Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1363

What’s in your Digital Management Tool Box

There are two levels of goals to run a successful business, at the strategic level, organizations concern about the long-term business result, business capability building, customer satisfaction and employee engagement; at the operational level, the business needs to take care of quarterly financial result, employees’ weekly report, customers’ purchasing transaction and more. Today’s digital business is complex and dynamic, therefore, systematic approaches, efficient tools and well-defined measures and KPIs are all important factors to manage business performance from a variety of perspectives and keep track of strategy execution effectively.
Strategy management tools: Strategic development is too often seen as a linear process, but it is, in fact, a cyclical process that needs constant attention and tuning within bounds. This process defines an approach which will leverage some popular strategy management tools such as Five Forces, SWOT, PEST, Blue Ocean, etc. So the “art” comes in both aspects - initial strategy formulation is a highly creative process, and so better strategic options usually result from a more creative and open process. When developing a strategy, one should always plan an execution of strategy, and prepare for “What If” scenario. Strategic scenario planning is to navigate through the digital dynamic, discover the path via unconventional or out of the box thinking, believing in yourself and most importantly in your team to achieve the high performing result. Strategy and execution are two completely different things and skill sets, but they are interlinked. Unless executed well, the greatest strategy will flop and without all dependencies and influences placed in the melting pot, risk-management of the greatest strategy will be a costly activity. Balanced scorecard offers a way for a corporation to gain a wider perspective on its strategic decisions by considering the impact on finances, customers, internal processes and employee satisfaction.  The Balanced Scorecard framework is a great way of selecting, scoping, and aligning specific projects to overall strategic objectives and the budget.  A well-defined scorecard should contain a good mix of outcome measures (or long-term strategic value) along with performance drivers to track the progress in the short term (operational value).
Business agility metrics: Metrics is a tool in the toolbox, but just because you have a hammer, not everything is a nail. What gets measured, gets managed. Metrics is not the end-all solution to management, but simply another set of tools, data, and information sets. Numbers permit one to collect and build out a quantifiable history for reference, particularly for trending. It is practical to measure, whether you are getting what you want to get out of being agile. In agile, measure directly what you want to achieve, what your organizational goals are like go to the market time, cycle time to develop a feature, anything that you truly want to see results from. Some of the key measures of Agile effectiveness are creating value, timely delivery, teamwork and productivity for the work done. By benchmark and comparison within the organization groups and their characteristics over a period of time may be the way to go.
Innovation management tools and metrics: Innovation performance indicators need to focus on measuring quality, quantity, time, and cost, revenue growth, profit improvement, margin targets, product variety for stability, turnover, shareholder/owner return and talent sustainability are a very few. Normally organizations look for KPIs measuring business results generated by innovation efforts. The innovation metrics in the context of business impact include such as, % of revenue from new products introduced. You could also change the variables and create something like % of the profit from new ideas implemented. But it takes quite some time for a new innovation drive to produce those measures. One of the solutions is to define process KPIs, which demonstrate the growing capability of the organization to deliver more innovation with business impact in the future. process KPIs could link to strategy, to make progress on the percentage of projects in the total innovation portfolio which contained a major part of external innovation. You choose those KPIs by deciding which are seen as critical to making progress on in order to deliver more innovations. Select the few (3-5) KPIs, to keep the measures simple and understandable.
Performance Management tools and measurement: Every function talent managers touch and activity HR handles have efficient tools and potential metrics for improvement comparison: engagement, cost control, return on incentives, recruiting efficiency, the number of stars rejecting outside offers, speed in revising performance objectives, clarity of organizational structure, depth of backups in succession plans. By tracking these measures, you can focus on where targets are not being met that support planned revenue and profit levels, and what actions might be taken to improve at the individual, practice and corporate levels.
Change Management “tool set” and metrics: Oftentimes, the organization may not have the systems and structures in place prior to implementation to actually monitor and track the change. Measuring change involves first accurately identifying where you are now. Then, clearly identifying where you want to be once the change is complete. Both require the necessity to be brutally honest and to establish clear, understandable, and easily calculable metrics.That metric needs to be SMART, so people can see what the outcome will look like throughout their transition. Second, there should be a consideration for a balanced scorecard that measures the progress you want to achieve during the change transition, this keeps people focused. A balanced approach may be sensible as they move away from providing towards commissioning services; looking at finance, working in partnership with others, contracting services out, building relationships that can help to support new ways of offering services. How do you measure these in a meaningful way? Perhaps the answer lies in using a range of different tools rather than relying on a single method.
There are both “hard tools and software” in the digital management toolbox, but still, leaders are the tool master. Do not confuse the means to the end. Follow the “KISS” and “SMART” principles, and always keep the end in mind - to strike the right balance between long-term business strategy execution and short-term operational efficiency.



Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 2/19/2016

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with 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. Here is the weekly insight about digital leadership, IT Management and Talent Management. 
The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO”  2/19/2016
Three Digital Fatigues IT Needs to Overcome  Digital transformation is an intense, even a stressful journey. It’s more like a sweeping approach to alter many things underneath the surface of the business, such as value, process, culture or behavior, etc. When the need for a significant digital shift is identified, IT often plays a crucial role in “gluing” all important hard elements and soft factors of the business to build differentiated digital capabilities. Therefore, it is the heavy duty for IT to adapt and innovate. But how can IT overcome digital fatigues and revitalize the business to achieve its vision?   
Three Elements to Fuel Creativity:  Creativity is simply openness to finding connections between ideas, things, people, experience., etc, and making literally something new from existing things. Creative thinking is the way to look at the “old” problems or situations from a fresh perspective that suggests unorthodox solutions. Every forward thinking organization is eager to build a creative workplace, but what are important elements to catalyze creativity, how can you recognize and empower your most creative people and build a culture of creativity?
Five Aspects to Rebrand IT as a Value Creator: IT is being treated as a cost center and technology controller for years, because many IT organizations are seen as a help desk and a maintenance center to keep the light on, or simply cannot give a fair accounting of where the money is going in terms of business capability or, more importantly, directly identifying the business value. Now with the accelerating digital speed, IT organizations are at the crossroad, either to reinvent its tarnished image or become irrelevant in the digital age. So the challenge facing IT leaders would how to re-imagining IT and unleash its potential.
How Coherent are your IT Enabled Digital Capabilities: IT plays a pivotal role in leading digital transformation at many forward-thinking organizations today, and IT strategy is an integral component of the corporate level digital strategy. A digital strategy has a purpose of driving customer engagement and experience as a cross-functional responsibility. Thus, the digital strategy needs to look outward with outside-in customer perspective; but the issue is that most IT departments look inward. So how effective does IT enable the business growth, and how coherent are your IT enabled digital capabilities?
How to Leverage IT to Unleash the Digital Potential of the Business?  Every forward thinking organization has the digital ambition to become a customer-centric, living, and smart business. Digital organizations are hyperconnected and interdependent and they have to continue to adapt to the digital new normal with “VUCA” characteristics. Information is the lifeblood, and technology is often the “digital disruptor,” so more specifically, how can companies across industrial sectors leverage IT to unleash the digital potential of its business?

Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

CIOs as Chief Investment Officer: Three Aspects to Run a Budget-Smart IT Organization

The majority of IT organizations get stuck at the lower level of maturity, with the reputation as a cost center, IT investment in many organizations is a controversial subject, Statistically seventy percent of technology initiatives don't have a direct measurable effect on the bottom line. In order to reinvent IT as a value center and running IT as a business, CIOs as Chief Investment Officer, how can you run a budget-smart IT organization and present IT value to the business effectively?

