Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1379
December 17, 2015
CIO’s Digital Agenda XVII: IT Management Dot Connection
Innovation is all about connecting the meaningful dots.
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. With today's emphasis on innovation per se and its importance to corporate survival, perhaps innovation is so important that the semantic should be recognized as such. Innovation is all about connecting the meaningful dots, from IT management innovation perspective, how to overcome the obstacles to managing digital transformation?
IT Management Dot Connection
Information Management vs. Knowledge Management? Information Management is to connect people with the right information at the right time & location, to ensure that accurate information is accessible and shared within relevant business units. This information is open to interpretation accordance to the level of knowledge one has. Knowledge Management safeguards full understanding business processes, tools that are used and the people using those to optimize business efficiency.
Strategic Management vs. Operational Management? Innovation is value creation in a different way or to a different element of the business; there are both disruptive innovation and incremental innovation as well. So is innovation just another word for change; or does innovation management align with change management? Change and innovation share a common DNA, which is 'change' nature. But they are still different; each one has different motivators and must be managed differently. Innovation is a collection of thoughts, ideas, or efforts used to bring about or manage change to a desirable outcome. Not all change management is innovative however innovation only exists to bring about change. Innovations do not need to be new however they should at the very least implement an existing method, idea, or resource in a new way, thereby making it innovative to the particular challenge at hand.
Innovation vs. Change Management? Innovation is value creation in a different way or to a different element of the business; there are both disruptive innovation and incremental innovation as well. So is innovation just another word for change; or does innovation management align with change management? Change and innovation share a common DNA, which is 'change' nature. But they are still different; each one has different motivators and must be managed differently.
Information vs. Decision Making? At today’s digital dynamic, information is abundant and even explosive, the business has become over-complex also hyper-connected, what’s the correlation between information and decision making. If data-decision pair works fine to advocate analytics based culture; as information is the processed data; and knowledge is processed information, how about information-decision pair? It's not necessarily information, but the business insight leads to the right decision making. So how to measure information accuracy as well as decision-making effectiveness?
Agile vs. DevOps? Agile is a big umbrella term refers to the mindset, philosophy and the set of principles to run business or manage projects, also covering the comprehensive methodologies like XP, and lightweight management frameworks like Scrum. DevOps is a deployment pipeline that stresses communication, collaboration, and integration between software developers and information Technology (IT) professionals.
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
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. With today's emphasis on innovation per se and its importance to corporate survival, perhaps innovation is so important that the semantic should be recognized as such. Innovation is all about connecting the meaningful dots, from IT management innovation perspective, how to overcome the obstacles to managing digital transformation?
IT Management Dot Connection
Information Management vs. Knowledge Management? Information Management is to connect people with the right information at the right time & location, to ensure that accurate information is accessible and shared within relevant business units. This information is open to interpretation accordance to the level of knowledge one has. Knowledge Management safeguards full understanding business processes, tools that are used and the people using those to optimize business efficiency.
Strategic Management vs. Operational Management? Innovation is value creation in a different way or to a different element of the business; there are both disruptive innovation and incremental innovation as well. So is innovation just another word for change; or does innovation management align with change management? Change and innovation share a common DNA, which is 'change' nature. But they are still different; each one has different motivators and must be managed differently. Innovation is a collection of thoughts, ideas, or efforts used to bring about or manage change to a desirable outcome. Not all change management is innovative however innovation only exists to bring about change. Innovations do not need to be new however they should at the very least implement an existing method, idea, or resource in a new way, thereby making it innovative to the particular challenge at hand.
Innovation vs. Change Management? Innovation is value creation in a different way or to a different element of the business; there are both disruptive innovation and incremental innovation as well. So is innovation just another word for change; or does innovation management align with change management? Change and innovation share a common DNA, which is 'change' nature. But they are still different; each one has different motivators and must be managed differently.
Information vs. Decision Making? At today’s digital dynamic, information is abundant and even explosive, the business has become over-complex also hyper-connected, what’s the correlation between information and decision making. If data-decision pair works fine to advocate analytics based culture; as information is the processed data; and knowledge is processed information, how about information-decision pair? It's not necessarily information, but the business insight leads to the right decision making. So how to measure information accuracy as well as decision-making effectiveness?
Agile vs. DevOps? Agile is a big umbrella term refers to the mindset, philosophy and the set of principles to run business or manage projects, also covering the comprehensive methodologies like XP, and lightweight management frameworks like Scrum. DevOps is a deployment pipeline that stresses communication, collaboration, and integration between software developers and information Technology (IT) professionals.
Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes the time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify your voice, deepen your digital footprints, and match your way for human progression.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Questions to Assess an Employee’s "Digital Fit"
"Digital fit" is about the business or talent’s capabilities to adapt to the digital dynamic.
Digital workforce is multigenerational, multicultural, multitasking and multi-devicing; digital workplace is more flexible and productive, propelled by technology to affect where we work, how we work and at what time we choose to work. However, it doesn’t mean you are perfectly fit in because you can play the latest digital gadgets, or you are an active user at multiple social platforms. So how to assess an employee’s digital fitness via inquiries?
“Fit” or “misfit” - which is the digital mentality? Digital fitness is about the business or talent’s capabilities to adapt to the digital dynamic –the accelerated changes or over complexity. You are fit to the digital new normal of CHANGE, not because you are fit for certain tasks or be compliant with order-taking only; on the opposite, shall you fear if you are "too" fit in a stereotype - fear of being a misfit is closed mind to keep status quo. It's fear that stops you, and it takes many forms, fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of rejection, and all that you have come to know. The world has too many stereotypes, we need more rebels, generally, not running after a single cause! Misfit has a raw intelligence to think independently, creatively, critically or futuristically. Pioneers were considered misfits. So it takes the time to learn to feel confident to be different, to be unique, to celebrate and be proud of who we are, that's the digital fit to be authentic, creative and forward-looking.
Do you have digital competency in pursuit of discovery, autonomy, and mastery? In order to build a high-effective digital workforce, foresightful organizations should always look for the complementary mindsets, capabilities and skills that they don't have so that they can build a winning team and complement each other. There are some competencies such as self-awareness and interpersonal competence that are the focus of leadership development. Creativity has become the #1 desired quality for digital professionals. “Being fit” needs to be assessed in more holistic and profound way. For example, a people-oriental person is not always a good talent manager if he or she doesn’t have the wise eyes to identify the best talent, or a bigger heart to attract the people brighter or smarter than him/herself; or a management philosophy to bring the wisdom to the workforce; because there are talent arenas such as synthetic capability, not very specific skills, can't be easily analyzed and hence, a recruiter fails in fitting right person to the job. You can give most people skills easily when compared to trying to give/develop the ability, attitude, flexibility, intelligence, practicality, pragmatism etc.
Do you have the learning agility to keep yourself digital fit professionally? Digital is the age of information abundance. But knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened. Research shows that people are much better at remembering where to find a piece of information than the information itself. Therefore, learning agility is critical to fit in today’s digital dynamic, because you need to be resourceful and continue to learn and update the knowledge. In addition, being digital fit is the ability to understand, understanding requires a person's ability to grasp or comprehend information. Too often assumptions and prejudices get in the way of understanding. It is the responsibility of each to examine themselves and to make sure they are open to true understanding. From knowledge management perspective, what is necessary is to have the information organized so workers can access it whenever and wherever they need it, and build the “recombinating” capability to solve more complex problems and spark the next level of innovation.
People are always the most invaluable asset in any organization, digital fitness needs to be perceived via different lenses. Therefore, in order to adapt to digital speed, talent management is a critical arena to understand, develop, and retain the top talent in the workplace with positive atmosphere, growth mindsets, intellectual stimulation, culture of learning, open-minded leadership, and collaborative & professional working relationship to both unleash employees’ potential and drive organizational maturity seamlessly.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital workforce is multigenerational, multicultural, multitasking and multi-devicing; digital workplace is more flexible and productive, propelled by technology to affect where we work, how we work and at what time we choose to work. However, it doesn’t mean you are perfectly fit in because you can play the latest digital gadgets, or you are an active user at multiple social platforms. So how to assess an employee’s digital fitness via inquiries?
“Fit” or “misfit” - which is the digital mentality? Digital fitness is about the business or talent’s capabilities to adapt to the digital dynamic –the accelerated changes or over complexity. You are fit to the digital new normal of CHANGE, not because you are fit for certain tasks or be compliant with order-taking only; on the opposite, shall you fear if you are "too" fit in a stereotype - fear of being a misfit is closed mind to keep status quo. It's fear that stops you, and it takes many forms, fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of rejection, and all that you have come to know. The world has too many stereotypes, we need more rebels, generally, not running after a single cause! Misfit has a raw intelligence to think independently, creatively, critically or futuristically. Pioneers were considered misfits. So it takes the time to learn to feel confident to be different, to be unique, to celebrate and be proud of who we are, that's the digital fit to be authentic, creative and forward-looking.
Do you have digital competency in pursuit of discovery, autonomy, and mastery? In order to build a high-effective digital workforce, foresightful organizations should always look for the complementary mindsets, capabilities and skills that they don't have so that they can build a winning team and complement each other. There are some competencies such as self-awareness and interpersonal competence that are the focus of leadership development. Creativity has become the #1 desired quality for digital professionals. “Being fit” needs to be assessed in more holistic and profound way. For example, a people-oriental person is not always a good talent manager if he or she doesn’t have the wise eyes to identify the best talent, or a bigger heart to attract the people brighter or smarter than him/herself; or a management philosophy to bring the wisdom to the workforce; because there are talent arenas such as synthetic capability, not very specific skills, can't be easily analyzed and hence, a recruiter fails in fitting right person to the job. You can give most people skills easily when compared to trying to give/develop the ability, attitude, flexibility, intelligence, practicality, pragmatism etc.
Do you have the learning agility to keep yourself digital fit professionally? Digital is the age of information abundance. But knowledge life cycle is significantly shortened. Research shows that people are much better at remembering where to find a piece of information than the information itself. Therefore, learning agility is critical to fit in today’s digital dynamic, because you need to be resourceful and continue to learn and update the knowledge. In addition, being digital fit is the ability to understand, understanding requires a person's ability to grasp or comprehend information. Too often assumptions and prejudices get in the way of understanding. It is the responsibility of each to examine themselves and to make sure they are open to true understanding. From knowledge management perspective, what is necessary is to have the information organized so workers can access it whenever and wherever they need it, and build the “recombinating” capability to solve more complex problems and spark the next level of innovation.People are always the most invaluable asset in any organization, digital fitness needs to be perceived via different lenses. Therefore, in order to adapt to digital speed, talent management is a critical arena to understand, develop, and retain the top talent in the workplace with positive atmosphere, growth mindsets, intellectual stimulation, culture of learning, open-minded leadership, and collaborative & professional working relationship to both unleash employees’ potential and drive organizational maturity seamlessly.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Running IT as a Pathfinder in Digital Transformation
IT more often needs to play a pivotal role in discovering the path for strategy implementation.
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. IT is at a unique position to look at the business in a profound level - the business information and processes, can IT be running as an innovation pathfinder for an organization’s digital transformation?
Path-finding in business strategy design and implementation: Obviously, when it comes to the doing of Strategic Planning, at a high level, this could involve creating a framework for understanding the organization's core capabilities. Strategy design is not just about defining what is your goals, but it is the path, to the achievement of the goal. IT has the bird view of business processes which underpin organization’s capabilities, so it can provide unique input to build a capability-based digital strategy. The success in executing a strategy depends on the kind of inputs, data, information, management assumptions that go into strategy formulation. As a steward of business information, IT can also help looking at uphill to identify the real problems that matter, and on a scale that can make a difference. Looking deeply into the future can have a profound effect on where you go, and how you get there. There are very few businesses today can state that IT does not play a significant role in the day to day operations or even long-term strategic positioning. Hence, organizations need to take that into consideration when establishing strategic goals to manage their digital transformation. IT more often needs to play a pivotal role in discovering the path for strategy implementation, and it is also an important component in building the differentiated business capabilities in executing strategy. Also, different IT organizations and enterprise as a whole are at the different stage of business maturity, IT can be used as a tool, enabler, catalyzer, or a digital platform to meet the ultimate goal of an organization's Short/Medium/Long-term strategic plans.
Path-finding in catalyzing business innovation: IT-Information technology should be seen by any business as a “digital transformer.” IT department should not live in a silo, or a function running as a help desk only. Often technology is the digital disrupter, and the information is the “gold mine,” to catch the upcoming business opportunities.Why the innovations happen and who is the strategic partners 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. Focus on VALUE proposition to run a digital IT. The role of the CIO is to drive the corporate vision and strategy through effectiveness and innovation in the knowledge and information channels. 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.
Path-finding in unleashing talent potential: CIOs must be the change agent, talent master, and be a good catalyst for business to differentiate by leveraging of IT. It all starts at the beginning, to make the most impact. If we always do the same thing the same way, we'll always get the same result. IT as a “digital brain” in the organization, should always be in the “thinking mode”: What can we do differently? What is stopping people from being autonomous, pursuing mastery and seeking purpose? And how to unleash talent potential via empowering them with the right information at the right time? The three P's (Passion, Purpose, and Potential) are critical for every employee no matter what the role is. Without the first two, you are just going through the motions and will never be an authentic leader. Passion is a requirement, but the way and how it is used, focused and balanced determines success. IT is a conductor to orchestrate digital sympathy via leveraging digital tools and social platforms to build a culture of innovation.
In the world where change is significantly speeding up, that business leaders couldn’t predict the future with a certain degree of accuracy, the strategy can no longer stay static, and strategy execution is an iterative continuum. the business goals can no longer be well framed in advance. IT plays a more crucial role in finding a path for strategy building, implementation, and innovation. Business/IT leaders should also realize the breakthrough success in digital business requires not only forward-thinking strategies but also a transformation of the company's underlying functions and processes, in order to build the new sets of business capabilities to adapt to the VUCA digital normality.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
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. IT is at a unique position to look at the business in a profound level - the business information and processes, can IT be running as an innovation pathfinder for an organization’s digital transformation?
Path-finding in business strategy design and implementation: Obviously, when it comes to the doing of Strategic Planning, at a high level, this could involve creating a framework for understanding the organization's core capabilities. Strategy design is not just about defining what is your goals, but it is the path, to the achievement of the goal. IT has the bird view of business processes which underpin organization’s capabilities, so it can provide unique input to build a capability-based digital strategy. The success in executing a strategy depends on the kind of inputs, data, information, management assumptions that go into strategy formulation. As a steward of business information, IT can also help looking at uphill to identify the real problems that matter, and on a scale that can make a difference. Looking deeply into the future can have a profound effect on where you go, and how you get there. There are very few businesses today can state that IT does not play a significant role in the day to day operations or even long-term strategic positioning. Hence, organizations need to take that into consideration when establishing strategic goals to manage their digital transformation. IT more often needs to play a pivotal role in discovering the path for strategy implementation, and it is also an important component in building the differentiated business capabilities in executing strategy. Also, different IT organizations and enterprise as a whole are at the different stage of business maturity, IT can be used as a tool, enabler, catalyzer, or a digital platform to meet the ultimate goal of an organization's Short/Medium/Long-term strategic plans.
Path-finding in catalyzing business innovation: IT-Information technology should be seen by any business as a “digital transformer.” IT department should not live in a silo, or a function running as a help desk only. Often technology is the digital disrupter, and the information is the “gold mine,” to catch the upcoming business opportunities.Why the innovations happen and who is the strategic partners 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. Focus on VALUE proposition to run a digital IT. The role of the CIO is to drive the corporate vision and strategy through effectiveness and innovation in the knowledge and information channels. 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.
Path-finding in unleashing talent potential: CIOs must be the change agent, talent master, and be a good catalyst for business to differentiate by leveraging of IT. It all starts at the beginning, to make the most impact. If we always do the same thing the same way, we'll always get the same result. IT as a “digital brain” in the organization, should always be in the “thinking mode”: What can we do differently? What is stopping people from being autonomous, pursuing mastery and seeking purpose? And how to unleash talent potential via empowering them with the right information at the right time? The three P's (Passion, Purpose, and Potential) are critical for every employee no matter what the role is. Without the first two, you are just going through the motions and will never be an authentic leader. Passion is a requirement, but the way and how it is used, focused and balanced determines success. IT is a conductor to orchestrate digital sympathy via leveraging digital tools and social platforms to build a culture of innovation.In the world where change is significantly speeding up, that business leaders couldn’t predict the future with a certain degree of accuracy, the strategy can no longer stay static, and strategy execution is an iterative continuum. the business goals can no longer be well framed in advance. IT plays a more crucial role in finding a path for strategy building, implementation, and innovation. Business/IT leaders should also realize the breakthrough success in digital business requires not only forward-thinking strategies but also a transformation of the company's underlying functions and processes, in order to build the new sets of business capabilities to adapt to the VUCA digital normality.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
December 16, 2015
Digital CIOs’ Agenda XVI: IT Talent Management Innovation II
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1+million page views with about #2300+ blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. blog posting. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom, to inspire critical thinking and spur healthy debates.
People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses. “Hiring the right person to 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 and how to innovate IT talent management and beyond?
IT Talent Management Innovation IIPerformance Management vs. Talent Management: Talent Management (TM) focuses more on the people element of the organization; where Performance Management (PM) is more about the overall alignment of various organizational functions towards shared vision, mission, and objectives.
Why are Majority of Employees not Engaged in the Work? The latest research pointed out that engaged employees put forth 57% more effort and are 87% less likely to leave their company than employees who consider themselves disengaged. But statistically more than two-third of employees are not engaged in their work. Consequently, organizations have begun the survey analyzing the engagement level by function or by the job. Is a researcher more engaged than a clerk checking thousands of invoices a month? Are people in strategy focused organizations more engaged than in process-oriented organizations? What are the root causes to employee disengagement, and how to engage talent to improve productivity, creativity, and overall employee satisfaction?
What Differentiates Top IT Performers from the Norm? With the changing nature of technology, IT talent may also need to present such ability to adapt to the changes, so what differentiates top IT performers from the norm? Or an alternative question might be to consider what personality and behavioral characteristics are displayed by top IT performers. Are there any key differences between IT leaders (like CIOs) and top performers on their staffs? With the pace of change speeding up, are those key performance indicators changing?
How to leverage Talent Development Plans in Building the Capabilities for future? Talent Development Plans are often used in a variety of ways, depending on individual and organizational needs. Some companies treat them as something that happens annually (annual event), others use them as the need arises and yet others do a combination. Some use them only for growth and use action plans for improving work that is below minimum standards. And there is every flavor in between for that as well. But more specifically, how can managers leverage Talent Development Plans to build skills and capabilities to compete for the future?
High-Performance vs. High-Potential vs. Mediocrity Modern talent management is both art and science. However, most of HR organizations still use static mechanisms to measure talent performance, mainly based on quantitative delivery, with ignorance of qualitative perspective, talent potential assessment, intangible culture effect, and lack of tailored solutions to reach the next level of talent management maturity. For example, as a talent manager, how do you differentiate High-Performance vs. High-Potential vs. Mediocrity, and how should you treat them same by treating them differently?
Three Missing Elements to Fail Talent Analytics? People are always the most invaluable asset in businesses, but most of HR organizations only play the supporting role as an administrative function; talent analytics becomes the very tool to help HR in their digital transformation journey. However, some pivotal organizations who adopt talent analytics earlier than others do not achieve the expected result, what’re the missing elements, or the pitfalls in doing talent analytics, and how to learn from others’ failures?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
Synthesizing Leadership
The substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about making the positive influence, and providing direction.
Digital is about changes, closer to reality is that 'change' is continuously happening in such a dynamic environment of a company. The desires of stakeholders, clients and employees are evolving naturally, not to mention that many of organizations today are facing a more radical digital transformation, and some of them are at the inflection point to radical digital. Businesses need to recognize the change and help leaders meet the challenge via business savviness and agility. Improvisation, fact finding, analysis and synthesis, trial and error, all are necessary ingredients of leadership. In particular, synthesis becomes an important element in digital leadership due to the "VUCA" characteristics of digital, Here are three perspectives of synthesizing leadership:
Synthesizing leadership is more future oriented, perceives “what could be”: At the industrial age, businesses are considerably static, with slower speed of changes, therefore, analytics is a predominant management style, while analytics describes “what is,” and it is the breaking down of a complex system into pieces that are small enough to be understood, in such a way that you can reassemble them as you broke them down to gain a deeper understanding of "what is." And the management improves the operational efficiency via hindsight gaining from historical data. However, with accelerating speed of changes, leaders and managers have to spend more time on pondering the future, and perceive “what could be,” under the “VUCA” digital normal, and thus, synthesis stands out. Uncertainty acknowledges that one can never know everything about a problem or a business completely, the manager is required to look beyond what might be the known facts to consider what is not known about the situation, as well as what is not known about the known facts. This is most likely the area needing greatest attention in management development. Digital leadership is more future oriented. And synthesizing leadership would be labeled as such based on-the knowledge/insight/skills/capability/ actions/results (the past )- the level of understanding via analytics/synthesis/Systems Thinking (the present)- the relevance of the past and present for the future desired transformation or outcome. (the future)
Synthesis is about looking at the system as a whole and not being part of a whole: Synthesis is about combining things into a whole. The analysis is understanding the thing by examining it as parts. Analysis without synthesis is a reduction. Synthesis without analysis is intuition. They should complement each other. Digital is about hyperconnectivity and interdependence, synthesis is understanding a thing by examining it as a whole. Interconnections and interdependencies are distinguished, wise choices and decisions are made via the full cycle of analytics and synthesis. Solutions are also made from a much broader and encompassing view that is not possible in linear or analytical thinking only. It is both detailed and holistic pictures. It is to understand how the “part” interconnected with the”whole.” From a leadership perspective, this is always a good start when working to break down the silo mentality, go beyond crunching numbers, harness cross-functional communication, build cross-functional collaboration: understanding where each is coming from and having some trust from them, with the ultimate business goals to ensure business a whole is superior to the sum of pieces.
Synthesizing leadership tackles the business problem by taking a longer term approach. A business needs to make money, just as a human needs to respirate, but that is not their purpose. A different living-context may require a different set of values be adhered to, synthesis can see a full business picture more vividly via timeframe. Thus, it will help to take long term approach for strategy implementation. In addition, digital means CHANGE, the emergent strategy is nowadays a fact. Systems Thinking - the full cycle of analytics-synthesis thought processes helps business leaders to manage such Strategy-Execution dynamism more effectively. It is particularly crucial for managing ongoing digital transformation. One could look at change (things happening now) as the consequence of a transformation journey. Transformation is the change, but on a grand level, at the level of the system, differentiate in terms of the end result on a systemic level, therefore, synthesis is not the “nice to have,” but a “must have” scenario to embrace the emergent business properties, approach problems and build business solutions via future driven, and long-term perspectives.
The substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about making the positive influence, and providing direction. Synthesizing leadership is more future driven, look at the business ecosystem as a whole, approach the problems more holistically, and run business with long term perspectives. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital is about changes, closer to reality is that 'change' is continuously happening in such a dynamic environment of a company. The desires of stakeholders, clients and employees are evolving naturally, not to mention that many of organizations today are facing a more radical digital transformation, and some of them are at the inflection point to radical digital. Businesses need to recognize the change and help leaders meet the challenge via business savviness and agility. Improvisation, fact finding, analysis and synthesis, trial and error, all are necessary ingredients of leadership. In particular, synthesis becomes an important element in digital leadership due to the "VUCA" characteristics of digital, Here are three perspectives of synthesizing leadership:
Synthesizing leadership is more future oriented, perceives “what could be”: At the industrial age, businesses are considerably static, with slower speed of changes, therefore, analytics is a predominant management style, while analytics describes “what is,” and it is the breaking down of a complex system into pieces that are small enough to be understood, in such a way that you can reassemble them as you broke them down to gain a deeper understanding of "what is." And the management improves the operational efficiency via hindsight gaining from historical data. However, with accelerating speed of changes, leaders and managers have to spend more time on pondering the future, and perceive “what could be,” under the “VUCA” digital normal, and thus, synthesis stands out. Uncertainty acknowledges that one can never know everything about a problem or a business completely, the manager is required to look beyond what might be the known facts to consider what is not known about the situation, as well as what is not known about the known facts. This is most likely the area needing greatest attention in management development. Digital leadership is more future oriented. And synthesizing leadership would be labeled as such based on-the knowledge/insight/skills/capability/ actions/results (the past )- the level of understanding via analytics/synthesis/Systems Thinking (the present)- the relevance of the past and present for the future desired transformation or outcome. (the future)
Synthesis is about looking at the system as a whole and not being part of a whole: Synthesis is about combining things into a whole. The analysis is understanding the thing by examining it as parts. Analysis without synthesis is a reduction. Synthesis without analysis is intuition. They should complement each other. Digital is about hyperconnectivity and interdependence, synthesis is understanding a thing by examining it as a whole. Interconnections and interdependencies are distinguished, wise choices and decisions are made via the full cycle of analytics and synthesis. Solutions are also made from a much broader and encompassing view that is not possible in linear or analytical thinking only. It is both detailed and holistic pictures. It is to understand how the “part” interconnected with the”whole.” From a leadership perspective, this is always a good start when working to break down the silo mentality, go beyond crunching numbers, harness cross-functional communication, build cross-functional collaboration: understanding where each is coming from and having some trust from them, with the ultimate business goals to ensure business a whole is superior to the sum of pieces.
Synthesizing leadership tackles the business problem by taking a longer term approach. A business needs to make money, just as a human needs to respirate, but that is not their purpose. A different living-context may require a different set of values be adhered to, synthesis can see a full business picture more vividly via timeframe. Thus, it will help to take long term approach for strategy implementation. In addition, digital means CHANGE, the emergent strategy is nowadays a fact. Systems Thinking - the full cycle of analytics-synthesis thought processes helps business leaders to manage such Strategy-Execution dynamism more effectively. It is particularly crucial for managing ongoing digital transformation. One could look at change (things happening now) as the consequence of a transformation journey. Transformation is the change, but on a grand level, at the level of the system, differentiate in terms of the end result on a systemic level, therefore, synthesis is not the “nice to have,” but a “must have” scenario to embrace the emergent business properties, approach problems and build business solutions via future driven, and long-term perspectives. The substance of leadership never changes, it’s all about making the positive influence, and providing direction. Synthesizing leadership is more future driven, look at the business ecosystem as a whole, approach the problems more holistically, and run business with long term perspectives. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The Top Management Role in Agile Journey
Senior management needs to focus more on agile philosophy, principles, and management discipline.
