Pearl Zhu's Blog, page 1382
December 7, 2015
Three Aspects of Agility Measurement
Business agility is the capability to adapt to changes.
Nowadays, “VUCA” (Velocity, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) is the new characteristics of the digital business, and the speed of change is accelerating. Therefore, agility - the business ability to sense, response, and take actions to changes, is a strategic imperative for companies’ surviving and thriving. But if you can only manage what you measure, how to measure business agility in order to continue building and improving business change capability and maturity?
Agile values and principles are best measured via linking what you want to achieve and top goals. We have a set of well-defined values and principles based on Agile Manifesto. Values and Principles are about what we believe and how we think. Neither of these is really amenable to direct measurement. And you will always have to tie these together to get the big picture of your organizational agility. In agile, measure directly what you want to achieve, what your organizational goals are like, such as go to the market time, cycle time to develop a feature, anything that you truly want to see results from. Some of the key measures of Agile effectiveness are Creating Value, Timely delivery, Teamwork and Productivity for the work done. In traditional command and control organizations, agility is very hard because they aren't built on trust, and there's often a great tension between the business and the delivery teams. It stops them becoming "fully" agile, and the business wants the comforting illusion of certainty and Gantt charts rather than capability. You can only progress overall as fast as the whole system you're operating in.
Measuring culture will help organizations understand “change inertia” and speed up agile adoption. Culture is the number one barrier to an Agile or overall digital transformation. So, measuring it although tough, is rather crucial and necessary. The goal measuring agility is to understand what it means for people. A person who looks at the values and principles and considers them to be self-evident truths about how the world of software development works, then that person probably has an agile mindset. If this person also has good knowledge of many techniques and practices, with insight about the set of principles and philosophy behind it, and it is also critically important that he or she gain the understanding of the contexts in which they are appropriate, and then that person is likely to be agile, and collectively, the true agile culture - the collective mindset is built on. Because culture is the collective mindset and behaviors. To measure culture variable, the pertinent question to answer is "How agile are we?" Overly rigid organizational structures - fixed plans, processes, and purposes cause an organization to resist external change up to a point, but eventually the stresses become too large and failure is inevitable. There are many corporate examples of this - where organizations are unable to adapt to major disruptive change because of their rigid inflexibility and lack of agility.
Measure the expected business agile traits such as resilience and transparency. One of the agile goals is to improve business resilience. For example, some Agile organizations support and encourage the idea of highlighting "mistakes" by those who made them and actually in some ways rewarding those team members. This, in turn, reduces risks and promotes feedback, learning, and transparency. In essence, the twin goals of an Agile transformation are to increase value received and decrease risk. 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. Agile transformation a journey and you can make a judgment on where people and organizations are on their journey, but none of that really matters unless collaboration is in place and business initiative is being delivered. You start there and move onward and upward.
The goal of agility measurement is to keep track of the most value-driven factors to lead business success. In most organizations, "value realized" is based on enhanced competitive advantage, and is usually measured in financial terms. These are usually increases in revenue/company valuation/user base or reductions in costs. What it really comes down to is an organization providing a culture that aligns its working with the Agile manifesto via a few important business aspects – interaction, iteration, improvement, and collaboration etc. You build a lot of trust and respect by letting people come up with what works best for them, and ultimately improving business agility and maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Nowadays, “VUCA” (Velocity, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) is the new characteristics of the digital business, and the speed of change is accelerating. Therefore, agility - the business ability to sense, response, and take actions to changes, is a strategic imperative for companies’ surviving and thriving. But if you can only manage what you measure, how to measure business agility in order to continue building and improving business change capability and maturity?
Agile values and principles are best measured via linking what you want to achieve and top goals. We have a set of well-defined values and principles based on Agile Manifesto. Values and Principles are about what we believe and how we think. Neither of these is really amenable to direct measurement. And you will always have to tie these together to get the big picture of your organizational agility. In agile, measure directly what you want to achieve, what your organizational goals are like, such as go to the market time, cycle time to develop a feature, anything that you truly want to see results from. Some of the key measures of Agile effectiveness are Creating Value, Timely delivery, Teamwork and Productivity for the work done. In traditional command and control organizations, agility is very hard because they aren't built on trust, and there's often a great tension between the business and the delivery teams. It stops them becoming "fully" agile, and the business wants the comforting illusion of certainty and Gantt charts rather than capability. You can only progress overall as fast as the whole system you're operating in.
Measuring culture will help organizations understand “change inertia” and speed up agile adoption. Culture is the number one barrier to an Agile or overall digital transformation. So, measuring it although tough, is rather crucial and necessary. The goal measuring agility is to understand what it means for people. A person who looks at the values and principles and considers them to be self-evident truths about how the world of software development works, then that person probably has an agile mindset. If this person also has good knowledge of many techniques and practices, with insight about the set of principles and philosophy behind it, and it is also critically important that he or she gain the understanding of the contexts in which they are appropriate, and then that person is likely to be agile, and collectively, the true agile culture - the collective mindset is built on. Because culture is the collective mindset and behaviors. To measure culture variable, the pertinent question to answer is "How agile are we?" Overly rigid organizational structures - fixed plans, processes, and purposes cause an organization to resist external change up to a point, but eventually the stresses become too large and failure is inevitable. There are many corporate examples of this - where organizations are unable to adapt to major disruptive change because of their rigid inflexibility and lack of agility.
Measure the expected business agile traits such as resilience and transparency. One of the agile goals is to improve business resilience. For example, some Agile organizations support and encourage the idea of highlighting "mistakes" by those who made them and actually in some ways rewarding those team members. This, in turn, reduces risks and promotes feedback, learning, and transparency. In essence, the twin goals of an Agile transformation are to increase value received and decrease risk. 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. Agile transformation a journey and you can make a judgment on where people and organizations are on their journey, but none of that really matters unless collaboration is in place and business initiative is being delivered. You start there and move onward and upward.
The goal of agility measurement is to keep track of the most value-driven factors to lead business success. In most organizations, "value realized" is based on enhanced competitive advantage, and is usually measured in financial terms. These are usually increases in revenue/company valuation/user base or reductions in costs. What it really comes down to is an organization providing a culture that aligns its working with the Agile manifesto via a few important business aspects – interaction, iteration, improvement, and collaboration etc. You build a lot of trust and respect by letting people come up with what works best for them, and ultimately improving business agility and maturity.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
December 6, 2015
CIO’s Digital Agenda X - Running a Digital-Flavored IT
Digital Flavored IT helps business to build a competitive set of capability and improve business agility.
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. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom.
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 X with different flavors of digital IT (Part II)
Running a Digital-Flavored IT
A Change Agent IT: With the emerging technological trends such as SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud) and IT consumerization & Internet of the Things, more often than not, IT plays a significant role in driving business changes, and CIO is the change agent for business transformation. Here comes both opportunities and responsibility.
A Strategic IT: Many organizations still consider IT as a maintenance department and a cost center, which lenses do you take to look into IT depends on the senior executives’ perspectives, background, and the organization’s culture as well. Forward-thinking IT organizations are at turning point of change from transactional IT to transformational IT and from operational IT to strategic IT.
An Influential IT? Fundamentally, the purpose of IT organization is to ensure the right information going to the right people at the right time and location in order to make the right decision. Indeed, IT is a key business decision influencer at information-explosion era, but more specifically, how does IT make an impact on the business decision, and how can IT improve business’s decision-making capabilities?
IT as a Better Business Partner (Part I) & (Part II): Many IT organizations are at transformation journey, from an industrial model to digital leap; from a cost center to value-added; from 'T'-technology driven to 'I'-Information focus, from alignment to engagement. But more specifically, how should IT leaders run IT as a better business partner?
