Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1357

Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Empathy

Many say, digital is the age of empathy, simply put, empathy is the ability to understand others from their perspectives. Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others. Now the physical barriers such as oceans or mountains can not stop people from communicating with each other, there are still walls in people’s mind and there are knots tiered in their hearts. Empathy is an important leadership trait and an important quality for today’s multigenerational and multicultural digital professionals as well. So which questions shall you ask to assess a person’s empathy?
Do you often label people only based on their physical identity on the surface, or can you see through others from their character and “aura”?  People learn as children about the world by labeling/identifying things; and somewhere along the way, people learn that labeling/judging other people based on precognition and superficial criteria. There are inherent limitations in engaging in conversations with people in text boxes; the limited abilities to facilitate meaningful dialogue and relationships with such a broad array of people from around the world; each having different intentions and life journey. So, the greatest contribution to humanity would be taking the time and the sincere effort to understand the other person. Walk in the shoes of the person you're judging. EVERYBODY has something to offer, and it is up to us to allow an equal give and take. That simple act might empower the other person and encourages them to take the next step in growing themselves and advance human society.
Are you often confused about the meaning of sympathy vs. empathy? Sympathy is an emotional attachment, and empathy is an Emotional Intelligence. Sympathy is to feel sorry about other’s unfortune. Empathy is about thinking as if you were in the other party's position. Someone in the throes of a strong emotion is simply unable to hear rational arguments or respond logically. Empathy is a great leadership quality that's often overlooked. Showing empathy helps a great leader infuse their employees with the company's mission and even better, their own life purpose or career goals. Such soft skill that can help is the ability of a leader to communicate with empathy, that it's better to be open to new ideas and risk having failures than to be close minded and miss a brilliant idea. Frequently those brilliant ideas come from empowered knowledge workforce and empathetic leadership.
Do you often communicate to tailor the different audience expectation and taste? Empathy means using the right language with the right people. It could be hinting at another important skill for great leaders, which is respecting other people as if you were in their position, judging the right language to use in different situations only comes from wisdom and experience. Empathy is an ultimate level of human cognition of being wise -understanding, active listening and balancing between tolerance and respect to achieve that.  Empathy is a very important soft skill that is frequently undervalued. It's not born to a leader. Too many business leaders have a "my way or the highway" mentality and don't value the opinions of their employees enough. The ability to not simply have empathy, but to exercise and convey that in a genuine and accessible fashion
These are silo mentality isolating the minds and small thinkings breaking the hearts. And the irony is, no two people are absolutely identical, we are each unique and yet, we are one human race; like snowflakes, each unique, yet collectively the same. You don’t need to like everyone, you also don’t need to be liked by everyone. So be yourself, focus on the things matter more to you, be empathetic to understand others and the world, be empathetic to show high-level emotional intelligence.


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Running IT as an “Innovative Outlier”

Many traditional IT organizations are still perceived as a invisible back office maintenance function, without enough knowledge about the business model of the organization; though technology is often the disruptive force for changes, IT function is often slow to adapt to changes with a controlling mentality. How can modern IT organization shift from a cost center to value creator, from an “isolated” support function to an “innovative outlier”?


The visionary IT leader has an outlier’s view: A visionary is often an outlier - the one who steps out of a conventional thinking box, or linear patterns. Visionary is the one who can envision the future, modern CIOs need to be technology visionaries who can help their organizations ride above the latest technology trend and leverage information for catching the new opportunity to grow business and delight customers.  Have a "visionary" leadership team is important, visionary could mean the ability to think outside the box, to think creatively, to be innovative both inside and outside the organization. Because IT is in the unique position to oversight business processes, it has broader lenses to connect broader business dots horizontally, to understand the business processes/capabilities underneath the surface, to see around the corner for risk management. The more dimensions the lens has, the vivid leaders can manifest a vision. Vision is something you see, others don't, and a visionary mind is able to and not afraid to leverage contrarian views to shape a holistic picture. Although the teams are the engine, leadership must put that engine in place and care for it in a cohesive way.
Be innovative from the business's lens: LISTEN to your clients, stakeholders, vendors, partners and staff.  To run an innovative IT, it’s critical to listen, comprehend and understand the people and the business they are part of, before embarking on any new way of thinking to know where you have come from enables you to move to a new place even quicker. The institutional trust, support, power, and autonomy make IT leaders’ vision a reality. Be careful, you do not want to come across as having a solution looking for a problem, hence, ensuring that you have the commitment from the senior executives to engage in dialogue (formal and informal) to derive a viable business strategy that is enabled/driven by IT would be good. Running a proactive and innovative IT is about making changes when people want things to stay the same, making rational decisions when others are rash, and responding quickly when others are slow. Once they believe all that, then, remind them to listen and get a complete picture before making decisions. With emergent digital technologies and consumerization of IT, and the whole consumerization of IT movement has largely focused on IT getting its arms around the trend and 'managing' it. IT has a great opportunity here to lead the business transformation. Rather than wait for business to tell IT what they want, IT needs to proactively work with the business and partners upon the great new digital technologies which can change the business. That has the added benefit of steering business toward things IT recommends to use. Businesses also love to see IT getting deeply immersed in the new apps, devices, and solutions and make internal customers more productive, collaborative and smart.
Be innovative from outside-in customer’s lense: Digital is the age of customers. Customer Experience Management is key to every business. It is not just important, it is vital for growth, development and to make sure you stay in business. IT has both internal and external customers. it has to deliver the quality services and solutions to delight internal users and engage employees in improving productivity and creativity. IT is also an integral and  critical element in building business capabilities for digitizing every touch point of end Customer Experience and building a customer-centric organization. Digital is also the age of empathy. To run an innovative IT, the more difficult challenge is not just launching a successful team, but maintaining their motivation and focus. Point out that customer inquiries are not just support related, but can foster new and better ways the application can perform and optimize every touch point of customer experience. What are the opportunities to change, how should you interact with customers and each other. Think like customers and let the business know how mobile, social and cloud can change the way to do business. Focusing on customer needs should be an easier path to grow the innovation fruit. If you're going to innovate without knowledge of "evident customer needs," then "the things that you are good at may distract you to build something which can really increase customer value and help business success for the long term. In short, instead of focusing on controlling computerization, use it as an opportunity to reboot IT mentality as a digital brain of the business and an innovative outlier to see things differently.
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! Running IT as an “innovative outlier” is truly about bringing the new perspective to grow the business and delight customer, to both capture the opportunities and manage risks timely, to become customer-centric and business-focused.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Monthly Innovation Brief: The Practices and Pitfalls of Innovation Management Mar. 2016

Innovation takes cycle of observing-questioning-connecting-networking-experimenting. From management perspective, innovation is how to transform novel ideas to achieve its business value, due to the hyper-complexity of modern business, innovation is essentially about reducing the unnecessary business complexity to tackle the complexities of business dynamic. Here is a series of blogs to brainstorm the practices and pitfalls of innovation management.
The Practices and Pitfalls of Innovation ManagementDigital Innovation Premium? Many say digital is the age of innovation. With the increasing speed of changes and hyper-fierce competitions, at present days, innovation is the “Must Have” element of the business strategy if the organization want to stay competitive on the market. Digital organizations are complex adaptive living systems, which are comprised, in part, of people who are also complex adaptive living systems, all such systems function, grow and prosper by continually learning, innovating, adapting and evolving. Creativity has just become indispensable, and innovation turns to be a competitive necessity. From a business management perspective, how to build a high competitive organization with digital innovation premium?
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?
Innovation Agility Innovation is neither a serendipity nor a rigid process or discipline, there is no such universal way to do innovation as well. It’s always about connecting, questioning and collaborating. It’s the certain mix of something old and new, being prepared to change what you are doing. So what’re further aspects of innovation agility?
How to Overcome Innovation Challenges? Innovation is to manage novel ideas and generating business value from them. Even innovation is the light every organization is pursuing, but often the term "innovation" has become so diluted or meaning it is hard to have even a basic conversation about it without problems of definition or interpretation arising - and perhaps in part why all sort of things can feel like innovation - even if they are faking it. So which factors are causes to innovation failure, and how to survive from innovation fatigue and pitfalls?
What Triggers Innovation?  The dictionary defines invention as 'a product of the imagination' and Innovation as "the act or process of introducing new ideas, devices, or methods." Everyone has, at least, one good idea that is capable of invention and innovation, great or small, manifested by overcoming that inner fear. And innovation does not just accidentally happen, it can be managed in more systematic way. But first you need to figure out: What triggers innovation?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about 2500+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.



