Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1380
December 14, 2015
Three Business Capabilities to DIfferentiate a Digital Leader from Laggards
High mature digital organizations have the high-level digital capabilities to improve organizational performance and drive enterprise-wide transformation.
Digital transformation is a journey, from digital strategy crafting to organizational structure tuning, it has to permeate into business strategy and vision, mindset, and action, culture and communication, process and capability, etc. A business capability is the set of abilities needed by an organization to do things effectively to achieve desired outcomes, measurable benefits and fulfill business demand consistently. In today’s digital paradigm, digital capabilities are also the building blocks to shift an organization from a reactive surviving mode to proactive thriving mode, here is a set of business capabilities to differentiate a digital leader from laggards.
Strategy-Execution Capability: Strategic planning and execution are a continuous cycle of organizational adaptation to a changing world. A strategy is a planned direction to act - without implementation, it is not complete and is probably someone's idea that got lost in the mail. 'Culture' describes the state of growth of the journey on the way to civilization. In itself simply a description of a process rather than the plane of civilization one has reached. Strategies fail either because of improper execution or more likely because the strategy was flawed. It implies three potential organizational capabilities in order implement strategy effectively: (1) The organizational capability in assessing the business environment and setting/re-setting of strategic direction. (2) The organizational capability in the management of projects and multi-project programs that translate strategic direction into real changes within the organization. (3) The organizational capability in the measurement of projects and programs that is needed to maintain strategic fit - stop individual projects if a change in direction makes them no longer necessary.
Agility: Business agility is the organization’s ability to sense, respond, and take actions to changes. Agility brings speed and flexibility. The strategy needs to be flexible, it is the objectives that drive strategy, so if you need to adopt a new strategy, agility should be your priority because it helps you achieve your objectives - better/quicker/faster- there is your justification. The overall goal of adopting a more "Agile" approach is about "resilience," in essence. The twin goals of an Agile transformation are to increase value received and decrease risk. An organization at any scale that can retain an overall sense of vision and purpose, can communicate effectively, continuously improve, reflect on its own limitations honestly and respond to change dynamically. It is simply more likely to thrive and survive. Being Agile also means to solve business problems more effectively and collaboratively. Problem-solving practices developed over many years shows that breaking big problems into smaller problems is often the better way to solve problems. Break them down until you have small enough problems to solve and then solve those small problems. By solving lots of small problems, you solve big problems. Same with business goals, by breaking big goals into smaller goals, each delivers a part of the big goal, you can more easily identify where the real value is and focus on the high value, cutting out the low-value noise.
Change and Innovation Capability: Corporate change can be a simple modification of strategy, a business process improvement or a more radical digital transformation. Either at the individual or organizational level, in the more static industrial era, change is a one-time project; at digital age, change has to become an ongoing capability and needs to be orchestrated at all levels to go hands-in-hands with strategy management. Innovation is one of the most desired change abilities. Innovation is a unique business capability to reinvent business, but not to reinvent the wheels. Innovation is more about taking something someone created and adding to it, changing it, adapting it; in some sense, to a particular need, whether individual, group or industry. From business perspective, innovation has much broader scope than a new product or service, it means both incremental innovation (product update or process optimization) or breakthrough innovation (the new business model or disruptive invention, etc), it also includes "soft" innovations such as leadership/management innovation, communication or culture innovation, etc.Innovation is about reinventing the business direction and purpose at any time. It defines strategy, profitability and relevance at any given time. If you do not, you become commoditized and just like so many others who offer the same product or service. Innovation allows one to stand out and above the rest.
Digital makes a profound impact from specific function to business as a whole, the purpose of such radical digitalization is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of customer delight, business innovation, organizational agility and achieve high performing business result. High mature digital organizations have the high-level digital capability to improve organizational performance and drive enterprise-wide transformation. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital transformation is a journey, from digital strategy crafting to organizational structure tuning, it has to permeate into business strategy and vision, mindset, and action, culture and communication, process and capability, etc. A business capability is the set of abilities needed by an organization to do things effectively to achieve desired outcomes, measurable benefits and fulfill business demand consistently. In today’s digital paradigm, digital capabilities are also the building blocks to shift an organization from a reactive surviving mode to proactive thriving mode, here is a set of business capabilities to differentiate a digital leader from laggards.
Strategy-Execution Capability: Strategic planning and execution are a continuous cycle of organizational adaptation to a changing world. A strategy is a planned direction to act - without implementation, it is not complete and is probably someone's idea that got lost in the mail. 'Culture' describes the state of growth of the journey on the way to civilization. In itself simply a description of a process rather than the plane of civilization one has reached. Strategies fail either because of improper execution or more likely because the strategy was flawed. It implies three potential organizational capabilities in order implement strategy effectively: (1) The organizational capability in assessing the business environment and setting/re-setting of strategic direction. (2) The organizational capability in the management of projects and multi-project programs that translate strategic direction into real changes within the organization. (3) The organizational capability in the measurement of projects and programs that is needed to maintain strategic fit - stop individual projects if a change in direction makes them no longer necessary.
Agility: Business agility is the organization’s ability to sense, respond, and take actions to changes. Agility brings speed and flexibility. The strategy needs to be flexible, it is the objectives that drive strategy, so if you need to adopt a new strategy, agility should be your priority because it helps you achieve your objectives - better/quicker/faster- there is your justification. The overall goal of adopting a more "Agile" approach is about "resilience," in essence. The twin goals of an Agile transformation are to increase value received and decrease risk. An organization at any scale that can retain an overall sense of vision and purpose, can communicate effectively, continuously improve, reflect on its own limitations honestly and respond to change dynamically. It is simply more likely to thrive and survive. Being Agile also means to solve business problems more effectively and collaboratively. Problem-solving practices developed over many years shows that breaking big problems into smaller problems is often the better way to solve problems. Break them down until you have small enough problems to solve and then solve those small problems. By solving lots of small problems, you solve big problems. Same with business goals, by breaking big goals into smaller goals, each delivers a part of the big goal, you can more easily identify where the real value is and focus on the high value, cutting out the low-value noise.
Change and Innovation Capability: Corporate change can be a simple modification of strategy, a business process improvement or a more radical digital transformation. Either at the individual or organizational level, in the more static industrial era, change is a one-time project; at digital age, change has to become an ongoing capability and needs to be orchestrated at all levels to go hands-in-hands with strategy management. Innovation is one of the most desired change abilities. Innovation is a unique business capability to reinvent business, but not to reinvent the wheels. Innovation is more about taking something someone created and adding to it, changing it, adapting it; in some sense, to a particular need, whether individual, group or industry. From business perspective, innovation has much broader scope than a new product or service, it means both incremental innovation (product update or process optimization) or breakthrough innovation (the new business model or disruptive invention, etc), it also includes "soft" innovations such as leadership/management innovation, communication or culture innovation, etc.Innovation is about reinventing the business direction and purpose at any time. It defines strategy, profitability and relevance at any given time. If you do not, you become commoditized and just like so many others who offer the same product or service. Innovation allows one to stand out and above the rest.Digital makes a profound impact from specific function to business as a whole, the purpose of such radical digitalization is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of customer delight, business innovation, organizational agility and achieve high performing business result. High mature digital organizations have the high-level digital capability to improve organizational performance and drive enterprise-wide transformation. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
An Insightful Board
The board needs to extend its insight and innovation lens via cognitive difference.
At today’s “VUCA” digital dynamic, organizations face both unprecedented opportunities to grow and hyper-competition or great risks to survive. Therefore, corporate board plays a more significant role in overseeing business strategy, setting principles and policies, and making the judgment on and assurance of corporate action within a framework of practical knowledge. Not only do today’s BoDs need to have sufficient knowledge to understand the business ecosystem, but also they need to have the collective insight to present today and foresee the future. Nut how to build an insightful digital board?