Agile goes beyond a buzzword. At the strategic level, Agile is a mindset, philosophy, and a set of principles to run today’s digital organization; at the tactical level, Agile is a software management methodology to deliver products/service. But what is an appropriate role for top management to play in Agile journey? Why do some of these senior managers want to implement agile / scrum but do not even bother to learn sufficiently enough about it? As Agile development teams working at project delivery, what would you really like senior managers to start doing, keep doing and stop doing? If they cannot or will not learn about "agile / scrum," can you identify the behavior changes needed to reap the benefits of an agile development organization?
Senior management needs to focus more on WHY & WHAT. Influencing the mindset, behavior of groups, teams and departments are actually the jobs of senior management. Senior managers play a significant role in shaping the agile culture - the collective mindsets and behaviors are critical for top management. Consider multiple levels and multiple timeframes. How will Agile support the organization's strategic goals? Does it address current tactical needs as well as the capacity you're trying to build, and differentiated business capability to compete for the long run? Do you understand what the organizations are trying to accomplish? If not, advocating for major change is unlikely to succeed. But the #1 STOP is attempting to fix development teams or even trying to control how development teams pursue their goals. Define the needs and set the constraints (resources) but stay out of deciding how. Even implicit support for one approach over another inhibits the team's ability to make choices about how to do their work.
Identifying gaps and resolving conflicts via "Agile Lenses": There are some good ways for a sensible senior manager to address the existing organizational pain points via “Agile lenses.” Top management needs to focus on creating the synergy of teams, and improving effectiveness - doing the right things, and solving the right business problems before doing them right. It could have potential conflicts between how senior leadership perceive Agile and how the development team understands it because they are often in the different position to look at the things from different angles. The team member is more efficiency driven or detail oriented, and the senior team is more strategic driven and principle focused. In fact, the problem the teams see may not be the problem top management is trying to solve...and may not be the most important one. For example, the goals for top management might be to ensure that there is a consistent way for the business to measure the efficacy of communication amongst and between teams. Consistency could be more important to the organization than efficiency; if that's the case, the most efficient solution for two teams may not be the right one. Therefore, mutual understanding and two-way communication are important to build trust.
Ask top management what they think about Agile's promise of Visibility. If they say something like "Finally, I'll be able to see and understand what's going on so that I can adjust my goals, plans and obligations accordingly," then they already understand Agile and may not need additional information. Most of the time people are very quick and eager to point out all the things that are wrong or suboptimal around them. Agile offers a solution to those things. Before agile is "installed," the leaders in the organization need to confront the question, "How will I change to see this succeed?" Otherwise, the same oddities that exist from their established decision making will plague whatever they had hoped to see come from Agile. Listen as well as your advocate before try to "guide," or "keep on track." - be mindful that your planned approach to communication doesn't turn into manipulation.
"Agile" word is not a noun but an adjective. You can have the agile philosophy, agile principle, agile practices agile methods, agile development or agile management. Senior management needs to focus more on agile philosophy, principles, and management disciplines, cultivating the habit of inquiring and adapting, not predicting, controlling or manipulating, and then Agile can scale up more effortlessly, shift from “doing Agile” to being agile in running a digital organization.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Agile goes beyond a buzzword. At the strategic level, Agile is a mindset, philosophy, and a set of principles to run today’s digital organization; at the tactical level, Agile is a software management methodology to deliver products/service. But what is an appropriate role for top management to play in Agile journey? Why do some of these senior managers want to implement agile / scrum but do not even bother to learn sufficiently enough about it? As Agile development teams working at project delivery, what would you really like senior managers to start doing, keep doing and stop doing? If they cannot or will not learn about "agile / scrum," can you identify the behavior changes needed to reap the benefits of an agile development organization?
Senior management needs to focus more on WHY & WHAT. Influencing the mindset, behavior of groups, teams and departments are actually the jobs of senior management. Senior managers play a significant role in shaping the agile culture - the collective mindsets and behaviors are critical for top management. Consider multiple levels and multiple timeframes. How will Agile support the organization's strategic goals? Does it address current tactical needs as well as the capacity you're trying to build, and differentiated business capability to compete for the long run? Do you understand what the organizations are trying to accomplish? If not, advocating for major change is unlikely to succeed. But the #1 STOP is attempting to fix development teams or even trying to control how development teams pursue their goals. Define the needs and set the constraints (resources) but stay out of deciding how. Even implicit support for one approach over another inhibits the team's ability to make choices about how to do their work.
Identifying gaps and resolving conflicts via "Agile Lenses": There are some good ways for a sensible senior manager to address the existing organizational pain points via “Agile lenses.” Top management needs to focus on creating the synergy of teams, and improving effectiveness - doing the right things, and solving the right business problems before doing them right. It could have potential conflicts between how senior leadership perceive Agile and how the development team understands it because they are often in the different position to look at the things from different angles. The team member is more efficiency driven or detail oriented, and the senior team is more strategic driven and principle focused. In fact, the problem the teams see may not be the problem top management is trying to solve...and may not be the most important one. For example, the goals for top management might be to ensure that there is a consistent way for the business to measure the efficacy of communication amongst and between teams. Consistency could be more important to the organization than efficiency; if that's the case, the most efficient solution for two teams may not be the right one. Therefore, mutual understanding and two-way communication are important to build trust.
Ask top management what they think about Agile's promise of Visibility. If they say something like "Finally, I'll be able to see and understand what's going on so that I can adjust my goals, plans and obligations accordingly," then they already understand Agile and may not need additional information. Most of the time people are very quick and eager to point out all the things that are wrong or suboptimal around them. Agile offers a solution to those things. Before agile is "installed," the leaders in the organization need to confront the question, "How will I change to see this succeed?" Otherwise, the same oddities that exist from their established decision making will plague whatever they had hoped to see come from Agile. Listen as well as your advocate before try to "guide," or "keep on track." - be mindful that your planned approach to communication doesn't turn into manipulation.