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The Two Important Components of People Management

People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses. People Management is both science and art; hard and soft. Talent Management and Performance Management are two important components: Talent Management (TM)  focuses more on the people element of the organization; where Performance Management (PM) is more about the overall alignment of various organizational functions towards shared vision, mission, and objectives. Both PM and TM are important in any organization if functions and objects are aligned properly. PM is about building sustainability in the organization; and TM is about building talent competency of the business -finding, renewing and protecting the right of talent. Unless the right talent is there, Performance Management cannot salvage sustainability. What are the emergent trends in TM/ PM to manage today’s digital workforce more effectively?
Data based talent management: Digital Talent Management is about combining traditional face-to-face sequences with digital platforms to train and develop talent. Learning and development platforms with social features, for peer learning, coupled with web training /webcasts for diverse teams across geographies, are being increasingly adopted by companies across sectors. Data-driven talent management will bring business leaders together across the organization to share their experience and insight wherever there is a gap in the system, help to streamline and identify root causes immediately, and give practical guidance for improving and ordering HR data and using it in creative ways to gain predictive insight and competitive advantage. The continuous capability development approach makes them more innovative, responsive, and agile as the markets change.•Creating a vision and path for workforce analytics •Engaging workforce planning & deployment & development based on performance •Doing social network analysis to improve effective communication & collaborative innovation •Embracing futuristic trends such as visualization and proactive presentation
Continuous Performance Management:  Digitization has a direct impact on the way companies manage talent and their performance. Performance management systems and processes are gradually moving away from a static, unidirectional, and time-bound avatar to a more dynamic, continuous, and interactive state. Improved transparency, goal tracking, real-time feedback, and enterprise-wide acknowledgment/recognition of achievements are some of the key drivers, which result in the adoption of digital and social performance management systems. The purpose of PM is to align corporate goals with employees’ career goals, encourage talent growth, create synergy by putting the right talent in the right position in the right time to achieve ultimate business result. Data-rich, information-sharing culture creates business harmony. By creating an environment for people to come together, to interact and to exchange different views on common topics of interest may create harmony and trust and eventually will benefit the organization. Redefining Engagement is also a challenge facing organizations to unleash collective human potential of the business.Focus on passion and the creative environment to consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Higher levels of engagement come from recognition, feedback, growth, and opportunity. While compensation and benefits are important, they are only the foundation. Top performers are looking for growth, recognition, career opportunities, and learning. Organizations should continuously monitor employee engagement through social communication channels with people at all levels. Building a sense of purpose and mission, to build a strong corporate brand to attract top talent.  
People are the most invaluable asset in any business. They are not just cost or even resource, but the human capital worth investing in a smart way. From gap identification to goal setting and measurement. The combination of PM and TM elements makes a business successful. PM and TM is one system and software with the set of different modules that track to measure the employee's performance as well as help to shape business culture and make the engaged workforce.


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Running IT as a Business Multiplier

Many IT organizations are on the journey to transform from a cost center to a value creator, from a commodity service provider to an innovation engine. The word "transformation" in itself means change and change for the better - new ways and methods of doing things, new structures, new relationships etc. There are changes in two shapes: One is internal where IT transforms, and the second where IT helps to transform or change the business in line with new strategic imperatives. Change is not for its own sake, but to maximize IT value and ideally, running IT as a business multiplier?
To accelerate strategy execution and improve business agility: Most companies expect their CIOs to lead the technical vision and achieve the strategic value of IT to be a business enabler and even a “multiplier” to accelerate business growth and digital transformation. Therefore, forward-thinking organizations engage their CIOs in corporate strategic planning. In a progressive company that embraces technology and value information, a highly strategic and innovative CIO will fit in. IT Transformation is an integral part of the business transformation. In short, it means understanding the "As is" position of the business and the role IT plays in it, and identifying the desirable "To be" state. The next step is to build and execute a strategy and the associated change programs that enable the "To be" state to be achieved, and a set of processes and activities that keep it dynamic. IT as a multiplier will enable operational excellence, business agility, new service/product innovation, customer experience optimization and employees satisfaction, which are five pillars in building a high-performance enterprise and the ultimate goal of the digital transformation.
Optimize business processes: IT is in a unique position to oversee business processes which underpin business capabilities. To speed up business speed and compete in a global marketplace, business unit leaders need IT to ensure the availability and reliability of their business process automation tools/technology, so their staff can function as efficiently as promised, back when they justified the tool purchase. In fact, many organizations have little insight into their cost structures and who is consuming the assets. They have no idea where they are spending their money on and often assume it is mainly being spent on items which are actually much lower on the list. Every IT finance group can capture costs, but the challenge is to have visibility and traceability between costs and the assets consuming those costs. Hence, the leadership team needs IT to be the business process optimization expert for the company, to find creative sources of competitive advantages, to better compete in a global marketplace.
Retool organizational culture: Culture eats strategy for breakfast: 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. From organizational perspective, business culture is perhaps the most invisible, but powerful fabric surrounding organization. The superior culture can even lift up an average strategy and expedite strategy execution, but a bad culture will fail a superior strategy. IT is also in a unique position to well align people, process and the latest technology to empower talented employees, enforce communication, enable cross-functional collaboration, enhance governance, retool organizational culture for achieving high business performance potential, and running IT as a multiplier.
Technology is pervasive and information is abundant. Business initiatives and digital transformation today nearly always involves some form of technology implementation and/or data analysis; IT touches both hard business processes and soft human behaviors. IT has the necessary structure/ methodology/tool in shaping the new box of thinking and managing emergent digital complexities with the new characteristics such as hyper-connectivity, hyper-diversity, and hyper-dynamism, IT also needs to help the business build unique competency, as a business multiplier to improve organizational agility, accelerate speed, and catalyze innovation.
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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 3/11/2016

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with 2600+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the weekly insight about digital leadership, IT Management, and Talent Management. 
The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO”  3/11/2016
How to Build a Real Agile Organization: Many organizations are doing Agile - applying Agile methodologies and practices to develop software, but very few organizations are being agile - following Agile principles and philosophy to run an agile organization. An agile organization is one that is open to change and can adapt readily when change is needed. Agile is a mindset which drives strategic and tactical decisions to achieve goals with a set of agile guidelines. But what characteristics determine whether organizations are truly agile or just calling themselves agile? is there any way to measure “agility” of an organization, and how to build a real Agile organization?
Running IT as a Business Optimizer IT is the spinal cord for the organization, integrating various functional capabilities to bring out technology-enabled business solutions, motivating the IT team to constantly deliver multidimensional IT values. Today's organizations have to continue to keep digital fit to adapt to changes with increasing speed. So how to run IT as a business optimizer for improving business efficiency, enhancing innovation, harness agility, build resilience, and ultimately achieve high-performing business expectation?
Boomers, X, Y, and Z Generations: Many company workforce spans three or even four generations—Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Y (Millennials) and Z: each with different leadership, communication, working, and learning styles, and their mindsets are shaped by the environment in which they grew up, the historical events they experienced, the technologies they played with at the certain era, the media they followed, or the particular challenges they overcome. Hence, each generation is defined by a set of stereotypes, and in fact, that different ages and worldviews learn differently and through different media and methods. So how can digital professionals belonging to different generations learn from each other to advocate the most advanced thinking, ideas, and viewpoint from a different perspective in order to lead their organizations, and fundamentally our society to the next level? How can they work together harmoniously by respecting what each brings, ideally, works for the overall goals of the company as well as fulfill their own career goal and purpose?
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Intellectual Curiosity: Leadership debate is never ending. the leadership impact for the business is just like the light on the road when you drive in the dark. What’s the cause and effect of poor leadership? What’s the biggest negative or most serious impact on employees when leadership is poor?
The Cause and Effect of Poor Leadership: The substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about future and change, innovation and progression. Either past, today or future, there's no magic formula for leadership effectiveness, because every era has its own opportunities and risks. It is the leap day today, but what're the emergent digital leadership trend, and how to leap digital leadership to achieve the next level of leadership maturity in the leap year and beyond?
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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Three Philosophical Clarities to Shift from Doing Agile to Being Agile