Cognitive diversity: First, Boards need to have qualified candidates who bring identity and cognitive diversity to a Boardroom. Anyone who is selected to sit on a corporate board should be fully qualified to bring the fresh insight to mind the cognitive gap. They should be selected based on performance, experience and qualities the candidate brings to a board. Some of these credentials are proven experience in executive leadership, entrepreneurship, strategy development, risk and crisis management, global empathy, international experiences, technological vision and some degree of financial literacy. At a deeper level, the Board diversity being sought should be “diversity of thought” and the “color of the character.” An insightful board built on the diversity of thought more often does not come from the diverse physical identity; but from one’s thought process, cognitive difference, earning habit, recombinant capability, diverse xperience or skill sets., etc. The board needs to extend its innovation lens via cognitive difference. The board needs diversity, or even more crucially, cognitive difference, to provide a perspective that goes beyond the gaps in board discussion and share the insight about the multitude of business disciplines and practices.
Learning agility: Board members should be joining the boards because they have the strong intent and learning agility to contribute to the maximization of the company's full potential and are unwilling to settle for anything less. they have a learning mind to absorb all necessary knowledge and abstract it into insight and wisdom. Directors of the Board with insight have a responsibility and be more skillful to ask ‘right’ questions. They need to go beyond "understanding the strategy" to a deep dive into the businesses to further understanding the culture, the business capability, and competency, etc. Only by doing this, can the board genuinely understand the value creation opportunities and risks available to the company which will then enable the board to engage with management in the development of a value maximization plan. BoDs with insight and foresight about the business can ask profound questions because they can observe thoroughly, have better critical thinking ability, learning capabilities. Being insightful means that you need to dig into the root cause, not just pointing out the symptoms, framing the questions first before asking them, having both content understanding and contextual intelligence.
Information savvy: The Board's role, in large part, is to make good decisions that enhance the value creation for the organizations. Insightful boards not just crunch finance numbers, but also get a new charter to focus on understanding more about KIDM - knowledge-information and data management. To gain business insight, the BoDs need to become more information savvy and IT-friendly. The BoD may not be interested in data itself, but surely they would be interested in the V factor -VALUE it can bring to the table. KIDM improves measurably with analytics, as the speed, accuracy, and precision of the decision which has a new level of importance and competitive value. So an insightful board will leverage information and analytics to make strategic decisions.
The matter of fact is that the changes sweeping the world are hugely disruptive and there is nowhere to hide. The changes are touching every industry and activity, but they have yet to produce a wave of response at board level. Hence, boards need to be more innovation driven and information savvy, more insightful and influential, focus on many prioritized issues regarding people, process, and technology to call themselves the corporate stewards.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
At today’s “VUCA” digital dynamic, organizations face both unprecedented opportunities to grow and hyper-competition or great risks to survive. Therefore, corporate board plays a more significant role in overseeing business strategy, setting principles and policies, and making the judgment on and assurance of corporate action within a framework of practical knowledge. Not only do today’s BoDs need to have sufficient knowledge to understand the business ecosystem, but also they need to have the collective insight to present today and foresee the future. Nut how to build an insightful digital board?Cognitive diversity: First, Boards need to have qualified candidates who bring identity and cognitive diversity to a Boardroom. Anyone who is selected to sit on a corporate board should be fully qualified to bring the fresh insight to mind the cognitive gap. They should be selected based on performance, experience and qualities the candidate brings to a board. Some of these credentials are proven experience in executive leadership, entrepreneurship, strategy development, risk and crisis management, global empathy, international experiences, technological vision and some degree of financial literacy. At a deeper level, the Board diversity being sought should be “diversity of thought” and the “color of the character.” An insightful board built on the diversity of thought more often does not come from the diverse physical identity; but from one’s thought process, cognitive difference, earning habit, recombinant capability, diverse xperience or skill sets., etc. The board needs to extend its innovation lens via cognitive difference. The board needs diversity, or even more crucially, cognitive difference, to provide a perspective that goes beyond the gaps in board discussion and share the insight about the multitude of business disciplines and practices.
Learning agility: Board members should be joining the boards because they have the strong intent and learning agility to contribute to the maximization of the company's full potential and are unwilling to settle for anything less. they have a learning mind to absorb all necessary knowledge and abstract it into insight and wisdom. Directors of the Board with insight have a responsibility and be more skillful to ask ‘right’ questions. They need to go beyond "understanding the strategy" to a deep dive into the businesses to further understanding the culture, the business capability, and competency, etc. Only by doing this, can the board genuinely understand the value creation opportunities and risks available to the company which will then enable the board to engage with management in the development of a value maximization plan. BoDs with insight and foresight about the business can ask profound questions because they can observe thoroughly, have better critical thinking ability, learning capabilities. Being insightful means that you need to dig into the root cause, not just pointing out the symptoms, framing the questions first before asking them, having both content understanding and contextual intelligence.
Information savvy: The Board's role, in large part, is to make good decisions that enhance the value creation for the organizations. Insightful boards not just crunch finance numbers, but also get a new charter to focus on understanding more about KIDM - knowledge-information and data management. To gain business insight, the BoDs need to become more information savvy and IT-friendly. The BoD may not be interested in data itself, but surely they would be interested in the V factor -VALUE it can bring to the table. KIDM improves measurably with analytics, as the speed, accuracy, and precision of the decision which has a new level of importance and competitive value. So an insightful board will leverage information and analytics to make strategic decisions. The matter of fact is that the changes sweeping the world are hugely disruptive and there is nowhere to hide. The changes are touching every industry and activity, but they have yet to produce a wave of response at board level. Hence, boards need to be more innovation driven and information savvy, more insightful and influential, focus on many prioritized issues regarding people, process, and technology to call themselves the corporate stewards.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
December 13, 2015
The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” 12/13/2015
Insight is to perceive the present, and vision is to foresee the future.
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 weekly insight of the “Future of CIO” blog.
The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” Blog 12/13/2015Talent Management Brief: See Through Talent from Different Angles Dec. 2015: 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?
CIO’s Digital Agenda XI - Running IT as an Innovation Engine. Majority of IT organizations today are still running at industrial speed, stick at the low or mid level of maturity, although technology is more often than not, the disruptive force for business and industry innovation, IT organizations seem to have a tendency to align with the slow changing parts of the organization, so how should CIOs prepare for the digital disruption and speed up accordingly? Here is the CIO’s Digital Agenda to run IT as an innovation engine.Three Mentalities Enlarge Digital Gaps: Lots have been said about transition and transformation to agile. Most organizations are already using agile of some form or shape. However, the business level agile transformation is a continuous journey. Like chicken and egg story. Do you first start with cultural transformation or start with agile adoption? Agile transformation is an important step in digital transformation, from doing Agile to being agile, how to manage it in a more effective way?The Shift from “Doing Agile” to “Being Agile”: Agile is an emerging methodology to manage software projects. Agility is a business capability to sense, respond, and act to changes. By following a set of Agile principles and philosophy, leading organizations is transforming from “doing Agile,” to “being Agile.” What’s the most important clarity such a journey?
Three Dot-Connections in Leadership Vision: Vision is to zoom into the future as if it were closer. Top leaders are supposed to be the guiding force in the organization or even with a broader scope, envisioning and leading it towards its future. Every C-level leader must participate in creating and shaping a company's vision. A visionary changes the course of business by seeing beyond what all other see or by charting new revenue or growth through the creation of a new product or market; or share their perception about future trends of business such as digitalization, innovation, or globalization. Here are three dot-connections in leadership vision. 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
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 weekly insight of the “Future of CIO” blog.The Weekly Insight of the “Future of CIO” Blog 12/13/2015Talent Management Brief: See Through Talent from Different Angles Dec. 2015: 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?
