Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1354

The Core Strategic Goals of an Agile Organization

Organizational agility is about to react to environmental changes and to create environmental changes. It is about to take into account any change in the environment and transform the organizational architecture to survive, growth and develop. It is about to answer to emergent events. It is about to transform the whole organization to create a "Lego" like environment that you can change as you need effortlessly. More specifically, what are core strategic goals of an Agile organization?

Agile” is a set of principles to follow for making changes: It is a quality of the organization and its people to be adaptive, responsive, continually learning and evolving, to be agile. Agile does not mean delivering faster only. Agile does not just mean fewer defects or higher quality. Agile does not just mean higher productivity. Agile means the ability to move with quick easy grace, to be nimble and adaptable. To embrace change and become masters of change -- to compete through adaptability by being able to change faster and cheaper than your competition can.
The key strategic goal of an Agile organization is also the key strategic goal of the organization to improve profitability. It's not enough to simply say you should distribute or decentralize authority to be more "profitable." Which is how you might do it. You must also answer in such a context why the path you're advocating is the better path to achieving "profitability."  In a highly agile organization, people take responsibility for their own work, for the product, for the company as a whole. Agile is a set of tactics which are in direct support of the Core Strategic Goal of moving Problem Ownership to the front line and empowering that front line to deal with their own Problems. If that happened, your product and service quality would improve, the margins would rise, and you could reduce costs and successfully enter new markets. So the goal of an Agile organization is simply put to make a profit while respecting and promoting the integrity and well-being if its members and the community in which it resides and does business.
The real value of Agile is to build a culture of innovation: When the entire enterprise adopts a new culture of agility that embraces and promotes innovation at all levels of the organization. In this light, the biggest disadvantage of Waterfall is the time from ideation to implementation. It was often six months to a year or more from the time an innovative product or idea was generated until it was launched. A company with this kind of delay will not be competitive against more agile competition. Innovative ideas tend to build on one another as a synergy of ideas is created. Again, long and heavy processes tend to stifle creativity. All of this combined with a culture that embraces pushing the boundaries and embracing the "fail fast" philosophy across the entire organization can't help but provide a significant competitive advantage. IT and business partner together to quickly deliver innovative products and services to the marketplace.
Agile is a mindset with emotional maturity and disciplined flexibility to solve problems and manage complexity: In an unpredictable world, the business needs to be resilient to change because you cannot predict it. You cannot rely on a single centralized authority to solve all problems because there isn't sufficient time to consult that authority on every problem. So, authority and control must be decentralized and distributed. Agile organizations are specifically adapted/organized to tackle complex business problems. There are plenty of examples that demonstrate the team of diverse perspectives is needed in finding an "optimal" solution.
Agile is neither a golden hammer or a silver bullet, it is more like a silver mirror, you need to make continuous reflection and improvement.  Agile is a state of mind, it is about embracing change, taking risks, thinking out of the box to encourage innovation. And it is not for its own sake, the strategic goal of being agile is to improve profitability, build competency, adapt to changes, engage employees and delight customers.
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The CIO’s Digital Agenda #51: Setting the Right Principles for Change Management

Change is inevitable, and organizational change becomes a common practice within an organization, but more than two-thirds of change effort fail to achieve the expected results. What’re the barriers to cause the change failures, and how to make Change Management tangible rather than fluffy, and manage change lifecycle effectively?


Setting the Right Principles for Change ManagementThree 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.
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 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?
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 current state, clear vision and clear process for getting towards the vision. How to apply simplicity principle in Change Management?
Digital Master Tuning #86: Five Principles to Manage Change Effectively 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?
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A Visionary Board

The future is already here, but it is unevenly distributed.
The corporate board plays a significant leadership role in modern businesses, with multidimensional responsibilities, such as strategy oversight, policy setting, corporate governance and monitoring - understand accountabilities of environment - regulatory, shareholder, etc; Not only do today’s BoDs need to have sufficient knowledge to understand the business ecosystem, but also they should have business vision to predict the emergent trend of business, technology or industry, so they can guide the executive team toward the right direction and play the advising role effortlessly.
Vision is an integral part of the directorial role: It doesn't have to be exclusive or externally focused. In most cases, it must be a shared, collaborative vision, because the board of directors which is responsible for setting the vision for the enterprise is a plurality, not an individual. Every C-level leader must participate in creating and shaping a company's vision. A visionary changes the course of business by seeing beyond what all others could see or by charting new revenue or growth through the creation of a new product or market. Though the BoD may not be responsible for developing business strategy, it is responsible for authorizing and monitoring business strategy, develop business policies offering further constraint / guidance to implementation of strategy, monitor performance and implementation of strategy, manage risks across all domains of interest. A visionary board can navigate to the deep digital reality and lead more effectively.
BoDs and C-level roles are supposed to be the guiding force in the enterprise: Envision and lead it towards its future. If they're not doing that or not allowed to do that then they aren't C-level, they aren't the Chiefs, they are implementing the visions of other people. Vision should have a direction which sets in clarity. Setting a vision that isn't high enough doesn't challenge the organization to excel. But establishing a vision that is based on unrealistic expectations will either discount the value of even creating the vision or disenfranchise stakeholders. The vision should be attainable; however, the vision shouldn't be a fixed target. It should be stable enough to make it worthwhile to make a concerted effort to attain it and dynamic enough to be able to react to any change in business direction or context. A vision should be attainable subject to current times and its ability to adapt to changing times.
BoD leadership vision is to serve as a “future shaper” and a strategy enabler: To clear the path, whether that be the elimination of obstacles or to provide coaching and guidance. So the intention of such leadership vision is to clearly define, through actions and deeds, the difference between management and leadership. A visionary mind has the ability to think the past, perceive what is now and foresee the future. Vision is about shaping an idea that comes with a commitment to push it through. The vision if understood in this perspective becomes a reality achievable and a comprehensible dream beyond words. The most important thing is that you believe in your vision and many follow your vision. A vision re-conceptualizes the future, connects the previously unconnected dream. Visionary could also mean the ability to think outside the box, to think creatively, to be innovative both inside and outside the organization. An visionary board has collective and broad range of business perspectives, they can explore the vision and fresh ideas in a spirit of open-mindedness, learning, and respect; Visionary is the one who can envision the future but not necessarily have plans and actions to get it. Therefore, 'future orientation' feels more like a 'leaning towards the future' where being visionary is 'making the future.' So they include those who have influence as they possess the means to shape the future through their actions.
Corporate BoD is the top leadership role. Leadership vision is to be guiding light. Being a leader means giving people confidence on where to go and how to get there, coaching them and also stretching them to live to their full potential, both individually and as members of a high performing team. To support effectiveness and achievement of final results, to set the tone for building the positive and inspiring working culture, to motivate, to be confident and trustworthy working with the people, communication with stakeholders, and transform vision into the reality.


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Reinvent IT as a Business Accelerator

