Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1368

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 1/29/2016

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 of the “Future of CIO” blog.
The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” Blog 1/29/2016Running IT as an Innovation Engine in Digital Organizations   Organizations large or small are at the digital journey, and corporate IT is also shifting from a support center to an innovation engine, because more often information is the lifeblood, and technology is the disruptor to push the business world into the digital paradigm. Hence, for any forward-thinking organizations, IT mantra is shifting from “doing more with less,” to “doing more with innovation. But more specifically, how to run IT as an innovation engine to accelerate digital shift?
Talent Management Brief: See Through Talent from Different Angles III People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses. “Hiring the right person for the right position at the right time,” is the mantra of many forward-thinking organizations. The question is how would you define the right people? How do you define wrong, average, mediocre, good, great or extraordinary person? Or put simply, for what should they be right? Traditional Performance Management focusing on measuring what an employee does (mainly being told to do) in a quantitative way is not sufficient to identify high performance or high potential, should we see through talent from different angles?The Multitude of IT Management Digital IT is impacting every business unit and is becoming the very driver of business change. It is not just about the fancy new tools or the help desk with monolithic hardware, one of the fundamental goals of running a high-effective IT is to ensure the right people to get the right information at the right time to make the right decisions. From a management perspective, what are the focal points and priorities IT leaders and management  need to work on for running a high-performing organization in a systematic way?
Five Principles to Run a Digital IT Principles are statements of values. Things that define why one make a decision one way or another. These core decision values guide the behavior of individuals within an organization. Digital does flatten  the organizational hierarchy and blur the functional, organizational, and geographical borders in the business ecosystem, it could mean less restrict rules or bureaucracy, but it also means the guiding principles become more crucial  to be defined as core decision values and behavior guidelines. It is less about controls, but more about the clarity of  "why we make decisions the way we do” and what’re the expectations of employees' work performance.
How to Close the Gaps in IT Talent Management? People are always the most invaluable asset in any organization, and having the right person in the right position at the right time is always one of the biggest challenges facing any business. This is particularly true for IT, due to the changing nature of technology and abundance of information. Some fresh mindsets, new skills, or integral digital capabilities are needed every day because we live in a time of rapidly changing digital dynamic. However, people are often the weakest link in strategy execution as well, so how to identify and close the gaps in IT talent management more specifically?
Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

How to Earn and Practice “Expert Power”