CIO’s Digital Agenda XI - Running IT as an Innovation Engine. Majority of IT organizations today are still running at industrial speed, stick at the low or mid level of maturity, although technology is more often than not, the disruptive force for business and industry innovation, IT organizations seem to have a tendency to align with the slow changing parts of the organization, so how should CIOs prepare for the digital disruption and speed up accordingly? Here is the CIO’s Digital Agenda to run IT as an innovation engine.Three Mentalities Enlarge Digital Gaps: Lots have been said about transition and transformation to agile. Most organizations are already using agile of some form or shape. However, the business level agile transformation is a continuous journey. Like chicken and egg story. Do you first start with cultural transformation or start with agile adoption? Agile transformation is an important step in digital transformation, from doing Agile to being agile, how to manage it in a more effective way?The Shift from “Doing Agile” to “Being Agile”: Agile is an emerging methodology to manage software projects. Agility is a business capability to sense, respond, and act to changes. By following a set of Agile principles and philosophy, leading organizations is transforming from “doing Agile,” to “being Agile.” What’s the most important clarity such a journey?
Three Dot-Connections in Leadership Vision: Vision is to zoom into the future as if it were closer. Top leaders are supposed to be the guiding force in the organization or even with a broader scope, envisioning and leading it towards its future. Every C-level leader must participate in creating and shaping a company's vision. A visionary changes the course of business by seeing beyond what all other see or by charting new revenue or growth through the creation of a new product or market; or share their perception about future trends of business such as digitalization, innovation, or globalization. Here are three dot-connections in leadership vision. 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
Digital Master Tuning #115: Three Digital Mentalities to Bridge Digital Gaps
A problem-solving mind focuses on keeping the end in mind, to solve the PROBLEMS in optimal ways.
Digital is the age of explosive information, hyperconnectivity, fierce competition, although the physical obstacles can not separate people from communication, but still, there are walls at people’s heart and gaps in their minds. We identified "Three Mentalities which Enlarge the Digital Gaps" in the previous posting, here we also discuss three mentalities to bridge digital gaps.
Simplicity mind: Complication causes uncertainty, insecurity and a sense of incompetence. Labels influence the mind to look at things their way which could be the root of all complications.When things get more and more complicated, the misunderstanding pop up, and the digital gaps enlarge. Simplicity is a behavioral attitude to see things as and what and where they are and be content and cool as it is. Often human cannot live the life with simplicity and keep making it complicated, and when it is complicated we make it more complicated instead of simplifying. Very rare case we find people with simple mind, simple thought and who gets on to simplifying everything being passionate for simplicity, be it thought, procedures, systems, life, nature, though we know every intelligence has certain complexity in it, complexity is not equal to complication, complexity is sometimes necessary, but complication can always be optimized. Logically, simplifying the complicated thing is an optimal and smart choice, for most of people, it is the other way round. They make simplicity as the source to make anything and everything complicated. It is not that they are not intelligent, it is just that they can't live with simplicity. Complexity arises not from nothing. Humans create, though unintentionally in most cases their own problems.Therefore, they have to untie the knots they made themselves. Simplicity does make a peaceful mind, thus, a peaceful life, and a peaceful world. So simplicity can bridge the gaps, harmonize, and create synergy to let positivity flow.
Problem-Solving Mind: A problem-solving mind focuses on keeping the end in mind, to solving the PROBLEMS in optimal ways. What’s the problem-solving mindset though? It is a multidimensional-intelligent mindset. It takes big picture type of Strategic Thinking and the scientific logic to dig through the root cause of problems. It is a sense of perspective, stepping back to see a bigger picture than others. It takes Critical Thinking to frame the right problem and empathetic thinking to address the correct need. Problem solving is about seeing a problem and actually finding a solution to that problem. Ultimately addressing the correct need is what determines the right problem. It is also important to apply CREATIVITY in a recursive way for problem-solving. Creative and methodical solvers exhibited different activity in areas of the brain that process visual information. It also takes collective thinking and collaborative mindset to brainstorm the solutions. There is as much Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Strategic Thinking and more thought processes that go into problem identification as well as solution discovering!
Systems Thinking: Systems Thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than isolated things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.” You cannot understand a cell, a living thing, a brain structure, an organization, or a culture if you isolate it from its context. The relationship is everything. In a broader sense. Systems Thinking is a path to greater awareness. Because it allows us to be integral and not separate from the world. Therefore, Systems Thinking can bridge the digital gaps. "Awareness" is a mixed word and it makes more sense to be aware of real boundaries than it does to disregard boundaries in trying to be "more aware." It’s important to apply Systems Thinking in framing the right questions before answering them, and it’s also important to leverage a good set of Systems Thinking tools to propose solutions. Although Systems Thinking might slow down the decision-making scenario, for strategic or any critical decisions, it’s the necessary thinking process to do both analytics and synthesis, to see both trees and forest, either for decision-making or problem-solving.
We are living in the era of opening the new page of innovation, to focus on solving more thorny problems and overcoming the common challenges facing human species. However, for many traditional organizations, they aren´t yet in the knowledge economy, they continue to act as expected in the economy of scarcity and live in the silos, presenting difficulties to share the insight and wisdom, and today in order to innovate and be more progress, to take advantage of all information available, you need to trust and share diversified views and create new knowledge. Knowledge and creativity are the two faces of same coin innovation. We are in the knowledge economy and cutting-edge innovation era, digital leaders, and professionals have to build these true digital mindsets to focus on problem-solving via following simplicity principle, understanding things holistically and taking approaches systematically.
Digital Master Featured URLs:Digital Master Author Home PageDigital Master on Future of CIO BlogDigital Master at FlipboardDigital Master at TwitterDigital Master on LinkedinGoodreads Author’s Home PageDigital Master Introduction, Fun Quiz on SlideshareDigital Master Introduction on YoutubeDigital Master Online Order Links:
Digital Master on AmazonDigital Master on B&NDigital Master on Apple iTunesDigital Master on LuLuDigital Master on Google BooksDigital Master on KOBODigital Master on FeedbooksDigital Master on BOL
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital is the age of explosive information, hyperconnectivity, fierce competition, although the physical obstacles can not separate people from communication, but still, there are walls at people’s heart and gaps in their minds. We identified "Three Mentalities which Enlarge the Digital Gaps" in the previous posting, here we also discuss three mentalities to bridge digital gaps.
Simplicity mind: Complication causes uncertainty, insecurity and a sense of incompetence. Labels influence the mind to look at things their way which could be the root of all complications.When things get more and more complicated, the misunderstanding pop up, and the digital gaps enlarge. Simplicity is a behavioral attitude to see things as and what and where they are and be content and cool as it is. Often human cannot live the life with simplicity and keep making it complicated, and when it is complicated we make it more complicated instead of simplifying. Very rare case we find people with simple mind, simple thought and who gets on to simplifying everything being passionate for simplicity, be it thought, procedures, systems, life, nature, though we know every intelligence has certain complexity in it, complexity is not equal to complication, complexity is sometimes necessary, but complication can always be optimized. Logically, simplifying the complicated thing is an optimal and smart choice, for most of people, it is the other way round. They make simplicity as the source to make anything and everything complicated. It is not that they are not intelligent, it is just that they can't live with simplicity. Complexity arises not from nothing. Humans create, though unintentionally in most cases their own problems.Therefore, they have to untie the knots they made themselves. Simplicity does make a peaceful mind, thus, a peaceful life, and a peaceful world. So simplicity can bridge the gaps, harmonize, and create synergy to let positivity flow.