"Agile" word is not a noun but an adjective. You can have the agile philosophy, agile principle, agile practices agile methods, agile development or agile management. Senior management needs to focus more on agile philosophy, principles, and management disciplines, cultivating the habit of inquiring and adapting, not predicting, controlling or manipulating, and then Agile can scale up more effortlessly, shift from “doing Agile” to being agile in running a digital organization.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
December 15, 2015
CIO’s Digital Agenda XV: Change Management FIne Tuning
Digital is the Era of Change!
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. And CHANGE is the main theme in such brainstorming. Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice within an organization, but how fine tune the Change Management, and overcome the obstacles to managing a smoothly digital transformation?
Change Management Fine Tuning
Does Change Management Need to Be Changed? Statistically, there’re 70% of change initiatives failed today; interestingly, that in the mid 90's, the research found 70% of change initiatives failed (indicates 70% of change projects continue to fail today.) In that twenty-year period, countless studies and experience of managing change have created a vast body of knowledge, consisting of thousands or even millions of books, articles, resources, etc. In turn, this has produced a plethora of change related theories, models, methodologies, tools, and techniques. Even with all this effort, no improvement on 70% failure rate has been achieved. What’s the root cause of such high rate of failures? Is it caused by leadership, process, methodology or technology? Does Change Management need to be changed as well?
How do You Well Tune the 'Change Management' Process? Change is the new normal. However, more than two-thirds of Change Management efforts fail to achieve the business expectation. When would you communicate the change imperative to your employees and how would you ensure that they buy-in to this new directive? And how do you well tune the “Change Management” processes in managing change with efficiency, effectiveness, and agility?
Five Principles to Manage Changes? There are many reasons for changes, and perhaps, even more, reasons for resistance to changes as well: It may be a shift in power, a need to learn new skills, to manage a different team, to adopt the new way (mindset, methodology or process, etc) to do things etc. What’re the psychology behind the change? What would be a good way to empower change capabilities? And what are the principles to manage change, not as a one-time project, but as an ongoing capability?
How to make Change Management Tangible rather than Fluffy? Change is the only constant, and Change Management is no longer just a one-time project or business initiative, but an ongoing business capability. However, more than two-thirds of Change efforts fail to achieve the expected result, especially for the large, legacy companies, what’re the causes to failure, and how to make Change Management tangible rather than fluffy?
People Centric Change Management? Digital is the age of people. The human element of change entails a people-centric approach to management style. Thus, empowering the workforce to embrace change is a most effective, efficient and result-oriented management in organizations, but how to manage it in a systematic way?
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
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. And CHANGE is the main theme in such brainstorming. Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice within an organization, but how fine tune the Change Management, and overcome the obstacles to managing a smoothly digital transformation?
Change Management Fine Tuning
Does Change Management Need to Be Changed? Statistically, there’re 70% of change initiatives failed today; interestingly, that in the mid 90's, the research found 70% of change initiatives failed (indicates 70% of change projects continue to fail today.) In that twenty-year period, countless studies and experience of managing change have created a vast body of knowledge, consisting of thousands or even millions of books, articles, resources, etc. In turn, this has produced a plethora of change related theories, models, methodologies, tools, and techniques. Even with all this effort, no improvement on 70% failure rate has been achieved. What’s the root cause of such high rate of failures? Is it caused by leadership, process, methodology or technology? Does Change Management need to be changed as well?
How do You Well Tune the 'Change Management' Process? Change is the new normal. However, more than two-thirds of Change Management efforts fail to achieve the business expectation. When would you communicate the change imperative to your employees and how would you ensure that they buy-in to this new directive? And how do you well tune the “Change Management” processes in managing change with efficiency, effectiveness, and agility?
Five Principles to Manage Changes? There are many reasons for changes, and perhaps, even more, reasons for resistance to changes as well: It may be a shift in power, a need to learn new skills, to manage a different team, to adopt the new way (mindset, methodology or process, etc) to do things etc. What’re the psychology behind the change? What would be a good way to empower change capabilities? And what are the principles to manage change, not as a one-time project, but as an ongoing capability?
How to make Change Management Tangible rather than Fluffy? Change is the only constant, and Change Management is no longer just a one-time project or business initiative, but an ongoing business capability. However, more than two-thirds of Change efforts fail to achieve the expected result, especially for the large, legacy companies, what’re the causes to failure, and how to make Change Management tangible rather than fluffy?
People Centric Change Management? Digital is the age of people. The human element of change entails a people-centric approach to management style. Thus, empowering the workforce to embrace change is a most effective, efficient and result-oriented management in organizations, but how to manage it in a systematic way?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 Solution-Driven Culture
The negative reactions to the problems come from a state of distrust, disengagement, and disempowerment.
Businesses "fail" for a multitude of reasons including economic conditions, vendor management, performance or production, industry regulations, expansion costs and the list goes on. Look at the primary causes behind the fall of the business, from an internal management perspective, which failures are you talking about? Is it capital investment failure or functional management failure? Is it leadership failure, or an individual’s failure? Is the failures caused by soft business elements such as communication, culture, or the hard elements such as product/project/process/service, etc. And when failure happens, are you finger pointing or problem-solving?
As a leader, see the larger picture is a critical aspect to understanding the best next moves. Take on a broad open perspective with empathy and understanding of being the quiet observer to become self aware of how our own actions/thoughts/ feelings contributed to problems/challenges that we all face at our surrounding and around the world. Effective leaders routinely zoom out to see the larger system and their part in the mess. It takes extraordinary discipline - to carve out the time for this type of reflection and it almost always takes an external coach to help develop the habit. Sometimes the simple question, "what was your role?" can get the reflective juices flowing. And the good news is that although we have a hand in the result, there are systems dynamics that shed as much light on the problem as the individual leadership role. It's all about who you are as a person. If you are a paranoid blamer, then, that's how you will be as a leader, if you are a focused, clear headed realist, that is what you will be. You will need to take a few steps back try to get the real picture of what happened based on facts, and figure out the best next move toward the right decisions.
The negative reactions to the problems come from a state of distrust, disengagement, and disempowerment. It is so easy to point the finger elsewhere and not look within. Just think of the time/energy/money wasted by this pattern of blaming others. Avoiding this pattern begins with a belief and understanding behaviors have ripple effects and that we all tend to be drawn into situations which force us to learn and grow. A good habit to build is to regularly ask the question: "What is my part in this?" This helps to both explore your role in creating the situation, and what part (if any) you should play in moving toward a solution. You can blame, complain, point fingers, wait for a leader to fix the problems; or you can choose "to be the change you wish to see " at work. The biggest problems come when you feel powerless to do anything. An individual needs to recognize not only what role they played in the problem, but what role they can now play to positively move forward.
High mature leadership will make the team more cohesive and functional. Often leaders feel that they can only be the solution when in fact they are actually the problem in some situations. Part of the challenge with situations like this comes down to the leader's maturity and self-awareness. If the leader lacks that self-awareness of the impact they are having, how can they realistically reflect on their own role in the mix? If they lack maturity, they might well recognize they are part of the problem but still fail to do anything about it because it is more 'expedient' to work around it. So high mature leaders will make the team more cohesive and functional. When the member of the team does not perform in the correct way, the typical adjustment to the team is the leader. If you are the leader you are the one who can fix things. So no point in complaining, just do it. Own it, address it, get everyone involved in crafting a solution. Avoid groupthink, the "blame game" and then be totally objective once the issues have been resolved, so that everyone has a positive takeaway for future reference. Fixing the problem, making changes in how you deal with challenges. When this model becomes your lifestyle you can better focus on goals.
From culture management perspective, the blame mentality should be removed from the individual’s mind. The good leaders focus on solutions, not on blame. And as far as who is to blame, per se, anyone who contributes to the decline of an organization can own some fault it in its demise. From business management perspective, the transparent processes help dig through the root cause of failures, and have a better controlling system, keep the learning attitude to improve, and focus on problem-solving, not finger pointing.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Businesses "fail" for a multitude of reasons including economic conditions, vendor management, performance or production, industry regulations, expansion costs and the list goes on. Look at the primary causes behind the fall of the business, from an internal management perspective, which failures are you talking about? Is it capital investment failure or functional management failure? Is it leadership failure, or an individual’s failure? Is the failures caused by soft business elements such as communication, culture, or the hard elements such as product/project/process/service, etc. And when failure happens, are you finger pointing or problem-solving?
As a leader, see the larger picture is a critical aspect to understanding the best next moves. Take on a broad open perspective with empathy and understanding of being the quiet observer to become self aware of how our own actions/thoughts/ feelings contributed to problems/challenges that we all face at our surrounding and around the world. Effective leaders routinely zoom out to see the larger system and their part in the mess. It takes extraordinary discipline - to carve out the time for this type of reflection and it almost always takes an external coach to help develop the habit. Sometimes the simple question, "what was your role?" can get the reflective juices flowing. And the good news is that although we have a hand in the result, there are systems dynamics that shed as much light on the problem as the individual leadership role. It's all about who you are as a person. If you are a paranoid blamer, then, that's how you will be as a leader, if you are a focused, clear headed realist, that is what you will be. You will need to take a few steps back try to get the real picture of what happened based on facts, and figure out the best next move toward the right decisions.
The negative reactions to the problems come from a state of distrust, disengagement, and disempowerment. It is so easy to point the finger elsewhere and not look within. Just think of the time/energy/money wasted by this pattern of blaming others. Avoiding this pattern begins with a belief and understanding behaviors have ripple effects and that we all tend to be drawn into situations which force us to learn and grow. A good habit to build is to regularly ask the question: "What is my part in this?" This helps to both explore your role in creating the situation, and what part (if any) you should play in moving toward a solution. You can blame, complain, point fingers, wait for a leader to fix the problems; or you can choose "to be the change you wish to see " at work. The biggest problems come when you feel powerless to do anything. An individual needs to recognize not only what role they played in the problem, but what role they can now play to positively move forward.
High mature leadership will make the team more cohesive and functional. Often leaders feel that they can only be the solution when in fact they are actually the problem in some situations. Part of the challenge with situations like this comes down to the leader's maturity and self-awareness. If the leader lacks that self-awareness of the impact they are having, how can they realistically reflect on their own role in the mix? If they lack maturity, they might well recognize they are part of the problem but still fail to do anything about it because it is more 'expedient' to work around it. So high mature leaders will make the team more cohesive and functional. When the member of the team does not perform in the correct way, the typical adjustment to the team is the leader. If you are the leader you are the one who can fix things. So no point in complaining, just do it. Own it, address it, get everyone involved in crafting a solution. Avoid groupthink, the "blame game" and then be totally objective once the issues have been resolved, so that everyone has a positive takeaway for future reference. Fixing the problem, making changes in how you deal with challenges. When this model becomes your lifestyle you can better focus on goals.From culture management perspective, the blame mentality should be removed from the individual’s mind. The good leaders focus on solutions, not on blame. And as far as who is to blame, per se, anyone who contributes to the decline of an organization can own some fault it in its demise. From business management perspective, the transparent processes help dig through the root cause of failures, and have a better controlling system, keep the learning attitude to improve, and focus on problem-solving, not finger pointing.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Running Digital IT in a Continuous Delivery Mode
Digital IT means more about speed, agility, and flexibility.
Many IT organizations are on the way for radical digital transformation, to change their reputation from a cost center to a value creator; from a back-office support function to a relentless innovation engine; from the process "glue" to the capability builder, and from a reactive mode to a proactive and continuous delivery mode.
Continue to deliver the right information to the right person at the right positions to make the right decisions: IT is the foundation for massive volumes of Data & Information that is collected, persisted, categorized, mapped, sliced, diced, reordered, related, transformed, and made meaning of... without which knowledge would be minimal in the modern day. Information applies to the context and environment in which decisions are made. Information, with the inclusiveness of data as input, is primary drivers of decisions when they apply to automated systems, not human beings. Information and decision-making are intimately connected and interdependent. There is more to it - information, principally more than data and knowledge alike, carries fundamentally higher entropy than the other two do. Also, IT is critical Knowledge Management Enabler. IT is generally the tools (hardware, software) that are used to enable Knowledge Management. Think of the large volumes of data & Information captured within areas of the enterprise (Marketing, Sales, Product, Support, Legal, Finance, HR, etc.); think of all the collection, coordination, categorization, mappings, and meaning that is all derived from modern IT; think of the persistence, recollection, and constant movement of large volumes of what people know, in all directions. The greatest advancements in the KM profession, in the last half century, are "all" tied to advancements in technologies and how they're used.
IT can reframe business process to keep ideas flow and implemented in continuous mode. Digital catalyzes the culture of innovation due to the convenience of learning and sharing. How these ideas are recognized, filtered and dealt with well become a crucial factor in an organization's success in producing digitized products and services. IT can play even bigger role in re-framing of business planning processes in order (who participates, how often, allowing creativity and innovation to flow, identifying technology as well as business risks, etc.) along with re-framing of in-place processes that filter and fund investments, both business-oriented and technology-oriented. The appropriately configured innovation platform creates a scalable means for sharing and building ideas throughout the enterprise. As a result, innovation becomes a persistent, shared reality — even across silos and geographies. And IT becomes the innovation engine to enable business growth and optimize business processes continually.