A Digital Fit IT: Shall you put your IT on a Diet? We live in the era of information overload and “data obesity,” IT organizations at the center of such changes, also suffer from the redundant application maintenance and heavy legacy infrastructure, how to build a digital fit IT, shall you put your IT on a diet, and what's the single best method you've seen to reduce technology "bloat" in your company?
A Proactive Digital IT. In today's digital business environment, information is the lifeblood, and technology touches every phase of the business, the CIO must be totally involved and participate in every decision of upper management and be proactive so there are no surprises when decisions are made. Statistically, the firms that have the CIOs sitting with the board or management committee are getting things done faster and become cost-effective in the long run. Or to worth brainstorming, how to run a proactive digital IT?
IT as Digital Culture Catalyst: Nowadays, IT organizations play a more significant role in building business capability, agility, and maturity, and the predictors of the success for any organization are the quality of leadership and the strength of the culture, what changes should CIOs make in the culture of IT team, and how can IT even become the business culture catalyst?
A High-Mature IT: Information is the lifeblood of business and digital technology is more often the innovation disruptor. However, the majority of IT organizations still get stuck at the lower level of IT maturity as a back-office support function and cost center, how can you change a commodity into an innovative source of business performance? How can you run IT as a digital innovation engine? And how to improve IT maturity from a reactive service provider to a proactive business partner and beyond?
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.
Running a Digital Flavored IT I
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
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. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom.
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 X with different flavors of digital IT (Part II)
Running a Digital-Flavored IT
A Change Agent IT: With the emerging technological trends such as SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud) and IT consumerization & Internet of the Things, more often than not, IT plays a significant role in driving business changes, and CIO is the change agent for business transformation. Here comes both opportunities and responsibility.
A Strategic IT: Many organizations still consider IT as a maintenance department and a cost center, which lenses do you take to look into IT depends on the senior executives’ perspectives, background, and the organization’s culture as well. Forward-thinking IT organizations are at turning point of change from transactional IT to transformational IT and from operational IT to strategic IT.
An Influential IT? Fundamentally, the purpose of IT organization is to ensure the right information going to the right people at the right time and location in order to make the right decision. Indeed, IT is a key business decision influencer at information-explosion era, but more specifically, how does IT make an impact on the business decision, and how can IT improve business’s decision-making capabilities?
IT as a Better Business Partner (Part I) & (Part II): Many IT organizations are at transformation journey, from an industrial model to digital leap; from a cost center to value-added; from 'T'-technology driven to 'I'-Information focus, from alignment to engagement. But more specifically, how should IT leaders run IT as a better business partner?
A Digital Fit IT: Shall you put your IT on a Diet? We live in the era of information overload and “data obesity,” IT organizations at the center of such changes, also suffer from the redundant application maintenance and heavy legacy infrastructure, how to build a digital fit IT, shall you put your IT on a diet, and what's the single best method you've seen to reduce technology "bloat" in your company?
A Proactive Digital IT. In today's digital business environment, information is the lifeblood, and technology touches every phase of the business, the CIO must be totally involved and participate in every decision of upper management and be proactive so there are no surprises when decisions are made. Statistically, the firms that have the CIOs sitting with the board or management committee are getting things done faster and become cost-effective in the long run. Or to worth brainstorming, how to run a proactive digital IT?
IT as Digital Culture Catalyst: Nowadays, IT organizations play a more significant role in building business capability, agility, and maturity, and the predictors of the success for any organization are the quality of leadership and the strength of the culture, what changes should CIOs make in the culture of IT team, and how can IT even become the business culture catalyst?
A High-Mature IT: Information is the lifeblood of business and digital technology is more often the innovation disruptor. However, the majority of IT organizations still get stuck at the lower level of IT maturity as a back-office support function and cost center, how can you change a commodity into an innovative source of business performance? How can you run IT as a digital innovation engine? And how to improve IT maturity from a reactive service provider to a proactive business partner and beyond?
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.
Running a Digital Flavored IT I
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three “L”s in Running a Digital IT
A digital CIO’s legacy is based on his/her quality of being both an artist and a technologist.
IT is at the crossroad, the majority of IT organizations get stuck in the lower-level of maturity and struggle to prove their unique value, for helping the business gain competitive advantage. So what are the best ways to demonstrate IT value, and build competitive advantage. here we introduce three “L” factors in running a high-value digital IT.
Leveraging Information Management to problem-framing and decision making: One of the important goals to run a value-driven IT is to make sure the right people to get the right information at the right time to make the right decision. The information allows you to build an actionable insight as to how to move from one level to the other. It applies to the context and environment in which decisions are made. Information, inclusive of data, as input is the primary driver of decisions when it apply to automated systems, not human beings. Better and efficient information management can provide visibility into the business and certain kind of trends can be seen and the early decision can be made in order to launch new services, manage changes, and improvement in the services, and ultimately create business value, particularly for the long term.
Legacy IT Modernization: In many well established IT organizations, legacy IT systems and processes are critical for business’s survival, but also drag down the business speed of changes, and make their IT organization as a cost center, not a value creator. Therefore, IT consolidation, integration, modernization, cloudification, and innovation are the necessary steps in IT management life cycle, and from IT talent management perspective, It is also important to build an innovative IT workforce with talent people who can think differently, always shape the new box of thinking, mind the gap of the traditional way to solve the problems, establish insight into approach and style in different situations. They could become the innovation champions, to rejuvenate legacy IT, legacy process, legacy enterprise, legacy industries, and even ‘legacy” social-ecosystem. In addition, what’s the legacy of IT leadership? CIO needs to be enterprise ‘polyglot,’ to master both business language and IT terminology, architect dialect and culture tones; regional viewpoint and global perspective; the gap can only be bridged by ensuring that the CIO is an excellent communicator, who is business aware and only finally, technically aware. Key is Language - CIO needs to talk in commercial outcomes, not technical throughput; be seen to be leveraging current assets before seeking the latest techie toys; have team leaders partner with and even embed themselves in business functions so they can ensure IT folks understanding the commercial end point of their work rather than it being an abstract set of code. In short, CIO needs to talk like and actually deliver as a business executive who is also a great communicator not only understand multiple ‘languages’ but also know the business context and always bring insight to the table.
Logic based on in-depth understanding business processes, customer insight, and revenue model: The business is no longer satisfied with the hindsight or operational insight based on traditional BI solutions, they are more interested in knowing what’s in customers’ mind: both positive and negative feedback; what’s the products & service trends in the future, what will the business act for the next step to embrace the change., etc, invest the trend, not just your core business, it’s the mantra in today’s business environment. IT can both manage information and oversight business processes to provide data-based business logic to help the organization ride the wave, build the instant-on value added capability. The CIO understands the role of information in designing and bringing success to a business model. Being an integral part of the business units planning and budget processes, so the CIO has a clear understanding of the revenue drivers and helps business improve both bottom line efficiency and the top line business growth.
IT needs to develop systematic measure approach to assessing its multi-dimensional value beyond just monetary benefit via in-depth understanding about these “L” factors. It is important for management to calculating IT value-added contribution, rather than just pushing the technology out, because IT has to rebrand itself as a value creator and strategic business partner. And digital CIO’s legacy is based on his/her quality of being both an artist and technologist - in brilliantly imagining the vision, mission, and business models of tomorrow while architecting the ability to succeed in the missions and business models of today. Of equal importance, he/she must then be able to take the vision of the company and translate it to his/her staff, who collectively will help find a path and be responsible for the tactical execution in concert with other areas of the company. In short, running IT as a business. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
IT is at the crossroad, the majority of IT organizations get stuck in the lower-level of maturity and struggle to prove their unique value, for helping the business gain competitive advantage. So what are the best ways to demonstrate IT value, and build competitive advantage. here we introduce three “L” factors in running a high-value digital IT.