IT Asset Management:  Companies are highly dependent on IT executives who make the proposal to change/ replace the technology based on the need of the business. Thus, IT should continue to review upon the ROIs of existing IT investment, whether IT depreciation life cycle is completed or not; whether new technologies/ products mature enough in the business market to adopt. Some IT executives do two different finance planning: 1) industrial and 2) fiscal. Matching the two, tells the CFO when, for real, some assets will have to be renewed, so it gives the finance department the right information about when to get ready for the money to buy something. The other question IT need to agree upon with the CFO is whether or not you are going to treat any software developed for internal use as an asset, in essence, treating these expenses as capital instead of operating expenses. Applying the right procedures and policies to asset management allows IT to create a realistic budget with few surprises, and keep best practice to adapt to “continuous changes. ”
IT benchmarking: Benchmarking is a way of learning from other organizations. Comparing to external benchmarks is a healthy exercise and positions the CIO as a critical thinker who assesses the company from both an internal and external perspective. Tangible benefits can also be realized. But it is not to construct measures to beat the internal organization into submission. Sadly such crude measures have led organizations to make decisions that are based on short-term cost savings that lead to higher costs downstream or even worse, loss of competitive position. Investment justification: It’s about spending the money right, and getting the right results. You should not spend to meet a quota, nor should you avoid spending to stay within a quota. You should spend to make a return. Assuming a proper business case is involved with each IT project, the answer to the question of "how much" becomes "however much makes business sense". If done properly, IT investments save the business money through improved efficiencies and better service. The merits of IT benchmarking is to ensure you are looking at your #s in a manner consistent with others, make IT more transparent, and validates your spending levels or forces you to explain why it differs from the norm.
Multidimensional IT value measurement: IT value is not something that can easily be measured and is very subjective. Remember that IT is there to deliver the programs that the business wants and states that it needs. The value of these programs is derived from the business and often competing business units will argue that they are more valuable than others. It is not as simple as taking measurements and making quick deductions. For example, TCO is a component of a management framework that gets to ROI. TCO is a concept that cuts across typical budget lines. TCO is a combination of tech expense, marketing expense, operation expense, etc. related to delivering a service or producing a product. TCO is often applied to tech expense today, but often because technology is a significant expense for a large percentage of companies. Analyzing the data is also critical to understanding the measurements. This is not an easy job, but it is not impossible, certainly within the capability of an analytics person. The point is, if the correct goals and objectives are set by the correct people, if measurements are then taken and analyzed, the analysis provided to the right decision makers, and the opportunity is provided to the CIO and the stakeholders to explain the variances, then the correct decisions can be made, the correct actions can be assigned, and improvement in the business can be achieved. and the use of statistical analysis techniques arrives at providing very valuable, insightful, useful and realistic results.
IT leaders and managers can also leverage the scoreboard and dashboard in helping measuring and visualizing IT performance and enabling instantaneous and informed decisions to be made at a glance.A scoreboard is strategic driven, and a dashboard is an operation- oriented. A scorecard assesses progress to strategic goals whereas a dashboard assesses performance to operational goals.A scoreboard is to provide the “balanced” view of trade-off variables; whereas dashboard tries to present key performance indicators in a visualized way. Still, benchmarking, tools, or KPIs are all the means to the end, the end is to run a high-effective, high-performing, and high-mature IT organization.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

CIO’s Digital Agenda XXXXI: Running a High-Mature Digital IT

Digital makes profound impact from specific functions to the business as a whole, the purpose of such radical digitalization is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of customer centricity and achieve high performing business result. IT plays a pivotal role in the business’s digital transformation. But how to run a high-maturity digital IT which has the multitude of digital capability to become a business enabler and innovation engine in the organization?        
Running a High-Mature Digital ITThe Multitude of IT Dexterity: Digital makes a significant impact on every aspect of the business from people, culture to process and capability both horizontally and vertically. The purpose of such radical digitalization is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of customer delight and achieve high performing business result. IT is a key enabler of enterprise capabilities, and IT dexterity will directly and skillfully impact how effective of enterprise-wide digital transformation and business maturity. Here are multitudes of IT dexterity:
A Frictionless IT: Due to the change and complex nature of technology and overloading information, the majority of IT organizations today still run at the lower level of maturity, they have been perceived as a silo function and support center, a controller only, or even the bottleneck to slow the business speed. So how can IT leaders reimagine IT, reinvent IT brand,  overcome culture inertia and numerous digital barriers to run a frictionless IT and become a top IT performers?
Digital IT Continuum  The effects of an increasingly digitalized world are now reaching into every corner of businesses and every aspect of organizations. Business agility is imperative to meet the demands of rapidly evolving digital consumer behaviors and dynamic business ecosystem. Therefore, digital leaders need to more proactively rethink the art and science of business management, from learning to doing, from design  to delivery, from talent management to customer satisfaction; here are three aspects of managing such a digital continuum.
Three Levels of Digital Fluency: Organizations’ digitalization is surely a transformation journey, as it has to permeate into business vision, strategy, culture, communication, and processes. etc. If digital literacy is the ability to effectively and critically navigate, evaluate and create information using a range of digital technologies; and to move a step further, digital fluency is the business capability to skillfully manage information lifecycle, to create fresh content enlightening customers; to gain contextual intelligence for solving complex problems; and more importantly to be fluently in innovation management for catalyzing business growth.
Digital IT Maturity: Digital means customer-centric business. Digital IT should add more strategic advantages, not just a support function, and IT strategy is an integral component of business strategy, as more often than not, technology is the driver for business innovation. The trend of IT consumerization indeed provides unprecedented opportunities for IT to get more touch base with end customers, to empower employees as well. IT acts more as an ‘orchestrator,’ to conduct an information-mature, customer-centric digital organizations, IT maturity directly makes an impact on the organizational maturity.Here are five aspects of digital IT maturity.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with 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.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Digital Master Tuning #131: The Digital Leadership Substances and Styles

The substances make leadership more profound, and the styles make leadership more effective.

Substantially, leadership is all about future and change; direction and dedication; influence and innovation; methodically, there are authoritarian, delegation, and participation leadership styles. With “VUCA” characteristics of digital new normal and today’s cross-functional, cross-cultural, and cross-generational workforce, vision, and influence, as aways are substantial for digital leadership, and mentorship and coach are emergent digital styles to improve leadership effectiveness.

Vision as a substantial element in digital leadership: The leaders need to observe, perceive, and pay attention to the myriad of internal, external, national or global forces that define and influence the way we do business these days. These digital forces must be dealt with, but before they can be dealt with, they must appear on digital leaders' radar screens. It's true that leaders must have a clear vision--not the vision clouded and distorted by rosy colored glasses or narrow-minded perspectives. A clear vision is circular rather than tunnel; multi-dimensional rather than single lens; colorful, rather than black and white; upward-driven, not backward-dragged; it should be vivid enough to tell the story and positive enough to overcome barriers; it touches the hearts and connect the minds and lead the team to the mountaintop or the ocean deep. The digital strategy should be driven by visionary leaders and being on the ground does not prevent a person from being a visionary; as being on top does not prevent a person from being short-sighted. And exceptional leadership will welcome additional perspectives on how to add better definition to the organization's current vision.

Influence is another substantial element of digital leadership: There is indeed a subtle difference, one need to be "influential" if one wants to "motivate." To "influence" means to be able to shape other people's views or opinions towards one's own views or perspectives. This ability to "influence" then sets the ground for getting your "motivation" going. To "motivate" is to get other people to move into actions, to act on whatever view you have influenced to take. There are different languages for leadership, one of which is "Advocate," which means to support, argue or persuade in favor of or against something or some groups of persons. To advocate is to exert degrees of persuasiveness and influence in the circumstances that require it. Vision broadens influence, and insight deepens influence. In essence, leadership is an influence.

Mentorship: A mentor is by definition someone outside of the individual's chain of command, mentorship inspires the culture of learning for the long term direction. Mentorship motivates people by allowing them to learn by giving them the time and the confidence to work out for themselves what needs to be done in certain situations. There should be a balance between the organization and the individual where the responsibility for learning is concerned. The organization should be able to identify fundamental skill requirements at different levels of management and the individual must self-assess and identify what they lack to move forward and seek to learn through whatever means is made available. Great leadership includes mentor capabilities. By mentoring you are showing that you value others, and in order to add value to others, you need to hold people in high regards, not only for who they are but for the potential that lies inside of them. Great leaders should be ideal mentors, If the leaders are not willing to mentor the next generation of leaders, it will lead to reduced competitiveness and effectiveness and suboptimal business results. But you need to understand where people are and where they want to go in order to be an effect leader.

Coaching: Coaching is a medium-term approach in guiding an individual to achieve a specific goal where the coach has goal-specific experience. It is an interactive process through which managers and supervisors aim to solve performance problems or develop employee capabilities, coaching is the subset of mentoring. And leaders today are not the one who always have all the answers due to the information overloading and shortened knowledge life cycle, but often they need to participate in framing good questions, and encourage teams to find more than one answers, and always discover a better way to do things. The coach leads by asking: "How would you like to do it"? "Are there any other ways of doing it"? "Can you compare them"? "Which is best”? Continue to update her/his own knowledge, coach and learn at the same time. The philosophy behind the coach style leadership is to build a winning team and develop other leaders to encourage the creation of an environment in which all feel the need to demonstrate leadership, to take responsibility for the results, to unlock the teaching potential of the company's best and brightest.The coach/mentor can show the team how to explore their own natural skill sets, talents, and strong sides, take into account their own objectives in line with working needs.
Effective leadership is the good combination of substances plus styles, both philosophical and methodical, it takes hard work and endurance. The substance of leadership never changes, but it has to shift the styles to adapt to the changes. Learning, coaching, and practicing leadership are the iterative continuum that is improved by constant learning and practice.


Digital Master Featured URLs:Digital Master Author Home PageDigital Master on Future of CIO BlogDigital Master at FlipboardDigital Master at TwitterDigital Master on LinkedinGoodreads Author’s Home PageDigital Master Introduction, Fun Quiz on SlideshareDigital Master Introduction on YoutubeDigital Master Online Order Links:Digital Master on AmazonDigital Master on B&NDigital Master on Apple iTunesDigital Master on LuLuDigital Master on Google BooksDigital Master on KOBODigital Master on FeedbooksDigital Master on BOL



Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Digital Leadership Substances and Styles

Substantially, leadership is all about future and change; direction and dedication; influence and innovation; methodically, there are authoritarian, delegation, and participation leadership styles. With “VUCA” characteristics of digital new normal and today’s cross-functional, cross-cultural, cross-generational workforce, vision and influence are substantial for digital leadership, and mentorship and coach are practical styles to improve leadership effectiveness.
Vision as a substantial element in digital leadership:  The leaders need to observe, perceive, and pay attention to the myriad of internal, external, national or global forces that define and influence the way we do business these days. These digital forces must be dealt with, but before they can be dealt with, they must appear on digital leaders' radar screens. It's true that leaders must have a clear vision--not the vision clouded and distorted by rosy colored glasses or narrow-minded perspectives. A clear vision is circular rather than tunnel; multi-dimensional rather than single lens; colorful, rather than black and white; upward-driven, not backward-dragged; it should be vivid enough to tell the story and positive enough to overcome barriers; it touches the heart and mind to lead the team to the mountaintop or the ocean deep. The digital strategy should be driven by visionary leaders and being on the ground does not prevent a person from being a visionary; as being on top does not prevent a person from being short-sighted. And exceptional leadership will welcome additional perspectives on how to add better definition to the organization's current vision.
Influence is another substantial element of digital leadership: There is indeed a subtle difference, one need to be "influential" if one wants to "motivate." To "influence" means to be able to shape other people's views or opinions towards one's own views or perspectives. This ability to "influence" then sets the ground for getting your "motivation" going. To "motivate" is to get other people to move into actions, to act on whatever view you have influenced to take. There are different languages for leadership, one of which is "Advocate," which means to support, argue or persuade in favor of or against something or some group of persons. To advocate is to exert degrees of persuasiveness and influence in the circumstances that require it. In essence, leadership is influence.
Mentorship: While motivating people move more into the area of coaching or mentoring because you are motivating people by allowing them to learn by giving them the time and the confidence to work out for themselves what needs to be done in certain situations. A mentor is by definition someone outside of the individual's chain of command, mentorship inspires the culture of learning for the long term direction. There should be a balance between the organization and the individual where the responsibility for learning is concerned. The organization should be able to identify fundamental skill requirements at different levels of management and the individual must self-assess and identify what they lack to move forward and seek to learn through whatever means is made available. Great leadership includes mentor capabilities. By mentoring you are showing that you value others, and in order to add value to others, you need to hold people in high regards, not only for who they are but for the potential that lies inside of them. Great leaders should be ideal mentors, If the leaders are not willing to mentor the next generation of leaders, it will lead to reduced competitiveness and effectiveness and suboptimal business results. But you need to understand where people are and where they want to go in order to be an effect leader.
Coaching: Coaching is medium-term in guiding an individual to achieve a specific goal where the coach has goal-specific experience. It is an interactive process through which managers and supervisors aim to solve performance problems or develop employee capabilities for the mid term; coaching is the subset of mentoring. And leaders today are not the one who always have all the answers due to the information overloading and shortened knowledge life cycle, but often they need to participate in framing good questions, and encourage teams to find more than one answers, and always discover a better way to do things. The coach leads by asking: "How would you like to do it"? "Are there any other ways of doing it"? "Can you compare them"? "Which is best”? Continue to update her/his own knowledge, coach and learn at the same time. The philosophy behind the coach style leadership is to build a winning team and develop other leaders to encourage the creation of an environment in which all feel the need to demonstrate leadership, to take responsibility for the results, to unlock the teaching potential of the company's best and brightest.The coach/mentor can show the team how to explore their own natural skill sets, talents, and strong sides, take into account their own objectives in line with working needs.
Effective leadership is the good combination of substances plus styles, both philosophical and  methodical, it takes hard work and endurance, the substance of leadership never changes, but it has to shift the styles to adapt to the changes. Learning, coaching, and practicing leadership are iterative continuum that are improved by constant learning and practice.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Practicing Intrapreneurship in Running Enterprise IT

IT organizations play a critical role in the organization’s digital transformation. Many forward-looking IT organizations have built the partnership with startup companies to accelerate changes  and deliver innovative and cost effective business solutions. And high-performing enterprise IT also leverages the startup culture for catalyzing changes and improving organizational agility. More specifically, how to practice intrapreneurship in running enterprise IT organization?
Speed Up: IT is often perceived to be too slow to adapt to the changes in the majority of enterprise organizations. To practice intrapreneurship, it means IT has to adapt to changes in proactive ways, and more often, IT has to drive the changes and plays a pivotal role in digital transformation, focus on the fastest speed available - because that is where the main threat to competitiveness. Technology Enablement is always about planning, funding, designing, building, operating, securing, optimizing and maturing, and digital IT has faster speed. Practicing intrapreneurship means to run IT as a business,  because digital IT also shifts from hardware and technology heavy to data and information savvy; running IT as a software startup.
Strike the right balance: In the 20th century, entrepreneurs and professional managers act more like different breeds of leaders: entrepreneurs think out of box, professional managers set up and manage within the box; entrepreneurs break the rules, professional managers make the policies, entrepreneurs dream big to make the dent in the universe, and professional managers keep focusing on winning finance results; entrepreneurs present resilience; professional managers manage elasticity; actually, in order to embrace and adapt to today’s business dynamic, such two set of leadership characteristics are not exclusive, but complement with each other more seamlessly. Intrapreneur-CIOs will add a new dimension of vision in making the right choice for balancing the business’s short term gain and long term win.
Build innovative partnership: Enterprise IT can rejuvenate itself via building partnerships with innovative vendors or technology startups. The innovation capabilities IT vendors can provide to their clients are to connect the dots. Those IT vendors work with their clients across industries, across cultures, accumulate many success stories and, even more, failure anecdotes to benefit their client, for adopting the best solutions and avoid pitfalls, modernizing legacy application via borrowing the fresh idea from totally different industry or culture. Businesses are looking for “Absorptive Capacity,” and Innovation capability from their IT service providers. They are expecting for vendors to figure out ways to perform the IT lifecycle, whether they are doing hardware or software or a combined integration, with less drain on their organization, they also expect vendors to deliver flexible, innovative and high-quality customer-tailored solutions. There are a number of business areas that can be transformed by a systematic yet sensitive approach to customer feedback. Also, it is necessary to understand that no department will suffer from being challenged too often.
Cultivate the culture of risk tolerance with flexibility: Practising intrapreneurship also means enterprise IT should go smarter and flexible, with the culture of risk awareness and tolerance. Good intrapreneur-leaders explain the big “whys” clearly, to articulate the strategic rationale behind the venture, as more often than not, intrapreneurship is about discovering the new path for IT transformation and balancing innovation with other organizational priorities, it presents a possibly even greater challenge--and reward. Many entrepreneurs taste risk as bitter experience, and show resilient to recover, some say, failure + quantity =  success, intrapreneur- leaders may have balanced viewpoints to perceive success and failure objectively, such mental toughness will help organization to be more resilient, and nurture the culture of risk-tolerance. Such flexibility can broaden the “innovation scope” of IT: -A new result (new satisfied need of a customer –“need” solution);-A new method of gaining the same result (“principle” solution);-A new technology the same method is based on (“scientific” solution)
Creative leadership: Creative leadership is the unique combination of leadership behaviors that develops and achieves high quality and meaningful results over a sustained period of time. The heart of entrepreneurship is about changes, and organizations no matter large or small, all face the unprecedented change, uncertainty, and accelerated business dynamic, intrapreneur IT leaders are not only self-motivated, but also motivate teams to cultivate change capabilities, encourage subordinates to think out of the box and bring back new designs that they might not even recognize using the current context, but, when they examine them in the new context they may be a key element for building the new paradigms and contexts to improve IT agility. Creative leadership can be described as "Adaptability meets Agility.” Running an innovative IT doesn't mean IT will go “wild,” or "rogue"; it also doesn't mean IT should get rid of all those processes or IT framework hassles. In fact, creativity and process have to go hand in hand; without process there is chaos and from the chaos it’s hard to be creative.
There are a set of principles and practices to run a high-effective and high-innovative IT organization. Practicing intrapreneurship starts from tuning the digital mindset of IT leaders and professionals, cultivate the culture of learning and innovation, build robust, not rigid processes to do the work, develop innovative partnership and intimate customer relationships, and leverage flexibility in running IT as a business like a startup.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

CIO’s Digital Agenda XXXC: The Letter Factors in Running Digital IT (Part III: P-T)

Due to the “disruptive” nature of technology and the abundance of information, IT plays more significant role in business’s digital transformation, There is “alphabet soup” in running a digital IT which must lead in reaching high-level performance and improve IT agility. 
The Alphabet Soup in Running Digital IT (P-T)
Three “P”s in Running a Digital IT: IT organizations are facing the significant digital transformation, perhaps crossroads is an appropriate word to articulate IT position since IT seems to fall into two camps. The first is in the reactive mode to keep the light on, and take command of the business, but not on the "go to" list for implementing the strategy. The latter is the proactive mode to co-create business strategy and provide business solutions (not just IT initiatives) to achieve ultimate business goals. Here, we introduce the triple “P”s in digital IT.
Three “Q”s to Run a High-Mature Digital IT: Cross-industry sectors, IT organizations are shifting from a technology support center of a company into an information steward of business. Managing information and the information position of an organization is what ought to be called Information Management. Information Management means to have the right people get the right information to make the right decisions at the right time. And that information has the right quality (actual, right, complete,...) and quantity (the volume of data, etc) and the information is used properly. It is a strategic imperative for managing information effectively in driving digital transformation. Here we introduce three “Q” factors in running a high-mature digital IT
Three Rs in Running a Digital IT:  Many IT organizations are at transformation journey, from an industrial model to digital leap; from back office function to innovation engine; from a cost center to value-added; from 'T'-technology driven to 'I'-Information focus, from alignment to engagement. Here we introduce three “R” factors in running a high-effective digital IT.
Three “S” Factors in Running a Digital IT: Technology is pervasive, business transformation or business initiatives today nearly always involves some form of technology implementation or data analysis; IT touches both hard business processes and soft human behaviors. But how to run a value-added digital IT? There is an “alphabetic soup” in running a digital IT which must lead in reaching high-level performance and maturity. Here we introduce three “S” factors in running a high-performing and high mature digital IT.
Three “T” Factors in Running a Digital IT: With the exponential flow of information and accelerating disruption of technology, IT plays a more significant role in the organization than ever. However, most of IT organizations get stuck at reactive mode as an order taker, lack of talent people with the right mindset, capabilities, and skill set, running at a lower level of maturity. In order to speed up and shift to the proactive mode, there is an “alphabetic soup” in running a digital IT which must lead in reaching high-level performance and maturity. Here we introduce three “T” factors in running a high-performing and high mature digital IT
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.3 million page views with about 2350+ 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

A Dynamic Board with Digital Fit BoDs

With many organizations and the society as a whole reach the inflection point of digital transformation, as always, the spirit comes from the top, leadership is a key success factor for any organization's success. Modern corporate board as a top governance body plays a crucial role in setting business tones and driving organization’s digital transformation.  Due to the complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and volatility of digital age, the directorship in any organization must have the ability to guide, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goal. Hence, who are the digital fit BoDs and how to build a dynamic board to adapt to the rapid changes?


Digital conductors: Corporate board oversights business strategies and provides advice and resources for the business growth and governance. It’s a collective responsibility for both senior leadership team and BoD to lead business transformation and orchestrate digital symphony. The BoDs are like the “conductors” who have to advise the top leadership team and take  into account the time lag (a fraction of a second) of the orchestras on another continent. This looks more and more like the situation faced by business (and other organizational) leaders. They have to keep the in-house order, and must, simultaneously, coordinate with distant contributors; otherwise, the "music" will jar the ears. The successful conductors may not play the instrument themselves, but they can successfully conduct the music of ‘balance’ to inspire innovation, setting principles, and enforce standards as well.
Strategic critics: One who criticizes is a critic. Effective BoDs are the business advisor and even strategic critics who master at critical thinking: Constructive criticism is the criticism or advice that is useful and intended to help or improve operational excellence and business maturity, often with an offer of possible solutions. the constructive criticisms such as good advice or timely feedbacks are crucial to business changes. The BoDs as the business critic can provide excellent feedback which gives the top management accurate information to improve; great questions to self-aware; and keen insight to help the organization grow and mature. Effective BoDs are excellent critical thinkers who can ask insightful questions to get at the truth of a situation while being mindful is a powerful tool. We all have a cognitive bias whether individually or collectively, including senior leaders like BoDs. The Critical thinking is analyzing, looking beyond the surface, not just accepting things at face value but asking questions and being active in your thought process. More practically, critical thinking implies some systematic methodology, employing and applying the criteria deemed appropriate by the thinkers involved, to arrive at the tangible and reproducible truth - the commonly accepted objective, testable or measurable, time-bound reality.
Business visionary: 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. Leadership is all about future and change. Leadership vision is to serve as an enabler to clear the path, whether that be the elimination of obstacles or to provide coaching and guidance (influence). The vision 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. BoDs as digital visionary can make a better influence on guiding the organization toward the right decision and bring profound insight in transform the business up to the next level of business maturity.
Dynamism consists in being able to break away from the static, being proactive. Dynamism is to get out of the created mental boxes; express yourself totally through whatever means. Stop creating boundaries, take long leaps, wide jumps. Dynamism means free and progress. Thus, it is the power of BoDs as dynamic leaders to ride above the change wave and drive business transformation at the digital dynamism.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Five Aspects to Rebrand IT as a Value Creator

IT is being treated as a cost center and technology controller for years, because many IT organizations are seen as a help desk and a maintenance center to keep the light on, or simply cannot give a fair accounting of where the money is going in terms of business capability or, more importantly, directly identifying the business value. Now with the accelerating digital speed, IT organizations are at the crossroad, either to reinvent its tarnished image or become irrelevant in the digital age. So the challenge facing IT leaders would be to re-imagining IT and unleash its potential.
Business enabler: IT is not just a set of tools to improve efficiency for running the business at the moment, but a business solution provider moving from functioning to delight, from fixing things to grow the business. IT leadership has, for some time now, been focused on driving efficiency on company's systems of record. Even if you have an operation’s "run the business" budget and a "growing the business" project portfolio, you shouldn’t sacrifice tomorrow ("transform the business") in favor of solving today's, or yesterday's problems, so you can keep running the business for long-term. IT can introduce a 'measure' for assessing the potential for any improvement opportunity, feature enhancement, or take the initiative to offer a competitive advantage.
Innovation engine: The business sees it increasingly needs IT to develop and innovate core products and processes and demand that IT delivers innovative business solutions. Why the innovations happen and who is the strategic partner to drive innovation? Innovations happen because of specific business needs. Unique challenges become more appear as we push the limits of the available technology, which pushes us to find a solution to the problem on hand. Hence, IT should understand what it can offer to meet that demand and even surpass it by sparking business innovations made possible by technology push and information pull. The CIO has to look forward and actively position the business in the right place to take full advantage of opportunities. DRIVING is not a passive activity. To digitize and speed up IT, the CIO should look to businesses outside their industry to spur the out-of- box thinking and dot-connecting innovation; to find examples and opportunities for how the other firms addressed similar challenges and implemented different types of products and services to delight customer or reach new markets.
Digital brain: IT is the steward of business data & information. Digital IT is all about how to deliver the right information to the right people at the right time to help them make the right decision. Often technology is the digital disrupter, and the information is the “gold mine,” and they become an important “clue” to catch the upcoming business opportunities. Information is raw material when you manipulate the raw material in meaningful ways, which give you business insight to interpret and utilize, then you have established a value. Metaphorically, IT is like the “digital brain” of the business, data by itself is meaningless until it’s interpreted and analyzed. Technology enables large data sets to be captured and presented for analysis, but the value hidden in data is only revealed through intelligent reasoning. IT plays the critical role in information lifecycle management to transform raw data - information - insight/intelligence - wisdom.
Business integrator: IT is not just part of the business; it is a critical, integral component of the business. IT plays the significant role to weave all necessary elements together to orchestrate a digital transformation symphony.  The CIO sits in a unique seat of having the opportunity to see across the entire landscape of the business. CIO must work to integrate and lead the integration (not merely alignment) of IT to business processes and the strategic value proposition. The ultimate goal is to push the IT organization to be clear about its position via the company's core business strategy. Once that's clear, the CIO must reinforce that position by demonstrating every day how IT contributes to it. Also, IT must partner with human change management experts to manage change. In the end, it is not about technology, but what technology can do, and information can provide when it is enabling and integrating with change management and business processes to deliver strategic differentiation. Capability builder: IT is the most critical element in building complex and differentiated business capabilities today. IT ability providing value. The focus is to provide business capabilities (both necessities and competencies), rather than smart solutions. Large, complex enterprises require a multilayered value proposition from their IT organizations. In multi-national organizations, the IT disaster increases exponentially, due to the fact that there is a limited attempt by the business to really understand what they really want, how system dynamics impacts their requirements, IT resources have limited abilities to question this. The only way forward is to enhance collaboration within and beyond departmental boundaries to leverage knowledge in the organization. In order to build tailored business capabilities to enable strategy implementation, CIOs have to be able to navigate the business objectives and corporate strategy, and lead the creation and execution of the corresponding technical strategy for achieve the company’s strategic goals. .It's all about the maturity of the IT organization.The right balance among the elements of an IT organization's value proposition depends on the style and market position of the business as a whole, combined with the expected contribution that IT makes.
Business paradigm is shifting from the industrial era to an information/digital era, from a static -”built to last” back office function to a dynamic “built to design.” digital engine. IT department should not live in a silo, or a function running as a help desk only. -Information technology should be seen by any business as a “digital transformer.” IT plays a pivotal role in such transformation, and therefore, IT value needs to reflect such shift. There are tangible (cost saving, efficiency, etc.) and intangible (brand equity, sales enablement, capability building etc.) components of value. And rebranding IT start with rebooting mindsets of the business management, following by  retooling IT management which include: reformulate principles, develop strategy, restructure the organization and present a new value proposition.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu