Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1375

The “Shaming” Effect

Modern organizations are highly complex and fierce competitive, diversified and dynamic,  in both wanted and unwanted, healthy and unhealthy ways. What are the best management practices to empower, engage and motivate employees? “Carrot or stick,” which one is more effective to drive changes in both behavior and mindset level? Is the “shaming effect” overall positive or negative?

It boils down to "the end justifies the means" argument for shaming: In the general scheme of things, shaming should generally be considered off limits, the real-life experiences shared by those athletes make us wonder if under very specific conditions it might be effective. First, the environment is one in which that type of commentary on one's performance is considered normal or at least doesn't come as a surprise. And second, the individual's on the receiving end are the type of personality who respond to such things with the "Oh yeah?! Well I'll show you!" mindset and then dig in harder than ever to improve their performance and prove themselves. And that might be true of similar environments made up of ultra-competitive individuals who have very high ego strength and therefore use any such situation as just more fuel on the fire to move them onward, rather than the more "average" person who might find such things demotivating, demeaning and a hindrance to future efforts to try.
Often shaming has negative impact for employees’ morale and business culture for the long run: Shaming is one form of bullying - who would defend bullying? Shaming is fear based and tells more about the self worth of the shamer then the shamee. It brings little value to any relationship personally or in the business world. Being nurturing, supportive, caring and accepting has a greater probability of being more inspiring and long range productive. Shaming someone usually leads to anger based passive aggressive behavior causing more long term harm than good. If you want to get temporary change that erodes morale and creates compliant behavior only when the "boss" is looking, then shaming is for you. If you want to create a culture where folks offer discretionary effort (going above and beyond) even when the boss is not looking, and then understanding how to effectively use positive reinforcement is the key. Behavior should be corrected when needed, but "shaming" is only temporary fix and has tons of potential negative ramifications. Managers are more likely to get results if they spend their time supporting their staff and not use their energy to shame them. Most people who are not performing to the standard required know they have a problem and appreciate support to do better.
It’s important to follow the principles of positive psychology and take healthy practices in the workplace: Leaders and managers knowing their people well enough to understand what is uniquely motivating to each, and leaders exercising "healthy accountability," which means, in part, spending as much or more time recognizing and calling attention to the achievement of desired outcomes (and even just healthy efforts toward those ends) as correcting or discouraging undesirable behaviors. We respect the dignity of another person. The fact is that shaming people from time to time is a sign that you are bowing to a passion to control that destroys all of those in its wake. Often shaming only makes the 'shamed' less likely to change their attitude. The use of shame does bring change: lowers the dignity of the person, bases the relationship with the manager on fear and mistrust, and projects a despicable image of the company. On the surface, employees exposed to this shameful managerial style might respond more swiftly to requests.... But inside their minds they are discouraged, disengaged, and finding ways to take revenge, surely not reflecting in how to innovate/bring more value! Rather, managers should meetings one on one with the under-performing workers to get them to perform better starting with incentives and if that fails, then the manager can bring up an ultimatum for change.
Either for managers or employees, it’s important to practice positive psychology and bring wisdom to the workplace, having clear and transparent expectations and lots of visibility on how all are doing toward helping the organization achieve its mission.  While shaming could prove effective sometimes, you need to weigh the cost of such an approach to the benefits for the long term. In that vein, everyone is accountable to everyone else and to behave in a professional way and build the culture of trust and positivity.


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“Digital Master” New Year Tuning: The People 2.0 - How to Manage Digital Workforce Effectively?