Problem-Solving Mind: A problem-solving mind focuses on keeping the end in mind, to solving the PROBLEMS in optimal ways. What’s the problem-solving mindset though? It is a multidimensional-intelligent mindset. It takes big picture type of Strategic Thinking and the scientific logic to dig through the root cause of problems. It is a sense of perspective, stepping back to see a bigger picture than others. It takes Critical Thinking to frame the right problem and empathetic thinking to address the correct need. Problem solving is about seeing a problem and actually finding a solution to that problem. Ultimately addressing the correct need is what determines the right problem. It is also important to apply CREATIVITY in a recursive way for problem-solving. Creative and methodical solvers exhibited different activity in areas of the brain that process visual information. It also takes collective thinking and collaborative mindset to brainstorm the solutions. There is as much Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Strategic Thinking and more thought processes that go into problem identification as well as solution discovering!
Systems Thinking: Systems Thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than isolated things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.” You cannot understand a cell, a living thing, a brain structure, an organization, or a culture if you isolate it from its context. The relationship is everything. In a broader sense. Systems Thinking is a path to greater awareness. Because it allows us to be integral and not separate from the world. Therefore, Systems Thinking can bridge the digital gaps. "Awareness" is a mixed word and it makes more sense to be aware of real boundaries than it does to disregard boundaries in trying to be "more aware." It’s important to apply Systems Thinking in framing the right questions before answering them, and it’s also important to leverage a good set of Systems Thinking tools to propose solutions. Although Systems Thinking might slow down the decision-making scenario, for strategic or any critical decisions, it’s the necessary thinking process to do both analytics and synthesis, to see both trees and forest, either for decision-making or problem-solving.We are living in the era of opening the new page of innovation, to focus on solving more thorny problems and overcoming the common challenges facing human species. However, for many traditional organizations, they aren´t yet in the knowledge economy, they continue to act as expected in the economy of scarcity and live in the silos, presenting difficulties to share the insight and wisdom, and today in order to innovate and be more progress, to take advantage of all information available, you need to trust and share diversified views and create new knowledge. Knowledge and creativity are the two faces of same coin innovation. We are in the knowledge economy and cutting-edge innovation era, digital leaders, and professionals have to build these true digital mindsets to focus on problem-solving via following simplicity principle, understanding things holistically and taking approaches systematically.
Digital Master Featured URLs:Digital Master Author Home PageDigital Master on Future of CIO BlogDigital Master at FlipboardDigital Master at TwitterDigital Master on LinkedinGoodreads Author’s Home PageDigital Master Introduction, Fun Quiz on SlideshareDigital Master Introduction on YoutubeDigital Master Online Order Links:
Digital Master on AmazonDigital Master on B&NDigital Master on Apple iTunesDigital Master on LuLuDigital Master on Google BooksDigital Master on KOBODigital Master on FeedbooksDigital Master on BOL
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Digital Mentalities to Bridge Digital Gaps
A problem-solving mind focuses on keeping the end in mind, to solve the PROBLEMS in optimal ways.
Digital is the age of explosive information, hyperconnectivity, fierce competition, although the physical obstacles can not separate people from communication, but still, there are walls at people’s heart and gaps in their minds. We identified "Three Mentalities which Enlarge the Digital Gaps" in the previous posting, here we also discuss three mentalities to bridge digital gaps.
Simplicity mind: Complication causes uncertainty, insecurity and a sense of incompetence. Labels influence the mind to look at things their way which could be the root of all complications.When things get more and more complicated, the misunderstanding pop up, and the digital gaps enlarge. Simplicity is a behavioral attitude to see things as and what and where they are and be content and cool as it is. Often human cannot live the life with simplicity and keep making it complicated, and when it is complicated we make it more complicated instead of simplifying. Very rare case we find people with simple mind, simple thought and who gets on to simplifying everything being passionate for simplicity, be it thought, procedures, systems, life, nature, though we know every intelligence has certain complexity in it, complexity is not equal to complication, complexity is sometimes necessary, but complication can always be optimized. Logically, simplifying the complicated thing is an optimal and smart choice, for most of people, it is the other way round. They make simplicity as the source to make anything and everything complicated. It is not that they are not intelligent, it is just that they can't live with simplicity. Complexity arises not from nothing. Humans create, though unintentionally in most cases their own problems.Therefore, they have to untie the knots they made themselves. Simplicity does make a peaceful mind, thus, a peaceful life, and a peaceful world. So simplicity can bridge the gaps, harmonize, and create synergy to let positivity flow.
Problem-Solving Mind: A problem-solving mind focuses on keeping the end in mind, to solving the PROBLEMS in optimal ways. What’s the problem-solving mindset though? It is a multidimensional-intelligent mindset. It takes big picture type of Strategic Thinking and the scientific logic to dig through the root cause of problems. It is a sense of perspective, stepping back to see a bigger picture than others. It takes Critical Thinking to frame the right problem and empathetic thinking to address the correct need. Problem solving is about seeing a problem and actually finding a solution to that problem. Ultimately addressing the correct need is what determines the right problem. It is also important to apply CREATIVITY in a recursive way for problem-solving. Creative and methodical solvers exhibited different activity in areas of the brain that process visual information. It also takes collective thinking and collaborative mindset to brainstorm the solutions. There is as much Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Strategic Thinking and more thought processes that go into problem identification as well as solution discovering!
Systems Thinking: Systems Thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than isolated things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.” You cannot understand a cell, a living thing, a brain structure, an organization, or a culture if you isolate it from its context. The relationship is everything. In a broader sense. Systems Thinking is a path to greater awareness. Because it allows us to be integral and not separate from the world. Therefore, Systems Thinking can bridge the digital gaps. "Awareness" is a mixed word and it makes more sense to be aware of real boundaries than it does to disregard boundaries in trying to be "more aware." It’s important to apply Systems Thinking in framing the right questions before answering them, and it’s also important to leverage a good set of Systems Thinking tools to propose solutions. Although Systems Thinking might slow down the decision-making scenario, for strategic or any critical decisions, it’s the necessary thinking process to do both analytics and synthesis, to see both trees and forest, either for decision-making or problem-solving.
We are living in the era of opening the new page of innovation, to focus on solving more thorny problems and overcoming the common challenges facing human species. However, for many traditional organizations, they aren´t yet in the knowledge economy, they continue to act as expected in the economy of scarcity and live in the silos, presenting difficulties to share the insight and wisdom, and today in order to innovate and be more progress, to take advantage of all information available, you need to trust and share diversified views and create new knowledge. Knowledge and creativity are the two faces of same coin innovation. We are in the knowledge economy and cutting-edge innovation era, digital leaders, and professionals have to build these true digital mindsets to focus on problem-solving via following simplicity principle, understanding things holistically and taking approaches systematically.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Digital is the age of explosive information, hyperconnectivity, fierce competition, although the physical obstacles can not separate people from communication, but still, there are walls at people’s heart and gaps in their minds. We identified "Three Mentalities which Enlarge the Digital Gaps" in the previous posting, here we also discuss three mentalities to bridge digital gaps.