We step into the knowledge economy in which digital provides the new way to learn, the new possibility to explore unknowns, and new perspective to lead and work. Today’s digital workforces, the majority of them are knowledge workers are hyperconnected and sophisticated with digital fluency. So are today’s leaders or managers really “powerful” enough to lead effectively? Power has many different formats; some visible, some invisible; some are earned, some are given;  some are delightful, some are intimidating. There are two powers (Informational power which is about the value or importance of information and knowledge, and expert power which comes from a person’s expertise, can truly win the minds and gain the respects. But how can you earn and practice them, and more importantly, as a leader, how can you help to grow more experts with an open mind in your organization?
Strength and distinction: Knowledge is power, however, knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened, and lots of commodity knowledge are just clicks away. Thus, digital leaders and professionals need to strengthen the strength and build unique competency and capabilities, and practice expert power based on critical thinking and creative thinking, insight and wisdom. From a management perspective, it’s important to encourage authenticity, purpose driven talent development and management, and discourage negative competition or unprofessionalism. Strength needs to be built via continuous practices, and competencies are interrelated with the traits and expertise. Neither one overshadows the other, they complement each other. And this is where the differentiation and selection algorithm comes in, and talent analytics can play an important role in people management.
Digital Footprint: Nowadays, to break down stereotypical guessing or any types of career ceilings, digital footprint becomes the significant part of “who you are,” and digital platforms can condense your strength and amplify your expert influence. Your digital blueprint will reflect your purpose, your vision, your character or personality, your expertise, and your uniqueness. At the era of social computing, each one of us can become the leader at your own favorite domains: the thought leader, the domain expert, the change agent, the innovator, the talent master, or the culture evangelist,  you can grow and flow both horizontally and vertically, you don’t compete for the best for anything, you will just need to discover your true authentication, and you are competing via your knowledge and expertise. Digital is more open, transparent and fluid, you are what they read, and you are what you are pursuing and what your are creating!
Success/Failure Stories: Life's a journey with ups and downs, we all have a set of success and failure stories to be who we are at the moment. And both parts can build your strength and expertise if you can learn from them and share about them. Success is a byproduct of failure and application of wisdom. Success is persistent, punctual efforts with perseverance. Failure is the chance to teach you the depth of life, and taste the bitterness which might also help you to get wiser. Success is picking you up when you fall or get a setback and having learned from the fall to continue on.
Coach Capability: Coaching and mentoring are going to be increasingly important now, and that’s why expert power is perhaps more powerful than other types of powers in the age of digitalization and globalization. Mentoring has always been a very integral part of an organization’s success. In the past, the share and spread of knowledge and skills could survive in isolation. However, in the new age, the faster the dissemination, the better the response. Some of this teaching have to be culturally driven by the insightful leaders and not just limited to discretionary skill. 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. Additionally, to show them that there is always a way to earn what they dream of - if they are willing to spend the time and energy in self-development. The titles and qualifications, if well managed, are needed in every society: ensuring respect for the person who has the knowledge and expert power to coach.
Empathic Communication: Technology makes the world much smaller than ever, we are all net citizen and C (connecting) generation now, the expert power can influence and improve communication quality and effectiveness, because knowledge-insight-wisdom cycle will break down silos, and gain empathy which  is the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person's feelings; or the intellectual identification with vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. Knowledge and insight help to build the leadership influence power in developing the true understanding based upon trust and cognitive understanding. It’s the leadership capacity to be non-judgmental; the capacity to appreciate and communicate with respect for other people's ways; and the capacity to be flexible with tolerance for ambiguity.
The expert power has the foundation of in-depth knowledge, profound insight, and abstract wisdom, to connect the mind and win the heart. Knowledge is the ‘power’; wisdom is the exceptionally effective use of the power. Knowledge is learned, and expert power is earned to make deep influence via the inner drive and demonstrated wisdom.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Five Aspects of Digital Strategy Management