People are always the most invaluable asset in organizations. However, the varieties of industry surveys continuously show that more than two thirds of employees do not feel engaged in the work; and more than 50% of senior executives across industries believe that their organizations have not fully leveraged the power of digitalization in HR and talent management. Thereby, it is emphasizing the strategic imperative and critical need for changes. So what’s the People 2.0 all about to drive a behavioral, cultural, and educational transformation by new technological paradigms?
Employee Engagement 2.0: With the abundance of information and the blossom of digital technologies and social platforms, many traditional activities such as monthly town halls or annual retreats are no longer sufficient to keep employees satisfied or motivated. They seek more visibility and involvement in achieving strategic goals of the organization to drive constant engagement. Social listening with an organization is another digital trend that is gaining traction. It’s also the time to reimagine the fundamentals of how organizations work. Leadership who listens well and provides ample room for the career development and staff managers who actively partners with HR to develop and promote a clear, simple plan for career progression sounds almost too simplistic, but it is indeed the most efficient and inexpensive route to higher employee engagement. Also, the reality is that the organizational structures and relationships with and between employees were designed for a very different age, so it’s the time to reimagining digital workforce and workplace, don’t make the rules or structure too restrictive, and leave the room for management innovation, to strike the right balance between orders (structure) and "chaos (sparking innovation), between team setting and cross-functional communication and collaboration; between "old way" and new way to do things, in order to improve employee engagement and overall business maturity.
Continuous Performance Management: There is a danger of not having a process to "develop and nurture" performance, bias and favoritism are common in the workplace. Waiting until once per year or even every six months to evaluate workers is also not enough to know key performance nor should it be. if the company's culture is democratic and that the evaluation be given on the effectiveness and efficiency of people based on the strategic plan and the routine duties of persons. How about real-time appraisals that take place consistently and can be tracked accordingly. A change in focus from evaluating the individual to partnering with the employee to evaluate the quality of the interactions the employee has started with the manager and employee. Each objective has milestones that the progress can be tracked by either the employee or manager and recorded in the talent system.The idea is to get away from the annual event based on stale data and poor record keeping. The basic premise is that every conversation a manager/supervisor has about project status or feedback is recorded as an assessment of current performance.
Digital Talent Management: Talent Management is about building talent competency of business of business finding, it comes with the set of practices of identifying, acquiring, developing, deploying, and retaining well-qualified people throughout an organization and managing business culture as well. Digital Talent Management or Talent Management 2.0 now is all about transparency, active listening, and trust in the wisdom of the team, and constant experimentation. For example, digital learning is about combining traditional face-to-face sequences with digital platforms to train and develop talent. And Digital collaboration today is less about mere information or document sharing and more about leveraging collective wisdom to breakdown the silo thinkings, build more interactive and  multichannel communication and sharing processes to help accelerate and secure workforce buy-in to achieve optimal business result.
So the digital organization of the future is designed openly for anyone with ideas on how human organizations ought to be contrived in the face of challenges and strategic imperatives of the 21st century. The work is not just the place you go and paint only a small piece of a large puzzle, but an experiment lab you can connect the future dots. And digital organizations today have the blurring borders and uncharted frontiers, growth and innovation are heavily dependent on having the right talent with growth mindsets in the right places at the right time. So it’s important to create a positive and dynamic working environment where talent can develop and learn more rapidly and unleash employees’ potential to accelerate business growth and digital transformation.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

CIO’s Digital Agenda XXVI: Go Digital, Like a Pro!

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.2 million page views with about 2300+ 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.
It’s the beginning of the New Year, also the dawn of digital age; and it’s the time for companies to catch up, proactively and effectively build core digital capabilities based on digital cognizance to adapt to digital normality, gain unique competitive advantage and execute with speed. Go digital, like a pro!Go Digital, Like a Pro! How to Manage Digital Transformation in Systematic Way: Organizations large or small are on their digital transformation journey, although there is no one size fits all solution to ensure success, but what’re the principles or logic steps they shall follow in managing such transformation in a more systematic way?
CIO Must Go Digital, Like a Pro:  Due to the changing nature and continuous disruption of information and technology in business nowadays, CIOs seem to be always at hot seat, the saying about the demise of the internal IT has been around for years, the fact is that because of the pervasiveness of technology within the enterprise and radical digital transformation facing in majority of organizations today, there is now a greater need for a CIO to understand business drivers and apply digital technology to speed up IT and build business competitive capabilities. So CIO must go digital, like a Pro!
Enterprise’s Digital Fitness: Digital is the age of change, there’s abundance of information and emergent digital technologies such as SMAC (Social, Mobile, Business Analytics, and Cloud) around, but it doesn’t mean organizations will become a high mature digital business automatically; many organizations have got the symptom of “data obesity”, "information misleading" or “technology addiction”, what’re the root causes and how to achieve enterprise’s digital fitness?
Change Agents for Digital Transformation: Many organizations are at the tipping point to digital transformation journey, but what’re the most effective factors to transform businesses? Is it sponsorship, change agent, public relationship or incentives? The most successful organizations have a very clear vision and understanding of why they exist and the value they bring to customers and the very reason for transformation. They also clearly communicate such vision both internally and externally. And then, people are always the weakest link in any change management effort, therefore, change agent is critical, as they have been an invaluable source of knowledge, business direction/insight and support etc. But more specifically, who are the change agents or champions and why are they so critical in business transformation?
Three Elements in Digital Transformation.  Digital transformation represents the next stage of business maturity which will improve how the enterprise works and interact with its ecosystem, with the customer at the center of its focus. Digital transformation or Digital shift means change. Are these changes more extensive than what we have experienced in the past? What are the key elements behind the “digital transformation” that we are now experiencing?
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