Most of IT organizations today are still being portrayed as the back-office cost center, to reimagine IT, it needs to shift from “T” driven to “I” - information focused business engine. Information is growing exponentially and it is humanly impossible to explore all of the "art" out there around a subject. In a business scope, there are some of the important bits and bytes of information needed when evaluating a new market, new technology or any business growth opportunity, therefore, IT becomes more critical to explore such an “art of impossible,” but how to accelerate idea validation, doing more with innovation and build a unique set of business capabilities from IT management perspective?
IT is the “superglue” to integrate people, process, and technology seamlessly to build an innovation platform and manage business innovation portfolio in a structured way: The appropriately configured innovation platform creates a scalable means for sharing and building ideas throughout the enterprise. As a result, innovation becomes a persistent, shared reality, even across silos and geographies. A well-considered tool/platform for innovation, in the given culture, operating environment, and governance, which can be part of innovation management planning and implementation, could strengthen the innovation effort and success rate to the organization. And more often than not, information is one of the most time intensive pieces to the innovation puzzle. But there must be a purpose of accelerating the evaluation process and the innovation management life cycle.  It's about to have a purpose such as, stay ahead of competition in the delivery process. It's about to be able to get all the way around the task, to see it from all interests. It's about creating a structure that delivers what your need! The analytical tools contains those that deal with the comprehensive discovery of the problem-solution space, together with selection criteria, allows objective (not subjective) identification of both existing needs, existing problems and the future problems that will face a respective market segment and niche in tech course of evolution. This is where the true competitive edge is since no one considers them today. Often innovation and risk are proportional, improving efficiency takes a little creativity and risk, while working on innovation effort usually takes higher risks and creativity. Still, forward-looking companies will spend more resource on innovation investment in order to reap the fruit for out beating competitors and gaining long term advantage
IT is not just the sum of services or processes, but an enabler of business capabilities: IT needs to build a set of value-added digital capabilities via weaving all necessary hard and soft elements, in reaching high-level maturity. IT is not just part of the business; it is a critical, integral component of the business. IT is the only entity in the organization supposed to understand business entirely and oversight organizational processes horizontally, and pay attention to the processes and interconnectivity under the surface, in order to build crucial business capabilities via platform approaches and systematic disciplines. The strategic planning should start with a clear picture of its own enterprise application landscape at a minimum and preferably understanding of its own IT capabilities and practices maturity relative to its industry. It’s ultimately important for IT to discuss "what's possible" not just "what do you want." This requires a certain depth of understanding the business, and having your input respected. The first is learned, the second is earned. Especially the "what is possible" part, don't just deliver what the business asks for, but be able to provide the "best solution" for the business' requirement, offering added value and feature insights based on system understanding, that the business might not even have thought of. An accelerating IT separates the exploitation of the existing methods and technologies from the exploration of the new way to do things via leveraging the emergent digital trends. There is no one size fits all, every organization has to walk the talk and explore its own sets of best practices and next practices, to build business competency for the long term growth and prosperity.
IT is also a crucial business enabler to build a customer-centric organization: Business information is the very clue to understand every step of customer purchasing; and technology is digitizing every touch point of customer experience. The entire customer journey at each stage needs to be mapped out clearly. Customer Experience is the new and most potent differentiating factor in a business that looks to embrace universal greatness. A real customer-centric approach permeates everything about the way the CIO leads in the business. It influences how you communicate about the operational crisis, it drives how you deliver services to your end users, and it sets the agenda for every single communication action you take with everyone else in the 'C'-suite.. Being customer-centric is not just about a few best practices or even a pretty high-level customer interface, it has to go deeper to combine all key business ingredients in orchestrating a digital business which has key capabilities to delight customers. From customer integration to customer experience: behavioral, emotional, social and transactional design are well understood and practiced. IT as an information steward of the business plays a critical role in customer analysis. Customers including prospects should be studied and observed and gain the insight upon. Deep understanding of the user through empathy and observation with the innovator using a more inductive approach such as predictive analytics to what the customer wants to accomplish "next." This involves gaining a deep understanding of the motivational construct of the customer, in order that the innovator can become "anticipatory" of what the customer will likely "want next." There are still quite a bit of work to do in turning analytical results and connecting to the customer satisfaction and business achievement.
It takes innovative leadership to reimagine IT and it takes a structural approach to reinvent IT effectively. CIOs as IT leaders need to be able to recognize the struggles of the company by understanding the business beyond IT. They must be transformational leaders that not only manage the IT group but also work to integrate and lead the integration (not merely alignment) of IT to business processes and the strategic value proposition, also, IT must partner with human change management experts to manage change and accelerate business growth and transformation.
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Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Gravitas

Gravitas can be defined to mean of substance, seriousness, or dignified demeanor, then it is important to both those who aspire to lead and those who allow others to lead them. Individuals who possess gravitas work to maintain decorum most conducive to achieving the desired results regardless of the situation at hand. More specifically, what is Gravitas all about, and how to assess a person’s gravitas?


Do you have self-awareness about “Who you are”? It’s not about acting, it's about how you can generate a specific energy in yourself to help consciously create the authentic impact you choose. Gravitas is neither defined by external environments nor external pressures, but is ultimately defined by the character traits that are refined by these external actions and interactions which make up processor journey. Knowing who you are or being self-awareness, allows you to become better leader or professional with gravitas. Knowing who you are and how you react and respond in different situations can help you understand and improve the cognitive, relational and assertive actions you take on a day to day basis.
Do you have the gravitas related qualities such as confidence, consistency, steadiness, or persistence? Gravitas is an attitude, rather than a behavior. Behavior is just its way of exposing itself to the world it interacts with. It's a responsive element, in that attitudes receive influences from the outside and adjust, if each in their own fashion -- somewhat comparable to the "gravitational" considerations in Newtonian planetary physics that lent their name to the game. Gravitas and humility have similarity, but also different. Humility is more attitude driven, with such humbleness, but gravitas can mean even more, it could be situation driven, it means consistency, persistence, steadiness, confidence or even a piece of pride, to be who you are and what you do. It takes the breadth of understanding of situation and depth of cogitative insight upon circumstances to have nature magnet to cause so-called gravitas.
Do you have the right dose of “Ego” to reach the great level of gravitas? Everyone needs to have some ego for a sense of self worth. We all have an ego - an ambitious sense of self that drives us to accomplish things. But too much of everything is bad including the big headed ego. More precisely, you can't have too much or too little ego, you can be more or less egocentric; and you can only have a greater or lesser awareness of ego. Ego and self worth are slightly different but interconnected. And in that scenario, feeling good about yourself is feeling good about your ego personality. However, many have an unhealthy ego - an inflated, pompous, selfish drive that fights to win at all costs. A healthy ego, by contrast, is one in service to our higher selves (that intuitive, more selfless aspect of ourselves that is the truly enduring part). When healthy, the ego still helps us succeed via your own strength in professional way. We need a well developed ego but we have to keep it under control, in that way, we would also reach the right level of gravitas.
People with gravitas are both confident and humbled, self aware and persistent, proud and egoless; stead and flexible, consistent but also creative. They can maintain the composure whatever be the situation, either being glorified or vilified, neither reacts tremendously when they receive good praise nor extremely dejected about anything good or bad, understand the philosophy of the life and pursue the ultimate human wisdom. Only when one makes this as the second nature, he/she will be empathizing other person's situation and respond positively.

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Three IT Management Dilemmas

Technology is pervasive, Business Transformation or business initiatives today nearly always involves some form of technology implementation or information analysis; IT touches both hard business processes and soft human behavior. However, managing a highly effective IT is not an easy job, IT leaders have to overcome many change management roadblocks and deal with quite a few of IT management dilemmas in transforming from a cost center to value creator, from a support function to a strategic business partner.
IT’s Information Management dilemma: assuming IT still stands for "Information Technology," the mission of IT is to get the right information to the right people at the right time. IT is the business data/information steward. While the mission may sound simple, execution of the mission may be challenging. It is not enough to provide users with access to the information, they need information to be consumable, summarized, aggregated, and presented in a meaningful and usable way. The dilemma is that, in many businesses, IT does not “own the data or information,” business functions do. IT needs to understand the business issues so they implement the business rules accurately. Only through cross-functional collaboration and seamless IT/business integration, businesses can manage their data asset to achieve its full potential for business growth and customer satisfaction. The other IT information management dilemma is the priority setting, the technology leaders are starved for resources. The lack of resources and focus on expanding their business revenue takes precedence to projects like an enterprise data strategy- a strategy which does not show up on the bottom line or immediately drives top line growth. This is a short-sighted view, but a view which shows the gap in understanding strategy for mid to long term business growth. This is why the business and IT need to collaborate closely so they can define how best to deliver information to those that will make effective use of it. When the corporate organization invests in information technology resources, it entrusts the IT organization with the stewardship of that considerable investment and the responsibility of providing good governance and operation of that investment.
IT Innovation dilemma: CIOs need to wear the hat of "devil's advocate" base on part of her/his role as the caretaker of information and “keep the light on.” In an industry where innovation threatens to tear down legacy systems and practices just as it generates new opportunities, IT organizations are nonetheless resistant to change. It's natural to fear the unknown, question the unproven, be skeptical of the latest and greatest technologies. Here comes IT innovation dilemma. Innovation requires thinking beyond, as opposed to outside the box, taking calculated risks, altering or changing the frame of reference to create previously unconsidered solutions. Because contemporary CIOs need to wear multiple hats of colors, to be an innovation officer, integration officer,  influence officer, steward/strategist/visionary., etc. CIOs need to rise above the status quo and take on a new set of activities that have them involved in the strategy development process from the get-go.  Innovation is about  thinking differently, acting differently, delivering differently, adding value differently... from the status quo.
IT Talent Dilemma: IT skills gap is the reality, not fiction. Due to the changing nature of technology, IT needs to discover the alternative talent pipeline and build a strong pool of talent. The dilemma facing IT leaders and talent managers would be: Should you high character or skill? When do you need specialized generalists, where should you put generalized specialists? Shall you promote internal candidates for smooth transaction or hunt from external new blood & outliers for innovation and transformation. It’s important to define the updated competency model, assess the talent's overall capability to solve problems, strike the right balance of learning capability, character, skills, communication and energy within the teams. To bridge the gaps, it starts from the mindset. IT needs both agile generalists with business acumen and dedicated specialists with technical excellence. It's about both aptitude and attitude. It’s best to bring a group of people together with the cognitive difference such as different backgrounds, capabilities, strengths etc. together in order to obtain such a way of divergent thinking for sparking innovation, convergent thinking for common understanding, and solving complex IT problems with flexibility. Getting the balance right is a must as the consequences can be difficult and expensive. Building high-performance teams is at the heart of what talent manager should do and choose the right balance of team members is, as we all know, critical.
In order to deal with those inevitable dilemmas smoothly, IT leaders need to be bold enough to drive through a clear vision, determined enough to adapt to changes, persistent enough to stick to the set of core principles, and creative enough to explore the new possibilities. The new IT rulebook isn't for the faint of heart. Getting to "smaller," "lighter," and "agiler" may not require a complete IT architectural overhaul, but it will require some hard decisions about legacy platforms, processes and cultures. The wisdom and ultimate goal of innovative CIOs are to help the organization think clearly about the two horizons of future, the short term gain & long term wins.
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Three Questions to Assess a Person’s “Judgmental Intelligence”

Both businesses and the world become hyperconnected and overly complex, either for leaders or digital professionals, to survive and thrive in such a “VUCA” new normal, do you have multidimensional intelligences such as IQ, EQ, SQ (Strategy Intelligence), CQ (Creativity Intelligence) and JQ (Judgmental Intelligence) etc. for both doing the right things and doing them right, making sound judgment about decision-making, people, or things? Which questions should you ask to assess a person’s “Judgment Intelligence”?
Can you often make fair judgment about people and things? We probably all learned as kids "Don't judge a book by its cover," but, unfortunately, we do live in an increasingly "profiled" world that does judge a book by its cover. The misjudgment are often caused by superficial thinking, lack of critical thinking or independent thinking, Critical thinking means making clear, reasoned judgments. While, in the process of critical thinking, your thoughts should be reasoned and well thought out/judged. (Wikipedia). While independent thinking includes "not depending on the authority of others for forming an opinion." (OXFORD). Making up your own mind, in other words. To think profoundly and avoid the trap of the superficial thinking, you have to really dig beneath the superficial layer, see around the corner and transcend the interdisciplinary knowledge, to understand others deeply or get to the heart of the matter; not just watch, but perceive; not just listen to what’s been said, but pay more attention to not being said. Not just follow others’ opinions blindly as a follower, but shape your own thought via learning and practicing. Being independent thinker means that one has the courage to say “I do not know.” The quickest way to learn something is to admit upfront that we don't know when we don't. Transparency and simplicity go together, thinking fast (Intuition) and thinking slow (analytics) need to go together in order to make a sound judgment.
Can you make effective and timely decisions either at works or the life? Having a sound judgment and discerning mind to making right decisions becomes one of the most critical professional qualities at today’s business dynamic with increasing pace of changes. Judgment and decision making are often considered together. Many people do wrong things, not because of ignorance, but because of poor judgment, due to the lack of comprehensive knowledge, bias, or preconceived notions. It is imperative to identify what causes manifestly intelligent people so frequently make such poor decisions. Do they lack independent thinking or critical reasoning? Do they think "too fast" without necessary "thinking slowly"? Do they focus too many trivial details, with ignorance of the big picture? The biggest challenge is knowing what you don't know, it is a reasonable moniker for decision making blind spots and biases. Hence, good judgment is a must for good decisions, data analysis and inferences from such data. There is a clear distinction between a good decision and a good outcome. In a world of uncertainty, the decisive mind can, by definition, not control the outcome, however, focus on making good decisions and the best chance for a good outcome is to make a good decision.
What other pitfalls to stop you from making a sound judgment and making effective decisions? Wisdom is to be understood within this context, we all have bias and limitation in our thought processes. Understanding the filters that influence one’s unconscious biases is critical to the choice you make or the life you live. Once you express the opinion and make choices, you make your biases known. In life you reach a point when you have your own mind and from there choose what and who shapes you. Being objective not only takes intelligence, but need wisdom. Sometimes, the challenge is objectivity doesn't just spawn from the "in one’s mind" place. It is actually a power greater than the mind and something impossible to accomplish in one’s thought only, it is embedded in the collective mind which is culture or the whole ecosystem of the things.often, when the decisions made only by easy logical choices...but would have significantly negative effect if made without regard to emotional, social, or situational variables that pure objectivity would ignore. The other self-check question could be: Are you a binary thinker ( extreme thinking) or a multidimensional thinker? More often, the binary thinking just focuses on the symptoms, and lack of systems thinking and independent thinking capability, only catches the conventional understanding of content, not the contextual insight beneath the surface; the quantity over quality; the close-mindedness, the stereotypical thinking or pre-conceived ideas about how things should happen. The leaders or business professionals with binary thinking are resistant to listen to the diverse viewpoint; have no intention to understand the other side of the coin; push the people to take the side, many times, they become the part of problems which they try to solve. These are all pitfalls in making sound judgment and right decisions.
Judgmental Intelligence is the combination of multiple intelligence such as IQ, EQ, as well as learning ability, mental agility and curiosity — thinkers of consequence, not thinkers of convenience. In order to adapt to the new digital way, today’s business leaders and professionals need to increase their cognitive agility and cultivate empathy by exploring alternative viewpoints and cross-disciplinary interpretations, cultivating a discerning mind that allows you to choose your steps that are aligned with your inner, core self, and leverage data-based analytics in order to make sound judgments and decide intelligently.
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How to Leverage IT in Double Jumps of Business Transformation

IT can weave all necessary business elements, either hard or soft, to lead through an Agile jump and to orchestrate a digital symphony.

In the world where change is significantly speeding up and business leaders couldn’t predict the future with a high degree of accuracy, the strategy can no longer stay static, the forward-looking organizations are working diligently building their organizational capabilities via weaving all important business factors in adapting the “VUCA” business normality. So how can organizations leverage IT to make double jumps - the digital jump to make the business radical digital and the agile jump to achieve the high-level business agility? From IT management perspective, are CIOs seizing the opportunity to enable the organization to transform into the digital way and carry out its business?

Agile Transformation: There are many organizations apply Agile methodologies and practices to develop software, but very few organizations are being agile - following Agile principles and philosophy to run an agile organization. From doing Agile to being agile is a big jump for business transformation. An agile organization is one that is open to change and can adapt readily when change is needed. The defining characteristic of being agile is that it can adapt readily when change is needed. Agile success can improve the entire business competencies because they can do things quicker and better, and encourage improvement and innovation. IT Agility is about how IT will enable business agility, how fast IT will deliver the required business capabilities effectively and efficiently. The more alignment between business and IT the more level of agility for both will be achieved. The challenge and direction now are to bring agility holistically to the entire business. Being Agile means to solve business problems more effectively and collaboratively, and often IT is a crucial component in managing effective solutions. Corporations that can't manage IT properly will eventually lag behind. the goal in this regard should be focused on business outcomes. For every IT project, which is also business initiative, they see the potential business impact and make it personal. Agile success can improve the entire business competencies because they can do IT quicker and better. Agile provides greater flexibility and it requires great discipline especially at team member level, beyond methodology and technology, it is a philosophy and a set of principles to run the business and make a long jump for the organizational maturity.

Digital Transformation: More and more organization are also at the strategic inflection point of the digital transformation, it is the broader and longer journey with many leaps and jumps (including agile), bumps and curves, perils and pitfalls on the way. It implies the full-scale changes in the way the business is conducted, such as mindset, talent, skills, processes, technologies. Significantly, IT is impacting every business unit and is becoming the driver of business change and transformation. At the age of IT consumerization, businesses need to understand not only the power and the opportunity information could bring in, but also the potential risks they might get exposed to. IT plays an important role in interpreting business issues into a technology solution, also, leverage necessary resources to solve them. And more broadly, IT can weave all necessary business elements, either hard or soft, to orchestrate a digital symphony. A good relationship between Business and IT becomes visible by clearly defining tasks, authorities, and responsibilities. IT is an enabler and catalyzer for the business to reach the era of radical digital. We are living in an information explosive world where technology is pervasive and the masses are looking for their own experiences to introduce new technology into the business, leverage information in decision making. And every forward-thinking organization also declares it’s in the information management business to improve competency and long-term growth.

Either big leap or double jumps, IT is an accelerator for speeding up the business. It’s about using information and technology to enhance agility and productivity, uncover customer insights, predict the business trend, catalyze innovation, create new business models. It is a continuous journey to develop the unique set of enterprise capabilities, integrate them across their organizations and transform businesses to reach the next level of efficiency, effectiveness, and maturity.
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How to Leverage IT in Double Jump Business Transformation

In the world where change is significantly speeding up so that business leaders couldn’t predict the future with a certain degree of accuracy, and the strategy can no longer stay static, the forward looking organizations are working diligently building their business capabilities via weaving all important business factors in adapting the “VUCA” business normality. So how can organizations leverage IT to double jump such an unprecedented business transformation -to make it radical digital with high-level agility? From an IT management perspective, are CIOs seizing the opportunity to support the organization to transform into the digital way to carries out its business?
Agile Transformation: There are many organizations apply Agile methodologies and practices to develop software, but very few organizations are being agile - following Agile principles and philosophy to run an agile organization. From doing Agile to being agile is a big jump for business transformation. An agile organization is one that is open to change and can adapt readily when change is needed. The defining characteristic of being agile is that it can adapt readily when change is needed. Agile success can improve the entire business competencies because they can do things quicker and better, and encourage improvement and innovation. IT Agility is about how IT will enable business agility, how fast IT will deliver the required effectively and efficiency. The more alignment between business and IT the more level of agility for both will be achieved. The challenge and direction now are to bring agility holistically to the entire business. Being Agile means to solve business problems more effectively and collaboratively, and often IT is an crucial component in managing effective solutions. Corporations that can't manage IT properly will eventually lag behind. the goal in this regard should be focused on business outcomes. For every IT project, which is also business initiative, they see the potential business impact and make it personal. Agile success can improve the entire business competencies because they can do IT quicker and better. Agile provides greater flexibility and it requires great discipline especially at team member level, beyond methodology and technology, it is a philosophy and a set of principle to run the business and make a long jump for the organizational maturity.
Digital Transformation: More and more organization art also at the strategic inflection point of the digital transformation, it is the broader and longer journey with many leaps and jumps (including agile), perils and pitfalls on the way. It implies the full-scale changes in the way the business is conducted, such as talent, skills, processes, technologies. Significantly, IT is impacting every business unit and is becoming the driver of business change and transformation. At the age of IT consumerization, businesses need to understand not only the power and the opportunity information could bring in, but also the potential risks they might get exposed to. IT plays an important role in interpreting business issues into a technology solution, also, leverage necessary resources to solve them. And more broadly, IT can weave all necessary business elements, either hard or soft, to orchestrate a digital symphony. A good relationship between Business and IT becomes visible by clearly defining tasks, authorities, and responsibilities. IT is an enabler and catalyzer for business to reach the era of radical digital. If we are living in an information explosive world where technology is pervasive and the masses are looking for their own experiences to introduce new technology into the business, leverage information in decision making. And every forward-thinking organization also declares it’s in the information management business to improve competency and long-term growth.
Either big leap or double jump, IT is an accelerator for speeding up the business, It’s about using information and technology to enhance agility and productivity, uncover customer insights, predict the business trend, catalyze innovation, create new business models. It is a continuous journey to develop the unique set of enterprise capabilities, integrate them across their organizations and transform businesses to reach the next level of efficiency, effectiveness, and maturity.
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The Monthly Digital Leadership Brief March. 2016: Innovative Leadership

Digital LEADERSHIP is the hidden GEM of the “Future of CIO” blog. From one generation to the next, the substance of leadership does not change, it’s about future, change, and influence. However, the leadership trends will continue to emerge. Here is a set of featured blogs to ponder the future of digital leadership.

What are the main characteristics of an Innovation Leader? With the increasing speed of change and continuous digital disruption, innovation in organizations is no longer "nice to have," but "must have" strategy and practice, because of the inevitability of competition, and uncertainty of business dynamic. There are many levels of innovation from incremental & iterative to evolutionary to breakthrough. If the cost of your product has to reduce to sustain in the market, then efficiency innovation is a must. If your current market has been disrupted by the new technology or other “brute forces,” then breakthrough innovation is needed to turn around the situation. Innovation is the top challenge for today’s leaders. Is this something you either have in your company, or you don’t? Leadership is one of the critical success factors for innovation. But who are the innovative leaders, and what are the main characteristics of a leader who "encourages innovation"?
Does Creative Leader Make you Nervous? Many executives in large corporate environments equate "creativity" with uncertainty and risk. Creative ideas are often hard to sell, particularly in public companies because the payoff is uncertain. Unless there is a clear culture of accepting some level of failure and budgeting for it on a regular basis, many fail to take the risk of encouraging creativity, therefore, the creative leaders also make others nervous, because they are the out-of-box thinkers and take more transformational initiatives.
Three Elements in Innovative Leadership? Leadership is a key success factor for any organization's success. Due to the characteristics of "VUCA"-Velocity, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity of digital age, innovation is no long a “nice to have,” but “must have” business capability to keep growth momentum and adapt to changes. And the leadership in any organization must have the ability to guide, inspire, innovate, and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals. What are important elements in innovative leadership though?
Nine Aspects in Creative Leadership Creative leadership is the ability to inspire, to create, and to maintain the social and psychological conditions and the environment in which everyone is able to: (a) reach his or her highest potential; and, (b) contribute "leadership" in areas of his or her unique competencies.
Top Qualities & Skills of Innovation Leaders? There are many common leadership qualities or skills shared between an innovative leader and any good leader or any creative team member. However, being innovative leaders take more courage, creativity, courage, collaboration, and concentration.

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about #2300 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
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