App Dev and delivery via Agile philosophy and methodology: App Dev should not innovate for its own sake. App Dev is central to the business's ability to innovate, and thus compete effectively. And if App Dev can't keep up with the demand & pace of business change, then there are problems. But AppDev should not innovate simply to amuse itself; and it's wasteful of resources, money, effort in many companies. The business line must be cognizant of innovation opportunities and agree to proceed with the proof of concept if they see merit. Those opportunities can be customer initiated or IT initiated. CIOs must ensure that application development does not proceed without a "clear business rationale." CIOs need to deliver value to the organization. The performance and innovation provided by Applications Development reflect not just on the CIO, but the whole IT sector. Application development projects need to bring up the most business value, the de facto best practices of managing IT project portfolio need to include such as, only manage business project, not for technology's sake, prioritize the portfolio, and manage full application life cycle in a continuous mode: from App Dev to potential application retirement, with the right methodology (either Agile, DevOp., etc), talent and metrics, to catch up with the speed of business change without sacrificing the quality.
Organizations rely more and more on technology; the IT department has more and more to overcome. Running at digital speed, people tend to have high expectation of digital flow, very little patience with technology issues, and digital IT must be running in a digital mode to enable ongoing business strategy execution, optimize business processes, drive data-based organizational culture, and allow ideas and creativity flow. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Many IT organizations are on the way for radical digital transformation, to change their reputation from a cost center to a value creator; from a back-office support function to a relentless innovation engine; from the process "glue" to the capability builder, and from a reactive mode to a proactive and continuous delivery mode. Continue to deliver the right information to the right person at the right positions to make the right decisions: IT is the foundation for massive volumes of Data & Information that is collected, persisted, categorized, mapped, sliced, diced, reordered, related, transformed, and made meaning of... without which knowledge would be minimal in the modern day. Information applies to the context and environment in which decisions are made. Information, with the inclusiveness of data as input, is primary drivers of decisions when they apply to automated systems, not human beings. Information and decision-making are intimately connected and interdependent. There is more to it - information, principally more than data and knowledge alike, carries fundamentally higher entropy than the other two do. Also, IT is critical Knowledge Management Enabler. IT is generally the tools (hardware, software) that are used to enable Knowledge Management. Think of the large volumes of data & Information captured within areas of the enterprise (Marketing, Sales, Product, Support, Legal, Finance, HR, etc.); think of all the collection, coordination, categorization, mappings, and meaning that is all derived from modern IT; think of the persistence, recollection, and constant movement of large volumes of what people know, in all directions. The greatest advancements in the KM profession, in the last half century, are "all" tied to advancements in technologies and how they're used.
IT can reframe business process to keep ideas flow and implemented in continuous mode. Digital catalyzes the culture of innovation due to the convenience of learning and sharing. How these ideas are recognized, filtered and dealt with well become a crucial factor in an organization's success in producing digitized products and services. IT can play even bigger role in re-framing of business planning processes in order (who participates, how often, allowing creativity and innovation to flow, identifying technology as well as business risks, etc.) along with re-framing of in-place processes that filter and fund investments, both business-oriented and technology-oriented. The appropriately configured innovation platform creates a scalable means for sharing and building ideas throughout the enterprise. As a result, innovation becomes a persistent, shared reality — even across silos and geographies. And IT becomes the innovation engine to enable business growth and optimize business processes continually.
App Dev and delivery via Agile philosophy and methodology: App Dev should not innovate for its own sake. App Dev is central to the business's ability to innovate, and thus compete effectively. And if App Dev can't keep up with the demand & pace of business change, then there are problems. But AppDev should not innovate simply to amuse itself; and it's wasteful of resources, money, effort in many companies. The business line must be cognizant of innovation opportunities and agree to proceed with the proof of concept if they see merit. Those opportunities can be customer initiated or IT initiated. CIOs must ensure that application development does not proceed without a "clear business rationale." CIOs need to deliver value to the organization. The performance and innovation provided by Applications Development reflect not just on the CIO, but the whole IT sector. Application development projects need to bring up the most business value, the de facto best practices of managing IT project portfolio need to include such as, only manage business project, not for technology's sake, prioritize the portfolio, and manage full application life cycle in a continuous mode: from App Dev to potential application retirement, with the right methodology (either Agile, DevOp., etc), talent and metrics, to catch up with the speed of business change without sacrificing the quality.Organizations rely more and more on technology; the IT department has more and more to overcome. Running at digital speed, people tend to have high expectation of digital flow, very little patience with technology issues, and digital IT must be running in a digital mode to enable ongoing business strategy execution, optimize business processes, drive data-based organizational culture, and allow ideas and creativity flow. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
December 14, 2015
CIO’s Digital Agenda XIV: How to Close the Gaps in Digital Transformation
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. Change is inevitable, and organizational change becomes a common practice and ongoing capability, but how to identify and bridge the gaps, particularly the gaps between IT and business, and overcome the obstacles to manage a smooth digital transformation?
How to Close the Gaps in Digital Transformation
Is the Gap between Business and IT Shrinking? IT is better integrated with the business than ever before. However, IT remains quite distinct in terms of performance metrics, structure, career path, etc. there are still numerous debates about “He said, She said” in CIO forums, Is the gap between business and IT shrinking?
Is IT skills Gap Fact or Fiction? There’s always a debate regarding IT talent supply and demand, does IT skills gap really exist? Or is it due to any management issues such as misunderstanding or miscommunication upon talent value chain? What is the root cause and how to solve the problem?
How to Bridge the Innovation Execution Gap? Although innovation is at every forward-looking organization’s agenda, there’re at least two gaps existing in innovation management: idea gap and execution gap. More often than not, companies seem to continue to have more ideas than execution expertise. If you have an idea, you gain only if you have the right methodology to implement the idea. However, there’re gaps between innovation strategy and innovation execution, how to mind it?
How to Mind the Gap between Strategy and Execution? As companies around the world transform themselves into digital business that is based on information, innovation, and intelligence, their ability to well align the strategy and execution, for delivering the solid result; their capability to explore intangible assets (leadership, culture, innovation, knowledge etc) has become far more decisive than their ability to invest in and manage physical assets. In order to build a solid strategy and execute it smoothly, more specifically, how to mind the strategy-execution gap? Do you think there should be a specialized strategy department for strategy analysis and formulation? What about strategy implementation and how to measure it effectively?
CIO in the Boardroom: Which Gaps Shall you Bridge? There is no question that businesses need digital leadership in today's boardrooms, as information becomes the life blood of business, digitalization is in every forward-thinking business’s agenda, and globalization turns to be the new normal of business expansion. All of these brings the significant opportunities and responsibilities for the new breed of CIOs: Do you want a seat in the Boardroom, which gaps shall you bridge? Digital gap, information gap, innovation gap or global gap?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