Digital Master New Year Tuning Chap 7: Information, Knowledge, and Insight Management

We live in the world with the explosive data and the abundance of information. Every day, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created through a range  of activities. And the average business expects to spend $8 million on data-related initiatives in recent years. So how to manage data, information, knowledge, and mind flow, to build a high-intelligent and high-effective organization?

Information Management: Data is simple, random, and unorganized, and the information is processed data. Information is structured and present facts in context to targeted situations and conditions that enable the business to make the right decisions at the right time. Different information is required at different points in the decision and operational delivery change. Digital organizations must manage data effectively, and bring to the table innovative solutions that meet customers’ needs while reducing the cost to market. If done well, information achieves its value. The potential value of information also depends on how the information will be used again in the future. So information Management is about to achieve the value of information which is defined uniquely, qualitatively, and, measurable. The art and science of Information Management are to optimize its usage and achieve its value as well as its full potential.
Knowledge Management: Information is processed data, and knowledge is processed information. Knowledge is information in use, that support the decision-making process. Knowledge is an intangible resource that can be converted into tangible content and that can be utilized to produce measurable advances or tangible progress of the business. Knowledge is an expression of understanding - relating information and experience accumulated over time. Knowledge Management involves the usage of technologies and processes of capturing, developing, sharing, and effectively using organizational knowledge, with the aim of optimizing the value that is generated. It is a multidisciplinary approach to achieving organizational objectives by making the best usage of its knowledge. So Knowledge Management safeguards full understanding business processes or tools that can be used to optimize business effectiveness, efficiency, and agility.
Insight Management: Insight is the abstracted knowledge. If knowledge is power, and then insight is like “superpower” - it’s the vision through “mind eyes,” insight of the situation requires in-depth understanding information available. and there are multilayer meanings upon insight: Insight is being able to identify the root cause of a problem or the core issues of a situation that lead to understanding and resolution. Insight is an understanding the cause and effect based on the identification of relationships and behaviors within a model, context, or scenario. It is also about penetrating and often sudden understanding of a complex situation or problem. If knowledge can be taught, but insight can not be told completely, because it comes from each individual’s cognitive understanding, connection, discernment, penetration, and perception. But surely insight can be shared, and the ultimate goal of business Information Management is to process raw data, abstract information from it, then gain knowledge, insight and foresight to spin the wheel of business growth with optimal speed.
So all forward-thinking organizations are claimed that they are in the information business today, but the Digital Masters are those who are mastering such information shift, a shift that organizations will take advantage of information to gain knowledge and insight, a shift to transform business culture from silo to data-based and customer-centric and a shift from playing the smart gadgets to being a truly intelligent digital business.
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
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The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 1/1/2016

The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.2 million page views with 2300+ 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 first weekly insight of the “Future of CIO” blog in 2016 - to celebrate the New Year.

The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” Blog 1/1/2016Ring in the Year of 2016: Is Integrated Leadership the DIgital Trend?  There are only minutes away from the New Year - businesses and the world are moving deeper and deeper into the digital world of VUCA -Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, while company boundaries are blurred and the world is so hyper-connected, who leads whom? The inspiring way to characterize the types of leadership needs to dig deeper, hunt for the character, look inside charisma, verify the authenticity, as well as pursuit the purpose: How can leaders make a positive influence? How can they harness the creativity and passion of the workforce in pursuit of competitive advantage & unique difference in the global stage? Is integrated leadership the digital trend? What are the most important ingredients in great leadership?
CIO’s Digital Agenda XXIII: Information & Knowledge Management  Back to fundamentals, CIOs are Chief Information Officers, IT is the steward of business data and information, and one of the most important responsibilities for IT is to ensure the right people getting the right information, extract to sufficient knowledge to help them make the right decision at the right time and location. Digital IT is also shifting from “T” oriented support center to “I” driven value creator.Digital Master Holiday Intense Tuning Chap 3: Five Points of Digital Strategy:  Strategy is the art of designing a way of navigating and effectively utilizing available resources to attain a clearly defined objective. However, in many business contexts, the word strategy is demotivating. Some organizations have strategy meetings days and weeks only to go around in circles. Now businesses step deeper and deeper into the digital era, in which everything is touched by digital technologies, but how do they put effort on reshaping the digital version of corporation strategy? Holiday Dots Connection: Sympathy vs. Empathy: Once again, it is the holiday season and it’s almost the end of the year, it is not just the time to spoil your appetite, but also the moment to open your mind, and connect more dots to discover the new meaning of holidays - Are you sympathetic to give more to others, or are you empathetic to understand better of the world? Are you compassionate about many man-made disasters; or are you passionate to overcome the challenges facing human society? What’s the further dot-connection between sympathy and empathy?
A Sociologist’s Mind: How to Manage Changes Effectively in Broader Scope: Sociology is the study of human interaction, usually within the context of organized groups, communities, or "societies." It is the systematic study of human society, especially present-day societies.Sociologists study the organization, institutions, and development of societies, with a particular interest in identifying causes of the changing relationships among individuals and groups. Sociologists have a different language, but does that language offer any substance not offered by the other disciplines? And does a sociologist’s mind help to manage change more effectively in a broader scope?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.
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The Spotlight on Digital CIOs Part III Jan. 2016

Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.2 million page views with about #2300th 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.
Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges. It is not sufficient to only keep the light on. Regardless of which industry or the nature of organization you are in, being a digital leader will need to master the art of creating unique, differentiating value from piles of commoditized technologies, but more specifically, what are the digital-savvy CIOs doing to run IT as a value creator and innovation engine?   The Profiles of Digital CIOs  III  Jan. 2016CIO as Chief Interface Officer: How to Delight Customers: CIOs are getting involved in building products for external/internal customers, but unfortunately, creating great user experiences continues to be a struggle. “UX — short for User Experience — refers to the experience a given user has when using a piece of software or technology, rather than the purely technical capacities of that device.” As customers' loyalty depends in large part on how they feel about your digital product or channel. CIO as ‘Chief Interface Officer,” what’s your strategy and tactics in building up  superior development teams, so you can deliver the innovative apps, to delight customer via an intuitive interface and optimal processes?
CIO as Chief Interpretation Officer.  CIO needs to play multiple roles, to make positive influence as a Chief Influence Officer, to deliver the right information/insight as a Chief Intelligence Officer or to orchestrate the seamless integration as Chief Integration Officer. But first of all, CIO needs to play as a Chief Interpretation Officer to convey the vision, to bridge the gap and to enforce the multi-layer, multi-dimensional communication. But what does it take to be an effective ‘Chief Interpretation Officer”?
CIO as Chief Inclusiveness Officer: People are still the weakest link either in IT or business overall. While there’re so many brainstorms upon how CIOs need to lead the business transformation and move up IT maturity, one of the most difficult goals facing CIOs is perhaps still about people, can CIO play a critical role as ‘Chief Inclusiveness Officer’ to shape an open and innovative enterprise culture and enforce talent value chain seamlessly?
CIOs as Chief Intrapreneur Officer: Three “C”s in Intrapreneur-Executive Leadership: Intrapreneur-executive leadership is an emergent trend, if entrepreneurship is to look for changes, deploy it as opportunity, then, intrapreneurship is about creating new venture from within an established company-  There are three “C” leadership traits intrapreneur-leaders can bring to board.
CIO as Chief Inspiration Officer:  Too often the perception is that the CIO is a glorified geek. The reality is that the CIO is one of the most important executive roles in the organization, the person in that role must be business savvy and not only understand the vision of the company but also be able to help formulate it. Here are summarized highlights on the “I” in CIO’s title.
CIOs as Visionary: The best vision is insight, the most-wanted vision is foresight, Being a visionary is a character or perspective. But, is vision “must have” or “nice to have” for CIOs and other C-level executives? Here are nine collective insights upon “vision things.”
CIO as Change Agent  Change is the second most popular word in the 21st century. Why change is so tough and what really keeps (C-suite) executives from embracing organizational transformation is FEAR: fear of letting go of heroic leadership, fear of losing control, fear of navigating through uncharted territory, fear of chaos. But change is inevitable, due to the CHANGE nature of technology, CIOs shouldn’t get pushed for the change, they are actually at a better position to play such a role as change agent in leading organizations’ transformation.
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

Is Creativity an Addiction or a Phenomenon?

Creativity is an innate ability to create innate ideas. Creativity has many dimensions, with multi-faceted truth and myth, and manifold knowledge. Creativity is infused with an inner cohesion, and comes from a vision of uniqueness. So can creativity be taught, is creativity nature or nurtured? And is creativity an addiction or a phenomenon?
Creativity is addictive because it's a kind of a flow, not the repetitive patterns to do the same old things. It could also be a desperate need or habitual actions  to keep doing something new. You create one thing; you are on the lookout for creating another; you do become restless if you are not able to, This restlessness to create is a sign of addiction. Creativity comes from dissatisfaction with the existing scenario and understanding the requirement as well as zeal to create or  improve upon the same. Conflict makes mind to think differently leading to creativity.
Creativity is fresh and new every time. The negative connotation about addiction is when you want to repeat the old pattern and seek comfort. You avoid " new.” Because it gives uncertainty and insecurity with new and change. Creativity loves the challenge, the courage to see the new; creativity is fresh and new every time. It does not fear. It has that emotional or affective strength to trust the process of creativity. Engaging in creativity inevitably creates tension, conflict, and emotionally charged debates and disagreements because we need both control and predictability, creativity and change. Creativity needs encouragement as the spirit of food, and conflict to spark it. The combination of good chemical balance is reinforced, because it does not go for repeating due to helplessness but due to fun and the joy of life.
The creativity is instinctive which keeps changing with dynamism. Another thing could be, Addictive people run from boredom, so that is why they tend to seek variety. Creative people never get bored. They don’t create out of boredom. They don’t look for change just because they are bored of the old. Creativity is internal and instinctive. Creativity is a passion for some on a artistic level. Creativity is a passion for some who are inquisitive and want to explore new possibilities.Creativity is a solution to a problem. Creativity is to find better ways to do things.Creativity is discovery of what has not yet been seen nor manifested. Creativity is not an addiction. It is a beautiful phenomenon…Creativity is both nature and nurtured. It can not be taught completely, but definitely it takes practice and practice to make one’s mind more creative.
True creativity has an inner origin. It keeps surfacing from within and one keeps expressing. It means that creativity needs a problem to solve; and a creative mind needs a purpose. Creativity is phenomenon, creativity is all around us, we just need to get connected with it. So being addictive to creativity is perhaps not a so bad as a New Year’s resolution.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

Ring in the Year of 2016: Is Integrated Leadership the DIgital Trend?

The digital leadership is more integrated, innovative, influential, and insightful!

There are only minutes away from the New Year - businesses and the world are moving deeper and deeper into the digital world of VUCA -Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, while company boundaries are blurred and the world is so hyper-connected, who leads whom? The inspiring way to characterize the types of leadership needs to dig deeper, hunt for the character, look inside charisma, verify the authenticity, as well as pursuit the purpose: How can leaders make a positive influence? How can they harness the creativity and passion of the workforce in pursuit of competitive advantage & unique difference in the global stage? Is integrated leadership the digital trend? What are the most important ingredients in great leadership?

Collaboration: Integrated leadership isn't one person at the top with prestige and value higher than the subordinates/followers underneath. Integrated leadership isn't looking only at work and the challenges we may encounter currently or locally; rather, integrated leadership includes all the relationship dynamics we have going on the surroundings to include the future perspectives and global community. We're all in this world together. It's basically some form of collaborative leadership, meaning to listen to those around you to help make decisions that (ideally) impact all positively. When collaborating, not dictating, it is with the intention that you respect and value each person as a human being and want to listen to their perspective/input breaking down barriers and working together towards common goals and for the greater good for all.

Wisdom: Knowledge tends to be linear, but wisdom is often multidimensional. Integrated leadership leverages the collective wisdom. The wise mind is not full, but free; not about cleverness, but about humbleness; not about system or boxes, but about out-of-box; not about informativeness, but about openness, not about dictation, but about direction. It is a leader's role to foster a culture of open-mindedness, to the best of their ability, and that may take time and effort, but the long-term results can be very rewarding. Cross-cultural / intercultural integration is about inclusiveness and bringing new thoughts & ways of doing things, and wisdom into an organization

Adaptability: It is characteristic makes someone better at almost anything in an ever changing environment. This doesn't mean changing things for fun or impulse but assessing an environment and adjusting to it (person, thing, event, etc.). Integrated leadership is more about adaptation to change, and flexibility to think alternatives. Adaptive leaders inspire cross-disciplined thinking, iterative communication, and cross-functional collaboration, cultivate and embrace the cognitive diversity that underpins adaptive organizations. They are more insightful to be capable of pulling past, present, and future together to pursue wisdom.


Digital leadership becomes more open and omnipresent in the digital era because the hierarchy of an organization is flatter due to the latest digital disruption, the digital leadership is more integrated, innovative, influential, and insightful! "Leadership is the art of getting someone else do something you need to be done, and they want to do it!" (Eisenhower).Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu

The Clarity of “Being Agile”

Agile isn't a process, it's a culture and a point of view.

Business agility is an ultimate goal the organizations pursue to reach their maturity. Indeed, we want to see teams and organizations being agile rather than doing agile. However, every business is different, every situation is different, and every organization is at the different stage of agile transformation, you have to fit the solution to the problem. So is the hybrid of traditional management and agile a business reality? Or is Agile the end state? What’re the clarity of “Being Agile”?

Agile isn't a process, it's a culture and a point of view. Most importantly, Agile is not a process. The Agile community should view the cross-pollination of at least parts of its philosophy into traditional project management as a win.Waterfall is a reductionist management methodology designed to maximize efficiency and ensure complicated projects can be produced to schedule and budget. Agile focuses on customer satisfaction and continuous improvement. Agile is a CULTURE, not a process. End-state thinking comes from confusing agile with some process or another. it's a culture within which those processes can flourish. There can be an end state to learning a specific process, but self-improvement is a significant part of the underlying culture. That culture says if something doesn't work, you fix it, and no practices (agile or otherwise) works perfectly all the time. There's always room for improvement, so the process is constantly evolving. Agile from a culture standpoint is often most uncomfortable for management because it exposes things that were previously ignored and demands that issues are addressed so that they can be fixed for the future.

Agile is not just a set of practices, but a leadership philosophy and management approach: Actually any approach to projects requires both leadership and management. The difference is that traditional approaches focus on management for doing things right. And Agile methods are about the team self-managing and business effectiveness. In that context, leadership is a key enabler. What 'agile' does is to divide the work that is traditionally done by managers because there is far less need to have one person making all these decisions. The responsibilities get distributed in ways that better suit the agile mindset. Without good leadership (provided by a variety of people) agile teams will fail. Agile frameworks and methodologies are intended for complex systems and problems in which reductionist systems fail because of the nature of complex, innovative, knowledge-based work. It values effectiveness in delivering value over efficiency in delivering schedule & budget. The simple agile assessment questionnaires include: 1) Are your employees / team members enjoy working? 2). Is your project financials healthy? 3). Does your customer smile after every delivery?...etc.