Leveraging Information Management to problem-framing and decision making: One of the important goals to run a value-driven IT is to make sure the right people to get the right information at the right time to make the right decision. The information allows you to build an actionable insight as to how to move from one level to the other. It applies to the context and environment in which decisions are made. Information, inclusive of data, as input is the primary driver of decisions when it apply to automated systems, not human beings. Better and efficient information management can provide visibility into the business and certain kind of trends can be seen and the early decision can be made in order to launch new services, manage changes, and improvement in the services, and ultimately create business value, particularly for the long term.
Legacy IT Modernization: In many well established IT organizations, legacy IT systems and processes are critical for business’s survival, but also drag down the business speed of changes, and make their IT organization as a cost center, not a value creator. Therefore, IT consolidation, integration, modernization, cloudification, and innovation are the necessary steps in IT management life cycle, and from IT talent management perspective, It is also important to build an innovative IT workforce with talent people who can think differently, always shape the new box of thinking, mind the gap of the traditional way to solve the problems, establish insight into approach and style in different situations. They could become the innovation champions, to rejuvenate legacy IT, legacy process, legacy enterprise, legacy industries, and even ‘legacy” social-ecosystem. In addition, what’s the legacy of IT leadership? CIO needs to be enterprise ‘polyglot,’ to master both business language and IT terminology, architect dialect and culture tones; regional viewpoint and global perspective; the gap can only be bridged by ensuring that the CIO is an excellent communicator, who is business aware and only finally, technically aware. Key is Language - CIO needs to talk in commercial outcomes, not technical throughput; be seen to be leveraging current assets before seeking the latest techie toys; have team leaders partner with and even embed themselves in business functions so they can ensure IT folks understanding the commercial end point of their work rather than it being an abstract set of code. In short, CIO needs to talk like and actually deliver as a business executive who is also a great communicator not only understand multiple ‘languages’ but also know the business context and always bring insight to the table.
Logic based on in-depth understanding business processes, customer insight, and revenue model: The business is no longer satisfied with the hindsight or operational insight based on traditional BI solutions, they are more interested in knowing what’s in customers’ mind: both positive and negative feedback; what’s the products & service trends in the future, what will the business act for the next step to embrace the change., etc, invest the trend, not just your core business, it’s the mantra in today’s business environment. IT can both manage information and oversight business processes to provide data-based business logic to help the organization ride the wave, build the instant-on value added capability. The CIO understands the role of information in designing and bringing success to a business model. Being an integral part of the business units planning and budget processes, so the CIO has a clear understanding of the revenue drivers and helps business improve both bottom line efficiency and the top line business growth. IT needs to develop systematic measure approach to assessing its multi-dimensional value beyond just monetary benefit via in-depth understanding about these “L” factors. It is important for management to calculating IT value-added contribution, rather than just pushing the technology out, because IT has to rebrand itself as a value creator and strategic business partner. And digital CIO’s legacy is based on his/her quality of being both an artist and technologist - in brilliantly imagining the vision, mission, and business models of tomorrow while architecting the ability to succeed in the missions and business models of today. Of equal importance, he/she must then be able to take the vision of the company and translate it to his/her staff, who collectively will help find a path and be responsible for the tactical execution in concert with other areas of the company. In short, running IT as a business. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Three Dot-Connections in Leadership Vision
Leadership vision is to be a guiding light and show the direction.
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.
Vision-strategy: Vision is where to go, Strategy is how to get there.A vision is how you see the future unfolding, how you dream about what the future will look like from your standpoint. A strategy is a way you will carry yourself out, your plan to make your vision a reality. Vision is the future you want to realize from a coordinated effort. The strategy is the systematic plan that assists you in employing your efforts towards achieving the desired output; with optimal utilization of your skill and available resources in the minimum time possible. Vision provides insight into where an organization needs to go and is future oriented. Vision is the end goal, the strategy is the plan to get there. Vision is the visual interpretation of your finest dream of, or what you desire to become. Which inspires you and your followers and stakeholders. Whereas strategy is the professional break down of your philosophy and methodology to achieve something. Vision is your point on the horizon, the strategy is how you will get there. Leadership vision is to be a guiding light and show the direction. A leader with a vision takes his/her organization through the necessary steps to achieve that vision.
Vision-Influence: Leadership is all about future and change. Leadership vision is to serve as an enabler. To clear the path, whether that be the elimination of obstacles or to provide coaching and guidance (influence) - so that the talent employees are limited only by their imagination. Being a leader means giving people confidence on where to go (vision) and how to get there, supporting them and also stretching them to live to their full potential, both individually and as members of a high performing team. To support effectiveness and achievement of final results, to ensure positive and inspiring working culture, to motivate, to be confident and trustworthy working with the people, having communication with stakeholders, and transform vision into the reality. Leadership vision is being great by making positive influence; without affecting anyone in any negative way. Being a leader takes one to have a desire to do better than others in certain domains, to practice thought leadership for making a profound influence, while creating themselves a platform of influence in wherever they are. Leadership is influence. So the vision and intention for becoming a leader are to facilitate and encourage, as change is often an uncomfortable, yet necessary part of reaching and maintaining success.
Vision-Innovation: "Vision" and "innovation" are different but complementary skills. "Vision" is about a destination and 'innovation' is about the better process, tools, cultures, etc. to get you there. If vision is about the "end" status, then innovation is the means to the end. “Vision" thing has to go hand in hand with execution and value contribution. Business leaders must DELIVER and deliver with creativity and innovation in order to outperform and be aligned within the defined objectives. Everyone in the leadership team has a gift and the future business is very complex. Business models and technologies are changing very rapidly, therefore, today’s business leaders must navigate through complexity based on the visions, and out beat competitors via innovation.
Vision is “must have,” not a “nice to have” quality for leaders, especially for C-level, if they are implementing the visions of other people, they are not the Chiefs; or if they are doing “administration” only, they are more as a manager, not a leader. Leadership is about direction via vision-strategy articulation; leadership is about change via vision-influence enablement, and leadership is about progress via vision-innovation game changing. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
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.
Vision-strategy: Vision is where to go, Strategy is how to get there.A vision is how you see the future unfolding, how you dream about what the future will look like from your standpoint. A strategy is a way you will carry yourself out, your plan to make your vision a reality. Vision is the future you want to realize from a coordinated effort. The strategy is the systematic plan that assists you in employing your efforts towards achieving the desired output; with optimal utilization of your skill and available resources in the minimum time possible. Vision provides insight into where an organization needs to go and is future oriented. Vision is the end goal, the strategy is the plan to get there. Vision is the visual interpretation of your finest dream of, or what you desire to become. Which inspires you and your followers and stakeholders. Whereas strategy is the professional break down of your philosophy and methodology to achieve something. Vision is your point on the horizon, the strategy is how you will get there. Leadership vision is to be a guiding light and show the direction. A leader with a vision takes his/her organization through the necessary steps to achieve that vision.
Vision-Influence: Leadership is all about future and change. Leadership vision is to serve as an enabler. To clear the path, whether that be the elimination of obstacles or to provide coaching and guidance (influence) - so that the talent employees are limited only by their imagination. Being a leader means giving people confidence on where to go (vision) and how to get there, supporting them and also stretching them to live to their full potential, both individually and as members of a high performing team. To support effectiveness and achievement of final results, to ensure positive and inspiring working culture, to motivate, to be confident and trustworthy working with the people, having communication with stakeholders, and transform vision into the reality. Leadership vision is being great by making positive influence; without affecting anyone in any negative way. Being a leader takes one to have a desire to do better than others in certain domains, to practice thought leadership for making a profound influence, while creating themselves a platform of influence in wherever they are. Leadership is influence. So the vision and intention for becoming a leader are to facilitate and encourage, as change is often an uncomfortable, yet necessary part of reaching and maintaining success.
Vision-Innovation: "Vision" and "innovation" are different but complementary skills. "Vision" is about a destination and 'innovation' is about the better process, tools, cultures, etc. to get you there. If vision is about the "end" status, then innovation is the means to the end. “Vision" thing has to go hand in hand with execution and value contribution. Business leaders must DELIVER and deliver with creativity and innovation in order to outperform and be aligned within the defined objectives. Everyone in the leadership team has a gift and the future business is very complex. Business models and technologies are changing very rapidly, therefore, today’s business leaders must navigate through complexity based on the visions, and out beat competitors via innovation. Vision is “must have,” not a “nice to have” quality for leaders, especially for C-level, if they are implementing the visions of other people, they are not the Chiefs; or if they are doing “administration” only, they are more as a manager, not a leader. Leadership is about direction via vision-strategy articulation; leadership is about change via vision-influence enablement, and leadership is about progress via vision-innovation game changing. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
December 5, 2015
The Spotlight on Digital CIOs Dec. 2015
Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges.
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1 million page views with about #2300th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the monthly strategy highlight of the “Future of CIO” blog.
Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges. It is not sufficient to only keep the light on. Regardless of which industry or the nature of organization you are in, being a digital leader will need to master the art of creating unique, differentiating value from piles of commoditized technologies, but more specifically, what are the digital-savvy CIOs doing to run IT as a value creator and innovation engine?
The Profiles of Digital CIOs II Dec. 2015CIO as ‘Chief Idea Officer’: Three Aspects of Idea Management: Innovation is the light every forward-looking organization is pursuing. However, innovation should no longer be treated as serendipity; it can be managed systematically and scientifically. From strategic planning, to resource allocation and funding, to program management, to rewards and recognitions, the comprehensive innovation management with platform support, and on-site program management can help an organization build a strong innovation program from the ground-up.
CIO as "Chief Investment Officer": How to Present IT Value to the Business? Successful CIOs know not only know the IT side but also understand the business, as CIO is not just the guy/gal running the PC help desk anymore. There are far larger, business-oriented responsibilities on the horizon, the skill set of CIO is going to transition from running IT infrastructure to best applying IT to business problems. Thus, on one side, CIO is a Chief "Intrapreneur" Officer to run IT as a startup, on the other hand, CIO acts as a “Chief Investment Officer” to scrutinize business case, master business language, and well prepare what if you have a seat at big table, how do you present effectively.
CIO as Chief Interaction Officer: How to Communicate with Board & Executive Peers Effectively? CIOs play a significant leadership role to convey the technological vision and interact with internal business executives or boards. In order to bridge the gap between business talks and IT talks, they are responsible for making sure that the IT meets the business requirements and works as an enabler. But what are the most effective way for CIOs to communicate: Board presentation, governance meeting; IT briefing, portal or informal discussion?
CIO as Chief Improvement Officer. (Part I) (Part II) (Part III): The “I” in CIO title is full of imagination; Chief Improvement Officer is a right fit for modern CIO role. CIOs need to have unique insight, technological vision to understand the business not only from the inside-out viewpoint but through outside-in customer’s lens. With that knowledge, CIOs can drive innovation to improve the hard business process and soft organizational culture by implementing technical solution, and improve IT and overall business agility and maturity.
CIOs as Chief Influence Officer: (Part II) Chief influence officer is one of the most pertinent personas for CIO in the 21st century since technology is ubiquitous in the information age. The CIO role by nature is fraught with paradox. The modern CIO need be both business strategist and IT manager, innovator and cost-cutter, visionary and situation-driven.However, the traditional big box hardware style of IT infrastructure is disappearing, and more invisible digitized IT backbone based on Cloud computing is emerging, modern CIO is no longer just the chief infrastructure officer to manage back office of functional IT, this strategic role is more based on the influence made across the organizational boundary, from innovation to sustainability, from talent management to cultural transformation. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes 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
The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1 million page views with about #2300th blog posting in 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. The content richness is not for its own sake, but to convey the vision and share the wisdom. Here is the monthly strategy highlight of the “Future of CIO” blog.
Modern CIOs have many personas and face great challenges. It is not sufficient to only keep the light on. Regardless of which industry or the nature of organization you are in, being a digital leader will need to master the art of creating unique, differentiating value from piles of commoditized technologies, but more specifically, what are the digital-savvy CIOs doing to run IT as a value creator and innovation engine?
The Profiles of Digital CIOs II Dec. 2015CIO as ‘Chief Idea Officer’: Three Aspects of Idea Management: Innovation is the light every forward-looking organization is pursuing. However, innovation should no longer be treated as serendipity; it can be managed systematically and scientifically. From strategic planning, to resource allocation and funding, to program management, to rewards and recognitions, the comprehensive innovation management with platform support, and on-site program management can help an organization build a strong innovation program from the ground-up.
CIO as "Chief Investment Officer": How to Present IT Value to the Business? Successful CIOs know not only know the IT side but also understand the business, as CIO is not just the guy/gal running the PC help desk anymore. There are far larger, business-oriented responsibilities on the horizon, the skill set of CIO is going to transition from running IT infrastructure to best applying IT to business problems. Thus, on one side, CIO is a Chief "Intrapreneur" Officer to run IT as a startup, on the other hand, CIO acts as a “Chief Investment Officer” to scrutinize business case, master business language, and well prepare what if you have a seat at big table, how do you present effectively.
CIO as Chief Interaction Officer: How to Communicate with Board & Executive Peers Effectively? CIOs play a significant leadership role to convey the technological vision and interact with internal business executives or boards. In order to bridge the gap between business talks and IT talks, they are responsible for making sure that the IT meets the business requirements and works as an enabler. But what are the most effective way for CIOs to communicate: Board presentation, governance meeting; IT briefing, portal or informal discussion?
CIO as Chief Improvement Officer. (Part I) (Part II) (Part III): The “I” in CIO title is full of imagination; Chief Improvement Officer is a right fit for modern CIO role. CIOs need to have unique insight, technological vision to understand the business not only from the inside-out viewpoint but through outside-in customer’s lens. With that knowledge, CIOs can drive innovation to improve the hard business process and soft organizational culture by implementing technical solution, and improve IT and overall business agility and maturity.
CIOs as Chief Influence Officer: (Part II) Chief influence officer is one of the most pertinent personas for CIO in the 21st century since technology is ubiquitous in the information age. The CIO role by nature is fraught with paradox. The modern CIO need be both business strategist and IT manager, innovator and cost-cutter, visionary and situation-driven.However, the traditional big box hardware style of IT infrastructure is disappearing, and more invisible digitized IT backbone based on Cloud computing is emerging, modern CIO is no longer just the chief infrastructure officer to manage back office of functional IT, this strategic role is more based on the influence made across the organizational boundary, from innovation to sustainability, from talent management to cultural transformation. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating the new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes 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
Three Questions to Assess a Person’s Professionalism
High professionalism is a crucial characteristic to influence organizational culture.
People are the most invaluable asset but also the weakest link in any organization today, the collective mindsets and behaviors shape corporate culture, and a company's culture helps define what a company is like. What it means to be part of the company, how to act in the company, what others in the company believe and strive for even how others see the company - the business brand. Therefore, high professionalism is a crucial characteristic to influence organizational culture. And it doesn’t mean if you had a profession, you would be automatically a well-respected professional with professionalism. An online dictionary defines “professionalism is the skill, good judgment, and polite behavior that is expected from a person who is trained to do a job well.” So here are three questions to assess a person’s professionalism.