Simplicity mind: Complication causes uncertainty, insecurity and a sense of incompetence. Labels influence the mind to look at things their way which could be the root of all complications.When things get more and more complicated, the misunderstanding pop up, and the digital gaps enlarge. Simplicity is a behavioral attitude to see things as and what and where they are and be content and cool as it is. Often human cannot live the life with simplicity and keep making it complicated, and when it is complicated we make it more complicated instead of simplifying. Very rare case we find people with simple mind, simple thought and who gets on to simplifying everything being passionate for simplicity, be it thought, procedures, systems, life, nature, though we know every intelligence has certain complexity in it, complexity is not equal to complication, complexity is sometimes necessary, but complication can always be optimized. Logically, simplifying the complicated thing is an optimal and smart choice, for most of people, it is the other way round. They make simplicity as the source to make anything and everything complicated. It is not that they are not intelligent, it is just that they can't live with simplicity. Complexity arises not from nothing. Humans create, though unintentionally in most cases their own problems.Therefore, they have to untie the knots they made themselves. Simplicity does make a peaceful mind, thus, a peaceful life, and a peaceful world. So simplicity can bridge the gaps, harmonize, and create synergy to let positivity flow.
Problem-Solving Mind: A problem-solving mind focuses on keeping the end in mind, to solving the PROBLEMS in optimal ways. What’s the problem-solving mindset though? It is a multidimensional-intelligent mindset. It takes big picture type of Strategic Thinking and the scientific logic to dig through the root cause of problems. It is a sense of perspective, stepping back to see a bigger picture than others. It takes Critical Thinking to frame the right problem and empathetic thinking to address the correct need. Problem solving is about seeing a problem and actually finding a solution to that problem. Ultimately addressing the correct need is what determines the right problem. It is also important to apply CREATIVITY in a recursive way for problem-solving. Creative and methodical solvers exhibited different activity in areas of the brain that process visual information. It also takes collective thinking and collaborative mindset to brainstorm the solutions. There is as much Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Strategic Thinking and more thought processes that go into problem identification as well as solution discovering!
Systems Thinking: Systems Thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than isolated things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.” You cannot understand a cell, a living thing, a brain structure, an organization, or a culture if you isolate it from its context. The relationship is everything. In a broader sense. Systems Thinking is a path to greater awareness. Because it allows us to be integral and not separate from the world. Therefore, Systems Thinking can bridge the digital gaps. "Awareness" is a mixed word and it makes more sense to be aware of real boundaries than it does to disregard boundaries in trying to be "more aware." It’s important to apply Systems Thinking in framing the right questions before answering them, and it’s also important to leverage a good set of Systems Thinking tools to propose solutions. Although Systems Thinking might slow down the decision-making scenario, for strategic or any critical decisions, it’s the necessary thinking process to do both analytics and synthesis, to see both trees and forest, either for decision-making or problem-solving.We are living in the era of opening the new page of innovation, to focus on solving more thorny problems and overcoming the common challenges facing human species. However, for many traditional organizations, they aren´t yet in the knowledge economy, they continue to act as expected in the economy of scarcity and live in the silos, presenting difficulties to share the insight and wisdom, and today in order to innovate and be more progress, to take advantage of all information available, you need to trust and share diversified views and create new knowledge. Knowledge and creativity are the two faces of same coin innovation. We are in the knowledge economy and cutting-edge innovation era, digital leaders, and professionals have to build these true digital mindsets to focus on problem-solving via following simplicity principle, understanding things holistically and taking approaches systematically.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Monthly Innovation Brief - Connecting the Dots of Innovation Dec.
Creativity needs a problem, and a creative person needs a purpose.
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.
Innovation is the light every organization is pursuing. Innovation takes the cycle of observing-questioning-connecting-networking-experimenting. From the management perspective, innovation is how to transform novel ideas to achieve its business value, due to the hyper-complexity of modern business, innovation is essentially about reducing the unnecessary business complexity to tackle the complexities of business dynamic. Here is a set of dot-connection of innovation management.
Connecting the Dots of InnovationBreakthrough Innovation vs. Incremental Innovation: There are two types of Innovations: (a) Radical which may be classified as Breakthrough or Disruptive, and (b) Evolutionary which has two components - Incremental and Spiral. Breakthrough Innovation and Incremental Innovation are not separated items, but it's rather a continuous flow that it goes from innovations that break a market or create a new one to the simplest continuous improvement.
Innovation vs. Continuous Improvement: Innovation is the larger umbrella term that encompasses continuous improvement, innovation is also expanding its horizon, goes beyond products/services innovation, it could mean business model/process /culture/leadership innovation, as well. They are either the same or different in many ways.
Bottom Up Innovation vs. Top Down Strategy: Digital organizations today face such a dilemma, on the one side; top-down strategy mapping is a logical step to ensuring smooth execution; on the other side, innovation takes freedom and flexibility, usually happens from bottom up. Consider a scenario, where an organization has performed the strategy mapping and made investment decisions for the budgetary period., and everyone knows this is what she/he needs to focus on and deliver, that's what his/her performance would be measured against. Now if someone sees an opportunity of innovation that doesn't directly map to his/her manager's objectives/scorecard for the year, chances are that the manager wouldn't cater to that idea; and the employee does not have motivations to innovate. So does strict top-down strategy mapping strangle bottom-up innovation?
Innovation vs. Standardization: Modern organizations have many hidden paradoxes, for example, customer satisfaction or employee satisfaction, which one comes first? Analytics or intuition, how to make a better decision? Here is another interesting dot connection debate: Standardization vs. Innovation, which one is more important?
Innovation vs. Complexity: Complexity is like energy. In the biosphere, for example, the "life potential" of a species is proportional to its complexity. Its fitness is proportional to its complexity. This is why the biological evolution is equivalent to an increase in complexity because this means an increase in functionality, which, in turn, means the ability to better cope with the uncertainties of a constantly changing environment. However, simplicity is ultimate sophistication, does complexity drive or hinder innovation?
Innovation vs. Simplicity: Innovation is the light every forward-looking organization is pursuing now; however, very few companies can well articulate their innovation process. Effective innovation requires a suitable process as part of the wider holistic 'system' for innovation, encompassing other key aspects such as culture, leadership, and strategy, but how to follow the simplicity principle when managing innovation?
Innovation vs. Invention Innovation comes from the Latin, "Innovare" - 'to change or alter things that already exist'. The invention, on the other hand, has its roots in the Latin word "Novare," 'to make new / create.' The difference between innovation and creativity is implementation. One of the good definitions of innovation is: "to transform the novel ideas into commercially successful products & achieving its business values.”
Innovation vs. Creativity Creativity is infused with an inner cohesion and comes from a vision of uniqueness. Creativity needs a problem, and a creative person needs a purpose; Innovation is to reinvent business, but not to reinvent the wheels. Innovation is about reinventing the business direction and purpose at any time. It defines strategy, profitability and relevance at any given time. If you do not, you become commoditized and just like so many others who offer the same product or service. Innovation allows one to stand out and above the rest.
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?
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
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.
Innovation is the light every organization is pursuing. Innovation takes the cycle of observing-questioning-connecting-networking-experimenting. From the management perspective, innovation is how to transform novel ideas to achieve its business value, due to the hyper-complexity of modern business, innovation is essentially about reducing the unnecessary business complexity to tackle the complexities of business dynamic. Here is a set of dot-connection of innovation management.
Connecting the Dots of InnovationBreakthrough Innovation vs. Incremental Innovation: There are two types of Innovations: (a) Radical which may be classified as Breakthrough or Disruptive, and (b) Evolutionary which has two components - Incremental and Spiral. Breakthrough Innovation and Incremental Innovation are not separated items, but it's rather a continuous flow that it goes from innovations that break a market or create a new one to the simplest continuous improvement.
Innovation vs. Continuous Improvement: Innovation is the larger umbrella term that encompasses continuous improvement, innovation is also expanding its horizon, goes beyond products/services innovation, it could mean business model/process /culture/leadership innovation, as well. They are either the same or different in many ways.
Bottom Up Innovation vs. Top Down Strategy: Digital organizations today face such a dilemma, on the one side; top-down strategy mapping is a logical step to ensuring smooth execution; on the other side, innovation takes freedom and flexibility, usually happens from bottom up. Consider a scenario, where an organization has performed the strategy mapping and made investment decisions for the budgetary period., and everyone knows this is what she/he needs to focus on and deliver, that's what his/her performance would be measured against. Now if someone sees an opportunity of innovation that doesn't directly map to his/her manager's objectives/scorecard for the year, chances are that the manager wouldn't cater to that idea; and the employee does not have motivations to innovate. So does strict top-down strategy mapping strangle bottom-up innovation?
Innovation vs. Standardization: Modern organizations have many hidden paradoxes, for example, customer satisfaction or employee satisfaction, which one comes first? Analytics or intuition, how to make a better decision? Here is another interesting dot connection debate: Standardization vs. Innovation, which one is more important?
Innovation vs. Complexity: Complexity is like energy. In the biosphere, for example, the "life potential" of a species is proportional to its complexity. Its fitness is proportional to its complexity. This is why the biological evolution is equivalent to an increase in complexity because this means an increase in functionality, which, in turn, means the ability to better cope with the uncertainties of a constantly changing environment. However, simplicity is ultimate sophistication, does complexity drive or hinder innovation?
Innovation vs. Simplicity: Innovation is the light every forward-looking organization is pursuing now; however, very few companies can well articulate their innovation process. Effective innovation requires a suitable process as part of the wider holistic 'system' for innovation, encompassing other key aspects such as culture, leadership, and strategy, but how to follow the simplicity principle when managing innovation?
Innovation vs. Invention Innovation comes from the Latin, "Innovare" - 'to change or alter things that already exist'. The invention, on the other hand, has its roots in the Latin word "Novare," 'to make new / create.' The difference between innovation and creativity is implementation. One of the good definitions of innovation is: "to transform the novel ideas into commercially successful products & achieving its business values.”
Innovation vs. Creativity Creativity is infused with an inner cohesion and comes from a vision of uniqueness. Creativity needs a problem, and a creative person needs a purpose; Innovation is to reinvent business, but not to reinvent the wheels. Innovation is about reinventing the business direction and purpose at any time. It defines strategy, profitability and relevance at any given time. If you do not, you become commoditized and just like so many others who offer the same product or service. Innovation allows one to stand out and above the rest.
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?
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
December 12, 2015
CIO’s Digital Agenda XIII: Digital IT Principles, Portfolio and Performance
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.
Principles are general rules and guidelines, intended to be enduring and seldom amended, that inform and support the way in which an organization sets about fulfilling its mission. The style of the principle should be short and recognizable. Its definition describes "what" the principle means in the language understood by stakeholders. The motivation describes "why" the principle is important to achieving the organizational mission. The implications describe "how" the principle changes behavior.
Digital IT Principles, Portfolio, and PerformanceSeven IT Leadership Principles - First People – Then Process – Then Technology in that order. Develop and nurture a high-performing IT team. Strive to be leaner and more business-focused.
How to Set Guiding Principles for an IT Organization? - Principles are statements of values. Things that define why one make a decision one way or another. These core decision values guide the behavior of individuals within an organization. Thus, guiding principles need to be defined as core decision values, "why we make decisions the way we do."
IT Portfolio Management: Many IT organizations are overloaded, but under-budgeted, their significant portion of resources have been used to keep the light on, and maintain the current application portfolio, In a time when IT departments are being asked to do more and more when budgets are not increasing, where does the money come from for innovation? Wouldn't it be useful to know where there are unused licenses? Wouldn't it be useful to know where you have multiple applications doing the same thing in different areas of the business? And wouldn't it be useful to profile your users based on what they use and need and then provide them with only those applications? To put simply, what are the barriers to managing a balanced IT portfolio, how to run IT more effectively, and do more with innovation?
The Science & Art of Portfolio, Program & Project Management? There’s paradoxical view about PMO (Project Management Office) or PPMO (Program & Portfolio Management Office), on one side, PMO plays a significant role in project delivery, portfolio optimization, and governance; on the other side, from industry survey: In some cases, the IT organization's performance may improve once the PMO was eliminated. The debate point is: Should project management be centralized or decentralized? How to maximize business value through portfolio, program and project management?
Five Pondering Why IT Project Fails: In the United States, we spend more than $250 billion each year on IT application development, statistically, 31% of projects will be canceled before they ever get completed., 53% of projects will cost twice as of their original estimates, overall, the success rate is less than 30%. Why did the project fail? From symptoms to root causes -what are the major factors that cause software projects to fail? What are the key ingredients that can reduce project failure?
Five "Super-Pitfalls" Why Large IT Projects Fail. Major IT projects have much higher percentage of the failure rate than other business initiatives, further, large IT projects fail even more frequently than the smaller project and cause significant damage for the organization in both short term and long run. Approximately there are at least 40 failure-factors that seem to repeat themselves in the industry studies, which can be grouped into categories like planning and control, strategic fit, scope, commitment and participation, communication, management and leadership, risk management and a few others. But, besides main aspects listed here to lead average IT project fail, what are those “super-pitfalls” to cause the large “Mighty Project” fall?
CIO's Four Views of IT KPIs IT is pervasive in any contemporary enterprise today, however, most of IT organizations still get stuck into lower level maturity, with a reputation as a cost center, IT should work with stakeholders to develop KPIs that show how IT is improving business and enforcing business capabilities. Here are four views of KPIs, from IT cost breakdown to IT Performance quadrant; from PMO measure to business capability metrics.
Does IT Need A Dashboard to Show Value to the Organization?-As internal IT faces competition for the first time from end users with their own devices and App Store solutions and cloud providers that are trumpeting “better” economics and faster time to value, one has to ask the question, “how IT “markets” its activities and benefits to the organization it serves”, “how is IT showcasing the value it brings?”
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
Leadership brand is less about "HOW," and more about "WHY”
If using one word to convey your leadership brand, what would it be?
It is the holiday season, many people start shopping the Holiday gifts, and wrap them up. If leadership brand is like the gift box, what is it more about? The fancy box itself, or the content inside? So what’s the substantial content inside the leadership box, and how to build a strong leadership brand?
Authenticity: Leadership brand is less about "HOW," more about "WHY," and “WHAT.” Leadership brand is less about what you look - the stereotypical leadership, and more about what you think - thought leadership. Why do you want to be a leader, and which value can you bring in. A personal brand is the total experience of others capturing the “yourness” of you on who you are and what you represent as an individual; as a leader. It means the inner you, who are you, from the bottom of your heart, the color of your character, and the top of your mind. Once you discover who you truly are, allow those good values to guide you, the words will flow and will take you places you never thought you could go. Being able to quickly articulate the value that you bring to others is critical to helping others learn about how you can benefit them. For example, if using one word to convey your leadership brand, what would it be - Innovation, Wisdom, Empathy, Authenticity, Visionary, etc, or the opposite -Dictatorship, Stupidity, Narcissism, or Fake., etc. If you are unclear about your own value, others have no hope of understanding how you can help them, and will move on to someone they can understand.
Vision: Leadership is forward-looking, to make progress. Leadership starts with having a vision, then developing a plan to achieve it. In all cases, a vision of the future is the key to getting started as a leader. Top leaders are visionary roles, it sets the direction for the enterprise (internal and/or external). If they are not visionary, then they should not be called a CXO. A CXO must be able to add value to an organization through strategy, and strategic thinking involves being visionary. That's a given.
Influence: Branding values is practicing behaviors in oneself. Sometimes there’s gap between self- reflection and how others viewing you due to social, cultural or cognizant difference, so leaders have to make influence on toning ecosystem: The consistency of connecting dots needs to be in the practice of the many great values, highlight some unique and outstanding ones as a brand and a personal tagline. A good brand starts with the person being absolutely clear about what they do, who they will do it for, and crystal clarity about what value they will bring to the table: from creating a solid vision and mission statement, sharing knowledge and wisdom to act the way following well-set principles, presenting strong character, and doing it consistently.
Intelligence: What keeps leaders successful is the intellectual curiosity and ability to continuously be open to learning and applying these learnings as they move forward. The authentic leaders with high and multi-intelligence have adaptability, consistency, and empathy to master business dynamic and cultural differences. They present the ability to manage COMPLEXITY in high digital transparency and stressful digital dynamic. Make fair judgment: Leverage information, analyze and synthesize accordingly. “Believe half of what you see, nothing that you hear, and everything you feel." - Nick C. Ciccone
Empathy is a great leadership quality that's often overlooked. Empathy is about thinking as if you were in the other party's position. The power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person's feelings; or the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. Empathy means using the right language with the right people. Nothing in the world, in business or in life, is black and white, there is a full spectrum of colors. It could be hinting at another important skill for great leaders, which is respecting other people as if you were in their position, understand things from different angles, and "treat others the same by treating them differently," as late Steve Convey well articulated.
Creativity: Creativity is the #1 skill in demand in the digital era. Creativity is not a "thing," it´s a process that happens as a proactive mental activity to a problem. Creativity is as much defined by the problem as by the capacity of the individual to connect things to resolve that problem in new and sometimes unexpected ways. The digital leaders of the future sense, feel, read, imagine and intuit possibilities in the digital paradigm shift, the crowd-sourcing or brainstorming is happening in real time with people and plays spontaneous networks of human and business operational concerns, to co-solve many thorny problems and overcome numerous challenges facing humanity.
Imagine if you were a gift receiver, would you prefer a fancy empty gift box or a fine box with the most wanted gift inside? The first impression though is important, still, leadership practice needs to be a daily activity and continuous delivery, and building a strong leadership brand is a long lasting journey with focus and dedication.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
It is the holiday season, many people start shopping the Holiday gifts, and wrap them up. If leadership brand is like the gift box, what is it more about? The fancy box itself, or the content inside? So what’s the substantial content inside the leadership box, and how to build a strong leadership brand?
Authenticity: Leadership brand is less about "HOW," more about "WHY," and “WHAT.” Leadership brand is less about what you look - the stereotypical leadership, and more about what you think - thought leadership. Why do you want to be a leader, and which value can you bring in. A personal brand is the total experience of others capturing the “yourness” of you on who you are and what you represent as an individual; as a leader. It means the inner you, who are you, from the bottom of your heart, the color of your character, and the top of your mind. Once you discover who you truly are, allow those good values to guide you, the words will flow and will take you places you never thought you could go. Being able to quickly articulate the value that you bring to others is critical to helping others learn about how you can benefit them. For example, if using one word to convey your leadership brand, what would it be - Innovation, Wisdom, Empathy, Authenticity, Visionary, etc, or the opposite -Dictatorship, Stupidity, Narcissism, or Fake., etc. If you are unclear about your own value, others have no hope of understanding how you can help them, and will move on to someone they can understand.
Vision: Leadership is forward-looking, to make progress. Leadership starts with having a vision, then developing a plan to achieve it. In all cases, a vision of the future is the key to getting started as a leader. Top leaders are visionary roles, it sets the direction for the enterprise (internal and/or external). If they are not visionary, then they should not be called a CXO. A CXO must be able to add value to an organization through strategy, and strategic thinking involves being visionary. That's a given.
Influence: Branding values is practicing behaviors in oneself. Sometimes there’s gap between self- reflection and how others viewing you due to social, cultural or cognizant difference, so leaders have to make influence on toning ecosystem: The consistency of connecting dots needs to be in the practice of the many great values, highlight some unique and outstanding ones as a brand and a personal tagline. A good brand starts with the person being absolutely clear about what they do, who they will do it for, and crystal clarity about what value they will bring to the table: from creating a solid vision and mission statement, sharing knowledge and wisdom to act the way following well-set principles, presenting strong character, and doing it consistently.
Intelligence: What keeps leaders successful is the intellectual curiosity and ability to continuously be open to learning and applying these learnings as they move forward. The authentic leaders with high and multi-intelligence have adaptability, consistency, and empathy to master business dynamic and cultural differences. They present the ability to manage COMPLEXITY in high digital transparency and stressful digital dynamic. Make fair judgment: Leverage information, analyze and synthesize accordingly. “Believe half of what you see, nothing that you hear, and everything you feel." - Nick C. Ciccone
Empathy is a great leadership quality that's often overlooked. Empathy is about thinking as if you were in the other party's position. The power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person's feelings; or the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. Empathy means using the right language with the right people. Nothing in the world, in business or in life, is black and white, there is a full spectrum of colors. It could be hinting at another important skill for great leaders, which is respecting other people as if you were in their position, understand things from different angles, and "treat others the same by treating them differently," as late Steve Convey well articulated.
Creativity: Creativity is the #1 skill in demand in the digital era. Creativity is not a "thing," it´s a process that happens as a proactive mental activity to a problem. Creativity is as much defined by the problem as by the capacity of the individual to connect things to resolve that problem in new and sometimes unexpected ways. The digital leaders of the future sense, feel, read, imagine and intuit possibilities in the digital paradigm shift, the crowd-sourcing or brainstorming is happening in real time with people and plays spontaneous networks of human and business operational concerns, to co-solve many thorny problems and overcome numerous challenges facing humanity.
Imagine if you were a gift receiver, would you prefer a fancy empty gift box or a fine box with the most wanted gift inside? The first impression though is important, still, leadership practice needs to be a daily activity and continuous delivery, and building a strong leadership brand is a long lasting journey with focus and dedication.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three “B” Factors in Running a Digital IT
IT is at the crossroad to shift from industrial mode to digital mode, and be more propositive.
IT is working hard to transform from a cost center into a value center, but some of the challenges facing in IT valuation is that too often, IT is driving by a look at rear mirror only, not pay enough attention to the front window and create forward-looking view upon how to run IT smoothly, or only focus on ‘tangible’ value, with ignorance of ‘intangible’ one. So here we introduce three “B”s in running a digital IT:
Bimodal IT: Keep the balance of IT stability and speed. Technology enablement is always about planning, funding, designing, building, operating, securing, optimizing and balancing, but digital IT has faster speed. So you have to strike the right balance of stability and agility. From IT management perspective, bimodal IT intends to manage two separate, but coherent IT delivery modes. One focuses on stability to “keep the lights on,” the fundamental IT responsibility to support business and serve internal customers. However, such mode limits IT potential and even drag down the overall business speed. Hence, with the emerging digital technology trends such as SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud), many IT organizations now explore the second mode -running faster, modular, nimble and resilient IT with digital speed, to focus on IT agility -the IT capability and capacity to adapt to changes. At cloud era, IT organizations will have to keep both models: the on-premise models to keep IT stable and reliable; and the hybrid cloud model to take the path for IT growth and expansion, and cloud shift focuses on what's differentiating to the business, the "what" value of IT services rather than "how" to do it.
Balanced scoreboard: The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a strategy performance management tool - a semi-standard structured report, supported by design methods and automation tools, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. From strategy management perspective, the scorecard helps you a lot when it is into execution mode, not on the paper mode. The success of the strategy is not only based on how well you have planned but how well it is executed. It is very useful for facilitating discussions and ensuring decision makers understand the various trade-offs. One of the strengths of the scorecard is that they enable practical use of the success factors and performance management concepts. It puts these key success enablers in the spotlight for all team members and unifies their efforts to achieve the common goals. Scorecards help greatly with prioritization. It is too easy to be swamped by report and dashboards. The scorecard allows you to focus on the most important thing and doing them with efficiency.
Big Data Analytics and Decision Making: Businesses enter the digital era of Big Data, with business dynamic of velocity, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, the first priority of IT is to manage information effectively, and ensure the right people to get the right information to make the right decision at the right timing, because it will directly make impact on business’s short term bottom line and long time prosperity. The CIO is one of the leaders of the organization, he/she should be working hand in hand with the other leaders within the business to identify what the opportunities are to help the different departments work more efficiently. How can IT get the information to the business departments faster and cleaner in order to make better and faster business decisions? A key requirement for CIOs is to find problems that analytic can solve; rather than show up with a solution and then find a problem. It is the IT’s responsibility to understand the business problem and opportunity. Analytics by themselves are useful, but it is a hard sale when you don't understand the business problem. So that's always the challenge. How can IT get closer enough to the business? You need to understand enough to be able to not just ask "what's a problem we can help you with," but to be able to say "we see this problem based on our prior discussions and think we can work closely to solve it with you."
Indeed, IT is at the crossroad to shift from industrial mode to digital mode, either move up value chain & maturity level or get stuck as utility & cost center. IT needs to be ‘propositive,’ which is always giving ideas, leading ahead of the pack and breaking the status quo, focus on these “B’ factors, IT leaders can manage strategy-execution via balanced scoreboard, set the right priority, and improve IT performance and maturity cohesively.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
IT is working hard to transform from a cost center into a value center, but some of the challenges facing in IT valuation is that too often, IT is driving by a look at rear mirror only, not pay enough attention to the front window and create forward-looking view upon how to run IT smoothly, or only focus on ‘tangible’ value, with ignorance of ‘intangible’ one. So here we introduce three “B”s in running a digital IT:
Bimodal IT: Keep the balance of IT stability and speed. Technology enablement is always about planning, funding, designing, building, operating, securing, optimizing and balancing, but digital IT has faster speed. So you have to strike the right balance of stability and agility. From IT management perspective, bimodal IT intends to manage two separate, but coherent IT delivery modes. One focuses on stability to “keep the lights on,” the fundamental IT responsibility to support business and serve internal customers. However, such mode limits IT potential and even drag down the overall business speed. Hence, with the emerging digital technology trends such as SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud), many IT organizations now explore the second mode -running faster, modular, nimble and resilient IT with digital speed, to focus on IT agility -the IT capability and capacity to adapt to changes. At cloud era, IT organizations will have to keep both models: the on-premise models to keep IT stable and reliable; and the hybrid cloud model to take the path for IT growth and expansion, and cloud shift focuses on what's differentiating to the business, the "what" value of IT services rather than "how" to do it.
Balanced scoreboard: The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a strategy performance management tool - a semi-standard structured report, supported by design methods and automation tools, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. From strategy management perspective, the scorecard helps you a lot when it is into execution mode, not on the paper mode. The success of the strategy is not only based on how well you have planned but how well it is executed. It is very useful for facilitating discussions and ensuring decision makers understand the various trade-offs. One of the strengths of the scorecard is that they enable practical use of the success factors and performance management concepts. It puts these key success enablers in the spotlight for all team members and unifies their efforts to achieve the common goals. Scorecards help greatly with prioritization. It is too easy to be swamped by report and dashboards. The scorecard allows you to focus on the most important thing and doing them with efficiency.
Big Data Analytics and Decision Making: Businesses enter the digital era of Big Data, with business dynamic of velocity, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, the first priority of IT is to manage information effectively, and ensure the right people to get the right information to make the right decision at the right timing, because it will directly make impact on business’s short term bottom line and long time prosperity. The CIO is one of the leaders of the organization, he/she should be working hand in hand with the other leaders within the business to identify what the opportunities are to help the different departments work more efficiently. How can IT get the information to the business departments faster and cleaner in order to make better and faster business decisions? A key requirement for CIOs is to find problems that analytic can solve; rather than show up with a solution and then find a problem. It is the IT’s responsibility to understand the business problem and opportunity. Analytics by themselves are useful, but it is a hard sale when you don't understand the business problem. So that's always the challenge. How can IT get closer enough to the business? You need to understand enough to be able to not just ask "what's a problem we can help you with," but to be able to say "we see this problem based on our prior discussions and think we can work closely to solve it with you."Indeed, IT is at the crossroad to shift from industrial mode to digital mode, either move up value chain & maturity level or get stuck as utility & cost center. IT needs to be ‘propositive,’ which is always giving ideas, leading ahead of the pack and breaking the status quo, focus on these “B’ factors, IT leaders can manage strategy-execution via balanced scoreboard, set the right priority, and improve IT performance and maturity cohesively.Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
December 11, 2015
CIO’s Digital Agenda XII: How to Overcome Change Inertia
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1 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 within an organization, but more than two-thirds of change effort fail to achieve the expected results. What’re the barriers to cause the change failures, and how to make Change Management tangible rather than fluffy, and manage change lifecycle effectively?
How to Overcome Change Inertia
The Symptoms of Ineffective Team or Organization. Change is never for its own sake. The true reason behind the change is either due to the ineffectiveness of teams/organizations or the inefficiency of processes or practices. There are many common success factors in effective team or organization; perhaps every failure has its own causes but generally speaking, what are the symptoms of dysfunctional management?
Change, or Resistance to Change, What’s the Problem? Change is only constant, but most of change management effort fails. Indeed, change is difficult, some say, change is not a problem, the primary reason for change failure is resistance to change while the secondary reason is the inability of leaders to deal with resistance. What are the true problems behind the change, or what’re the real roadblocks to step into changes?
A Resistance Mind: How to Crack it and Manage Change Successfully: Change is the only constant, even change itself has been accelerated, however, more than 70% of corporate change management effort fails to achieve the expected result. Digital means flow, perhaps the root cause of change failure is due to such a static mindset, resistant to change, but what is the cause of such a resistance mind and how to crack it and manage change successfully.
What Factors keep Business from Championing transformational change? Organizations large or small are faced with more radical digital or management transformation now, however, change management (the overarching term includes both transformation and change) has very high failure rate overall, what factors keep business from championing transformational changes, or what are key success factors in driving transformation?
How to Get Ahead of the Change Curve: The change curve is a model of the states that people who are to change will go through because going through the downs of the change curve has a negative impact on productivity, leadership is required to guide people through the different phases in order to flatten the curve and to minimize the impact on productivity.
Embedding Creativity in Change Management: Too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crisis, and demands. This is the bureaucracy’s way of meeting the challenges. The perspective is often rational, an automatic cultural response; defending already existing structures, all that we take for granted, without questioning the underlying premises. So in order to make change both proactive and sustainable, shall you or how to embed creative mechanism in change management.
Have You Focused on Fixing the Wrong Cause of a Problem? As human species, we are still facing many problems and challenges. Either for individuals, organizations, or society as a whole, the problem-solving capability is crucial to surviving and thriving. However, many decision-makers fail to fully grasp and accurately perceive what leads to problems and difficulties. Often, events and patterns are observed on the surface, and then the action is taken, but that is too early. After observing events and patterns, there are the underlying structures, the mechanisms, that cause problems. And people lack critical thinking are usually never question because "it's the way things should be." Problem-solving in the majority of organizations today is woefully inadequate, so what happens when you focus on fixing the wrong cause of problems?
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