Agile is more about a direction, a journey: To move from Waterfall to Agile is not an act of 1 day. It is a journey. And as long as the journey is coming to a place where we can call the organization actually Agile, Waterfall and Agile do co-exist. Some organizations stop moving and remain in the hybrid state and some just turn back to go on the previous state of the waterfall and few actually reach the destination of the Agile world. So, hybrid organizations are the reality. There are fundamental differences in philosophy that mean trying to hybridize Agile and Waterfall will not be optimal from the management perspective. However, many (but probably not all) practices can be used in both. The best way is to choose the next/best practices and make changes so it will fit your need.

Agile is neither just a “waterfall-agile” hybrid reality nor an end state, it’s the set of principles and guidelines, the leadership philosophy, the management approach and engineering discipline. It is important to cultivate agile culture,  build a quality roadmap to speed up, develop the next practices, but not to be too rigid, and improve overall business agility.
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Digital Master Holiday Intense Tuning Ch V: Three Characteristics of Digital Innovation

The essence of innovation is made of trying new combinations of known things.

Generally speaking, innovation is to transform novel ideas and achieve its business value. Why is innovation more important in the digital era whereas information is abundant and technology is more advanced? Because innovation is the core activity of human evolution to changing the environment to reach high performance. And at the business scope, innovation is also expanding its scope and flexing its muscles, goes beyond creating the new things, it has enriched context, such as business model innovation, process innovation, management innovation, communication innovation, culture innovation etc. And innovation management is both art and science. Here are the characteristics of digital Innovation:
Variety: The essence of innovation is made of trying new combinations of known things. It's the essence of evolution. Each human being is a potential innovation by definition as you won't find two humans that are exactly the same. We are all new combinations of the known. Focusing on digital variety will force you to confront new ideas. Organically, organizations do not embrace change nor do they embrace new ideas or new people. In fact, the lack of variety of PoVs makes organizations non-optimal. Focusing on diversity will force you to confront new ideas, new materials and possibly embrace a new concept that you may have never imagined. IT helps one look at thing from a multiplicity; fundamentally allow us to glimpse how interesting to be a human; as an individual, or as a social entity; professionally, it broadens our vision to see the possibility with a variety of perspectives. Once the superior ideas of a truly diverse work culture have surfaced, a unanimous decision is necessary to bring the project forward. So digital variety and workforce diversity are no long wallflowers for decoration, but a switch to turn on the creativity light bulb.
Collaboration: Digital hyper-connectivity can foster innovation through broader scope collaboration. In other words, it's important to digitally connect key resources/assets in their vicinity/context to the resource-rich innovation hubs/clusters across the business ecosystem. In doing so, you can create the collegiality and "shared context for learning." Cross-functional or even cross-industrial collaboration would also add that nonlinear thinking and tangential thinking provide more opportunity for innovation than linear thinking. That, in turn, should lead to "inspirations" that will further fuel more collaboration in innovative projects and enterprises nascent to their communities/environments. In addition, innovation must be a multi-disciplinary effort. The innovation collaboration teams embraced multiple disciplines, and understand how systems work, and this yielded competitive advantage. Furthermore, at the digital age, the crowd-sourcing or brainstorming is happening in real time with people and plays spontaneous networks of human and business operational concerns, to co-create ideas and overcome significant challenges.
Complexity: The blurring border of the digital organization and its business ecosystem make the world hyperconnected, but also overcomplex. Organizations today can no longer rely on a single individual or team to drive innovation. It is largely due to the fact that innovation in the digital dynamic has become increasingly complex in nature. Innovation needs to lay out different mindsets, structures, processes, capabilities to unleash its potential. The complexity can be good or bad for you depending on your strategy. Complexity Management is the methodology to minimize value-destroying complexity and efficiently control value-adding complexity in a cross-functional approach. Usually, innovation either through need seeker or technology driver is the key factors to weave such complexity in order. Therefore, the certain level of complexity is a foundation to spark the next level of innovation; and one of the very goals for innovation is to simplify the old way to do things, or to manage the complexity in an optimal manner.
Innovation is a systematic way of applying creativity in the real life and business, in general, innovation is a discipline. And an innovation ecosystem should fully cover a wide enough directions. Innovation Management does require not just interdisciplinary understanding to connect the dots and see what’s possible, but also, technical expertise to create the disruption, focus on unleashing business potential and growth prosperity.

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