Do you have the consistency of thought, words, behaviors, advice, and how you treat others, and so on? High-professionalism means authenticity. Nobody is perfect, we all have strength and weakness, focus or preference, but being professional doesn’t mean to just put on a poker face at the work. Being authentic means being true to that in every aspect: thinking, saying and doing. If this standard is internalized, then it should guide behavior. If it is not internalized but being implemented anyway, and one's thoughts and beliefs are not in consonance with this standard, then the individual's behavior will not be true to that standard, it will not be genuine. This dissonance will eventually become apparent. Being consistent during the good and tough moments is difficult for leaders as they advance in their career, but it directly impact leadership effectiveness, being authentic means that you have a clear vision and coherent thought to lead forward even the time flow. Leadership consistency helps to drive a positive culture which encouraging people to focus on who they are and pursue the purpose discovery, autonomy, and mastery.
Are you part of solutions, or part of problems of unprofessionalism? The great culture catalyzes positive mind, attitude, and behaviors; but discourage the negativity and unprofessionalism. Unprofessionalism can take on so many forms, from backbiting to rumor mongering; from negative bullying to psychological abusing, from office politics to unhealthy competition. Bullying is not just the loud obnoxious aggression, but it can also be subtle disrespect given to someone's ideas or efforts, especially when it causes undue harm to someone perceived value in doing their job. It is worth clarifying that the scale of the failure is in the eyes of the victim; today’s managers that grew in a competitive (either positive or negative) social environment, riding on waves of pressure, playing political smartness, may miss signs of suffering in their teams if they are not adequately focused. At the conversations about culture, we need to remember that it is the policies, procedures, rewards and retributions that drive and groom advanced mind and good behavior and it is the employee behavior that expresses "culture." Different employees may have a different expectation for the work they do and the workplace they go, but overall speaking, The right people with high professionalism make a positive influence on corporate culture and bring the wisdom to the workplace.
Do you have the soundness of judgment to make the right decisions? Today’s digital business is more dynamic and complex than ever, today’s digital professionals shouldn’t just be an order taker only, even you are not at the formal leadership position, you need to master at critical thinking, independent thinking, and analytics to make a sound judgment or wise decisions. Many people do wrong things, not because of ignorance, but because of poor judgment, due to the lack of comprehensive knowledge or insight, bias, or preconceived notions. So what are the root causes to make professionals lack of true professionalism in this regard? Do they lack independent thinking or critical reasoning? Do they think "too fast" without necessary "thinking slowly"? Do they focus too many trivial details, with ignorance of the big picture? Or do workplaces today lack of the set of policies and participles to encourage people behavior professionally? Wisdom is to be understood within this context.
As the old saying goes, the rumor stops at a wise person. High professionalism is an important quality for today’s multigenerational, multicultural and multidevicing workforce, and it is a foundation to bring wisdom in the workplace which often means 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
People are the most invaluable asset but also the weakest link in any organization today, the collective mindsets and behaviors shape corporate culture, and a company's culture helps define what a company is like. What it means to be part of the company, how to act in the company, what others in the company believe and strive for even how others see the company - the business brand. Therefore, high professionalism is a crucial characteristic to influence organizational culture. And it doesn’t mean if you had a profession, you would be automatically a well-respected professional with professionalism. An online dictionary defines “professionalism is the skill, good judgment, and polite behavior that is expected from a person who is trained to do a job well.” So here are three questions to assess a person’s professionalism.
Do you have the consistency of thought, words, behaviors, advice, and how you treat others, and so on? High-professionalism means authenticity. Nobody is perfect, we all have strength and weakness, focus or preference, but being professional doesn’t mean to just put on a poker face at the work. Being authentic means being true to that in every aspect: thinking, saying and doing. If this standard is internalized, then it should guide behavior. If it is not internalized but being implemented anyway, and one's thoughts and beliefs are not in consonance with this standard, then the individual's behavior will not be true to that standard, it will not be genuine. This dissonance will eventually become apparent. Being consistent during the good and tough moments is difficult for leaders as they advance in their career, but it directly impact leadership effectiveness, being authentic means that you have a clear vision and coherent thought to lead forward even the time flow. Leadership consistency helps to drive a positive culture which encouraging people to focus on who they are and pursue the purpose discovery, autonomy, and mastery.
Are you part of solutions, or part of problems of unprofessionalism? The great culture catalyzes positive mind, attitude, and behaviors; but discourage the negativity and unprofessionalism. Unprofessionalism can take on so many forms, from backbiting to rumor mongering; from negative bullying to psychological abusing, from office politics to unhealthy competition. Bullying is not just the loud obnoxious aggression, but it can also be subtle disrespect given to someone's ideas or efforts, especially when it causes undue harm to someone perceived value in doing their job. It is worth clarifying that the scale of the failure is in the eyes of the victim; today’s managers that grew in a competitive (either positive or negative) social environment, riding on waves of pressure, playing political smartness, may miss signs of suffering in their teams if they are not adequately focused. At the conversations about culture, we need to remember that it is the policies, procedures, rewards and retributions that drive and groom advanced mind and good behavior and it is the employee behavior that expresses "culture." Different employees may have a different expectation for the work they do and the workplace they go, but overall speaking, The right people with high professionalism make a positive influence on corporate culture and bring the wisdom to the workplace.
Do you have the soundness of judgment to make the right decisions? Today’s digital business is more dynamic and complex than ever, today’s digital professionals shouldn’t just be an order taker only, even you are not at the formal leadership position, you need to master at critical thinking, independent thinking, and analytics to make a sound judgment or wise decisions. Many people do wrong things, not because of ignorance, but because of poor judgment, due to the lack of comprehensive knowledge or insight, bias, or preconceived notions. So what are the root causes to make professionals lack of true professionalism in this regard? Do they lack independent thinking or critical reasoning? Do they think "too fast" without necessary "thinking slowly"? Do they focus too many trivial details, with ignorance of the big picture? Or do workplaces today lack of the set of policies and participles to encourage people behavior professionally? Wisdom is to be understood within this context.As the old saying goes, the rumor stops at a wise person. High professionalism is an important quality for today’s multigenerational, multicultural and multidevicing workforce, and it is a foundation to bring wisdom in the workplace which often means 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
Alignment and Autonomy in Agile
Both alignment and autonomy are two different things and both are required for agile teams to succeed.
Agile is the right mindset, methodology, or approach to enforcing interactive communication, and continuous improvement. There must be committed and continual engagement from the customer/ client/business. They must be part of the WE. To deliver products/services exactly what customers need, with outstanding quality, usability, and experience. In practice, alignment or autonomy, which one is more important for Agile success?
Both alignment and autonomy are very important. The team should be as autonomous as possible, and the stakeholders should be well aligned. Either failure would create a big problem to the development. Alignment on key things is critical for autonomy at scale. The extremes to both ends are either total chaos, anarchy or dictatorship. This is the similar notions of centralization vs decentralization. While organizations favor decentralization in an Agile world there are cases where economics, need for consistency, and scope of impact may push some decisions to a "higher authority." And teams that are well aligned on the 'what' and the 'why' are much more able to be very autonomous on the 'how.' It means they can determine which languages, tooling, development approach type decisions such as Scrum or Kanban or something else, etc. are appropriate to use. The disciplined approaches are important for Agile success, but sometimes intuition should take precedence or you fall back into "Best Practice" blindness. if you are aligned with other teams on bigger shared goals, you don't lack autonomy, but you agree to support those goals. You may make them a priority.
It's all about trusting and empowering teams, the nature of the project. For some goals, chaos and varying opinions are a good thing, because new ideas are more likely to come out of chaos and a diversity of people and opinions and more autonomy. This is important in early R&D work and very hard problems. That same chaos would ruin a project if different groups each with their own methods not collaborating with each other, or the project is in crisis mode and acting fast may be more important than choosing the perfect solution. In those cases, having a bunch of people argue the minuscule merits of one option or another will slow things down with little advantage. Sometimes the balance point isn't where we might think, but it's a fair bet that either end of the scale isn't where we want to be, whether anarchy/dictatorship; totally independent/perfectly aligned; chaos/discipline. If there's a contradiction, or if the team must choose between the two, then clearly the organization doesn't have alignment.