Agile has become increasingly pervasive, it also became increasingly viewed as an "improvement" on reductionist management, The best way to fail is thinking that you will implement agile inside a business unit without taking into account the whole enterprise. Agile is neither just a methodology nor a set or practices, how to clarify the philosophy behind agile in order to shift from “Doing Agile to Being Agile”?
Agile is mindset and principles, not just methods or practice: Agile is a state of mind, not a process. It’s the basic underlying principles of Agile! You can not expect big bang mindset change so you need to start with some initial philosophy and some initial practices that pay off and reinforce, a mindset change is more difficult of a change and involves coaching/ training/ teaching and important discussions around what Agile is to the team/department/company. Focused on the degree to which an organization encourages an agile mindset - so the pertinent question to answer is "How agile are we?" Given that agility is largely about human relationships based on Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles. Values and Principles are about what we believe and how we think. Neither of these is really amenable to direct measurement. And you will always have to tie these together to get the big picture of your organizational agility
Agile is direction, not a destination: Agile is more about a direction, a journey. Transforming to “Being Agile” means the business knows the direction they want to go on, and as people start “putting on” the agile mindset, discover new ways of working, collaborating, delivering value, they inspect and adapt in that journey by overcoming the frictions and challenges. You have to keep things rolling, to make agile not just a methodology to manage projects, but a principle instilled into a healthy culture to run the business more effectively. To move from Waterfall to Agile is not an act of 1 day. It is a journey. And as long as the journey is coming to a place where we can call the organization actually Agile, Waterfall and Agile do co-exist. Some organizations stop moving and remain in the hybrid state and some just turn back to go to the previous state of the waterfall and few actually reach the destination of the Agile world. So, hybrid organizations are the reality. There are fundamental differences in philosophy that mean trying to hybridize Agile and Waterfall will not be optimal from the management perspective. However, many (but probably not all) practices can be used in both. The best way is to choose the next/best practices and make changes so it will fit your need. At the top level, Agile needs to be the philosophy to perceive multidimensional business values. Make the effort at the leadership and portfolio level to qualify and quantify value in terms of both strategic value and tactical value; direct revenue and indirect (mission/vision/values) terms is the first step to crafting high-level strategic intents. When faced with two or more alternatives that deliver roughly the same value, take the path that makes future change easier. Once benefits of agile are visible and understood, a domino effect takes over. Agile is more a "direction," than an "end."
Agile is first about doing right things before doing things right: Agile is about people and not tools and processes. Tools and processes are definitely going to be add on, in being agile, but they are not mandated to become agile. In practice: on one hand, organizations focusing on artifacts, metrics, ceremonies without ever understanding the why from the inside, will not get far. On the other hand, evangelists of agile who lose touch with business, do agile for its own sake, also, won’t be successful in being agile. Agile is really about constant renewal. Those who sell packaged practices demonstrate a tenuous understanding of the values and principles that underly the products they sell. Develop your own relationship with the values and principles - you'll recognize anyone who has not. Agile is often narrowly viewed as 'something for technology,' rather than as something to the business. Agility won't fix what being call "technical problems." It is a way to organize work. You still have to be good at doing the work. It takes more engineering and management discipline, not less. If problems happen, why not take some time to look into the root cause of the technical problems and late deliveries. Often agile practices are at odds with the overall corporate or environment. Agile practices up mean more about a mind shift and a set of principles to run an agile organization. Agile principles and agile thinking would be a better bet at today’s business dynamic with increasing speed of change and uncertainty.
If doing Agile is more about managing a software project which is still a business initiative to achieve the corporate goals, and then being Agile is to follow a set of agile principles to run a business with customer centricity, and business agility is the upper level characteristic of organization maturity. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

How to Leverage IT in Building Business Competency

The goal of all businesses is to generate revenue, increase net-new business and enlarge their footprint, and monetize their core competencies. In order to achieve business goals, organizations need to build a set of business capabilities such as innovation, agility or intelligence, and complementary core competencies such as customer satisfaction which consist of multiple capabilities and are infused into the being of the firm, IT is an important business enabler which can weave all necessary elements of the business to build into strategic organizational capabilities and unique competency.
Highly effective IT organizations continue to cultivate its differentiated capabilities and business competencies: IT is uniquely positioned to observe processes across the enterprise. Sometimes when one business area has a new product that can be used by another, IT leaders can connect the dots to come up with new innovative solutions. IT is not just the sum of services or processes, or monolithic hardware only, IT needs to build capability based unique competency via weaving all necessary hard and soft elements, in reaching high-level maturity. Unique competency is a combination of capabilities with a focus. A core competency is a harmonization of multiple capabilities such that it permeates the entire organization with a focus, and in alignment with the resource-based view, it is at the same time valuable, rare, and difficult to imitate. Each of these same capabilities may be combined in different fashions to yield multiple competencies. If capabilities define how you do something (marketing, logistics, production, etc.) and competencies describe just the result of those capability combinations in terms of what you deliver to the market and customers, then the firm can exist, thrive, and generate a suitable return as an outcome of being competitively advantageous. Leverage unique IT knowledge and capability to build business competency. There are few business units that are as deeply embedded into each corporate function as IT. Use this knowledge to uncover hidden value, not only within IT but benefit for the entire organization.   
Business case justification is important in IT portfolio management. The CIO must be concerned as to whether the operational ecosystem will function as expected. 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. 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? What immediacy does this problem or event have and why does it need to be addressed now? What is wrong with maintaining the status quo? What impact are these problems currently having (either to the organization or the community)? Can the impact of these problems be measured and quantified and if so what is the quantum of the problems., etc. Overall value, therefore, has to be judged at the enterprise level considering the overall satisfaction over each combination of cost, schedule, performance, and satisfaction the customer, user, and each stakeholder. The de facto best practices of managing IT project portfolio need to include such as, only manage a business project, not for technology's sake, prioritize the portfolio, and manage full application life cycle. Every IT project is the  initiative to help build business capability and competency.
Multi-layer ROIs: IT is an enabler of current and future capabilities of both the organization and its ecosystem. Thus, CIOs need to maximize IT value via pursuing tactical, strategic and innovative alignment with the business. Building business competency really means a lot: from “doing more with less” (efficiency) to “doing more with innovation”; from enabling business strategy (execution capability) to adapting to the changes (agility); from  revenue growth to business resilience. Hence, in order to become a better business partner, IT value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like collaborative value or collective advantage. IT and the business have to speak the same language and communicate more creatively, IT leaders must be both business strategist and technology visionary, always think in terms of the value-add to the business. From IT performance management perspectives,  if, as a CIO, your key metrics focus only on cost, then don't be surprised if you are managed on cost. If your metrics is all pointed backward at the technology, then don't be surprised that the business can't really understand the value of IT. Only through the well-defined set of KPIs which focuses on measuring business result, IT can both qualitatively and quantitatively measure value delivery to business and improve business competency.
In short, IT need to deliver value to the organization in order to help the business build competency and implement business strategy. It means to have a respected intra-organizational agreement of priorities and resources, to have the teams and employees focusing on the most important things, develop the energy and excitement to achieve business results, not only for quick wins but for long term prosperity.

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The CIO’s Digital Agenda XXXXVIII: Back to Basic, IT needs to Focus on Information Management

At today’s digital dynamic, information is abundant and even explosive, the business has become over-complex also hyper-connected, Back to basic, the focal point of IT needs to focus on information management, what’s the correlation between data, information, and decision-making, and how to manage data-information-knowledge-insight life cycle effectively?   Back to Basic, IT needs to Focus on Information ManagementThe Value of Information? Data is raw, unorganized facts that need to be processed. Data is simple, random and unorganized; on the other hand, information is processed data. Information is structured and presents facts in context to targeted situations and conditions that facilitate business in making the right decisions at the right time. Given this assertion, there is no limit to the value of information in the digital economy.
Information vs. Decision Making: At today’s digital dynamic, information is abundant and even explosive, the business has become over-complex also hyper-connected, what’s the correlation between information and decision making. If data-decision pair works fine to advocate analytics based culture; as information is the processed data; and knowledge is processed information, how about information-decision pair? It's not necessarily information, but the business insight leads to the right decision making. So how to measure information accuracy as well as decision-making effectiveness?
How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Information Overloading: IT is working hard to transform from a cost center to value center, but some of the challenges facing in IT valuation is that we attempt to apply the same measurement approach to all investments - yet there are unique attributes that differentiate one investment category from another. Further, too often, IT is driving by a look at rear mirror only, not pay enough attention to the front window and create forward-looking view upon how to run IT smoothly, or only focus on ‘tangible’ value, with ignorance of ‘intangible’ one. So what are the best way to present IT value?

Who is in the Driver’s Seat for your Master Data Management: Data is the raw asset and information is the lifeblood of organizations today. How to manage data right is a fundamental requirement to become a Digital Master, and Master Data management plays an important role in information lifecycle management -"master data management comprises the processes, governance, policies, standards and tools that consistently define and manage the critical data of an organization to provide a single point of reference." But in your organization, who is in the driver’s seat for your Master Data Management?
Process vs. Data: Which Comes First:  Data is like the life blood of business, processes are like body functions, made up of steps that convert inputs to outputs. process management is to manage known from the flow. Process vs. Data, which one should come first?
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with 2600+ 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 Whether You have a “Simplicity” Mind

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."  -Albert Einstein
We live in a both complex and complicated world, complexity is somehow necessary because of interconnectivity and interdependence of nature elements and things. However, complication often means redundancy, duplication, outdated burdens, or generally speaking, unnecessary complexity, it is the opposite of simplicity. Getting to simple is not easy for most people because they rather follow the traditions and set rules and regulations in the society. They don't bother to remove the dust around them, or want to question the unknown, or challenge the status quo, out of fear. Which questions shall you ask to assess whether a person is an “Intelligent fool,” or a “simplicity” genius?
Are you passion about simplifying things or often addicted to getting things complicated? Simplicity mind is neither equal to single dimensional thinking nor superficial reasoning. Simplicity is an optimal level of complexity. Very rare case we find people with simple mind, simple thought and who gets on to simplifying everything being passionate for simplicity, be it thought, procedures, systems, life, nature, though we know every intelligence has certain complexity in it, complexity is not equal to complication, complexity is sometimes necessary, but complication can always be optimized. Is 'elegance' such a word to convey “just right” simplicity? We have all seen tough problems solved elegantly while at the same time admitting that depending on your perspective it may have been very complex for someone to implement. You know an elegant solution when you see it. Like all things in Simplicity has always been one of the goals.  When you get it "just right" it's called elegant. And the complexity of the solution is simple enough when it only just exceeds the complexity of the problem.       
Do you often appreciate elegance or enjoy flamboyance? Simplicity has a multitude of perspectives. Elegance is such a word to convey “just right” simplicity. And flamboyance is perhaps the word to connect with innate complication in design. There is a relationship between simplicity and clarity. With simplicity, what we are adding is clarity and purpose. Let us decode the complexity, we make our path, life is always good, we make it complex or simple, the sooner we learn the better simple person we will be, we all have power within, to think, learn and expand our knowledge, choice is ours. People complicate the simple things when they don't have the answers. The masters decode complexity and make it simple, elegant, and purposeful.
Do you have abstract thinking ability to simplify things? Simplicity is an aspect of “appropriate” abstraction. Simplicity is a behavioral attitude to see things as and what and where they are and be content and cool as it is. That simplicity is a characteristic of architecture promulgates the view that architecture is a 50,000 ft view when it is quite the opposite. This complex mosaic of the inter-related concepts that make up an environment is far from simple. But such oversight is abstract, so that, even though the interrelationships of all aspects of the enterprise are characterized, the details of the individual pieces are left up to the design and implementation efforts of the subject matter experts in each respective area. Abstract thinking enables an optimized view to perceive “simplicity.”
Unnecessary complexity arises not from nothing. Humans create, though unintentionally in most cases their own problems. Therefore, they have to untie the knots they made themselves, how could you shoot the tangle to see from the different angle, how could you leverage abstract thinking to convey simplicity, creative thinking to discover the alternative way for problem-solving, system thinking to make leverage, and hybrid thinking to strike the right balance between simplicity and complexity. It is perhaps the intellectual curve you need to ride over: from simple to complex and back to the next level of simplicity.
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