The strategy is what you intend to do or accomplishes in terms of managing the constraints to having the critical success factors in place to achieve the set of strategic priorities. In the strategy making process, one must also assess the environment, competitions, and other threats and opportunities and devise contingencies accordingly. With the increasing speed of changes and disruptions, digital Strategy-Execution is an ongoing continuum with iterative steps. Here are five aspects of digital strategy.
Real-time planning: The strategy is not created in isolation, valuable and reliable information about the organization must be available for the design of effective strategy. It is also crucial to make a risk assessment and constant evaluation of business environment, otherwise, you may end up having a strategic plan which is oceans apart from reality. The strategy has to suit your organization, if it is too rigid or prescriptive, it becomes a waste of time. What really matters is having a continuous dialog about the progress being made to achieve the strategic initiatives. Most executives view goal setting as an annual event, even though business is dynamic, and the business objectives can change over that 12 month period. There is nothing wrong with the annual revisiting of the goals, but goal setting should be event-driven as well whenever it is needed during the year. Thus, real-time planning is a characteristic of digital strategy. Strategy Planning becomes a "living process" with regular evaluation, scanning, listening, revisiting and potential course correction.
Multidimensional business values: Digital business is a hyper-connected and interdependent ecosystem, therefore, the business value needs to be defined via multidimensional length, including economic value, customer value, functional value, social value, etc. Too often the whole system is not considered when measuring values and success. Ask management teams to define business values in terms of outcomes they're helping the organization and customer to achieve and you will often get very tactical responses. To preserve "business value," you need to have a very clear idea of the "product" - its life cycle, the overall "value proposition," via broader lenses, where it fits into the overall "product/project portfolio," the wider competitive landscape and your price/business model.
Agility: Agility is “the ability of business to adapt rapidly and cost efficiently in response to changes in the business environment.” What do you put in place or how would you then structure your business to ensure that the ability of your business to adapt rapidly. The focus is necessary to maintain or improve quality because there can be positive impacts as well as negative needs to be on capabilities for strategy management. One of the agile goals is to improve business resilience, which is also a critical business ability to fail forward and manage risks effectively. For example, some Agile organizations support and encourage the idea of highlighting "mistakes" by those who made them and actually in some ways rewarding those team members. This, in turn, reduces risks and promotes feedback, learning, and transparency. In essence, the twin goals of an Agile transformation are to increase value received and decrease risk.
Measure Leading Indicators: It’s important to keep tracking and measuring the outcome of strategy execution. There are many practical metrics and KPIs, but not every metric is created equal. The concept of leading and lagging indicators relies on an understanding of the cause-effect relationships between KPIs in the different perspectives. Leading indicators intend to measure performance that change ahead of the underlying strategy management cycle. For example, good process results depend upon a number of things included in the learning and growth perspective. Well trained and happy staffs are needed to make the processes work. Investment in new IT systems provides new capabilities and competencies (such as customer analytics and effective process control). Investments in leadership training affect the corporate culture and values, especially on innovation and empowerment. The learning and growth perspective are where businesses build institutional capacity and capabilities. These are longer-term investments which take multiple periods to have an effect on the financial KPIs. That why they are seen as "lead indicators."
Harden the soft factors for successful strategy execution: Soft factors such as communication or culture make invisible but direct impact on seamless strategy management. More than two-thirds of strategy implementation fail to achieve the expected result, often the root causes are the soft business factors which underlining business capabilities. Most problems are systemic and require systemic solutions where people take accountability for their part in describing and solving them. Without denying the accountability of the person being asked about their performance, too often, the leader fails, explicitly or even implicitly, to acknowledge what they are accountable for in a situation or demonstrate a willingness to explore legitimate systemic issues beyond the performance, or even control of the team member that contribute to the outcome.
The purpose of strategy never changes, it’s the roadmap to achieve a vision of what organizations want to be, to achieve. But in practice, digital strategy is a living process with iterative steps and a dynamic continuum. Organizations must be proactive in keeping both short-term and long-term strategy goals in insight, and leverage the emergent digital philosophy, methodology, and tools to achieve a high-performance business result.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Is IT Leadership like Bicycling: All About Balance