There is a need for alignment, consistency and adhering to central norms for architectures, tools, coding norms etc.. So typically to that extent individual teams are not completely autonomous as they would be in a single team agile set-up. The key is simplicity (or lack of it), especially in ecosystems, it should not be very hard to find competing priorities forcing decisions in favor of one choice over the other. For example, it could be that when architecture becomes too complex, refactoring is neglected even more by some teams (call it someone else's problem). Complexity is one cause for the divergence between alignment and autonomy and there may be others. And in certain situations, we may address only some aspects of autonomy until that advantage is also lost. There is a symbiotic relationship between various teams across the organization which leads to the realization of higher goals (such as keeping the organization alive and growing). It is helpful to visualize concepts and relationships in relative to each other, this way of looking helps to appreciate that autonomy and alignment are not rivals but two faces of the same coin, where there is alignment (as an organization) then autonomous action ought to be possible while still aligning with an organization’s vision.
Agile is a set of processes and methodologies. But in the big scheme of things, it's just another tool to get things done. Agile methodology is first and foremost about delivering early and often, and delivering the most valuable software soonest. If some agile shops have drifted from this primary value, then it's not a new methodology they need, but perhaps some serious readjustment. To follow accountable agile, one should always work in agile using the requisite structure in an organization, practicing agile requisitely makes it very powerful, It is more accountable and becomes very strong in management.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Agile is the right mindset, methodology, or approach to enforcing interactive communication, and continuous improvement. There must be committed and continual engagement from the customer/ client/business. They must be part of the WE. To deliver products/services exactly what customers need, with outstanding quality, usability, and experience. In practice, alignment or autonomy, which one is more important for Agile success?
Both alignment and autonomy are very important. The team should be as autonomous as possible, and the stakeholders should be well aligned. Either failure would create a big problem to the development. Alignment on key things is critical for autonomy at scale. The extremes to both ends are either total chaos, anarchy or dictatorship. This is the similar notions of centralization vs decentralization. While organizations favor decentralization in an Agile world there are cases where economics, need for consistency, and scope of impact may push some decisions to a "higher authority." And teams that are well aligned on the 'what' and the 'why' are much more able to be very autonomous on the 'how.' It means they can determine which languages, tooling, development approach type decisions such as Scrum or Kanban or something else, etc. are appropriate to use. The disciplined approaches are important for Agile success, but sometimes intuition should take precedence or you fall back into "Best Practice" blindness. if you are aligned with other teams on bigger shared goals, you don't lack autonomy, but you agree to support those goals. You may make them a priority.
It's all about trusting and empowering teams, the nature of the project. For some goals, chaos and varying opinions are a good thing, because new ideas are more likely to come out of chaos and a diversity of people and opinions and more autonomy. This is important in early R&D work and very hard problems. That same chaos would ruin a project if different groups each with their own methods not collaborating with each other, or the project is in crisis mode and acting fast may be more important than choosing the perfect solution. In those cases, having a bunch of people argue the minuscule merits of one option or another will slow things down with little advantage. Sometimes the balance point isn't where we might think, but it's a fair bet that either end of the scale isn't where we want to be, whether anarchy/dictatorship; totally independent/perfectly aligned; chaos/discipline. If there's a contradiction, or if the team must choose between the two, then clearly the organization doesn't have alignment.
There is a need for alignment, consistency and adhering to central norms for architectures, tools, coding norms etc.. So typically to that extent individual teams are not completely autonomous as they would be in a single team agile set-up. The key is simplicity (or lack of it), especially in ecosystems, it should not be very hard to find competing priorities forcing decisions in favor of one choice over the other. For example, it could be that when architecture becomes too complex, refactoring is neglected even more by some teams (call it someone else's problem). Complexity is one cause for the divergence between alignment and autonomy and there may be others. And in certain situations, we may address only some aspects of autonomy until that advantage is also lost. There is a symbiotic relationship between various teams across the organization which leads to the realization of higher goals (such as keeping the organization alive and growing). It is helpful to visualize concepts and relationships in relative to each other, this way of looking helps to appreciate that autonomy and alignment are not rivals but two faces of the same coin, where there is alignment (as an organization) then autonomous action ought to be possible while still aligning with an organization’s vision.
Agile is a set of processes and methodologies. But in the big scheme of things, it's just another tool to get things done. Agile methodology is first and foremost about delivering early and often, and delivering the most valuable software soonest. If some agile shops have drifted from this primary value, then it's not a new methodology they need, but perhaps some serious readjustment. To follow accountable agile, one should always work in agile using the requisite structure in an organization, practicing agile requisitely makes it very powerful, It is more accountable and becomes very strong in management.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
December 4, 2015
Digital CIOs’ Agenda IX: IT Talent Management Innovation
Measuring knowledge worker’s performance is challenging because there are many variables to leverage.
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. 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 from IT workforce management perspective, is IT skill gap fact or fiction, how to fill it, and how to innovate IT talent management?
IT Talent Management InnovationIs IT skills Gap Fact or Fiction? Part I, Part II: Close IT Skill Gaps Part III: Filling IT Skill Gaps: 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? According to industry surveys, IT skills gap is a significant challenge facing IT leaders today, what are exactly the skills gaps and what are the resulting symptoms? For example, business have job openings, but cannot find people with the right skill set; or the talent people they current have do not have the right competencies to adapt to the changes; or their business partners do not understand IT. Sometimes, the gaps people usually pick are not root causes, they are symptoms of specific best practices not being used. So what are the organizational best practices/ways that have been deployed to close the gap?
CIO’s Talent Strategy: Are People the Weakest Link in IT? The speed of business is accelerated; the talent demand for IT department is also never ending. However, the crux of the problems is that IT tends to employ the wrong people, and HR often plays 'buzzword bingo' because they don’t really understand what they have been tasked to the source. So, are people the weakest link in IT, and to what extent is your IT function let down by your talent supply chain? If so, why and where?
How to Define IT Talent Competency? Measuring knowledge worker’s performance is perhaps more tougher than measuring IT performance, because there’re many variables and intangible factors to leverage, traditional competency model more focuses on quantified result, with ignorance of qualified or innovative effort; or only measure short-term productivity, without enough consideration of long term skill set matching, and most of performance management systems today rewards mediocrity rather than encourage excellence. So how to define IT talent competency, how to move into people 2.0 –to unify talent’s heart, mind, and hands, and build up long term talent solution?
Data-Driven Talent Management: Information is the lifeblood of digital business, and makes an impact upon all different aspects of business, especially in talent management space, as people are the most invaluable asset in business, rather than following traditional subjective HR model, forward-looking organizations should experiment, develop and mature data-driven talent management for leaping through digital transformation.
Performance vs. Potential - Which One is More Crucial? Performance is how someone has performed in the past plus the present in various related contexts/ jobs. The potential is how one might perform in a different context or within the same context as a result of growth, maturity, skill development, or capability shaping etc. Performance keeps the business running; and potential moves the business to the next level; so performance vs. potential, how shall you assess them objectively; are organizations really buying-in to talent development? In this day and age of instant up-to-the-minute information of stock performance and earnings reports that are due on a quarterly basis, what are the real odds of companies that actually put in the time to develop their human capital so employees would achieve their full potential, and ultimately organizations can grow into a Digital Master?
How to Measure ROI on Talent Management? People are the most critical asset in organizations today, business is also moving from treating talent as a human resource to thinking talent as human capital, not just the cost, but the investment for the future, and from extended research, there are clear linkages between strategic talent practices and improved corporate performance. However, what’re the guidelines to measure ROI on talent management effectively?
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
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. 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 from IT workforce management perspective, is IT skill gap fact or fiction, how to fill it, and how to innovate IT talent management?
IT Talent Management InnovationIs IT skills Gap Fact or Fiction? Part I, Part II: Close IT Skill Gaps Part III: Filling IT Skill Gaps: 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? According to industry surveys, IT skills gap is a significant challenge facing IT leaders today, what are exactly the skills gaps and what are the resulting symptoms? For example, business have job openings, but cannot find people with the right skill set; or the talent people they current have do not have the right competencies to adapt to the changes; or their business partners do not understand IT. Sometimes, the gaps people usually pick are not root causes, they are symptoms of specific best practices not being used. So what are the organizational best practices/ways that have been deployed to close the gap?
CIO’s Talent Strategy: Are People the Weakest Link in IT? The speed of business is accelerated; the talent demand for IT department is also never ending. However, the crux of the problems is that IT tends to employ the wrong people, and HR often plays 'buzzword bingo' because they don’t really understand what they have been tasked to the source. So, are people the weakest link in IT, and to what extent is your IT function let down by your talent supply chain? If so, why and where?
How to Define IT Talent Competency? Measuring knowledge worker’s performance is perhaps more tougher than measuring IT performance, because there’re many variables and intangible factors to leverage, traditional competency model more focuses on quantified result, with ignorance of qualified or innovative effort; or only measure short-term productivity, without enough consideration of long term skill set matching, and most of performance management systems today rewards mediocrity rather than encourage excellence. So how to define IT talent competency, how to move into people 2.0 –to unify talent’s heart, mind, and hands, and build up long term talent solution?
Data-Driven Talent Management: Information is the lifeblood of digital business, and makes an impact upon all different aspects of business, especially in talent management space, as people are the most invaluable asset in business, rather than following traditional subjective HR model, forward-looking organizations should experiment, develop and mature data-driven talent management for leaping through digital transformation.
Performance vs. Potential - Which One is More Crucial? Performance is how someone has performed in the past plus the present in various related contexts/ jobs. The potential is how one might perform in a different context or within the same context as a result of growth, maturity, skill development, or capability shaping etc. Performance keeps the business running; and potential moves the business to the next level; so performance vs. potential, how shall you assess them objectively; are organizations really buying-in to talent development? In this day and age of instant up-to-the-minute information of stock performance and earnings reports that are due on a quarterly basis, what are the real odds of companies that actually put in the time to develop their human capital so employees would achieve their full potential, and ultimately organizations can grow into a Digital Master?
How to Measure ROI on Talent Management? People are the most critical asset in organizations today, business is also moving from treating talent as a human resource to thinking talent as human capital, not just the cost, but the investment for the future, and from extended research, there are clear linkages between strategic talent practices and improved corporate performance. However, what’re the guidelines to measure ROI on talent management effectively?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
Change Leadership & Change Management Go Hand-in-Hand
Change Management is not a one-time project, but an ongoing business capability.
Change Management is about mentoring the human side of the business through profound, unsettling change. Change Management has a very wide scope and is a relatively new area of expertise. From a management perspective, First, distinguish between change management and change leadership: the former is being about guiding strategy, systems, and process while the latter is about influencing people and culture. To be successful leaders, you must face and handle both. they are both important to make a change not a one-time project, but an ongoing business capability.
Change leaders need to focus on building a culture of change: The issues that will prevent change from happening are likely to be the leadership vision, communication, and style. Senior leaders need to gain an in-depth understanding about changes, especially at the strategic level. Change is supposed to happen. Resistance is supposed to happen. However, many senior leaders honestly don't understand what their role is, don't want to discuss publicly due to the criticism they will get. The big challenge is for the managers to change their own behaviors to allow their teams to do the change that is needed, especially if they are “hands on” in their style. Change is inevitable, and change is a strategic imperative. From top-down, taking the time to know who you are and what you like and the big WHY about the changes at first things first.
Change Management needs to be people-centric, shouldn’t just put emphasis on change tools. Unless you get the people side right even the most awesome plans and technical expertise still fall over! The implementation of any significant change process usually succeeds or fails because of the leadership of that change process. Leadership and management are two distinct and complementary systems of action and they have to be integrated seamlessly. Pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance are the logical steps in managing change scenario. Walking people through the process of resistance is key. The change should be based on planning strategy; there is long term mythology for big changes & short term mythology.
The change objectives must be well defined, understood, and accepted through planning. Planning is a good way to achieve change if the planning effort is integrated with the normal management practices.A strategy for "change" should focus on betterment. Change for the sake of change doesn't help anyone. The most important factor for positive change is flexibility in planning, decide to be prepared for inevitable change, clear roles and responsibilities, and authority to adapt and act as reality changes plans. Invest in change before it happens. Change leadership and change management need to go hand-in-hand - both the process and influencing people and culture are critical, defining the desired result BEFORE plowing into any effort, and facing inevitable questions, learning styles, technology issues (and so on) through anticipatory preparation.
Be sure to provide a metric for all to gauge progress and benefits. This is critical to keeping long-term commitment to and justification for the course correction. Change processes underpin organization’s change capability. Hence, pay attention to the processes under the surface, in order to be aware of them, as an organization. Change is a constant. Platforms support constants. Change is not an event. Events can be managed top down. Change can be supported top down, but change cannot be fully managed or controlled top down, it has to be proactively made bottom up. You have to define the change situation and the desired result before plowing into any effort, from measured progress to critical survival. Know what is an acceptable outcome, what resources the change and how urgently to act. Make change sustainable. When victory is declared too soon, undesired organizational behaviors return, and the transformation becomes another flavor of the month initiative.
A changeable organization is to creating organizations where change is the norm (though not for its own sake) and happens the whole time thereby delivering faster and increasing market share. Change can not be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the organization. And it is an ongoing business capability built through the effectiveness of change leadership plus the efficiency of change management.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
Change Management is about mentoring the human side of the business through profound, unsettling change. Change Management has a very wide scope and is a relatively new area of expertise. From a management perspective, First, distinguish between change management and change leadership: the former is being about guiding strategy, systems, and process while the latter is about influencing people and culture. To be successful leaders, you must face and handle both. they are both important to make a change not a one-time project, but an ongoing business capability.
Change leaders need to focus on building a culture of change: The issues that will prevent change from happening are likely to be the leadership vision, communication, and style. Senior leaders need to gain an in-depth understanding about changes, especially at the strategic level. Change is supposed to happen. Resistance is supposed to happen. However, many senior leaders honestly don't understand what their role is, don't want to discuss publicly due to the criticism they will get. The big challenge is for the managers to change their own behaviors to allow their teams to do the change that is needed, especially if they are “hands on” in their style. Change is inevitable, and change is a strategic imperative. From top-down, taking the time to know who you are and what you like and the big WHY about the changes at first things first.
Change Management needs to be people-centric, shouldn’t just put emphasis on change tools. Unless you get the people side right even the most awesome plans and technical expertise still fall over! The implementation of any significant change process usually succeeds or fails because of the leadership of that change process. Leadership and management are two distinct and complementary systems of action and they have to be integrated seamlessly. Pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance are the logical steps in managing change scenario. Walking people through the process of resistance is key. The change should be based on planning strategy; there is long term mythology for big changes & short term mythology.
The change objectives must be well defined, understood, and accepted through planning. Planning is a good way to achieve change if the planning effort is integrated with the normal management practices.A strategy for "change" should focus on betterment. Change for the sake of change doesn't help anyone. The most important factor for positive change is flexibility in planning, decide to be prepared for inevitable change, clear roles and responsibilities, and authority to adapt and act as reality changes plans. Invest in change before it happens. Change leadership and change management need to go hand-in-hand - both the process and influencing people and culture are critical, defining the desired result BEFORE plowing into any effort, and facing inevitable questions, learning styles, technology issues (and so on) through anticipatory preparation.
Be sure to provide a metric for all to gauge progress and benefits. This is critical to keeping long-term commitment to and justification for the course correction. Change processes underpin organization’s change capability. Hence, pay attention to the processes under the surface, in order to be aware of them, as an organization. Change is a constant. Platforms support constants. Change is not an event. Events can be managed top down. Change can be supported top down, but change cannot be fully managed or controlled top down, it has to be proactively made bottom up. You have to define the change situation and the desired result before plowing into any effort, from measured progress to critical survival. Know what is an acceptable outcome, what resources the change and how urgently to act. Make change sustainable. When victory is declared too soon, undesired organizational behaviors return, and the transformation becomes another flavor of the month initiative.A changeable organization is to creating organizations where change is the norm (though not for its own sake) and happens the whole time thereby delivering faster and increasing market share. Change can not be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the organization. And it is an ongoing business capability built through the effectiveness of change leadership plus the efficiency of change management.
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The Monthly Digital Leadership Brief Dec. 2015
Leadership is about future and change; direction and dedication; innovation and improvement.
The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1 million page views with about #2350 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Digital LEADERSHIP is the hidden GEM, Here is a set of featured digital leadership profiles:
Three “P”s in Paradoxical Leaders: The world is becoming hyper-connected & interdependent every day, and as a consequence every successful business has to sooner or later go beyond borders. At the same time the global business dynamic is only becoming more complex, uncertain, and ambiguous, Studies show that effective leaders display a marked level of ease and comfort when dealing with a paradox. Leading complex digital organizations is a challenge that transcends rational management and that requires paradoxical capabilities and behavioral complexity and competencies that distinguish great leaders from others. Paradoxes are conflicting choices or conditions that demand equal attention. Here are three pairs of “P” s in paradoxical leadership.
Three “W”s in Wise Leaders: Knowledge tends to be linear, but wisdom is often multidimensional. A wise mind is not full, but free; not about cleverness, but about humbleness; not about system or boxes, but about out-of-box; not about informativeness, but about openness. “Being wise” seems to be a bit old fashion, however, as a leader, the pursuit of wisdom is the only path to reach high maturity, from good to great, or from important to significant. Wisdom is not as superficial as winning only, or as countable as gray hairs, there are three “W”s in wise leaders.
Three “E”s in Effective Leaders: Perhaps “EFFECTIVENESS” is the most popular word to describe leadership in positive way, though it seems to be fundamental, doesn’t mean to be easier or tedious as an effective leader, because it takes character to do right things, it takes vision to pull up the future, it takes insight to understand deeper, it takes adaptability to learn, and it takes creativity to do things in better way. There are many “E” words in leadership, here are three key “E”s in the effective leadership.
Three “I”s in Insightful Leaders: If visionary leaders look on the horizon and take peek of future, then insightful leaders look beyond to capture the violet ray, or x-ray, to see underneath the surface; if visionary leaders are able to zoom in the future as if it were closer; then insightful leaders are capable of pulling past, present, and future together to dig into humanity and pursue universal wisdom. There are three “I”s in insightful leadership.
Three “S’s in Strategic Leaders: Perhaps many people thought to be strategic just means to think bigger or know strategy frameworks, strategic thinking is specified as being conceptual, systems-oriented, directional, linking the future with the past and opportunistic. It deals with "discovering novel, rewriting the rules of the competitive game." Statistically, only 10% of leaders exhibit strategic skills; if a good strategy embraces three “C”s: Creativity, Context, and Cascade, then a good strategic leader should also cultivate three “S”s quality.
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.
Read more leadership blogs here:
The Monthly Digital Leadership Brief Nov. 2015
Three "D"s in Digital LeadersThree "W"s in Wise LeadersThree "E"s in Effective LeadersThree "P"s in Purposeful LeadersThree "I"s in Insightful LeadersThree "V"s in Visionary LeadersThree "P"s in Paradoxical LeadersThree "C"s in Creative LeadersThree "A"s in Adaptive LeadersThree "T"s in Transformational LeadersThree "C"s in Character-based LeadersThree "C"s in Charismatic LeadersSeven Characteristics of Global LeadersLeadership Innovation: Compete for UniquenessCIO's Five Leadership TraitsTen Insights of Leadership Substances. vs. StylesHo, Ho, Ho of Leadership InfluenceFive Elements of Authentic LeadershipLeadership StyleThree Trends of Future of Leadership
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting the minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 1.1 million page views with about #2350 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Digital LEADERSHIP is the hidden GEM, Here is a set of featured digital leadership profiles:
Three “P”s in Paradoxical Leaders: The world is becoming hyper-connected & interdependent every day, and as a consequence every successful business has to sooner or later go beyond borders. At the same time the global business dynamic is only becoming more complex, uncertain, and ambiguous, Studies show that effective leaders display a marked level of ease and comfort when dealing with a paradox. Leading complex digital organizations is a challenge that transcends rational management and that requires paradoxical capabilities and behavioral complexity and competencies that distinguish great leaders from others. Paradoxes are conflicting choices or conditions that demand equal attention. Here are three pairs of “P” s in paradoxical leadership.
Three “W”s in Wise Leaders: Knowledge tends to be linear, but wisdom is often multidimensional. A wise mind is not full, but free; not about cleverness, but about humbleness; not about system or boxes, but about out-of-box; not about informativeness, but about openness. “Being wise” seems to be a bit old fashion, however, as a leader, the pursuit of wisdom is the only path to reach high maturity, from good to great, or from important to significant. Wisdom is not as superficial as winning only, or as countable as gray hairs, there are three “W”s in wise leaders.
Three “E”s in Effective Leaders: Perhaps “EFFECTIVENESS” is the most popular word to describe leadership in positive way, though it seems to be fundamental, doesn’t mean to be easier or tedious as an effective leader, because it takes character to do right things, it takes vision to pull up the future, it takes insight to understand deeper, it takes adaptability to learn, and it takes creativity to do things in better way. There are many “E” words in leadership, here are three key “E”s in the effective leadership.
Three “I”s in Insightful Leaders: If visionary leaders look on the horizon and take peek of future, then insightful leaders look beyond to capture the violet ray, or x-ray, to see underneath the surface; if visionary leaders are able to zoom in the future as if it were closer; then insightful leaders are capable of pulling past, present, and future together to dig into humanity and pursue universal wisdom. There are three “I”s in insightful leadership.
Three “S’s in Strategic Leaders: Perhaps many people thought to be strategic just means to think bigger or know strategy frameworks, strategic thinking is specified as being conceptual, systems-oriented, directional, linking the future with the past and opportunistic. It deals with "discovering novel, rewriting the rules of the competitive game." Statistically, only 10% of leaders exhibit strategic skills; if a good strategy embraces three “C”s: Creativity, Context, and Cascade, then a good strategic leader should also cultivate three “S”s quality.
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.
Read more leadership blogs here:
The Monthly Digital Leadership Brief Nov. 2015
Three "D"s in Digital LeadersThree "W"s in Wise LeadersThree "E"s in Effective LeadersThree "P"s in Purposeful LeadersThree "I"s in Insightful LeadersThree "V"s in Visionary LeadersThree "P"s in Paradoxical LeadersThree "C"s in Creative LeadersThree "A"s in Adaptive LeadersThree "T"s in Transformational LeadersThree "C"s in Character-based LeadersThree "C"s in Charismatic LeadersSeven Characteristics of Global LeadersLeadership Innovation: Compete for UniquenessCIO's Five Leadership TraitsTen Insights of Leadership Substances. vs. StylesHo, Ho, Ho of Leadership InfluenceFive Elements of Authentic LeadershipLeadership StyleThree Trends of Future of Leadership
Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu
