblood for any organization to make a data-driven decision and capture business insight, IT enables all critical business processes, which underpin business capabilities in enabling such transformation. IT has the necessary structure, methodology, and tool in shaping the new box of thinking and managing the emergent digital complexity with the new characteristics such as hyper-connectivity, hyper-diversity, and hyper-dynamism. The CIO needs to play a critical role in such transformation. IT has to become an innovation engine for business growth. IT capabilities directly make an impact on business capabilities, and IT maturity is proportional to overall organizational maturity.
IT Transformation is on the horizon to improve IT maturity: from a reactive support center to a proactive value creator; from a back-office function to an innovation train yard; from an order taker to a strategy co-creator, from a help desk to a growth engine of the digital organization. IT is always at the center of change, and IT needs to speed up and improve its maturity from functioning to firm to delight, and from efficiency to effectiveness to agility.
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
Digital organizations are hyperconnected and interdependent and they have to continue to adapt to the digital new normal with “VUCA” characteristics. Now, everything requires shorter term planning, without giving up the strategic endgame, IT is more often the big influencer of business strategy and the creative driver of business innovation, because Information is the lifeblood, and technology is often the “digital disruptor.” To further expedite digital transformation, how to run IT as a growth engine of the business?IT leadership needs to shift their management orientation and begin thinking like entrepreneurs: Some IT leaders have no interest in this transition. IT entrepreneurialism becomes a new fixture for management in their efforts to substantiate their competitive position, effect market landscape, and drive new revenue growth. Practicing intrapreneurship in the large enterprise is the right way to reinvent IT as a growth engine of the business and a change agent to build the culture of innovation. Today IT is the wing of every successful business. The paradigm shifts from IT being a reactive, engine room culture to one that is agile and develops the capabilities to drive business growth and perpetual improvement. Profits and then ROI should be the driving force behind any IT project. The IT department provides guidance, support, assistance and direction in the application and adoption of information technology solutions in support of business objectives! IT is the only entity in the organization supposed to understand business entirely and oversight organizational processes horizontally, and pay attention to the change processes under the surface, in order to build change as a crucial business capability via platform approaches and systematic disciplines. A great IT organization can differentiate its organization from the competitors via achieving the desired capability outcome.
It’s not enough for IT to only focus on the bottom line “keep the lights on,” it has to contribute more on business growth: IT leaders need to encourage their teams to spend more time with leaders on the business side as well as directly with customers, because a high-effective digital IT is about top-line business growth by maximizing ROI to add up overall business value in the second dimension. When maintaining a clear and efficient bottom line, with enough forward thinking to 'plan in' growth, and this dimension allows the IT organization to manage information and apply technology to pour more on the top line. 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. Also, you have to have some measure to show what value was created. 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 needs to rebrand itself as a business innovation and digital transformation center: IT touches both hard business processes and soft human behaviors. Technology is pervasive, Business Transformation or business initiatives today nearly always involves some form of technology implementation and information management. The information provides the lifeblood for any organization to make a data-driven decision and capture business insight, IT enables all critical business processes, which underpin business capabilities in enabling such transformation. IT has the necessary structure, methodology, and tool in shaping the new box of thinking and managing the emergent digital complexity with the new characteristics such as hyper-connectivity, hyper-diversity, and hyper-dynamism. The CIO needs to play a critical role in such transformation. IT has to become an innovation engine for business growth. IT capabilities directly make an impact on business capabilities, and IT maturity is proportional to overall organizational maturity.
IT Transformation is on the horizon to improve IT maturity: from a reactive support center to a proactive value creator; from a back-office function to an innovation train yard; from an order taker to a strategy co-creator, from a help desk to a growth engine of the digital organization. IT is always at the center of change, and IT needs to speed up and improve its maturity from functioning to firm to delight, and from efficiency to effectiveness to agility.
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
May 2, 2016
The Monthly Innovation Brief: Innovation Measurement May. 2016
One can only manage what it’s being measured. It is also true for innovation management.
Innovation takes a cycle of observing-questioning-connecting-networking-experimenting. From a management perspective, innovation is how to transform novel ideas to achieve its business value, due to the hyper-complexity of modern business, innovation is essentially about reducing the unnecessary business complexity to tackle the complexities of business dynamic. Here is a series of blogs to brainstorm the practices and pitfalls of innovation management.
Innovation MeasurementInnovation Measurement: How to Do it Right? Innovation is the light every organization must pursue now, but most of the innovation initiatives fail to achieve the expected result. Druck is credited as saying: “We can only manage what we measure.” What is stopping you from measuring top line impact from innovation, how much revenue is generated by innovations launched in the last 5 years? Are innovation failures caused by the time lag, inefficiency of financial systems? Is your innovation process not so clear with limited information on what has been done, or something else for ineffective innovation management, like a fuzzy or not well-communicated strategy goals? And innovation measurement, how to do it right?
How to Assess and Improve Innovation Management Maturity For many organizations, innovations are still serendipitous. However, serendipity can be planned into an innovation project. Serendipity is not a lucky accident, and it can be planned and worked upon. Has a lot of determination and divine providence for those who believe in that. Serendipity will always play some part in the innovation effort, but innovation is both art and science, Innovation Management is a scientific management discipline, how do you assess innovation management maturity, though?
What are the Pitfalls in Measuring Innovative IT Effectively? IIT as an enterprise group is in a bigger identity crisis than ever, the industrial mode of IT running as a cost center no longer satisfies stakeholders and business partner anymore; the digital mode of IT means speed, agility, and innovation. IT needs to become business’s innovation engine, 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, what are the pitfalls in measuring such innovative IT effectively?
Do KPIs Kill Innovation? Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are part of an effective bridge between the desired business objectives and execution of strategies. Good KPIs make management more as science than art, however, due to the ‘creative’ nature of innovation, do KPIs kill innovation?
How to Measure Innovation Performance Innovation is about how to implement the creative idea and achieve its business value. One can only manage what it’s being measured. It is also true for innovation management. Innovation performance metrics and tools can help companies think systemically about business innovation.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about 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. 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
Innovation takes a cycle of observing-questioning-connecting-networking-experimenting. From a management perspective, innovation is how to transform novel ideas to achieve its business value, due to the hyper-complexity of modern business, innovation is essentially about reducing the unnecessary business complexity to tackle the complexities of business dynamic. Here is a series of blogs to brainstorm the practices and pitfalls of innovation management.
Innovation MeasurementInnovation Measurement: How to Do it Right? Innovation is the light every organization must pursue now, but most of the innovation initiatives fail to achieve the expected result. Druck is credited as saying: “We can only manage what we measure.” What is stopping you from measuring top line impact from innovation, how much revenue is generated by innovations launched in the last 5 years? Are innovation failures caused by the time lag, inefficiency of financial systems? Is your innovation process not so clear with limited information on what has been done, or something else for ineffective innovation management, like a fuzzy or not well-communicated strategy goals? And innovation measurement, how to do it right?
How to Assess and Improve Innovation Management Maturity For many organizations, innovations are still serendipitous. However, serendipity can be planned into an innovation project. Serendipity is not a lucky accident, and it can be planned and worked upon. Has a lot of determination and divine providence for those who believe in that. Serendipity will always play some part in the innovation effort, but innovation is both art and science, Innovation Management is a scientific management discipline, how do you assess innovation management maturity, though?
What are the Pitfalls in Measuring Innovative IT Effectively? IIT as an enterprise group is in a bigger identity crisis than ever, the industrial mode of IT running as a cost center no longer satisfies stakeholders and business partner anymore; the digital mode of IT means speed, agility, and innovation. IT needs to become business’s innovation engine, 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, what are the pitfalls in measuring such innovative IT effectively?
Do KPIs Kill Innovation? Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are part of an effective bridge between the desired business objectives and execution of strategies. Good KPIs make management more as science than art, however, due to the ‘creative’ nature of innovation, do KPIs kill innovation?
How to Measure Innovation Performance Innovation is about how to implement the creative idea and achieve its business value. One can only manage what it’s being measured. It is also true for innovation management. Innovation performance metrics and tools can help companies think systemically about business innovation.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about 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. 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 Questions to Assess a Person’s Inclusiveness
Inclusiveness will be the mantra of the future.
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?
Are you often comfortable with homogeneous setting or enjoy heterogeneous teamwork? There are all kinds of differences that exist between individuals. Many individuals live in a traditional organizational or societal culture in which perhaps they still get stuck in the “comfort zone,” only get along with the people similar to themselves, even many companies have such a diversity program going on somehow, it is superficial. The real inclusiveness needs to focus on cognitive differences, skills, abilities and the wealth of ideas since the value lies in the contributions of the individual to the organization. Effective communication is also important, since different perspectives, and talent, lead to well-rounded ideas and solutions. It is about skill and ability to work together. To produce a high-performing team, the forward-thinking digital organization needs cognitive differences, levels of capabilities, complementary experiences, the spectrum of skills, unique competencies, cultural perspectives and personalities. That's what cultivates the culture of innovation and improves performance ultimately.
Are you a silo thinker or an open-minded innovator? Identities and differences are the sources of creativity although insulating them within silos contains this potential. Silos are the opposite spectrum of integrative diversity and limit the organization's potential, since different perspectives, and talent, lead to well-rounded ideas and solutions.A collection of people who think innovatively can adapt instantly, who give the company a competitive advantage. It is about skill and ability to work together to bridge the gaps and build business competency. From talent management perspective, organizations need to build an innovative and inclusive culture, this only happens when the ‘inclusiveness mindset’ is available with top management, and the focal point of management is to harness innovation and encourage creativity. Often, diversity is most common at very low levels of the organization, the higher the hierarchy the more homogenous the workforce is. It could be the very reason that many talent/leadership development and innovation initiatives fail to achieve the expected result. It also means managing people well and as technology develops, creating the right mix of automation and human creativity is crucial for the business's long-term success. The business leaders must work with the right mindset to create an inclusive organization with every dip in the business lifecycle, from individual thinking to collective mind (culture); from strategy to execution; from process management to performance measurement, to make it both the principle and practice.
Are you inquisitive to learn from others and empathetic to understand the other point of view? We can learn a lot from different mindsets (thought processes), cultures and positions, so organizations as a whole can be competitive enough to keep surging further. Focusing on inclusiveness will force you to confront new ideas, new materials and possibly embrace a new concept that you may have never imagined. Inclusiveness and the emphasis on it will be pay off. One should pride themselves on being a unique individual, with a cultural perspective, and life lessons. There are a time and place for all things. There are boundaries to what is appropriate and when. Having an inclusive culture always help us learn from diverse people. Orienting people and making them aware of the diversity in their organization or team, helps them understand the value of harnessing the differences, and then giving them the tools and experience of how to effectively communicate and build trust across these diverse cultures is usually essential and the key to reaping the benefits of diverse organizations. It is usually essential and the key to reaping the benefits of an inclusive organization. In some cases, organizational culture is so powerful and even then will be able to influence the surrounding societies of the organization as well, and ultimately advance the human society.
Inclusiveness will be the mantra of the future. We must face diversity and inspire inclusiveness, bringing in new ideas and new perspectives to make new creations and build better future together. And diversity will be transcendent to the next level of human advancement when having a common purpose. So you have to continue to stress those new ideas if they are not woven into the organization, or if they are not part of a unified purpose. The inclusiveness is a digital theme, and diversity of thought is on demand, for boosting collective creativity and harness collective wisdom.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
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?
Are you often comfortable with homogeneous setting or enjoy heterogeneous teamwork? There are all kinds of differences that exist between individuals. Many individuals live in a traditional organizational or societal culture in which perhaps they still get stuck in the “comfort zone,” only get along with the people similar to themselves, even many companies have such a diversity program going on somehow, it is superficial. The real inclusiveness needs to focus on cognitive differences, skills, abilities and the wealth of ideas since the value lies in the contributions of the individual to the organization. Effective communication is also important, since different perspectives, and talent, lead to well-rounded ideas and solutions. It is about skill and ability to work together. To produce a high-performing team, the forward-thinking digital organization needs cognitive differences, levels of capabilities, complementary experiences, the spectrum of skills, unique competencies, cultural perspectives and personalities. That's what cultivates the culture of innovation and improves performance ultimately.
Are you a silo thinker or an open-minded innovator? Identities and differences are the sources of creativity although insulating them within silos contains this potential. Silos are the opposite spectrum of integrative diversity and limit the organization's potential, since different perspectives, and talent, lead to well-rounded ideas and solutions.A collection of people who think innovatively can adapt instantly, who give the company a competitive advantage. It is about skill and ability to work together to bridge the gaps and build business competency. From talent management perspective, organizations need to build an innovative and inclusive culture, this only happens when the ‘inclusiveness mindset’ is available with top management, and the focal point of management is to harness innovation and encourage creativity. Often, diversity is most common at very low levels of the organization, the higher the hierarchy the more homogenous the workforce is. It could be the very reason that many talent/leadership development and innovation initiatives fail to achieve the expected result. It also means managing people well and as technology develops, creating the right mix of automation and human creativity is crucial for the business's long-term success. The business leaders must work with the right mindset to create an inclusive organization with every dip in the business lifecycle, from individual thinking to collective mind (culture); from strategy to execution; from process management to performance measurement, to make it both the principle and practice.
Are you inquisitive to learn from others and empathetic to understand the other point of view? We can learn a lot from different mindsets (thought processes), cultures and positions, so organizations as a whole can be competitive enough to keep surging further. Focusing on inclusiveness will force you to confront new ideas, new materials and possibly embrace a new concept that you may have never imagined. Inclusiveness and the emphasis on it will be pay off. One should pride themselves on being a unique individual, with a cultural perspective, and life lessons. There are a time and place for all things. There are boundaries to what is appropriate and when. Having an inclusive culture always help us learn from diverse people. Orienting people and making them aware of the diversity in their organization or team, helps them understand the value of harnessing the differences, and then giving them the tools and experience of how to effectively communicate and build trust across these diverse cultures is usually essential and the key to reaping the benefits of diverse organizations. It is usually essential and the key to reaping the benefits of an inclusive organization. In some cases, organizational culture is so powerful and even then will be able to influence the surrounding societies of the organization as well, and ultimately advance the human society.
Inclusiveness will be the mantra of the future. We must face diversity and inspire inclusiveness, bringing in new ideas and new perspectives to make new creations and build better future together. And diversity will be transcendent to the next level of human advancement when having a common purpose. So you have to continue to stress those new ideas if they are not woven into the organization, or if they are not part of a unified purpose. The inclusiveness is a digital theme, and diversity of thought is on demand, for boosting collective creativity and harness collective wisdom.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
“CIO Master” Book Tuning XXIII: Running a Balanced IT Portfolio
Portfolio management is about doing right things.
To reinvent IT management and maximize IT value, IT needs to become the strategic partner of the business, and it’s important to map and translate business strategy into technology projects, fundamentally every IT project should be business initiatives. Because IT is a key enabler of business capabilities underpinned by IT-glued business processes. Therefore, in order to implement strategy successfully, it is important to manage a balanced IT project portfolio to achieve business efficiency, effectiveness, and agility.
IT portfolio is a collection of programs and projects that are designed to help the organization achieve its targeted performance: They are the means through which a vision is translated into practice. Strengthen the strategic alignment of programs and projects to prevent initiatives being undertaken that do not support the enterprise strategy. Strategic initiatives are not the same thing as strategic objectives or strategic goals. They are the vehicle for achieving a strategic goal; it is focused on the “how” rather than the “what.” IT Portfolio Management plays a significant role in project delivery, portfolio optimization and prioritization. While some organizations may be excellent in the execution of project management, they may not have a mature portfolio management process in place, which causes issues with the strategy alignment of programs and portfolio. In order to make the portfolio executable, an organization needs to make sure that enough resources are available to deliver the programs and projects, also manage the interdependencies of the project.
A healthy IT program portfolio makes a good balance of “run, grow, and transform” projects: IT should not just run the business today, but help to “grows the business” for tomorrow. The goals of portfolio management are not only the strategy alignment and value leverage; it's also a mix of short, mid and long-term projects that need to make up a project pipeline. If one focuses on short-term value too much, this might not support long-term strategy and vision in the end. If one puts too much focus on long-term value, there may be a loss of momentum and engagement. IT leaders must also have a good understanding of the projects and programs they are facilitating, particularly the objectives and benefits to be delivered. For the “Run the business projects” category: Prioritize based on the value offered or loss avoidance. These are tactical in nature. Make a special effort to fund projects with a payback of 3 years or less. For the “Grow the Business” category: These are more difficult to prioritize. Partner with business to understand entry, exist, risk permanence and value generation strategy. For the “transform the Business” category, changing the way of business. Use of new technology, business process, partners, business model, joint product development, supplier integration and use of real-time, accurate, predictive information.
Portfolio management is about doing right things: IT has been unable to demonstrate the value in application portfolio management. It does well at a gross level but when it comes down to individual applications, it doesn’t do that well, largely because IT focuses on overcoming technology challenges, not solving business problems. What's missing in many organizations is the CIO's ability to question the business's requirements and justifications used for IT based projects. They also have to advocate for "departmental immersion" and other strategies to help IT become more integrated and aware of the organization as a whole. If you have a project or program without a sponsor, you need to take a fast, hard look at the business case that justifies the program you are engaged in, spending assets on. Focus on the decision-making process around which programs and projects should be executed based on their alignment with the goals and objectives of the organization, also focus on preventing the value leakage. It is, therefore, getting increasingly more attention with large organizations that have poor visibility and control over their project portfolio. A business case provides the description and reason for starting an initiative. What are the key drivers behind this project? What problem or event is driving the need for the project? Only CIOs put "Chief Investment Officer" hat on, he/she can scrutinize IT effort via the business lens. IT must invest in and leverage appropriate technologies and solutions to generate valuable insights to help their businesses open up new channels of revenue and monetization within the enterprise, their ecosystem, and the industry.
The CIO and IT function must be contributing to the future business strategy by leveraging technology as a means to an end, not the end itself. The three keys to presenting IT value are financial returns, return timeline, and risk. Just like any other investment. If you can present IT' project portfolio in a manner similar to an investment portfolio, it makes instant conceptual sense to board and C-level folks. Corporate IT has no choice but to embrace transformational change or literally face extinction. IT leaders need to strike the right balance of “run, grow and transform,” and from the budgeting perspective, continue to figure out what’s an ideal ratio to both “keep the lights on” and drive innovation and business growth. IT is not just a set of tools to improve efficiency, but a business solution providers moving from functioning to delight. IT can manage a balanced portfolio, design the 'measure' for assessing the potential for any improvement opportunity, feature enhancement, or initiative to offer a competitive advantage.
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
To reinvent IT management and maximize IT value, IT needs to become the strategic partner of the business, and it’s important to map and translate business strategy into technology projects, fundamentally every IT project should be business initiatives. Because IT is a key enabler of business capabilities underpinned by IT-glued business processes. Therefore, in order to implement strategy successfully, it is important to manage a balanced IT project portfolio to achieve business efficiency, effectiveness, and agility.
IT portfolio is a collection of programs and projects that are designed to help the organization achieve its targeted performance: They are the means through which a vision is translated into practice. Strengthen the strategic alignment of programs and projects to prevent initiatives being undertaken that do not support the enterprise strategy. Strategic initiatives are not the same thing as strategic objectives or strategic goals. They are the vehicle for achieving a strategic goal; it is focused on the “how” rather than the “what.” IT Portfolio Management plays a significant role in project delivery, portfolio optimization and prioritization. While some organizations may be excellent in the execution of project management, they may not have a mature portfolio management process in place, which causes issues with the strategy alignment of programs and portfolio. In order to make the portfolio executable, an organization needs to make sure that enough resources are available to deliver the programs and projects, also manage the interdependencies of the project.
A healthy IT program portfolio makes a good balance of “run, grow, and transform” projects: IT should not just run the business today, but help to “grows the business” for tomorrow. The goals of portfolio management are not only the strategy alignment and value leverage; it's also a mix of short, mid and long-term projects that need to make up a project pipeline. If one focuses on short-term value too much, this might not support long-term strategy and vision in the end. If one puts too much focus on long-term value, there may be a loss of momentum and engagement. IT leaders must also have a good understanding of the projects and programs they are facilitating, particularly the objectives and benefits to be delivered. For the “Run the business projects” category: Prioritize based on the value offered or loss avoidance. These are tactical in nature. Make a special effort to fund projects with a payback of 3 years or less. For the “Grow the Business” category: These are more difficult to prioritize. Partner with business to understand entry, exist, risk permanence and value generation strategy. For the “transform the Business” category, changing the way of business. Use of new technology, business process, partners, business model, joint product development, supplier integration and use of real-time, accurate, predictive information.
Portfolio management is about doing right things: IT has been unable to demonstrate the value in application portfolio management. It does well at a gross level but when it comes down to individual applications, it doesn’t do that well, largely because IT focuses on overcoming technology challenges, not solving business problems. What's missing in many organizations is the CIO's ability to question the business's requirements and justifications used for IT based projects. They also have to advocate for "departmental immersion" and other strategies to help IT become more integrated and aware of the organization as a whole. If you have a project or program without a sponsor, you need to take a fast, hard look at the business case that justifies the program you are engaged in, spending assets on. Focus on the decision-making process around which programs and projects should be executed based on their alignment with the goals and objectives of the organization, also focus on preventing the value leakage. It is, therefore, getting increasingly more attention with large organizations that have poor visibility and control over their project portfolio. A business case provides the description and reason for starting an initiative. What are the key drivers behind this project? What problem or event is driving the need for the project? Only CIOs put "Chief Investment Officer" hat on, he/she can scrutinize IT effort via the business lens. IT must invest in and leverage appropriate technologies and solutions to generate valuable insights to help their businesses open up new channels of revenue and monetization within the enterprise, their ecosystem, and the industry.
The CIO and IT function must be contributing to the future business strategy by leveraging technology as a means to an end, not the end itself. The three keys to presenting IT value are financial returns, return timeline, and risk. Just like any other investment. If you can present IT' project portfolio in a manner similar to an investment portfolio, it makes instant conceptual sense to board and C-level folks. Corporate IT has no choice but to embrace transformational change or literally face extinction. IT leaders need to strike the right balance of “run, grow and transform,” and from the budgeting perspective, continue to figure out what’s an ideal ratio to both “keep the lights on” and drive innovation and business growth. IT is not just a set of tools to improve efficiency, but a business solution providers moving from functioning to delight. IT can manage a balanced portfolio, design the 'measure' for assessing the potential for any improvement opportunity, feature enhancement, or initiative to offer a competitive advantage.
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
May 1, 2016
The Monthly Change Management Agenda: Setting Principles for Changes May. 2016
Change is not for its own sake, but to make continuous progress.
Change is inevitable, 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. The perspective is often rational, an automatic cultural response; defending already existing structures, all that we take for granted, without questioning the underlying premises. So in order to make change both proactive and sustainable, which principles should you follow to manage changes effectively and systematically?
Setting Principles for Changes Three Change Principles: Statistically, more than two-thirds of change effort fail to achieve expected result. All efforts at having other humans act as you would like to depend, in large part, on circumstances, the number of actions/tactical moves, action sequence, and "action coordination" vary. Therefore, change is situational, these differences have to do with who the people are, what they plan, what and HOW they execute. Although there is no “one size fits all” formula for changes, you can set principles to make Change Management more effective and cohesive.
Five Principles to Manage Changes There are many reasons for changes, and perhaps, even more, reasons for resistance to changes as well: It may be a shift in power, a need to learn new skills, to manage a different team, to adopt the new way (mindset, methodology or process, etc) to do things etc. What’re the psychology behind the change? What would be a good way to empower change capabilities? And what are the principles to manage change, not as a one-time project, but as an ongoing capability?
What are the Set of Principles to Harness Communication?: Communication is a very powerful tool in breaking barriers, building trust, and enforce collaboration. In order to harness communication, start by identifying the barriers you think hinder effective collaboration and work on them. We can achieve an effective communication when we make sure our desired thought is interpreted between multiple entities and acted on in the desired way. Here is the set of principles to harness communication...
Five Characteristics of Highly Effective Change Management: Traditional Change Management is all about management and control. Real change is all about appropriate leadership and management. Anyone who has successfully worked with the change in organizations and businesses know that the change process is unpredictable and a moving target; it's less about management and more about leadership. So what are the principles to manage change effectively and efficiently?
How to Apply Simplicity Principle in Change Management? Simplicity is a behavioral attitude to see things as and what and where they are and be content and cool as it is. Philosophically, simplicity is the source of complication, and complications are the source of simplicity. Often human cannot live the life with simplicity and keep making it complicated. So does Change Management. Can we make change simpler? A successful change requires three things; dissatisfaction with the current state, clear vision and clear process for getting towards the vision. How to apply simplicity principle in Change Management??
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about 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. 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
Change is inevitable, 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. The perspective is often rational, an automatic cultural response; defending already existing structures, all that we take for granted, without questioning the underlying premises. So in order to make change both proactive and sustainable, which principles should you follow to manage changes effectively and systematically?
Setting Principles for Changes Three Change Principles: Statistically, more than two-thirds of change effort fail to achieve expected result. All efforts at having other humans act as you would like to depend, in large part, on circumstances, the number of actions/tactical moves, action sequence, and "action coordination" vary. Therefore, change is situational, these differences have to do with who the people are, what they plan, what and HOW they execute. Although there is no “one size fits all” formula for changes, you can set principles to make Change Management more effective and cohesive.
Five Principles to Manage Changes There are many reasons for changes, and perhaps, even more, reasons for resistance to changes as well: It may be a shift in power, a need to learn new skills, to manage a different team, to adopt the new way (mindset, methodology or process, etc) to do things etc. What’re the psychology behind the change? What would be a good way to empower change capabilities? And what are the principles to manage change, not as a one-time project, but as an ongoing capability?
What are the Set of Principles to Harness Communication?: Communication is a very powerful tool in breaking barriers, building trust, and enforce collaboration. In order to harness communication, start by identifying the barriers you think hinder effective collaboration and work on them. We can achieve an effective communication when we make sure our desired thought is interpreted between multiple entities and acted on in the desired way. Here is the set of principles to harness communication...
Five Characteristics of Highly Effective Change Management: Traditional Change Management is all about management and control. Real change is all about appropriate leadership and management. Anyone who has successfully worked with the change in organizations and businesses know that the change process is unpredictable and a moving target; it's less about management and more about leadership. So what are the principles to manage change effectively and efficiently?
How to Apply Simplicity Principle in Change Management? Simplicity is a behavioral attitude to see things as and what and where they are and be content and cool as it is. Philosophically, simplicity is the source of complication, and complications are the source of simplicity. Often human cannot live the life with simplicity and keep making it complicated. So does Change Management. Can we make change simpler? A successful change requires three things; dissatisfaction with the current state, clear vision and clear process for getting towards the vision. How to apply simplicity principle in Change Management??
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about 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. 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 Questions to Assess a Person’s Agility
An individual’s agility is a fundamental digital capability block through which she or he can build more advanced professional capabilities and better fit in the digital dynamic we live in.
Agility is related many things such as adaptability, flexibility, changeability, robustness, sensitivity, comprehensiveness, speed, responsiveness, etc. Either at the business level or from the individual perspective, agility is the multidimensional competencies to adapt to changes, formulate creative or unconventional alternatives or solutions to resolve problems, to show versatility and flexibility in response to unpredictable or unanticipated circumstances. It’s a crucial ability to thrive in today’s “VUCA” normality. Which questions should you ask to assess an individual’s agility?
Are you mastering the full learning cycle: Learning, unlearning and relearning? The mind with learning agility likes to experiment and comfortable with change. Learning agility can help a digital professional to move out of his or her comfort zone, take risks, learn from mistakes, and grow to a lifetime learner. People are always the most critical element for any business success, and more often the weakest link as well. In Agile circumstances, people should be able to unlearn what is not working, eager to learn new things, willing and be able to communicate and collaborate, have a passion for what they do etc. Of course, this needs to be supported with people focused organizational culture and appropriate reward and recognition policies, which encourages learning, change, sharing, and collaboration.
What’s the correlation between agility and innovation? Digital means flow, there is more flow of creative ideas, the better opportunities to reap the benefit from innovation management. Learning agility is an important element to spark creativity. Being learning agile via experiment on innovation, delivering a result at the first-time situation will be more frequent than ever. It will allow one to obtain new insights and experiences that can only help in your future endeavors as well. Think outside the box, go against the grain. At times throw away conventional means and try something radically new, and overall multifaceted resourcefulness. Agile is a fantastic way of working to involve everyone in the process of creation and delivery. Organizations need to be getting used to these forms of working and commercializing value at the digital era with the new characteristics of hyper-connectivity and convergence.
Do you (either as a professional or a team) follow the agile principles to focus on three “I”s: Interaction, Improvement, and Innovation? A process or methodology like agile is people dependent, agility is all about people and change. A mature Agile team composed of passionate people that embrace change and seek understanding will be paramount. Share early and share often, cross-functional collaboration and iterative communication are encouraged to optimize business processes and improve business agility. A system has neither accountability nor responsibility. A system cannot provide leadership. Individuals must be made accountable and responsible including giving into mediocrity. The systems never have saved the world but individuals did. Organizations, as a social milieu made of individuals, may encourage or even drive mediocrity. You need first and foremost people who value working to the best of their ability, being agile and willing to cooperate and communicate effectively under conditions of mutual trust, to achieve a common goal.
Agility is about both creating the change and adapting to changes. An individual’s agility is a fundamental digital capability block through which she or he can further build more advanced professional capabilities and better fit in the digital dynamic we live in. There needs to be broad management support for Agile talent management and an understanding that it means empowering staff to be creative and adaptive. This is not always an easy transition for an organization but being agile is the right way to go, and agility is a high professional quality.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Agility is related many things such as adaptability, flexibility, changeability, robustness, sensitivity, comprehensiveness, speed, responsiveness, etc. Either at the business level or from the individual perspective, agility is the multidimensional competencies to adapt to changes, formulate creative or unconventional alternatives or solutions to resolve problems, to show versatility and flexibility in response to unpredictable or unanticipated circumstances. It’s a crucial ability to thrive in today’s “VUCA” normality. Which questions should you ask to assess an individual’s agility?
Are you mastering the full learning cycle: Learning, unlearning and relearning? The mind with learning agility likes to experiment and comfortable with change. Learning agility can help a digital professional to move out of his or her comfort zone, take risks, learn from mistakes, and grow to a lifetime learner. People are always the most critical element for any business success, and more often the weakest link as well. In Agile circumstances, people should be able to unlearn what is not working, eager to learn new things, willing and be able to communicate and collaborate, have a passion for what they do etc. Of course, this needs to be supported with people focused organizational culture and appropriate reward and recognition policies, which encourages learning, change, sharing, and collaboration.
What’s the correlation between agility and innovation? Digital means flow, there is more flow of creative ideas, the better opportunities to reap the benefit from innovation management. Learning agility is an important element to spark creativity. Being learning agile via experiment on innovation, delivering a result at the first-time situation will be more frequent than ever. It will allow one to obtain new insights and experiences that can only help in your future endeavors as well. Think outside the box, go against the grain. At times throw away conventional means and try something radically new, and overall multifaceted resourcefulness. Agile is a fantastic way of working to involve everyone in the process of creation and delivery. Organizations need to be getting used to these forms of working and commercializing value at the digital era with the new characteristics of hyper-connectivity and convergence.
Do you (either as a professional or a team) follow the agile principles to focus on three “I”s: Interaction, Improvement, and Innovation? A process or methodology like agile is people dependent, agility is all about people and change. A mature Agile team composed of passionate people that embrace change and seek understanding will be paramount. Share early and share often, cross-functional collaboration and iterative communication are encouraged to optimize business processes and improve business agility. A system has neither accountability nor responsibility. A system cannot provide leadership. Individuals must be made accountable and responsible including giving into mediocrity. The systems never have saved the world but individuals did. Organizations, as a social milieu made of individuals, may encourage or even drive mediocrity. You need first and foremost people who value working to the best of their ability, being agile and willing to cooperate and communicate effectively under conditions of mutual trust, to achieve a common goal.
Agility is about both creating the change and adapting to changes. An individual’s agility is a fundamental digital capability block through which she or he can further build more advanced professional capabilities and better fit in the digital dynamic we live in. There needs to be broad management support for Agile talent management and an understanding that it means empowering staff to be creative and adaptive. This is not always an easy transition for an organization but being agile is the right way to go, and agility is a high professional quality.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
"CIO Master" Book Tuning XXII: Three Aspects of Practicing Intrapreneurship in the Enterprise
Innovation is an important business capability to catalyze the business’s long-term prosperity.
If entrepreneurship is to look for changes, deploy it as an opportunity, then, intrapreneurship is about creating new venture from within an established organizations to leverage the startup culture for catalyzing changes and improving IT agility. But more specifically, how to practice intrapreneurship to innovate business and accelerate digital transformation?
Innovation is a mindset and a prerequisite to doing sustainable business these days: Innovation is more than designing new products, it is about establishing and nurturing a way of thinking where innovation is in every aspect of the business. It is a collective mindset. People can learn tools to develop both their divergent and convergent thinking skills. They can learn to generate more novel and useful ideas in diverse teams. What’s often missing is internal innovation culture to support these platforms and ideas coming from outside the company. Mindset leads to an innovative culture, where the leadership has to understand that it is the process, instead of maintaining hierarchy or status quo, will create and enforce the collective mindset of creativity through systematic Innovation Management. Often "open innovation mindset" inside the companies is missing. It needs a completely new way of dealing with knowledge, the willingness of sharing ideas and knowledge etc.
Innovation, in general, is surely a discipline: It covers innovation management, knowledge, and technology transfer, entrepreneurship, and it is closely related to several other disciplines. It stands in between management, economy, psychology, sociology, and law, not speaking about disciplines that are related to technologies implemented by the particular innovation. Because innovation culture and innovation management underpin an organization’s innovation capability which enables the business to manage innovation in a systematic way and drives a high rate of innovation success. Because no one can always forecast future technological advances or the next business and industry disruptor accurately, however, one can create a system that will recognize and capture technological advances as they appear. A way of doing this is by creating innovation ecosystems in which innovation can be nurtured and fruited into its maturity.
The definition of innovation is simple - to gain benefit by doing something different: The essence of innovation is made of trying new combinations of known things. It's the essence of progress. Each human being is a potential innovation by definition as you won't find two humans that are exactly the same. We are all new combinations of the known. The traits of innovation include that, simply about how some people can see what's around easily and effortlessly and discover a better way to do things, people are capable of innovation if they are capable of silencing the noise in the mind and thinking out of the box but also stay laser focus. Instead of projecting the past accepting the thing as it is, practicing intrapreneurship is about creating the future via learning, experimenting, and discovering. Innovation follows basic rules, which are adapted depending on the company's situation and ambition. That's subjective, so what's innovation to one may not be to another. Isn't it a question of perspective? Doesn't the term innovation depend on who is the customer, who gets the new benefit, the increased value (time, quality, etc.)? So revolutionary changes on subsystems might be incremental improvements on the system, which again might be a subsystem to an even bigger system, design changes that dramatically change consumer appeal and on and on. In essence, innovation is the use of something that is new and unique, and you are able to create its business value.
Innovation is an important business capability to decide business’s long-term prosperity. Running an innovative business doesn’t mean everything goes rogue, practicing intrapreneurship in the large organization also doesn't mean getting rid of all rules. Instead, a high-innovative business has more discipline, not less; it's not about rigid rules, but a set of fine-tuned principles and an effective framework to manage innovation in a structural way. And they have an open and mature culture to attract the best and the brightest, to embrace change, create positive tension, ask tough questions and think and do things differently in order to catalyze business growth and achieve high-performance business result for the long run.
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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If entrepreneurship is to look for changes, deploy it as an opportunity, then, intrapreneurship is about creating new venture from within an established organizations to leverage the startup culture for catalyzing changes and improving IT agility. But more specifically, how to practice intrapreneurship to innovate business and accelerate digital transformation?Innovation is a mindset and a prerequisite to doing sustainable business these days: Innovation is more than designing new products, it is about establishing and nurturing a way of thinking where innovation is in every aspect of the business. It is a collective mindset. People can learn tools to develop both their divergent and convergent thinking skills. They can learn to generate more novel and useful ideas in diverse teams. What’s often missing is internal innovation culture to support these platforms and ideas coming from outside the company. Mindset leads to an innovative culture, where the leadership has to understand that it is the process, instead of maintaining hierarchy or status quo, will create and enforce the collective mindset of creativity through systematic Innovation Management. Often "open innovation mindset" inside the companies is missing. It needs a completely new way of dealing with knowledge, the willingness of sharing ideas and knowledge etc.
Innovation, in general, is surely a discipline: It covers innovation management, knowledge, and technology transfer, entrepreneurship, and it is closely related to several other disciplines. It stands in between management, economy, psychology, sociology, and law, not speaking about disciplines that are related to technologies implemented by the particular innovation. Because innovation culture and innovation management underpin an organization’s innovation capability which enables the business to manage innovation in a systematic way and drives a high rate of innovation success. Because no one can always forecast future technological advances or the next business and industry disruptor accurately, however, one can create a system that will recognize and capture technological advances as they appear. A way of doing this is by creating innovation ecosystems in which innovation can be nurtured and fruited into its maturity.
The definition of innovation is simple - to gain benefit by doing something different: The essence of innovation is made of trying new combinations of known things. It's the essence of progress. Each human being is a potential innovation by definition as you won't find two humans that are exactly the same. We are all new combinations of the known. The traits of innovation include that, simply about how some people can see what's around easily and effortlessly and discover a better way to do things, people are capable of innovation if they are capable of silencing the noise in the mind and thinking out of the box but also stay laser focus. Instead of projecting the past accepting the thing as it is, practicing intrapreneurship is about creating the future via learning, experimenting, and discovering. Innovation follows basic rules, which are adapted depending on the company's situation and ambition. That's subjective, so what's innovation to one may not be to another. Isn't it a question of perspective? Doesn't the term innovation depend on who is the customer, who gets the new benefit, the increased value (time, quality, etc.)? So revolutionary changes on subsystems might be incremental improvements on the system, which again might be a subsystem to an even bigger system, design changes that dramatically change consumer appeal and on and on. In essence, innovation is the use of something that is new and unique, and you are able to create its business value.
Innovation is an important business capability to decide business’s long-term prosperity. Running an innovative business doesn’t mean everything goes rogue, practicing intrapreneurship in the large organization also doesn't mean getting rid of all rules. Instead, a high-innovative business has more discipline, not less; it's not about rigid rules, but a set of fine-tuned principles and an effective framework to manage innovation in a structural way. And they have an open and mature culture to attract the best and the brightest, to embrace change, create positive tension, ask tough questions and think and do things differently in order to catalyze business growth and achieve high-performance business result for the long run.
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 of Practicing Intrapreneurship in the Enterprise
If entrepreneurship is to look for changes, deploy it as an opportunity, then, intrapreneurship is about creating new venture from within an established organizations to leverage the startup culture for catalyzing changes and improving IT agility. But more specifically, how to practice intrapreneurship to innovate business and accelerate digital transformation?
Innovation is a mindset and a prerequisite to doing sustainable business these days: Innovation is more than designing new products, it is about establishing and nurturing a way of thinking where innovation is in every aspect of the business. Mindset leads to an innovative culture, where the leadership has to understand that it is the process. Instead of maintaining hierarchy or status quo, via systematic Innovation Management, you will create and enforce this mindset! People can learn tools to develop both their divergent and convergent thinking skills. They can learn to generate more novel and useful ideas in diverse teams. What’s often missing is internal innovation culture to support these platforms and ideas coming from outside the company. "Open innovation mindset" inside the companies is missing. It needs a completely new way of dealing with knowledge, the willingness of sharing ideas & knowledge etc.
Innovation, in general, is surely a discipline: It covers innovation management, knowledge, and technology transfer, entrepreneurship, and it is closely related to several other disciplines. It stands in between management, economy, psychology, sociology, and law, not speaking about disciplines that are related to technologies implemented by the particular innovation. Because innovation culture and innovation management underpin an organization’s innovation capability which enables the business to manage innovation in a systematic way and drives a high rate of innovation success. Because no one can always forecast future technological advances or the next business and industry disruptor accurately, however, one can create a system that will recognize and capture technological advances as they appear. A way of doing this is by creating innovation ecosystems in which innovation can be nurtured and fruited into its maturity.
The definition of innovation is simple - to gain benefit by doing something different: The essence of innovation is made of trying new combinations of known things. It's the essence of progress. Each human being is a potential innovation by definition as you won't find two humans that are exactly the same. We are all new combinations of the known. The traits of innovation include that, simply about how some people can see what's around easily and effortlessly and discover a better way to do things, people are capable of innovation if they are capable of silencing the noise in the mind and thinking out of the box but also stay focus. Instead of projecting the past accepting the thing as it is, practicing intrapreneurship is about creating the future via learning, experimenting, and discovering. Innovation follows basic rules, which are adapted depending on the company's situation and ambition. That's subjective, so what's innovation to one may not be to another. Isn't it a question of perspective? Doesn't the term innovation depend on who is the customer, who gets the new benefit, the increased value (time, quality, etc.)? So revolutionary changes on subsystems might be incremental improvements on the system, which again might be a subsystem to an even bigger system, design changes that dramatically change consumer appeal and on and on. In essence, innovation is the use of something that is new and unique, and you are able to create its business value.
Innovation is an important business capability to decide business’s long-term prosperity. Running an innovative business doesn’t mean everything goes rogue, practicing intrapreneurship in the large organization also doesn't mean getting rid of all rules. Instead, a high-innovative business has more discipline, not less; not rigid rules, but a set of fine-tuned principles and an effective framework to manage innovation in a structural way. And they have an open and mature culture to attract the best and the brightest, to embrace change, create tension, ask tough questions and think and do things differently in order to catalyze business growth and achieve high-performance business result.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