Many IT organizations are on the way to the digital paradigm shift, from running a maintenance center  for keeping the business light on to reinvent IT as an innovation engine and value creator, there is a mixed bag of legacy technologies and emergent digital tools and apps. therefore, IT leaders need to bridge the chasm between “the old’ way to do things and the new way to think and prioritize how to run a high-performing IT, as well as how to measure IT value via the business perspective. Is today’s IT leadership just like bicycling, all about balance?
IT has to strike the right balance between supporting business and leading changes:  Often there is a huge gap between IT-Business mutual understanding and trust. On one side, most of the business managers still perceive IT organizations as support functions only, not inviting IT to brainstorm strategy; and IT leaders also say that they can't put together a strategic plan because the business doesn't have one. You need to see this as an opportunity - not a roadblock. So while the other areas of the business need to change, IT should ask itself how it can influence - and help - them to do that. After all, business and IT are all on the same team to ensure the organization as a whole can achieve an optimal business result for long term growth. Due to abundant information and more mature digital technologies, IT is actually in a unique position to grasp business opportunities, also predict risks for businesses growth and expansion, thus, it needs to put more focus on innovation, and standardize the applications and devices customers use to keep support cost down and manage risks effectively.
From IT organizational structure perspective, it needs to balance of the Centralized IT vs. Decentralized IT organization: What's the best organizational structure to run an effective IT or the digital organization under the cloud? As the border of functional silos is blurred and creating meaningful differentiation requires capabilities that are almost always cross-functional. The same concerns can be lifted for other functions as well. Often, centralized or decentralized IT capabilities are the perpetual dilemma as paradoxically, centralizing and standardizing what makes sense enables flexibility without chaos.  And a centralized IT also has the advantage in purchasing power when negotiating with vendors, practicing governance discipline and sharing best practices with speed. The speed of change is creating a solutions environment that is more specialized and complex, thus more expensive to successfully manage. And the certain level of decentralization enables IT to get understanding business better and deliver business solutions, not just IT services. A hybrid approach to deliver IT capabilities may work best to fit most of IT organizations: And it’s not a black or white decision. It always depends on several factors like firm’s culture, strategy, IT budget, IT maturity and so on. It relates much to who makes IT decisions and If done right, that you can get the best of both worlds is the best approach.
From IT management perspective, the balance of DevOp -Agile vs. Waterfall helps to run a balance of project portfolio:  Agile is more as a management philosophy, a set of principles and a proven methodology to manage projects and run IT. DevOps brings in a cultural shift to an organization to not only develop but also to maintain the application with continuous changes in place. Devops as a natural consequence of applying agile thinking not only to development but to the whole lifecycle of a service that has IT-components as central assets. Many established IT organization also accumulate  enriched experience to using Waterfall as a management practices for years. Thus, suitability is important to select the right methods in managing project portfolio effectively. There are multiple approaches, frameworks available to help teams identify the agile suitability for particular projects. Organizations can use "all agile some of the time" and "some agile all of the time" on projects delivery journey to ensure the project success and customer satisfaction.
The technique for riding a bicycle is to look forward, keep your body balanced and steer toward the right direction. So does today’s IT leadership. We have more computing power, greater connectivity, more data, greater potential empowerment of the worker, etc. But more of something isn't always necessarily good, the management challenge is to BALANCE them well. The pervasive digitalization or IT consumerism require the balance of the “old experience” and the “new way to do things,” the “learning and doing.” Whether one believes that the current experience is a transformation or just an extension of the past, what are the things that you can do as IT and non-IT leaders to leverage the experiences of the past, and what are some new lessons for you to consider through applying digital technologies? The ultimate goal is to build a high-performing, high-innovative and customer-centric IT organization. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Three Big “WHY”s in Change Management

Change is the most significant trait in the digital age, and it’s multifaceted. Change also becomes an important business capability, not just an ongoing project or one-time business initiative. “Change Management” is an overarching term that encompasses extensive planning, communication, discovery, creativity, measurement, etc. But the first step first, what are the very reason for changes, and what are the ultimate goals for changes. And what are the big WHY questions you should ponder in order to manage change more seamlessly?
More fundamentally, WHY do you need to CHANGE?  Many organizations focus so heavily on the "doing" (the "how"), they lose sight of the "purpose," the "WHY" part of changes. It is the key to present the WHY first. Primarily, it provides a way to inject enthusiasm, which is infectious and spurs the concept forward. Once people agree with the “WHY” part of the reasoning, they can develop their own level or means of participating, maybe even offering what you didn't think to ask for, expanding the efficiency of the concept itself, thereby re-injecting further excitement in their being part of it. Because change can not be completely manipulated from top-down, it starts from the mindset. "Why" should not only precede "How," but should be reaffirmed at each step in the "How." Every process, every expenditure of time, money, or energy, and every assignment of resources should directly relate back to the "Why." The enemy is not changing per se, it's the change without focus or purpose. One of the change mottoes is "never mistake motion for action." "The successful businesses are the ones that have learned WHY should change, WHEN change is called for and how to decide WHAT to change." Let's not let all these problems inherent in any change initiative, to get in the way of accepting the business facts that change is inevitable and needed in every business.
WHY is Change so Difficult? Statistically, more than two-thirds of change management effort fail to achieve the expected result. Change becomes fundamentally difficult in most organizations because it is treated as something distinct from running the business, evolving performance and increasing results over time. Leaders and employees are stressed enough in getting done what is right in front of them that change is layered upon becomes disruptive. In addition, resistance to change is part of human nature. For many people, "sameness" is psychological security, change leads to psychological insecurity. Most people like security. Even though it is difficult to change human nature, there is still value in understanding that resistance is normal and must be considered and managed. The other reason why is change so difficult could be the leadership factor. Leaders do not set a good example to be change agents. Even the people who are advocating change are resistant to change. It is common for people to propose changes that impact others while exempting themselves. This type of approach is guaranteed to be resisted.
WHY is measuring change so difficult?  Perhaps the difficulty in measuring Change Management is that the very thing you are measuring is changing. Some change is very difficult to quantify and measure. There is an inherent oxymoron in the term change management. We want people to change, and manage/control at the same time. That's like trying to drive with your foot on the brake and the accelerator at the same time. The other consideration is that the part we are measuring is only a snapshot of the entire organizational picture. Each change effort is so different. Even two simultaneous changes going on in a firm are so varied, so there are no cookie cutter metrics or methodologies exist that gives the answer. Employee morale can be measured in terms of retention and by surveying job satisfaction. Improved customer service can be measured as well. Not all elements of change are easily quantifiable, whereas some are in terms of hours, and dollars saved. It's probably better and more accessible to measure change-readiness rather than change progress. The change needs to be defined in its base elements and associated benefits to be achieved. (financial, market share, productivity.) The change deliverables success value is then tied to the success of the elements dependent upon the amount of adoption, utilization, and proficiency of the people involved. The higher the adoption, utilization, and proficiency of the people in the new normal, the more successful the deliverable will be. It can be argued that if you have good change-readiness, then you will probably be better at change, measure the input - not the output - it's too late to do anything about it by then.

Asking big WHY question is to dig through the root cause of changes, how to manage it and achieve more tangible results. Real change and improvement are deprogramming old mindsets, letting go of the outdated tradition or the voices from the past, and reprogram collective minds with new mentalities, norms and behaviors, and successful changes are often linked to the DNA of the organization itself. From management perspectives, it’s how to build multi-faceted change capabilities to adapt to the ever-evolving business dynamic and improve organizational maturity.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

CIO’s Digital Agenda XXXV: The CIO’s Cloud Journey Part I

Cloud is the nature phenomenon and a technology advancement to draw a lot of contemplations. 

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.
More and more organizations are pushing their cloud envelope and migrate IT applications, platform, or even infrastructure to the cloud, CIOs as IT leaders, what are the holistic cloud strategy you make, the logic steps you should follow, and what’re the pitfalls you need to avoid?     The CIO’s Cloud Journey Part ICIO’s “Cloud Philosophy”: The Preparation and Pitfalls of Cloudification: Moving up to the cloud is neither for cost saving only nor about catching the IT fashion, it is a journey to reinvent IT via modernization, classification, integration, and optimization, it is an opportunity to improve IT agility and increase IT maturity, make well preparation, and avoid potential pitfalls, it is not only the technology advancement, more crucially about management methodology and philosophy.
CIO’s Cloud Navigation: Three Big Whys to Deploy Cloudification: Though “Cloud” has been proven to bring visible benefits such as faster delivery or CapEx-OpEx transformation, etc, and many organizations have already reaped the benefit from the SAAS model. Still, as an emerging IT trend, most of organizations lack of well-defined cloud strategy to run an agile IT, especially, Cloud itself takes some time to get matured, from vendor maturity to technology and methodology maturity, as a CIO, how should you navigate the Cloud journey via fundamental questioning: WHY, WHY and WHY you should go on Cloud?

What is the Critical Role of IT in the Cloud Era? For so long, IT has been perceived by businesses as an inhibitor to productivity, because it is slow to change and acts as a gatekeeper for businesses to adopt the emerging IT consumerization. With the dawn of the cloud era, the best bet of IT is to understand the various Cloud options (including SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, private, public, hybrid) that deliver self-service, instant productivity to the developers and business units - probably in a DevOps model - so that the business units can get product to market in an expedient fashion.

The Inflection Point to Cloud?  The transition to cloud solutions is inevitable. We're hitting an inflection point where businesses are moving from traditional industrial IT environments to digital cloud-based environments. But how can IT leaders embrace the opportunity and prepare for such challenges?

CapEx  vs. OpEx More and more IT organizations are pushing up their Cloud envelope though Cloud Computing still takes the time to get matured and it doesn't necessarily equate to faster software development or better quality of software. Still, there are some significant advantages such as the ability to scale up or down as demand waxes and wanes, global availability and transforming from CapEx. To Opex., etc.
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 to human progression.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

CIO’s Digital Agenda XXXV: The CIO’s Cloud Journey

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.
More and more organizations are pushing their cloud envelope and migrate more IT applications, platform, or even infrastructure to the cloud, what are the logic steps you should follow, and what’re the pitfalls you need to avoid?     The CIO’s Cloud Journey ICIO’s “Cloud Philosophy”: The Preparation and Pitfalls of Cloudification: TMoving up to the cloud is neither for cost saving only nor about catching the IT fashion, it is a journey to reinvent IT via modernization, classification, integration, and optimization, it is an opportunity to improve IT agility and increase IT maturity, make well preparation, and avoid potential pitfalls, it is not only the technology, more crucially about management methodology and philosophy.
CIO’s Cloud Navigation: Three Big Whys to Deploy Cloudification: Though “Cloud” has been proven to bring visible benefits such as faster delivery or CapEx-OpEx transformation, etc, and many organizations have already reaped the benefit from the SAAS model. Still, as an emerging IT trend, most of organizations lack of well-defined cloud strategy to run an agile IT, especially, Cloud itself takes some time to get matured, from vendor maturity to technology and methodology maturity, as a CIO, how should you navigate the Cloud journey via fundamental questioning: WHY, WHY and WHY you should go on Cloud?
What is the Critical Role of IT in the Cloud Era? For so long, IT has been perceived by businesses as an inhibitor to productivity, because it is slow to change and acts as a gatekeeper for businesses to adopt the emerging IT consumerization. With the dawn of the cloud era, the best bet of IT is to understand the various Cloud options (including SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, private, public, hybrid) that deliver self-service, instant productivity to the developers and business units - probably in a DevOps model - so that the business units can get product to market in an expedient fashion
The Inflection Point to Cloud?  The transition to cloud solutions is inevitable. We're hitting an inflection point where businesses are moving from traditional industrial IT environments to digital cloud-based environments. But how can IT leaders embrace the opportunity and prepare for such challenge?
CapEx  vs. OpEx More and more IT organizations are pushing up their Cloud envelope, though Cloud Computing still takes time to get matured and it doesn't necessarily equate to faster software development or better quality of software, still, there are some significant advantages such as the ability to scale up or down as demand waxes and wanes, global availability and transforming from CapEx. To Opex., etc.
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 to human progression.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Three Questions to Assess an Employee’s Authenticity

Most of the employees at the pyramidal organization in the industrial age is like a cog in the mechanical business wheel, keep working, but lack of the big picture about the strategic goals of their organizations as well as lack of the imagination about their own potential. Now the new digital paradigm that is emerging is one of a living organization, one that is organic, alive, energetic, fluid, and holistic. Every staff is also like a living “cell,” can continue to discover and grow, creative and influential. So an important perspective for either talent managers or employees themselves is to ask tough questions and discover authenticity and purpose of people and unleash the collective human potential and business potential as well.
Who are you, as an individual, a digital professional or a leader?  There are many good talent theories around from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to Belbin’s team role, or the motivation scenario of “autonomy, mastery, and purpose,” the very goal is to discover human’s potential and keep our energy flow toward the positive direction. When digital workers are inspired to discover who they are, their inner genius, and are empowered to grow into who they want to be, the negative emotions and unhealthy competitions are discouraged and every member can bring some wisdom to the workplace. Therefore, the members of an organization reflect its culture, meaning you select team members who are nature fit. Culture is determined by behaviors - how do you act/react to everything at all times. It is a reflection of the mindset. Successful culture change helps people become who they are. By encouraging people to focus on who they are, and pursue the purpose discovery, autonomy, and mastery, the great culture catalyzes positive mind, attitude, and behaviors; but discourage negativity and unprofessionalism.
Originality - Are you an original thinker?  From the dictionary, it means the creative and independent thinking. The word, Original, comes from 'origin.' What we probably mean when we say original thinker is to be the origin of our thoughts. In other words, make our own mind up, or formulate our own conclusions, or ideas, or expressions. Original thinking is independent, creative, original, special or different. Being original is one of the important characteristics of authenticity because you don’t just blindly follow other people’s opinions or conventional wisdom. This world needs more of an original thinker than ever to handle the ever increasing complexities, and organizations need to be able to recognize them not least in order to innovate and adapt, Originality is valuable as Authenticity. It is not easy to recognize "original thinker," though, and it becomes more difficult as most of the modern people are too busy to even think and observe. Original thinking is a tough job and recognizes original thinking is equally tough if not less. The points like motivation, characteristics, personality, and confidence can be the indicator of original thinking which is also a trait of being authentic.
Are you consistent with what you think, what you say and what you act: Consistency doesn’t mean to keep static, change is only constant, consistency means you can do a lot of different things in your career or life, but keep consistent of having intellectual curiosity, a growth mindset, a learning attitude; and building cohesive capabilities; or you can stick to one thing, but doing damn well, shows consistent progress and keep a beginner’s mindset. It means the digital professionals with consistency can make better balance, capture the substance of digital professionalism and trace the root at the heart of change dynamic; They are consistent in the habit of learning, delearning and relearning, not only do they keep consistent on themselves; but also they look for consistency in their teams, in their organization as well as in the ecosystem, as consistency harmonizes humanities.

An authentic leader has character and courage to decide and act; an authentic digital professional can release more positive energy to influence the surroundings, Be aware of your strengths and weaknesses, and be aware of how you impact others and your environment. It is crucial to getting to understand yourself and how others perceive you.  "But change must always be balanced with some degree of consistency." - Ron D. Burton.

Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

A Frictionless IT

Due to the change and complex nature of technology and overloading information, the majority of IT organizations still run in lower to median level of maturity, they have been perceived as a silo function and support center, how can IT leaders overcome culture inertia, overcome digital barriers to run a frictionless IT?
The seamless communication between IT and business, within IT and across business ecosystem: Language influences perception, without a clear strategy and a way to communicate it in the language of the business, CIOs will always have trouble getting even "aligned," not mention of reaching higher IT maturity level of proactively enabling and engaging with business,  TOP IT performers have the ability to talk and walk on both sides of the fence: The best IT leaders are focused on success at all levels - from the success of their own team to the success of their boss, the organization, and even the business sector. Top IT performers don't think of themselves as IT guy/gal only, they understand the business as well as the business people they work with and focus primarily on solving business problems and creating business capabilities. Top IT performers "get" technology and are astute at the solution and implementing it. However, they also fully understand how the business operates and how technology helps/supports obtain business objectives. The seamless two-way communication is based on trust,  the trust means IT and business work closely to deliver the business solution with optimal speed. Business gets frustrated about the speed of IT because they can see the ease of delivery and use of easily accessible solutions that fit to some of their business needs, they see how far technology has advanced, they see the ease with which new sites and services are deployed on demand, and then they sit around a table with their internal IT service providers and suddenly everything is impossible because business is being too demanding; IT may also need to educate business upon the complexity of IT integration, governance, risk and compliance management issues, to not allow ‘shadow IT’ put their organizations at risk for the long period of time. The key challenge is to find a way so that both sides, even though they speak different 'languages' in some cases can communicate effectively.

Data and Information flow across functional boundary: In the organization with lower level of maturity, the business is struggling with overly restrictive hierarchy and bureaucratic mentality, even IT organizations are usually the data steward of the business, they still have to overcome the functional barriers or office politics to keep information flow and manage data life cycle effectively. Information and technology catalyze today's digital businesses. Information brings about business ideas; business ideas generate lots of information. Information Systems are the backbone and provide valuable information for key decision making. Information comes from the analysis of that data, technology allows for the capture, manipulation, and presentation of data. Fundamentally, Information Management is to make sure that the right information is at the right place at the right time and shared to the right persons. It means that the business has the information, that the information has the right quality, that the information is used properly.
Business Mobility: Digital means flow, with emergent “SMAC” technologies, business mobility becomes a digital trend to harness agility and innovation. One of the CIO’s main responsibilities is to learn and keep themselves abreast of existing and future technologies available and see how they would be useful in their business environments. Adoption of these technologies has to be carefully considered in their particular business environments.  Cloud handles the optimization part while mobility provides the efficiency/ channel/segment alternatives, business is now always on, with multi-channel, multi-touch points. API have been around and will always be around and become more critical. They are the glue that sticks dissimilar tools together. By leveraging the latest digital technologies and tools, organizations can build IT-enabled competency and capabilities to achieve business mobility - always-on, hyperconnected.
From a monolithic IT to a mosaic IT, from a silo IT to a frictionless IT, from a controlling IT to an enabler IT. Top IT performers are top business performers, they innovate organizational culture, streamline business processes, enforce cross-functional communication and collaboration. In addition, IT needs to measure its impact in the eyes of the business value being created - looking at ways to improve employee productivity, enable business growth, agility, and maturity.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Three Aspects in Customer Centric Innovation

One of the key characteristics of digital business is customer centricity. The customer is absolutely a vital part of the overall innovation process. Customer-centric innovation can accomplish far more than incremental product/service improvement, it can also implement path breaking products or service, build evolutionary business models as well.
Outside - in Customer Viewpoint: When to look at the customer experience from the inside out, there is nothing wrong with that, because you are the ones that can change the inside. However, the outside-in view is more important, because the customer's experience is about how they encounter, observe, or undergo a company's events or stages. Thus, customers should always be involved, but they are only one of the stakeholders in the innovation process, certainly they provide important feedback, but not the final decision maker. Because they don’t always know what they want and aren’t always best informed, and most especially when it comes to new technological innovation. Therefore, the proactive listing is very important and becomes a vital link in innovation management effort. It is not a question of whether the customer is right or not, it is more of whether you are truly and proactively listening to their needs and gaining a deep understanding of the motivational construct of the customer through empathy, and figure out what they will likely want next.
Crowdsourcing for customer-centric problem-solving: At the heart of innovation is a life cycle of idea generation, interaction, selection, and learning.  The point of crowdsourcing  is to bring in new ideas from outside, the lead users or from the wider-user community to drive features and understand the value in use of products and services. The goal isn’t just to be democratized or be cost-efficient, but to ensure that the abundance of good ideas to flow in. The more diversified people you invite in, the better result you could get, and the whole innovation scenario can improve idea generation, harness interaction and inspire learning and share.
Social innovation: It’s excellent to leverage the social platform and technologies to urge a sense of customer-centric innovation via online conversations. In other words, try to digitally connect key resources and assets or context to the resource-rich innovation hubs and cluster across enterprise ecosystems. Setting agendas and starting new conversations that galvanize inspiration and gain traction on a powerful theme of renewal and growth. Thus, it’s important to take different propositions and approaches to a problem or a new interpretation. These innovative conversations may not directly provide you the solutions, but offer you a fresh insight into your goals, processes, and invaluable context.
The customer is the center of innovation management and they are the major focus for innovation process and accomplishment. Hence, it’s important to listen to customers and involve them in both idea generation and process implementation, to gain insight and empathy, to ultimately solve the innovation puzzles by differences between what is verbalized, what is prioritized and acted out and what is technically feasible. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu